Cheltenham runner-up Final Demand disqualified over mepivacaine finding

Final Demand has been disqualified from second place in the Grade 1 Brown Advisory Novices’ Chase at the 2026 Cheltenham Festival after mepivacaine, a local anaesthetic classed as a Category B Prohibited Substance, was found in its post-race blood sample. The fast-track decision by Judicial Panel chair Sarah Crowther KC was published by the British Horseracing Authority (BHA) Judicial Panel on 12 October 2026, with a linked decision fining Cheltenham Racecourse.

Trainer Willie Mullins, named as William Mullins in the decision and licensed by the Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board, admitted breaching Rule (K)2.2, because the horse ran with a Category B substance in its body, and Rule (J)24.2, because the substance was not declared on the medication forms submitted before the race. He was fined £1,000 and £100, a total of £1,100. Under Rule (L)47.4 the horse is disqualified and the £43,672 it won for second will be redistributed. The decision says this follows from the presence of the substance and does not reflect any assessment of the trainer’s culpability. According to ITV Racing, the race was won by stablemate Kitzbuhel.

An unexplained source

On 3 March, the day of the first-stage declaration deadline, the horse had an injury to its lower jaw stapled under mepivacaine by a vet from an outside equine hospital. That treatment should have been on the second-stage declaration and was not. But the concentration found, 0.19 ng/ml, is what the BHA’s expert said a dose would most likely produce between 10 and 24 hours after administration, not eight days later. Her view was that a low dose most likely reached the horse very close to the time of sampling. The panel accepted that the source is unknown, so no defence under Rule (K)14 was available.

The chair rated culpability as low, the lowest band in the Table of Penalties because the BHA accepted that reasonable precautions were in place at the yard. She did not reduce the fine to a caution because Mullins had a previous breach, in 2002. On the declaration breach she cut the fine from the £250 entry point to £100, accepting that the omission was a single error in a system covering a string of about 250 horses. She placed the likely contact on race day, between the race and the taking of samples, and concluded:

Given the precautions in place, and the fact that a full investigation, including review of all available CCTV footage and interviews with all identified individuals, has not identified any source, in my view this was a one-off accident of a kind which it is difficult to foresee or forestall.

Sarah Crowther KC, Judicial Panel Chair

Racecourse fined over lost footage

In the linked decision, Cheltenham Racecourse was fined £5,000 under Rule (B)46 because CCTV footage from the Charles Turner yard, where Final Demand was stabled from 8 to 11 March before moving to the Irish yard on race day, was not kept. The cameras there had been installed temporarily by an outside supplier. BHA investigators asked for the footage on 11 May; on 2 July the clerk of the course, Jon Pullin, told them the supplier had said the hard drive holding it had been misplaced. The Jockey Club admitted the breach and agreed the penalty.

BHA General Instructions require stable CCTV images to be kept for at least 60 days and the recording system to be kept secure. The entry point for the breach is £3,500, within a range of £1,000 to £15,000. The chair raised the penalty because all the yard’s footage from a flagship meeting was lost and the supplier repeatedly failed to answer requests, and moderated it for the early admission, a systems review the racecourse says it is carrying out and the limited effect on the investigation.

Equanine’s reading

• Strict liability means a horse loses its placing and prize money even when the regulator accepts that the source is unknown and culpability is low, so the commercial risk of a positive sits with owners as well as trainers.
• The undeclared 3 March treatment was given by an outside vet, and the details did not reach the yard’s medication record before the declaration deadline. For large yards, the flow of treatment records from treating vets to whoever completes declarations is an operational exposure.
• Racecourses are responsible for the contractors who run stable CCTV. With a 60-day minimum retention period and a £5,000 penalty at a flagship meeting, courses that use temporary stabling may want to check how their suppliers store and hand over footage.