Benoit De la Sayette set to return next month after suspension

Leading apprentice jockey Benoit de la Sayette, who has spent this summer on the sidelines after failing a drugs test, is set to resume his riding career on October 17.

The 18-year-old was expected to be among the stars of this season after a stunning start to his career and being handed the honour of being champion trainer John Gosden's first apprentice for 29 years. The 7lb-claimer guided Haqeeqy to victory for Gosden in the Lincoln at Doncaster on March 27 when having his first ride on turf.

A video was subsequently circulated on social media claiming to show De la Sayette at a party in the presence of cocaine following that victory, prompting the British Horseracing Authority to take urine and hair samples from him four days later.

The urine sample returned negative on the same day the test was administered, but the strand of hair returned positive for metabolites of cocaine. De la Sayette admitted he had previously used the drug, although insisted the video was from October 2019.

The BHA suspended him from riding pending the conclusion of the subsequent disciplinary process, which was completed this morning remotely by an independent three-person panel. It was not without a sting in the tail with Tim Charlton QC, chairing the panel, saying he and his two colleagues had “misgivings about the fullness of the explanation you [De la Sayette] have given”.

Ciara McElvogue, representing the BHA at the disciplinary hearing, said the rider had admitted taking cocaine “around three or four times” between August 2020 and January 2021, after falling in with a “bad crowd” while living in Newmarket.

De la Sayette was represented by Rory Mac Neice, who said the rider takes “full responsibility for the position he now finds himself in” and explained De la Sayette came into contact with cocaine through people he lived with, when he “succumbed to temptation”, before ceasing his use of the drug when moving back in with his parents in February this year.

“Mr De la Sayette has made a mistake and he entirely understands and embraces that, he won’t be the first teenager to have done so and he possibly won’t be the last,” said Mac Neice. “He is very young, to his credit he had recognised prior to the positive test the need to make changes to his living arrangements and he had taken the counsel and advice of his parents and Mr (John) Gosden and he had made changes.

“He recognised the complete incompatibility of allowing himself to succumb to temptation with his ambition to become a professional jockey. His entire focus now and throughout the late spring and summer of this year has been to work hard at Mr Gosden’s yard to ensure that should he be given a second chance as a rider, he is able to pay back those who have helped him through this period.

“Mr De la Sayette apologises without reservation and all ultimately he can say is that he has learned the hard lessons of this episode in his life and he has learned those lessons well.”

McElvogue told the panel there was “no suggestion or evidence” that De la Sayette ever rode in a race under the influence of cocaine, but presented the evidence of a toxicologist who studied the hair sample as indicating “the likely use of cocaine in the period of January to March”.

She stressed the time period involved was estimated and did not say it amounted to a finding of continuing use through that period, but Charlton felt the evidence was a cause for concern.

In handing down a six-month suspension, he told De la Sayette he had “misgivings about the fullness of the explanation you have given in the light of the expert evidence we have”.

He added: “Even though that expert evidence may not be something that we treat as gospel, it’s not written in stone, this panel is nevertheless concerned about the fact that you have on the face of it been using cocaine after you had returned home.

“That’s a possibility that the expert evidence opens and therefore being at home does not seem on that expert evidence to have cured the problem you had with the use of cocaine. That’s a matter you will need to confront, perhaps, when you come before the licensing committee.”

De la Sayette, dressed in a shirt and tie for the remote hearing, did not speak throughout the 45-minute inquiry. He occasionally sipped from a glass of water.

Before becoming a jockey, De la Sayette had excelled in pony races in France and Britain, and has been a regular face at Gosden’s Clarehaven yard in Newmarket for several years. His father, Geoffroy de la Sayette, rode about 250 winners in France.

Gosden had been supportive of De la Sayette when interviewed by Racing TV at Sandown in April: He said: “They're young kids, they're teenagers, they've been in lockdown on and off for a year. They're bored stiff and they can't even go and play football with their friends in the park.

"They're going to be looking for another stimulant. We don't have to be Einstein to see that alcohol sales have gone through the roof in lockdown because people are bored of looking at the walls.

"These kids are no different and they need all the support they can get and a firm talking-to. If there's any question of addiction, they need to go into a programme. But remember, for these jockeys, with cocaine - which is readily-available, I bet we could go into Esher now and get some in a beer garden - is something that actually suppresses appetite.

"It's a way of 'having a drink'. You drink alcohol, you get sugar and all the carbohydrates with it, so obviously it's convenient. But it is illegal and it's got to be stamped out. There's no doubt that urine samples are one thing but hair samples are another. He was messing about with it at the start of the year and he's paid a mighty price for it.

"I see no harm in doing more testing. It's an obvious place to go. They do plenty of urine testing here, but if they want to take a stage further, they're certainly within their rights to do so."