SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
Former jockey Darren Egan has been suspended from racing for 12 years after participating in ‘a conspiracy which struck at the heart of the sport’. Egan was found guilty of corruption charges last November, but the British Horseracing Authority (BHA) has now confirmed he is suspended until November 22, 2027.
The former leading apprentice was found to have engaged in a conspiracy with unlicensed individual Philip Langford, who at the time was given an immediate exclusion order which will remain in place for at least the next 15 years.
A BHA disciplinary panel said Langford laid Egan’s rides between June 17 and July 16, 2013, with the jockey charged with deliberately riding to lose in two of those races – at Chepstow (Imperial Spirit) on July 12 and at Bath (Tregereth) on July 16.
Egan, who has not ridden in Britain since October 2013, declined the BHA’s invite to provide details of any mitigating circumstances which could have reduced the length of his suspension. The BHA disciplinary panel said that Egan sent an email dated November 23 last year, in which accepted he had committed wrongdoing but that he “desperately” needed money.
A BHA statement read: “It can of course be said on Egan’s behalf that he was relatively young, that he was still an apprentice, and that the corruption was initiated and pushed forward by Mr Langford.
“But Egan was a willing participant. In his email, he explains that he knew what he was doing was wrong but that, ‘I needed the money desperately’. The panel was unable to see any reason for mitigation in that or in anything else of which the panel was aware.”
Last Thursday, Langford sent a written submission to the BHA, who said it “contained no identification of mitigating factors” and that he was the “instigator of the conspiracy”.
