Hear the full interview
From 3:03 in Tuesday’s episode of Nick Luck Daily. Press play to start at the interview.
Harry Derham says there are “no grey areas” after a former senior member of his staff was disqualified for two years for passing on inside information for reward.
Graham Baines, a long-serving stable employee in Lambourn who latterly worked for Derham, admitted passing information to three men, one of whom was described as an online tipster. Their identities were protected at the request of the BHA. Baines received payments totalling £1,950 between January 2024 and December 2025.
An internal inquiry first
Derham told Nick Luck he acted as soon as he was sent evidence. “I suspended Graham immediately, pending an internal inquiry, which I did with my chairman,” he said. “Graham said all the evidence we had was true and factual, and that he’d been doing it. That is a clear breach of BHA rules, so we had no option but to dismiss him, which was obviously the right thing to do.”
Once the inquiry was over, Derham passed the information on to the BHA, on the advice of his chairman Adrian Brown. “He’s a vastly experienced businessman. He was CEO at RSA for a long time, and without him I would not be in business,” Derham said. “He said the right thing to do was to pass it on to the BHA. He has advised me since the start of my career, I trust him implicitly, and once he thought it was the right thing to do, that’s what I was going to do.”
“It’s against the rules. And I take my licence from the BHA extremely seriously.”
Harry Derham
‘We play by the rules’
Nick put it to Derham that many people would say this kind of thing happens in every yard, and asked whether anything is really wrong with it if the information is only positive. “I would answer it very simply. It’s against the BHA rules,” Derham said. “We are governed by the BHA. I’m a licence holder from the BHA. If it’s against their rules, we don’t do it. It’s very, very simple.”
“I don’t subscribe to this ‘Oh well, this always happens, this has gone on for years.’ I’m sorry, it’s against the rules,” he added. “I employ a lot of people, and a lot of people employ me to train their horses. I’m a 32-year-old man with a business that I have put everything I own into, and I’ve risked an awful lot of my family’s money as well. We play by the rules. It was a hugely upsetting episode, the whole thing, but I’m glad we’ve dealt with it. We hold our staff to the highest standards we can, and rules are black and white. There are no grey areas with them.”
Jane Mangan: ‘I thought there would be a couple of zeros on that’
Jane Mangan, Nick’s guest on the programme, said the figures surprised her. “From reading the headline, I thought there would have been a couple of zeros on that,” she said. “It would be naive in the industry to believe that this is a one-off. I’m not saying it’s acceptable, but when I read it I thought, oh Lord, I thought that was going to read way worse.”
Nick noted that the entry point for passing information for reward is three years, with a range of 18 months to five years. “Clearly it has had a very significant bearing on his life and career,” he said. “You could make a fairly strong case that the retribution outweighs the crime, for passing on a few positive tips. But it’s very interesting that Harry Derham got the information, did what he did and acted on it accordingly.”
Cristal D’Estruval ‘hugely exciting’
On a happier note, Derham’s unbeaten Cristal D’Estruval made a sparkling chasing debut at Carlisle on Monday. Derham would not put him above his Grade 1 winner Le Frimeur, but said: “This horse is hugely exciting in his own right. This might sound silly, but I’ve just wanted to do him justice, because I haven’t had a young chaser like him, and his schooling has been really impressive.”
“I worry constantly that he hasn’t had much racing, but yesterday he was super professional and measured his jumps beautifully. He’s obviously a very talented horse.”
Le Frimeur is due to reappear in the Long Distance Hurdle at Newbury on Friday 27 November. “That’s been the plan since we decided hurdling is the right thing to do,” Derham said. “He’s in lovely shape and training really well. He’s only had three runs, so I’m hoping there’s still a lot more to come from him. I can’t wait to get him out.”
