Shortly after his return he lied to a BHA investigator about where he had been on holiday, insisting it had been Italy. Murphy went on to win that season’s jockeys’ title, his second, by eight winners from William Buick, and he kept up the deception until May 25 last year, when he complied with a BHA production order – showing his travel details, boarding pass and credit card details.

In tears at times Murphy spoke to the panel about the history of his alcohol problem, the advice he had been given all the way through by some of racing’s most eminent trainers – Aidan O’Brien and Andrew Balding among them – to avoid it, to the evening of October 7, when he drank vodka in the car on his way back from Chelmsford races, went to a friend’s birthday party and the pub before failing a breath test at Newmarket the following day when he should have been riding in a Group One.

Murphy has claimed not to have had a drink since, has attended AA meetings with fellow jockey Kieren Shoemark, who has got his career back on track after addiction, and has been seeing a therapist. He handed his licence in on December 8.

He was given 11-month bans for each of the Covid breaches back-dated to December 8 to run concurrently and 10 days for his first alcohol breach and 90 for the second, taking his ban to Feb 16 next year.

For all his troubles off the track Oisin Murphy has few peers on it 

By Marcus Armytage 

Oisin Murphy is racing’s heir apparent to Frankie Dettori; a great jockey with the gift of the gab.

But on Tuesday, the three-time Champion jockey’s career, which has been in an upwards trajectory ever since he moved to England aged 16, hit its nadir when the 26-year-old was essentially banned for a year and fined £31,110 for breaching racing’s, and the country’s, Covid regulations, misleading the British Horseracing Authority as well as failing two alcohol tests. All events linked, according to the jockey, to the demon drink.

Kerry-born Murphy, a nephew of three-time Gold Cup-winning jump jockey Jim Culloty, who he went to live with aged 14, was brought up riding showjumpers, a passion he still indulges in.

As a child he was on a couple of Irish showjumping pony teams and might well have enrolled in Ireland’s Army Equitation School had his best 14.2 pony not been sold but showjumping’s loss became racing’s gain.

His interest in the sport had been spiked as a boy when his uncle, in the space of three weeks, won the 2002 Gold Cup on Best Mate and the Grand National on Bindaree.

“I was six or seven at the time,” he told The Telegraph once. “I remember my own excitement at him winning those races. I’d take my pony out and gallop it flat out around the field afterwards. I wanted to ride every day, but I wasn’t big enough to reach up to tack up the pony on my own.”

With his best pony sold he went to ride out for Aidan O’Brien, where he was taken under the wing of Ballydoyle’s established jockeys and allowed to ride work. O’Brien does not do apprentices so, aged 16, Murphy joined Andrew Balding who, alongside his training operation, runs a highly successful apprentice academy at Kingsclere.

He was champion apprentice at 19, became first jockey to Sheikh Fahad Al-Thani’s Qatar Racing operation aged 21 and won the first of his three jockeys titles in 2019.

A year later he rode his first Classic winner when he won the 2,000 Guineas on Kameko for Balding and Qatar Racing.