Racing Victoria chief steward Terry Bailey admits the rules of racing were not “strictly” followed in testing for cobalt.
Racing Analytical Services Ltd wanted urine samples divided with one sent to Perth-based ChemCentre for cobalt testing and RASL testing for other prohibited substances.
Bailey said the procedure did not “strictly” follow the rules of racing.
“That was the way RASL wanted to do it so that’s the way we did it,” Bailey told Danny O’Brien and Mark Kavanagh’s appeal against their cobalt disqualifications.
“Obviously the rules weren’t followed to the letter.”
Bailey said he was never told the two labs that did the cobalt testing – ChemCentre and the Hong Kong Jockey Club lab – did not have specific accreditation to test for the substance in equine urine.
O’Brien and Kavanagh’s barrister Damian Sheales suggested Bailey was telling a straight-out lie when he could not remember a 2014 drug strategy committee meeting, but Bailey said he did not remember it.
Bailey said Racing Victoria does not tell trainers about positives for any prohibited substance until it gets the first analysis certificate.
“Screening levels we’ve found in the past have been unreliable,” Bailey told the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal.
“We don’t act on screens because we’re not confident of the readings.”
Bailey said there were issues in the past with screen tests for total carbon dioxide (TCO2) levels, including involving O’Brien horses that were held back after races at Flemington in 2013 for further samples to be taken.
“They did receive a lot of criticism because it ultimately turned out the screens were out of the ball park, incorrect, and it did obviously bring a lot of attention to the O’Brien stable because we had acted on those screens.”
Racing Victoria brought in its cobalt threshold in April 2014, while a national threshold came in the following January.
Bailey, who said he was used to criticism in his job, said he worked on the cobalt proposal with Racing Victoria head vet Dr Brian Stewart.
“What Brian left me with no doubt was it was performance enhancing and it was an issue,” Bailey told the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal.
“Time has shown he hasn’t got it wrong.”
