Racing NSW has today announced Newcastle trainer Darren Smith will need to answer charges for 18 of his horses testing positive for the performance additive cobalt.
Stewards have ordered Smith to answer charges relating to the positive swabs from 17 horses between February 14 and May 20 last year, with cobalt also detected in one horse during an out-of-competition drug test in May 2014.
Eleven Smith-trained winners tested positive to cobalt, and Smith has been stood down from training following a stewards’ raid on his Newcastle stable in May last year.
Smith’s case is unusual as it does not concern whether the trainer’s horses returned samples above the cobalt threshold – no threshold was in place at the time of the alleged offence. That threshold is now set at 200mg/L of urine.
Instead, stewards have charged Smith under Australian Racing Rules AR175h(ii), AR178 and alternatively AR177B(1)(a), which are outlined at the bottom of this article.
Smith is the first Australian trainer in the thoroughbred or gallopers jurisdiction code to be charged in relation to cobalt. (Harness Racing has had a restriction in place from October 2014, with trainers charged.)
The case is therefore an important one for thoroughbred racing as it will likely have ramifications for other trainers, including leading names Peter Moody, Mark Kavanagh and Danny O’Brien, who returned horses with elevated cobalt readings during the Victorian spring carnival.
Applicable Rules of Racing:
AR 175. The Principal Racing Authority or the Stewards may penalise;
(h) Any person who administers, or causes to be administered, to a horse any prohibited substance
(ii) which is detected in any sample taken from such horse prior to or following the running of any race;AR 178. Subject to AR 178G, when any horse that has been brought to a racecourse for the purpose of engaging in a race and a prohibited substance is detected in any sample taken from it prior to or following its running in any race, the trainer and any other person who was in charge of such horse at any relevant time may be penalised.
AR 177B. (1) When a sample taken at any time from a horse being trained by a licensed person has detected in it any prohibited substance specified in sub-rule (2):
(a) The trainer and any other person who was in charge of such horse at the relevant time may be penalised unless he satisfies the Stewards that he had taken all proper precautions to prevent the administration of such prohibited substance.
(b) The horse may be disqualified from any race in which it has competed subsequent to the taking of such a sample where, in the opinion of the Stewards, the prohibited substance was likely to have had any direct and/or indirect effect on the horse at the time of the race.AR 177. Subject to AR 177C, any horse that has been brought to a racecourse and a prohibited substance is detected in any sample taken from it prior to or following its running in any race must be disqualified from any race in which it started on that day.
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