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A bad case of the cobalt blues

10th August, 2015
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Peter Moody has quit training in the wake of the Lidari cobalt trial. (AAP Image/Julian Smith)
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10th August, 2015
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Racing has a long history of amateur pharmacology and the dose of the day is cobalt. Current stewards’ inquiries into cobalt use in NSW and Victoria have put a very public microscope on some of racing’s slyest characters.

Quebec’s most committed beer drinkers accidentally proved the lethality of high cobalt levels in the 1960s, when 50 of them developed unexplained heart disease and 20 dropped dead from heart attacks.

Autopsies blamed the cobalt that local breweries used to stabilise foam. When cobalt (a transition metal that can cause acute or cumulative poisoning) was removed, the deaths stopped.

Cobalt doping is a type of blood doping that assumes horses will react to cobalt in the same way that humans and laboratory animals do. In those species, research shows that high cobalt levels stimulate production of oxygen-carrying red blood cells.

The downside is that high cobalt levels cause severe damage to organs and sensory systems, and hamper blood clotting. For obvious reasons, cobalt is no longer used in medicine and is banned for athletes.

There are no recorded cases of horses having cobalt deficiency. High cobalt readings cannot result from the use of veterinary supplements. Knowing that high doses of cobalt are poisonous made further research unnecessary.

Due to the damage it causes, a group of leading equine vets has expressed serious concerns over the cruelty implications of cobalt doping. The Victorian RSPCA is following the case closely and will lobby for changes to animal cruelty laws to make administering illegal substances to animals a cruelty offence.

Urine tests on ordinary horses will always show tiny traces of cobalt – single-digit readings, around 5 micrograms (µg)/litre – because it is a naturally occurring trace element and essential micronutrient. High cobalt levels are caused by cobalt injections and drenches, not feed supplements or hoof treatments.

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On January 1 2015, the national cobalt standard for racing horses was introduced. The threshold is a generous 200 µg/litre – double scientific recommendations.

Harness Racing NSW first became aware of cobalt doping in 2013 and have led research into preventing it. They took initial advice from Dr Terence Wan of the Hong Kong Jockey Club’s Racing Laboratory who has been working on cobalt doping since 2007.

Wan said that 60 µg/litre was an absolute upper limit reading for an untreated horse but that 100 µg /litre would clearly show that a horse had been treated on race day. This is the cobalt threshold used in Hong Kong.

When Harness Racing NSW conducted an 80-sample population study in NSW and Queensland, the average reading was 17 µg /litre – three times what would be expected. However, statistical analysis of those 80 samples still supported Wan’s threshold.

Despite this evidence, the Harness Racing NSW Board accepted NSW Integrity Manager Reid Sanders’ recommendation that they introduce a cobalt threshold double Wan’s recommendation – 200 µg/L.

As an aside, it is worth noting that Australian horses were excluded from the International Confederation of Horseracing’s international testing and analysis of cobalt use in racing done in 2013. They suspected (and were proven right) that cobalt was being being used in Australian racing and that it would skew the results.

Research shows that one-off doses of cobalt do not benefit horses’ EPO concentrations, red blood cell parameters or heart rate. Cobalt doping in human athletes shows that it is best used repeatedly, which preconditions tissue to hypoxia, protects skeletal muscles from exercise-induced oxidative damage, and enhances endurance.

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The focus on race-day testing won’t catch those who are exploiting the real advantage of cobalt – preconditioning. Catching them would require widespread out-of-season and post-competition testing by authorities.

Instead of clearing things up, introducing an out of season testing regime is likely to muddy the waters even more.

Different thresholds would have to be set for non-race-day tests to account for legitimate use of veterinary supplements, but the manufacturers can offer little test data to say what those levels should be.

Understanding of clinical and pathological conditions that may affect horses’ cobalt levels is comparatively poor. Even if it was understood, accurately factoring those conditions in would require a substantial baseline data set of untreated racing horses from different regions, and there isn’t one.

The aggressive smoke and mirrors shows put on by legal eagles at the NSW and Victorian inquiries are a distraction from the core issue. So is their chorus line – trainers, stable hands, vets and hangers on, who range from bumbling accomplices to out-and-out liars.

Cobalt is a banned substance. Cobalt doping is a calculated risk that assumes horses will react to cobalt preconditioning as other species do, resulting in a clear competitive advantage.

When a horse tests high for cobalt it shows that someone has deliberately exposed the horse to likely organ failure, permanent lameness, damaged senses or death. It is undeniably cruel and against the rules of racing.

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Which raises the question – does the 200µg/litre threshold prevent cobalt doping? Does testing below the 200µg/litre limit prove that a horse is clean or just that it hasn’t been dosed recently?

At the Racing NSW inquiry, a text from John Camilleri said it all: “These galloping Cs have to wake up a week before to outsmart us trotting grubs.”

The excessive cobalt threshold means that the grubs don’t have to be smart or subtle to slip through the net.

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