Leading Australian trainer Gai Waterhouse has called for zero tolerance of anyone involved in the doping of horses.
Her comments follow the publication of text messages from former Aquanita employees charged with allegedly doping horses on raceday that suggested a horse may have received a ‘‘top-up’’ of bi-carb before running in the 2015 Melbourne Cup.
Despite the information in the texts, no charges have been laid against any trainer with horses in that race and there is no suggestion that any committed any racing offences.
Waterhouse, who had two runners in that year’s Cup, said there was no place for cheats in racing.‘‘We can’t have people like this as part of our sport. We need to be on a level playing field and it looks like we were not,’’ she said.
‘‘It is unfair to owners. It is unfair to punters and it is unfair to the public.’’Geelong-based trainer Jamie Edwards had the only Australian bred runner in that year’s race, Sertorius, his first Melbourne Cup runner. Sertorius finished 12th. Edwards told Fairfax Media he would be happy to finish last in every race if he knew it was run without anyone getting an unfair advantage.
‘‘I may never ever get a chance to have a runner in the Melbourne Cup and certainly 99.9 per cent of Australian trainers are probably in the same boat, so when you do get that opportunity, to then find out that there is a chance that it potentially wasn’t a level playing field, well it’s pretty disappointing isn’t it?’’ Edwards said.
A directions hearing will be held next Thursday.
Caulfield Racecourse was a stark and lonely place yesterday as the club staged an eight-race twilight meeting. The long line of stalls that the Aquanita team used to occupy remained vacant, with just a few leaves swirling about instead of a group racehorses preparing for battle. The owners’ bar the MRC generously constructed for Aquanita has long been nailed up.All streams of racing maintained that the Aquanita scandal was one of the great blights on the sport.
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‘‘Whenever you bring cash into a sport, you always find the cheats following. It’s been happening ever since I came into racing,’’ champion trainer John Hawkes said.
‘‘Of course they’re all trying to get the edge. But at the end of the day they’re just cheating. You’ve only got to look at sport everywhere. Someone’s trying to get money by doing the wrong thing.‘‘OK myself and my two sons mightn’t be well liked by some people in the industry but they all respect us for doing the right thing.
‘‘It’s driven by money and money is just so vitally important to these people that they use cheating to obtain it.’’
One of the most respected syndicators in Australia, Terry Henderson, who runs OTI said ‘‘it’s simply and utterly disgusting’’.‘‘It’s put a cloud over the industry and it’s just chipped away at our credibility to the sporting world,’’ he said.
‘‘But what’s even worse is that now it’s affecting those international horses that are coming out here for our showcase racing.
‘‘Our international reputation is vital and these scandals are just a hindrance.’’Some Caulfield members believe that a special meeting of members must be triggered after Saturday’s $1.5 million Blue Diamond Stakes.
Some owners at Caulfield were highly critical of the inaction of theonce robust Victorian Owners Association.
Said one owner: ‘‘The owners association was set up to protect owners and guard against their rights. The association now has gone from a group fighting for better conditions to a boys club.’’While the small crowd cheered home the second winner, those in the inner sanctum of the sport were speculating on where this investigation would reach in the coming weeks.
Next week, there is another directions hearing for those involved in the nearly 300 charges.Strangely for Caulfield denizens, they were more preoccupied with how racing would be affected by the scandal than in backing another winner.
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SYDNEY MORNING HERALD
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