A former Racing Victoria investigator resigned from the organisation, in part, due to frustrations about the alleged lack of a thorough investigation into the first cluster of Formestane positives.
Betsy has spoken to the former employee of RV’s integrity department, who asked to remain anonymous.
The investigator made a series of bombshell claims, including:
– Several requests made to investigate and consider potential explanations for the Formestane positives other than administration were denied by superiors.
– The initial investigations with trainers of horses that returned positives to Formestane and its metabolites uncovered no evidence of deliberate treatment, incorrect supplement use or feed contamination.
– There was a culture within the Compliance Assurance Team that trainers who returned positive swabs in this case and others were likely guilty of wrongdoing, even if there was a lack of evidence against them.
The investigator was involved in stable inspections and conducted initial interviews with several trainers whose horses returned post-race urine swabs containing Formestane and 4-Hydroxytestosterone in early 2023.
Those initial investigations uncovered no evidence of deliberate treatment, incorrect supplement use or feed contamination and the investigator accepted the forthright statements of the trainers they spoke with.
The former investigator, who had a policing background prior to joining the racing industry, claims that several requests made to investigate potential explanations for the positives were denied by superiors at RV.
These included interviews with lab technicians at RASL and the theory that Formestane could potentially be endogenous in horses.
RV charged five stables – Mark and Levi Kavanagh, Amy and Ash Yargi, Julius Sandhu, Smiley Chan and Symon Wilde – in April 2024, more than 12 months after the first horse returned a positive swab containing traces of the banned substances.
The positive swabs for the mystery drugs have continued since, with at least 24 stables across both horse racing codes and spanning three states now implicated in the saga.
A Racing Victoria spokesperson said the investigation was conducted thoroughly and in accordance with standard practice.
“We don’t intend to go into the specifics of this case or any other similar investigations whilst there are matters that remain the subject of legal proceedings or active investigations,” the RV spokesperson said.
“What we will say broadly is that a thorough investigation was conducted in accordance with established regulatory processes and that the Stewards considered all information available to them at the time of their relevant decisions.”
“This includes both the decision, in light of a confirmed positive swab, to issue presentation and not administration charges against the five trainers and to apply a 12 month stand down order against each of the horses as is mandated in the Australian Rules of Racing.”
A plea hearing at the VRT for the first five trainers charged in the saga is set down for next Wednesday.
