BARRIER TRIAL HORSE TESTS POSITIVE TO PAINKILLER PHENYLBUTAZONE

I like to sit back and watch the various stewards panels around Australia - and observe how they handle different tasks that they are confronted with, but I think what came through late yesterday in a Media Release from Thoroughbred Racing S.A. Limited stewards is one of the best pieces of stewarding work I have seen in over four decades of following racing. In a nutshell, it involves stewards in that jurisdiction deciding they would swab a horse who was required to trial to their satisfaction - after the galloper in question had hung at its previous start.

 

I often raise the subject in my clients Sectional Times reports as to which horses in a race are sore – and it isn’t rocket science to know that a sound and fit racehorse should have no trouble exhibiting certain characteristics in a race – and one of those characteristics will be that the horse will be able to negotiate the home turn, without the need to be hanging like Ronald Ryan did at Pentridge in 1967.

 

The positive case that has just surfaced in South Australia is very interesting to watch, as one of the drugs allegedly found in the sample taken from the galloper Court Bell after a barrier trial on 1/2/10 is phenylbutazone, the exact same drug that was found in the Western Australian 2YO galloper Savage Cabbage when that horse was swabbed following it breaking a leg and being humanely euthanized on 28 October 2002 at Belmont racecourse in Perth. 

 

In the Western Australian barrier trial positive to phenylbutazone, the trainer of Savage Cabbage, Steve Wolfe, pleaded guilty to presenting the horse with a prohibited substance - and was disqualified for two years. Savage Cabbage broke his foreleg in the 400-metre barrier trial and 33-year-old Jason Oliver died the next day in a Perth hospital from the severe head injuries he’d received when Savage Cabbage collapsed on him. Jason Oliver’s Melbourne based jockey brother Damien - and his mother Pat - were at his bedside when he passed away.

 

 

 

TRSA Stewards have today received a report from Racing Analytical Services Limited confirming the presence of Phenylbutazone and Oxyphenbutazone has been detected in a urine sample taken from the racehorse COURT BELL, after it completed an Official Barrier Trial at Allan Scott Park Morphettville on Monday, 1 February 2010.

 

COURT BELL, trained by Mr. Jon O’Connor, was trialling for reinstatement following it being suspended when it won the Parmalat Handicap – 1100 metres at Allan Scott Park Morphettville on Saturday, 16 January 2010 in which it hung out severely.

 

Mr. O’Connor has been informed of the analyst’s findings and an inquiry into the circumstances will be held at a date to be fixed.