Moods

by Helen Thomas

  Pillar of Hercules did not win the elite weight-for-age event the following day, and the potential so many saw in him on that overcast Friday morning at Caulfield would prove too great a burden. Eventually sold in 2010 as a ‘tried horse’ for $46,000 to a businessman keen to set up a stud in Malaysia, he was sent to a farm in Victoria to await his international call-up, covering a few mares in the intervening months to get the hang of his new duties.

  Gary Mudgway, manager of Grange Thoroughbreds, oversaw his care through this period. He had known him as a yearling; in fact, Mudgway probably had a longer association with the horse than anyone. ‘I bought his mother when she was carrying him, actually,’ he explains.

  Astonishingly, Pillar of Hercules’ latest owner suffered a stroke about a year later, and was then discovered to be in serious debt. In a way, this didn’t surprise Mudgway. ‘All his life, it seems like he was a magnet for nefarious types,’ he laughs. ‘At the end of the day, I took over the ownership of him.’

  Given that the sire-in-waiting had hardly been able to set the world on fire as a private stallion, Gary Mudgway decided to give him one more preparation as a race horse. He had retired ‘relatively sound’, he reasoned; why not give him a chance to recapture some of his form on the track?

  Three years and four months after Pillar of Hercules had last raced, and six years since his last win, he travelled to Adelaide to face the starter in the Perks Accountants (BenchMark 90), only to be pulled out of the race with a tendon injury. By this time a gelding, the nine-year-old returned to his old friend’s farm in Victoria.

  Eventually, Mudgway was contacted by a woman keen to retrain the former headline-maker as an equestrian horse. Kate Fenner offered to pay the grand sum of $1 for the privilege. ‘I don’t think Gary ever accepted that from me,’ she says with a laugh. Nevertheless, ‘Pillar’ now lives with her and her partner, a vet – and has a new name. ‘We call him Cream Puff, he’s such a lovely-natured horse,’ she says.

  Mudgway is pleased. ‘He was a nice horse, so I think it was a very good ending,’ the horseman reflects. ‘He arrived with a good yarn, and left with a good yarn.’

  A worse fate befell Bill Vlahos. After establishing himself as the mastermind behind a punting club called The Edge, he became a major ‘buyer’ of yearlings, shooting to international prominence as the successful bidder on two of Black Caviar’s siblings: with BC3 Thoroughbreds, Vlahos purchased her yearling sister for $2.6 million in 2012, and a year later her half-brother for a record $5 million. To veteran industry observers, this buying spree seemed far too good to be true. They were correct. ‘Dollar Bill’ Vlahos never paid for the colt, nicknamed Jimmy, who had to be euthanased on humane grounds as he was suffering from the debilitating hoof condition laminitis. He had just turned two.

  After The Edge collapsed with debts of $194 million, Vlahos declared bankruptcy in December 2013, six years after the forced auction of Peter Moody’s ‘hell of a horse’.

  Fortunately, the trainer’s luck went in precisely the opposite direction.

  11

  THE HORSEMAN LEFT home most days at 3.00 a.m. to drive to his stable, arriving in the strange half-light that illuminates that time – not quite morning, but no longer night. He liked the quiet shuffling as the horses around him awoke, their gentle whinnies and soft snuffling signalling that his working day – and theirs – had begun. He did this six, sometimes seven days a week, and the horses who had been with him longest knew his sounds and smell well. This was vital. Routine, old-timers insist, is the key to a successful racing yard.

  And this had been a very successful one. Once owned by the man who nurtured Star Kingdom and Biscay, two equine speedsters that can still be found in the pedigree ‘tree’ of Australian racing’s internationally renowned sprinting families, it became famous again as the home of Black Caviar, the sprinting star of the contemporary era – and the ‘winningest’ horse in modern racing. ‘The good mare’, as her trainer still calls her.

  She, too, would wake up as he came into the yard in that slow first light, and watch him walk towards her stall, drawing on his second, or perhaps third cigarette for the day. She probably knew his moods as well as he did hers by the end of their tumultuous time together, although the start of each day always provided the best clue as to what was in store for them both.

  Yet that was years ago. Not even half a decade had passed, but it must have felt like a lifetime. In just a few hours’ time, Peter Moody would be as far away from that career high as he could ever have imagined, staring into an abyss as disheartening as his run with Black Caviar had been exhilarating. Over the past six months, this had become a reality he could not ignore.

  The trainer had carried on regardless, abiding by the habits of the stable, the rigours of training thoroughbreds day after day, across at least two states. Now, having quietly closed his small satellite stable in Sydney because of the weight and distraction of the alleged blood-doping case he was facing, the operation was again focused only on Caulfield. Even so, what might lie ahead cast a pall over even his redoubtable presence.

  For the first time in his life, Moody – a master of horses – would shoehorn himself into a suit and drive across town to sit for hours at a table crowded with legal briefs, books and binders. He had waited a long time to be called to explain how one of his better gallopers came to have nearly double the legal limit of a prohibited substance in his system after an important race in the spring of 2014. Now, with the moment upon them, he and his team seemed poised, even buoyant.

  *

  They were certainly on familiar territory. It cannot be by accident that Racing Victoria’s main building, home to the stewards and their disciplinary panels, sits on a high hill at the edge of Flemington Racecourse. It is a veritable eyrie of officialdom that houses Harness Racing Victoria, Racing Victoria’s executive, the chief steward and his team, Racing Analytical Services Limited (RASL), and the racing.com media teams. Like all trainers, Moody must have gazed in the compound’s direction countless times, probably without realising it, when working at Australia’s most famous racetrack.

  Finally, 11 days before Christmas, Peter Moody’s ‘day in court’ had arrived. Finally, he would have the chance to put his case, to give his opinion on what might have led to Lidari’s illegal cobalt reading. In anticipation, he had timed his arrival at RV’s headquarters to perfection, walking into the hearing just ahead of Judge John Bowman and his panel of two, without being accosted by the hovering camera crews and journalists. Veteran turf scribes looked bemused as the trainer slipped in his seat beside his lawyer with just a minute to spare.

  But Moody’s alacrity was premature; as it transpired, he would have no direct involvement in the opening day’s proceedings at all. The charges against him would not even be read until the second day of the hearing.

  Nevertheless, it quickly became apparent that the trainer’s feeding regime was under the spotlight, especially regarding Availa, the oral supplement that came in powder form and was mixed into the horses’ feeds to encourage hoof growth. It was clear, too, that this inquiry would be dense with expert witnesses and their reports. But before any of that, Judge Bowman – the recently appointed chair of the RAD Board – asked Jeff Gleeson QC to outline Racing Victoria’s case.

  ‘As we understand it,’ Gleeson began, ‘Mr Moody admits that cobalt present in the horse’s urine at a concentration greater than 200 micrograms per litre is a prohibited substance, but he does not admit that he’s guilty of any of these charges. The matter will involve, it seems at the moment, a contest in relation to some of the processes regarding the analysis of the urine … [but] the substantial factual dispute will focus on just what substances, and I use that word neutrally, Lidari was consuming in the lead-up to October 4.’

  One of Victoria’s most respected senior counsels, Jeff Gleeson has acted for clients as diverse as the AFL and the Catholic Church, and his grasp of these matters was strong. He explained to the board how Racing Victoria h
ad tested Availa on other horses, in the amount Moody had originally claimed Lidari had been receiving. But more recently, he continued, ‘it came to the stewards’ attention’ that Moody would argue that Lidari ‘had been receiving the hoof powder Availa in very significantly greater quantities than the stewards had been led to understand’. Naturally, this meant that ‘a lot of the earlier scientific evidence [about Availa] was arguably rendered of considerably less relevance’.

  Having got the ball rolling, the debonair QC then introduced Dr Martin Wainscott, who was appearing via a video link from Dubai. The former head vet for Harness Racing New South Wales had prepared a report for Racing Victoria on the central issue: could the amount of hoof powder Lidari was given have led to the high cobalt levels? This expert witness doubted it.

  Peter Moody’s barrister honed in on the so-called ‘SCEC trial’, in which SCEC Pty Ltd, a contract research organisation, had tested Availa on six mares using the original information involving the hoof powder the Moody stable had given stewards. After discussing the cobalt levels of each horse – Belinda, Christmas, Conway, Hattie, Pretty and Ruby – Matthew Stirling posed a series of questions.

  ‘It’s the case, isn’t it, that every single one of those six horses showed a higher cobalt reading on day 15, when the horse had no Availa, and obviously no cobalt in Availa, than [on] day 14, when the horse was given Availa?’

  Wainscott: ‘Yes, that’s correct; a small increase in all of them, but it’s got to be said that those increases are broadly in line with their levels for the previous 14 days that they were receiving the supplement.’

  Stirling: ‘But does the SCEC trial tell us these things: the first is that the level at which different horses test varies significantly? So the horses are getting the same amount of Availa, which is 9.7 grams, aren’t they?’

  Wainscott: ‘Yes.’

  Stirling: ‘If Lidari was fed – and this is a fact to be found by the current board – in the order of five times 9.7 grams of Availa – that is, if Lidari got about 50 grams of Availa a day – you’d expect the detected levels of cobalt to be much higher, wouldn’t you?’

  Wainscott: ‘I can’t answer that. I don’t know. There’s been no work that’s ever administered cobalt orally at such a high dose.’

  Things became even more technical, with Matthew Stirling raising the issue of the ‘bioavailability’ of cobalt, or what percentage of the substance enters the bloodstream. Specifically, he asked Dr Wainscott if he agreed with Dr Andrew Van Eps, an associate professor of veterinary medicine at the University of Queensland, whose report said ‘the most important factor is whether the horse has received supplementation with cobalt-containing compounds and the nature, dose and duration of this supplementation’.

  Wainscott: ‘Yes, I do.’

  Stirling: ‘Can I take you to [where] he says, “The bioavailability of cobalt in horses is not known and cannot be extrapolated reliably from existing data that I have reviewed.” Do you agree with that?’

  Wainscott: ‘Yes.’

  Stirling: ‘It’s true, isn’t it, that the bioavailability of a product, and we’re talking about horses, varies from product to product when we’re talking about oral feed?’

  Wainscott: ‘Correct, yes.’

  Stirling: ‘So we know, with intravenous administration, there’s 100 per cent uptake because it goes directly into the bloodstream. Is that right?’

  Wainscott: ‘Correct.’

  Stirling: ‘When a horse puts his snout into the feed trough and he eats his feed, with the Availa mixed in, which is what happened with Lidari, the bioavailability might be in the single digits, and it might be, with some substances, 30, 40, 50, 60 per cent, mightn’t it? There’s a big variation.’

  Wainscott: ‘Yes, some substances have high oral bioavailability, yes.’

  Stirling: ‘In addition to there being a wide range [in the] bioavailability of a product, there’s a second range, isn’t there, that individual horses vary in their bioavailability of each product?’

  Wainscott: ‘There’ll be an individual factor, yes.’

  Stirling: ‘So Lidari or Hattie or Conway … or any of the horses in the SCEC trials will have a different percentage rate of bioavailability, which shows how much they ingest and [how much] goes into systemic circulation?’

  Wainscott: ‘They could.’

  Stirling: ‘Every horse is different?’

  Wainscott: ‘Every horse is different.’

  This was probably not news to Matthew Stirling’s client, listening patiently at his side.

  *

  Peter Moody had been tackling this current predicament as he had the other difficult scenarios he’d faced in his 46 years: head-on. But on the second day of his hearing, on Wednesday 16 December 2015, he held his natural demeanour in check.

  The room itself had this effect on most present. It was like a cocoon: four long blinds blocked out the natural light, as well as any view of the outside world, and every word was recorded. Journalists leaned forward, trying to note all that was said.

  For Moody, this stage was so different to the one on which he usually worked; it was understandable if he was not quite at ease. The problem he faced was not one with which he could grapple physically, or work out with a stopwatch, or even get mad at. His professional focus was legendary, but so too was his ability to erupt when things didn’t go his way. A fellow trainer alludes to a chair that might have flown out the window of the Caulfield tower one morning, and a fax machine on another. Such theatrics were impossible here.

  His professional reputation on the line, Moody had to fight this battle within the confines of the room, as well as the rules of racing. He was the highest-profile Australian trainer charged in the cobalt scandal and so had the most to lose. He was a major racing identity, and this was now a major news story.

  Like everyone entering the building, Moody had passed by an almost life-sized photograph on the foyer wall, the seminal ‘black-and-white’ of Phar Lap’s strapper, Tommy Woodcock, lying in a stall alongside his beloved galloper Reckless. Photographer Bruce Postle captured the image in 1977, on the eve of that year’s Melbourne Cup, and it made the front page of the Age on Cup Day. The city woke up to the photo and has never forgotten it. Reckless ran a valiant second in the race that afternoon.

  Thirty-nine years later, his eyes are still closed, his head still resting gently on his elderly trainer’s chest. Theirs was a treasured partnership, and the photo a reminder of the bond in racing that should never be broken.

  What it meant to the beleaguered younger trainer in this context was hard to know. But the time had almost come for Peter Moody to talk. He at last had the chance to plead not guilty to each of the three charges. But he had longer to wait to give evidence, as the two opposing barristers continued their opening arguments. And his counsel indicated he had something up his sleeve that might tip the case in an unexpected direction.

  Matthew Stirling flagged this before Jeff Gleeson could start prosecuting the three serious charges against his client. Stirling reminded the board that it had been notified of ‘an outstanding issue in relation to documentation which we have been requesting from the RVL for a couple of months now’.

  ‘What it concerns is internal emails at RVL,’ Stirling went on. ‘That is, emails going between stewards, we think, or other people at RVL … The issue that those documents relate to is not the decision to analyse the samples by RASL, the samples initially provided to RASL, but the decision to provide those samples on to ChemCentre and to the Hong Kong Jockey Club.’

  This was a warning shot over the bow of the prosecution, hinting at a point of racing law to be argued. Rather muffled at this stage, it still sent a ripple of anticipation through those watching. But it didn’t stop Gleeson from opening Racing Victoria’s case. He got straight to the core of the matter, as the stewards saw it.

  ‘If the board pleases, there are two main issues in this case,’ he said. ‘The first one is: do you believe the story
that has been belatedly advanced by Mr Moody about his staff administering a hoof powder called Availa to Lidari in quantities seven times greater than the manufacturer recommended?

  ‘The second is: even if you do believe that story, do you accept that this hoof powder, together with a vitamin injection, resulted in the cobalt level in Lidari being almost twice the permitted level? There’s lots of other sub-issues, but ultimately we say you’ll come back to those two central issues when you come to make your determination.’

  The key facts, both sides agreed, were straightforward enough. When initially interviewed by stewards early in 2015, after the trainer had been informed of Lidari’s cobalt reading on 13 January, Moody had not mentioned ‘overfeeding’ Lidari with Availa. Several months later he did. One daily scoop of the powder mixed into his feed became two, then three. It was clear the case would turn on how this changed scenario was interpreted, and the reasons it had changed.

  As the hearing quickly discovered, Jeff Gleeson was not a man who minced words. ‘We say that you will find that the belated story is hopeless,’ he asserted, ‘and transparently does not explain the amount of Availa that Lidari was receiving in October 2014.’ According to Gleeson, the ‘obvious attraction of the belated Availa story’ for Moody was that he intended to argue that the administration trials conducted by the stewards were irrelevant.

  Even if the stewards did believe what the QC called Moody’s ‘hopeless’ explanation about the supplement, he continued, ‘do you accept that this hoof powder, together with the vitamin injection, resulted in the cobalt level in Lidari being almost twice the permitted level? There’s a host of reasons why we say you would not accept that.’

  The barrister also fired a shot back at Moody’s counsel in relation to the now-disputed process involving Lidari’s swab. A portion of the A-sample had been sent by the Melbourne-based RASL to ChemCentre in Perth to be screened for cobalt ‘because at that time [RASL] wasn’t equipped to do it’. On the initial test, the sample returned a reading of 360 micrograms of cobalt per litre. RASL then wanted to have the sample analysed further, but they understood there was ‘insufficient urine in the A-sample bottle to send a further A-sample back to ChemCentre’. In fact, Gleeson said, that assumption was wrong: ChemCentre did have enough urine to continue to test but, believing there was not enough, decided to split the B-sample bottle instead.