Moods

by Helen Thomas

  Quiet time: Mick Bryant and Nelly, at Moody Racing’s stable in Melbourne. (Michael Bryant)

  Cobalt surprise: Lidari (centre), with jockey Steven Arnold, races into second place in the 2014 Turnbull Stakes, with eventual winner Lucia Valentina on the outside, and stablemate Brambles on the rail. Lidari returned an illegal cobalt reading after this race. (Vince Caliguri/Getty Images)

  New approach: Having recovered from a tendon injury, Lidari moved to Darren Weir’s Warrnambool stable in October 2015 to take advantage of ‘a beach-based training program’. (Bronwen Healy)

  Top cop: Terry Bailey, Racing Victoria’s chief steward, on track. (Vince Caliguri/Getty Images)

  Legal drama: Moody with barrister Matthew Stirling at Racing Victoria’s headquarters. (Vince Caliguri/Getty Images)

  Interlocutor: Jeff Gleeson, Racing Victoria’s QC at the Racing Appeals and Disciplinary (RAD) Board, outside court in Melbourne. (Michael Klein/Newspix)

  If only: Cartoonist Mark Knight’s take on the cobalt hearing. (Mark Knight)

  Boys from the bush: Terry Bailey and Peter Moody cross paths at Flemington, 12 March 2016. (Vince Caliguri/Getty Images)

  No cheat: Moody fronts the national media after being cleared of the notorious ‘cheating charge’ by the RAD Board on 16 March 2016. (Vince Caliguri/Getty Images)

  Partners: Sarah and Peter Moody. (John Donegan/Fairfax Media)

  Big night: Mick Bryant, Moody, vet Peter Angus and farrier Matthew Martin on the trainer’s last night at Moonee Valley. (Michael Bryant)

  ‘Emotional night’: Moody and David Moodie, Racing Victoria’s chairman, after Flamberge’s win at Moonee Valley on 24 March 2016. (Vince Caliguri/Getty Images)

  Saddle off: Luke Nolen and Peter Moody embrace after the jockey rode the trainer’s final starter, Dig A Pony, on the same night at the Valley. (Vince Caliguri/Getty Images)

  Last hurrah? Flamberge, Peter and Sarah Moody, and their three daughters after winning the 2016 William Reid Stakes at Moonee Valley. (Vince Caliguri/Getty Images)

  13

  DRESSED IN A crisp white shirt, his reading glasses hanging on a black cord over his blue-and-white striped tie, the trainer looked quite unlike what most Australians had come to expect. Without his ubiquitous baseball cap, straw hat or Akubra, let alone a bomber jacket or the sunglasses through which he’d watched Black Caviar win race after race, Peter Moody was clear-eyed, but his usually amicable expression was drawn. At 46, he retained an almost youthful charm, a vigorous exuberance that was largely appealing – and there was still a spring in his step, despite this circumstance. But on this morning, his energy seemed constrained, almost coiled.

  As he headed to the coffee bar before the start of the third day of the cobalt hearing, on Thursday, 17 December 2015, a racing journalist asked him how he was going. ‘Cantering out in front, looking back at ’em,’ Moody replied with a grin, not breaking stride. Later in the morning, when his turn came to give evidence, he was more measured. Sitting at the small table between the RAD Board of three and the two legal teams, this man of movement was unusually still, both hands clasped in front of him.

  Matthew Stirling’s opening questions were straightforward. Yes, Moody agreed, he had 119 horses in work: 95 at Caulfield and 24 at the satellite stable at Randwick. But that had now closed, so those horses had either come back to Victoria or stayed in New South Wales with other trainers. There were also 20-odd horses on his books that were not in full training.

  Yes, he had won metropolitan trainers’ premierships, country trainers’ premierships and been a leading Group 1 trainer who, between 1999 and 2015, had more than 13,000 runners for over 2500 winners, and a winning percentage of 18 per cent – or nearly one in five.

  Stirling: ‘Now, the last three years, you’ve had about a thousand runners a year, and you train a little less than 200 winners a year, or of that order, 170-odd, consistently?’

  Moody: ‘Yes.’

  Stirling: ‘The position is that every winner is swabbed, is that right?’

  Moody: ‘Yes.’

  Stirling: ‘The position also is that, in addition to the winner, some unplaced horses or random horses are also swabbed?’

  Moody: ‘Yes.’

  Stirling: ‘So would it be fair to say that approximately 200 of your horses each year are swabbed for prohibitive substances?’

  Moody: ‘Yes, along with out-of-competition testing.’

  Stirling: ‘If there is, say, 200 horses swabbed each year, you might have had 3000 swabs over the course of your career, or thereabouts – 15 times 200?’

  Moody: ‘Yes.’

  Over the next 15 minutes, the barrister asked his client to confirm which staff were working with him at Caulfield at the time Lidari was under his care, and to describe the layout of the yard: the main barn with its 32 boxes (or stalls), eight day yards and three pony yards – as well as the A-barn with 16 boxes, and the B-barn with 19. Finally, they got to Lidari, the horse at the centre of this case.

  ‘He came into our stable in 2013,’ the trainer outlined. ‘He’s quite a robust, rigorous type of colt. That’s probably a kind way of describing him. We find with a lot of these European horses, particularly the “entires”, they’re quite spoilt and they have very little manners, and this horse was certainly no different. We try and coax it out of them in any manner which we can, but this bloke retained his vigorous attitude.

  ‘I’ve handled a lot worse horses, but he wasn’t a horse that I allowed junior staff to handle. He could bite, strike, kick. Put simply, he’d lift a little kid out of the box door and drag them into the box with him. He was always handled by senior male staff.’

  Yet, Lidari – who was known as Frank or Frankie in the stable – was a completely different horse once he was saddled up. ‘All the way through, once you were on the horse’s back, he had a good attitude,’ Moody told the RAD Board. ‘He wasn’t dangerous in any way, shape or form. It was just with people handling him on the ground.’

  As if that wasn’t a degree of difficulty enough for the new arrival, there was also the matter of his feet. ‘Once again, I’ve had horses with a lot worse ailments, but I always found that these English horses have small, clubby feet – probably the makings of the soft, wet environment – and when these horses come to Australia and strike our firm ground, they seem to struggle, certainly initially.’

  To help counteract the jarring effect, the trainer said, he encouraged the farrier to trim their hooves back as much as possible, to ‘open the heel up and allow the expansion of the foot when it hits the ground, versus the club banging effect’. With these horses, too, the stable used ‘hoof aids’, either in the form of feed supplementation, specific shoeing or both.

  After a detailed explanation about how daily feeds were prepared, Matthew Stirling asked the trainer how a decision to include a supplement in a feeding regime was made.

  Moody: ‘Dependent on what the supplement is for, I’d firstly run it by my vet, Dr Peter Angus. If it involved hoof supplementation, I would also include my farrier. If it involved some sort of muscle aid, it would involve the chiropractor and so on. All supplements are introduced through myself, recommended through myself. Nothing enters the stables without my specific say-so.

  ‘Most supplements that are introduced come with some recommendation or whether people have had success with it. I’ll quite often inquire of that; either myself or Dr Angus will inquire into whether we can legally use such supplementation, [or] if there might be an issue with horses racing on them, whether they might contain banned substances. After we’ve ticked off all of the relevant boxes, usually with most supplementations we proceed on a trial basis to see if we get the desired effect, before maybe entering our regime full-time.’

  The stable’s ‘chain of command’ had been established. Moody’s lawyer now focused on the supplement in question, Availa. Could the trainer recall the first horse who was put on the hoof powder?

  ‘A horse called Hanks,’ Moody replied.
‘He raced maybe in the 2007–08 season, or thereabout.’

  Stirling: ‘What can you recall in relation to Lidari going on Availa?’

  Moody: ‘Availa was obviously quite a significant part of our supplementation routine by the time Lidari came along in 2012. I can’t recall the specifics of it, but … we’d found success with it in previous imports, and it would have followed on that general routine of, “Here’s another one, we may as well whack him on it as well.”’

  Stirling: ‘Can you recall what the ingredients were of Availa at the time that Lidari went on it?’

  Moody: ‘No.’

  Stirling: ‘Did you know that cobalt was an ingredient in Availa at the time?’

  Moody: ‘No.’

  Stirling: ‘When did you first become aware that cobalt was an ingredient of Availa?’

  Moody: ‘I would say mid to second half of June this current year, 2015.’

  Stirling: ‘When the stewards first notified you, on January 13 this year, that there had been cobalt detection in Lidari, did you do anything in your feed room as a result of that?’

  Moody: ‘Initially, no. We had no comprehension, no understanding of it. We knew cobalt had been recently introduced as an outlawed substance, or there was a threshold introduced. The general education among trainers, I would suggest was probably – it’s easy for me to say now, in hindsight – poor. But it was indicated that normal circumstances, normal supplementation at our stables wouldn’t have any effect or any bearing on the outcome of the cobalt circumstance.’

  There was no tremor of trepidation in Moody’s voice. But this question and answer would soon prove pivotal. Important, too, was the next fact introduced by Stirling: that equine chiropractor Michael Bryant had introduced the cobalt-containing supplement to the stable.

  ‘Michael operates out of numerous stables in his capacity as a chiropractor,’ Peter Moody told the board. ‘He came across it, [as with] numerous things, and he thought it was worth a try and he informed me that he [had] introduced it to my stables. But once again, without being prompted, I wouldn’t have recalled that.’

  Stirling then asked the trainer to explain the feeding arrangements of his horses, especially on a race day.

  Moody: ‘We stick to a strict schedule where we try to change very little. It’s part of my mantra, I suppose you’d say; I don’t want them to feel any different. My horses actually go out and work on race morning. Some of them even gallop on race mornings. They get fed, watered and treated exactly the same as they do every other day, because my idea there is I want them to go home and relax and pretend it’s any other day. I believe if you do something different with them, they’re not a silly animal, they’ll soon realise that “this is race day” and you can have subsequent problems.’

  Stirling: ‘What about the feeding of supplements on race day? And specifically we’re talking about Availa.’

  Moody: ‘We feed numerous supplements which I consider feed supplements, not treatments, and at that point in time I can say we used to feed anything that was part of the process – whether it be Availa, White-E, Salkavites, bicarbonates, salts. But I can honestly say [that] subsequently, since the last six to 12 months, we’ve ceased all these types of things on race days, due to the fact of the now very stringent race day rules, and a very – what I deem cloudy, but regulators would say otherwise – grey area on what is supplementation and what is treatment. And [what is] deemed race-day treatment. Unfortunately, a lot of things are deemed race-day treatment, where I deem them to be feed or a part of the feeding regime.’

  Stirling: ‘Did you have any knowledge about what cobalt might do to affect the performance or behaviour of a horse in a race? And I’m specifically talking about Lidari on Turnbull Stakes Day.’

  Moody: ‘No, I didn’t, and I can honestly say to this point in time, I still don’t.’

  His barrister then touched on an intravenous injection the horse was given the day before the Turnbull Stakes. According to racing grapevine, this was potentially a ‘smoking gun’.

  Stirling: ‘The IV injection given on October 3, 2014, that was given by your veterinary staff – do you have any recollection about that?’

  Moody: ‘Only on recollection, looking at the training sheets, which are recorded every day with the treatments on them, and the veterinary book, which I produced for the stewards when they interviewed me on January 13.’

  Stirling: ‘At the end of the day, it was established [that] the treatment was given on October 3, 2014 – the day before the Turnbull Stakes, rather than two days before, which is the normal position within your stable?’

  Moody: ‘Traditionally, Thursday for Saturday, Monday for Wednesday and so on. I can’t recall why, but on this occasion Lidari was administered a multi-vitamin injection on the Friday morning, pre-racing Saturday. On looking at his work sheets for the Thursday, he wasn’t listed to have anything. Usually it is a vitamin injection and a saline drench, but Lidari we found very difficult – if not impossible – to drench with a stomach tube, so we didn’t go down that path with him.’

  Matthew Stirling moved on, noting that Lidari was swabbed after the Turnbull Stakes, and that sample was sent off to ChemCentre. ‘On November 20, 2014,’ he said, ‘ChemCentre wrote to RASL, indicating a screening test had shown a positive reading for Lidari of 360 micrograms per litre of urine. Were you informed at that stage by the stewards of that detection?’

  Moody: ‘No.’

  Stirling: ‘When was the first time that you were informed by the stewards of a detection of cobalt in Lidari?’

  Moody: ‘Approximately three p.m. on January 13 this year, 2015.’

  It would be another six months before any charges were laid.

  Moody: ‘It was at this point that, obviously, we realised that things were far more serious than initially thought.’

  Stirling: ‘Why was that?’

  Moody: ‘The fact that we’d been charged with administering. Mr Bailey, and I can’t recall who else, visited my office and informed me of the charges laid against me, and they did include administration, and obviously informed me that these charges brought with them the mandatory three-year penalty.’

  Stirling: ‘What was said at that meeting?’

  Moody: ‘I looked him [Bailey] in the eye and said, “Do you believe I’m a cheat?” His answer was, “Well, the substance got into this horse in some way, shape or form.” I think I repeated the question a few times rather vigorously, and without saying I was a cheat, he didn’t deny it.

  ‘He apologised, actually, for presenting the charges. I said I was extremely disappointed to be facing these charges, then I started to realise the gravity of the situation I faced, and I could honestly say, up to that point in time, I didn’t have any expectation to be charged. I think I grilled him on the fact that I’d worked under him, or beside him, since we were both juniors in this industry – he as a cadet steward and myself as a stablehand – for probably some 30 years, and [I] looked for some clarification from him that he believed he was doing the right thing in charging me. He felt, as he indicated, that there was no other option.’

  As soon as the stewards left, the trainer said, he started investigating ‘all plausible reasons why this had happened’. But still the answer did not come to light quickly: there had been a mix-up between staff as to how and when Lidari had been given the hoof powder.

  Stirling: ‘Other than whatever cobalt was in Availa and whatever cobalt was in the intravenous injection on October 3, 2014, what do you say to the allegation that you administered cobalt other than that to Lidari?’

  Moody: ‘Outside of normal supplementation, no.’

  *

  As his lawyer relinquished the floor, Peter Moody seemed more relaxed in his chair. It was a fleeting moment of respite. His cross-examination began straight away, and within minutes it was clear that Racing Victoria’s counsel wasn’t mucking around; at times through this hearing, in fact, his questioning would prove lacerating.


  Jeff Gleeson QC: ‘Is Availa, in the quantity of seven times above the recommended dosage, “normal supplementation”?’

  Moody: ‘No.’

  Gleeson: ‘So what do you say about your last answer?’

  Moody: ‘Human error.’

  Gleeson: ‘Well, your last answer was that you didn’t administer or cause cobalt to be administered outside “normal supplementation”. It’s wrong, isn’t it?’

  Moody: ‘Yes.’

  Gleeson: ‘Would you describe yourself as a hands-on trainer in terms of the feeding, treatment and training of your horses?’

  Moody: ‘The training most definitely. Unfortunately, with the numbers I train, feeding and treatment I tend to have got further away from these days. But the training, most definitely.’

  Gleeson: ‘When you arrived at your stables at 3.45 a.m. on a typical day in 2014, what was your routine?’

  Moody: ‘Do you really want to know?’

  Gleeson: ‘I really want to know.’

  Moody: ‘Quite often, some mornings, I run from the car to the toilet because I’ve had a big cup of tea. Once that’s completed, I go to the office, pick up all my work sheets [and] enter the stable complex before four a.m. I meet my foremen at my board. Within my stable, there’s a central area where the morning’s trackwork is recorded and so on at the back gate, where the horses must leave. I meet my assistant trainer and foremen there.

  ‘We go through what horses may or may not have eaten, digested during the night; whether they had any queries. Temperatures of probably 50 of the 90-odd horses are taken every morning [in case] we need to change any trackwork details and so on, and I then proceed on to the trainers’ tower in the middle of the track, [and] I arrive there at probably quarter past four each morning.’