Moods

by Helen Thomas

  ‘And then, of course, once she went over the line, I was standing with him, and I give him a hug, you know? But it wasn’t a celebrity hug. I just turned around and I give him a big squeeze. And he said, “We’re in a bit of trouble here, I think.” And I said, “Oh, jeez …”

  ‘And we didn’t know if she’d won or not, and we were in a bit of bother and he’s sucking on a durry. Anyway, lo and behold, she’d won. And Michael and I, we went to the bar, and Peter went up and got to shake the Queen’s hand. That was about how it worked.’

  *

  Once safely home in Australia, Black Caviar would have just three more starts, eventually bowing out with another slashing win in the T.J. Smith Stakes in Sydney on 13 April 2013. It was a fitting end to her remarkable career, and seemed to bring her trainer full circle. Moody had started his professional life as a strapper in Tommy Smith’s yard at Randwick, and now for a second time had returned with his unbeatable mare to win the race named after the trainer.

  The mare’s 25th victory also broke one of Australasian racing’s most significant records. By reaching her 15th Group 1 success, Nelly surpassed a special milestone: Kingston Town’s 14 victories at the elite level. Four days later, Timeform confirmed that she was the ‘joint highest-rated filly or mare in [their] 64-year history, with a rating of 136’. It was another international honour for the mare ranked the world’s best sprinter for four years.

  That same day, Peter Moody announced her retirement. ‘The connections of the horse and I decided 25 was a great number, and she did us proud on Saturday,’ he told the media.

  He was right: it was time. The trainer’s relief was almost palpable.

  15

  THE HEADLINES COMING off the hill at Epsom Road through the first days of Peter Moody’s RAD Board hearing had not been kind. Even the most cursory glance at the papers and online reports indicated things were not going well, for anyone. ‘Stewards call Moody’s cobalt story “hopeless” at RAD Board hearing’ came early in the piece from the Herald Sun; racing website G1X.com.au led with ‘Bombshell: Moody “denied natural justice”’.

  As the case continued through the week, the bold type condensed a grim tale. ‘I’m no cheat, says Moody’ read one; ‘Peter Moody made up story, says QC’ read another. Even the more neutral ‘Stewards’ QC continues Moody cobalt grilling on Friday’ made clear the mood of the matter.

  On the morning of Friday 18 December, with the trainer still under cross-examination, it didn’t take long for the sparring partners to warm up. Racing Victoria’s QC, Jeff Gleeson, honed in on the stewards’ trials of six mares, in which they had attempted to replicate Moody’s feeding and supplement regime.

  Gleeson: ‘When did you become aware they were doing trials on your feeding regime?’

  Moody: ‘There was nothing specifically put to me. The great racecourse innuendo and rumour [mill] suggested trials were being conducted. An actual date that I was made totally aware of, I couldn’t recall. Probably somewhere in the vicinity of the middle of the year, or likewise.’

  Gleeson: ‘So before you received the brief, you heard a bit of scuttlebutt that they were running trials based on your feeding regime?’

  Moody: ‘Well, once again, I hadn’t been given that significant information. I knew they were running trials on numerous things – my telephones, my computers. I knew they were contacting every associate that I’d been with since I’d been at preschool, ringing them and hanging up once they found out who they were. So I was very open-minded to what path they were going down, to be honest. The significance of the feeding trials I don’t think I was ever made fully aware of, to be honest.’

  Gleeson and Moody then had a lengthy exchange about what the stable’s two main feed-men, Neil Alexander and Rami Myala, had told stewards about feeding Lidari. At issue was how much Availa powder they had been adding to the horse’s food each day, and when their boss became aware that the dosage was higher than recommended. The QC was especially determined to find out how the trainer had addressed the matter with his staff.

  Gleeson: ‘Is it your evidence to the board that at no stage have you personally sat down with your main feed-man and your assistant feed-man and said, “Boys, what is it? What are you feeding? You say three, you say one, sometimes you say two. Let’s get this straight: what are you feeding?” You’ve never done that?’

  Moody: ‘No. Obviously, I had a meeting, according to Mr Myala, but I don’t have a recollection of it.’

  Gleeson: ‘You’ve never said to Neil Alexander, “What did you tell Rami to feed it?”’

  Moody: ‘No, I believe not. This is a substance, or a treatment, that’s been in the stable for eight years, so should I have checked the feeding protocol of it? In hindsight, yes. But no, I didn’t.’

  Gleeson: ‘What systems had you put in place to prevent there being a mix-up in the dosage of feeding?’

  Moody: ‘Got rid of it.’

  Gleeson: ‘No, to prevent it before this happened – what was your system?’

  Moody: ‘I didn’t have a system. When it’s introduced and there was no reason to change it, it was introduced seven or eight years ago – I think we said 2007–08 – I can’t recall the intricacies of it at the time.’

  Gleeson: ‘What do you say to the proposition that your version of events about how this horse received high quantities of Availa doesn’t just make you look incompetent, but it requires the board to believe that you are incompetent?’

  Moody: ‘I would think the board would look at my record to make that decision.’

  Gleeson: ‘But I want you to be very clear about this, Mr Moody: there will be a submission to this board, advanced through me by the stewards, that if your story is to be believed, it must require them to believe that you’ve engaged in gross negligence in respect to not only the way it was allowed to happen, but what you’ve done since … Do you want to respond?’

  Moody: ‘Firstly, I would say, obviously, this product – it’s suggested to you that it’s got this horse above this level, or you wouldn’t have asked me all these questions regarding it. Secondly, this product was introduced in my stables in ’07–08. We’d used it successfully on some terrific horses that have performed at the extreme highest level, and I didn’t have an issue of going back and revisiting its use, of revisiting the contents or revisiting the dosage. I never had concern for it, to the degree that when this first came about, I was prepared to not even employ legal counsel. I only did at the behest of the owners of this horse. I still believe this is a drug of gross imagination of some parts within racing and I didn’t have an issue with it …’

  At this point, RAD Board member John Rosenthal intervened. ‘Sorry, what does that mean?’ he asked the trainer.

  Moody: ‘I mean cobalt didn’t raise any problems with me. I didn’t have an understanding of the drug. The bit that I have come to understand, I really believe it’s a non-issue in racing, and I think time will prove [that]. But I know we’ve got to deal with this now, and not in the future. Am I incompetent? Should have I employed an investigator to sit down and speak to every single staff member? I’ve got no doubt I did speak to staff members … I looked at possibilities of maybe the way someone did inject this horse, and then I totally dismissed them on the fact that, knowing the stewards had attended my stables, they would have recognised such things.

  ‘If you want to call me incompetent, so be it. But I haven’t got a PhD, I’m not an educated man. I get the best out of my race horses because I’m the best at what I do, and that’s why most people now copy me, even people that I surpassed during my career. Call me incompetent if you like. Maybe some of my procedures are incompetent. I do not believe so.’

  Gleeson: ‘I’m not going to submit [that] you’re incompetent. I’m going to submit that you’re highly competent, and that’s why I’ll be submitting that your story ought not to be believed, because no competent trainer with a passion for horses – who’s up before dawn six or seven days a week, in and a
bout the stables – would ever conduct themselves in the way that you’re asking the board to believe you’ve conducted yourself, before and after the event.’

  Moody: ‘Well, I would put back to you that a person in the same position wouldn’t find it a necessity to cheat in any way, shape or form; a person of his standing and his competence with his record that he’s holding in the industry, and an industry that no one has worked harder for in the last decade in Victoria.’

  The cross-examination seemed to be winding down, but there remained one serious matter to be addressed: what some believed could prove the ‘smoking gun’, the vitamen injection Lidari had the day before the Turnbull Stakes. Slowly, the QC worked his way to this.

  Gleeson: ‘You talked about the administration charge being the thing that made you realise it was more serious than you thought; did you seriously think to yourself that when you’ve got that reading from Lidari, and you’ve offered no explanation to the stewards as to how it could have come about, that you weren’t going to be charged with anything?’

  Moody: ‘I thought presentation. I would be charged with presentation, because that rule has been brought in so a trainer can never walk free, so a trainer must be penalised … and I honestly believe that cobalt is a drug blown out of proportion, and I didn’t have an issue with it, hence the reason I even had, as I stated, reservations in employing someone to represent me. I still believe cobalt is a drug blown out of proportion.’

  Gleeson: ‘When the cobalt threshold came in, in April 2014, am I correct in understanding that you didn’t implement any procedure or say to anyone on your staff, “Go and just check what we’re giving the horses – feed supplements, injections. Just make sure we won’t have any potential problem with cobalt.”’

  Moody: ‘Once again, a scant [remembrance] of it. Maybe I did ask the question of my vet, maybe I did ask it of my assistant. But I do not recall, as I didn’t have any issue with it.’

  Gleeson: ‘You didn’t send anyone out to say, “Look at the tubs, at the packs,” because they all have the list of ingredients, don’t they?’

  Moody: ‘No, what usually happens when such a thing happens, the ATA [Australian Trainers’ Association] send the trainers – or even stewards send us – a sheet saying “banned substances” or whatever. I would print that off. I have a veterinary book, which is required by RVL, in my office, which my vets tend to every day, and I would place such a thing on the veterinary book, like I do lots of information. I’m presuming that this happened in this case, without knowing for sure.’

  What could be agreed on was the fact that an entry for Lidari’s hoof powder had been written up on the stable’s whiteboard, in the feed room: ‘hoof powder, scoop PM’. Not long after this, Jeff Gleeson moved to newer ground.

  Gleeson: ‘I want to ask you some questions about the injection … the vitamin injection. The normal protocol in your stables was for a horse to be given a drench and a vitamin injection two days out from racing?’

  Moody: ‘That’s correct.’

  Gleeson: ‘Lidari didn’t usually get a drench because of his volatile nature?’

  Moody: ‘I think, on looking at the work sheets, I still wrote, “Salt and vitamin,” and then after a period of time we decided it was a waste of time. In Sydney, the vet there seemed to have the trick with him; he could stomach-tube the horse with a saline [drip]. In Melbourne, they struggled. So I dropped [it] off.’

  Gleeson: ‘According to the treatment diary, Lidari was given an IV on the third [of October 2014]. You told stewards that it would have been given on October 2. Is that because you were operating under the assumption that it would have been given two days out?’

  Moody: ‘Yes.’

  Gleeson: ‘Am I right that you have no explanation at all for why it would have been given the day before the race, instead of two days out?’

  Moody: ‘No. What I do – I write the trackwork sheets up the day before and record the treatments. Sometimes I might add, sometimes I might subtract. But as I write today’s trackwork sheet up, I’m obviously viewing yesterday’s and the day before’s. In hindsight, my belief would be that when I recorded the sheet … I would have viewed the previous day’s, realised that the horse hadn’t been treated for some reason, and wrote it in for the horse to have it the next day. You know, it wasn’t of consequence.

  ‘It was probably my own omission, or maybe I even had the belief that I wasn’t going to run the horse. I can’t recall my state [of mind] at the time. After examining the field, I might have changed my mind and decided that, yes, he was running; yes, I did want to give him the vitamin injection.’

  Gleeson: ‘It would be a highly exceptional circumstance for the vet to give what you call a “vitamin injection” the day before a significant race?’

  Moody: ‘It would be my understanding that the vet wouldn’t know when the horse was racing, without being sure of that. She could well have assumed that the horse was running on the Sunday.’

  The hearing room was alert again, and with good reason.

  Gleeson: ‘The usual practice was that the vitamin injection was pre-made by Neil Alexander?’

  Moody: ‘Neil, or a senior staff member. We pull the vitamins up and hand them to the vets for administration.’

  Gleeson: ‘The task they perform is to draw the various component parts of the injection into the syringe?’

  Moody: ‘That’s correct.’

  Gleeson: ‘So the vet who arrives basically has to assume that whatever is in it has to be given?’

  Moody: ‘Yes. Sometimes the vets are in attendance when they are drawn. I would suggest most times they are already made, the salines and the injections.’

  Gleeson: ‘Mr Moody, I put to you that you caused to be administered to Lidari cobalt in excess of the amounts that you have disclosed to the stewards, either in the first administration regime or the subsequent administration regime. What do you say to that?’

  Moody: ‘Incorrect.’

  Gleeson: ‘Yes, thank you.’

  Apart from a brief re-examination by his own counsel, Peter Moody’s two-day ordeal had come to a polite end. He stood up and walked back to sit with his legal team. The sting in the tail of that final exchange would become more intense when the stable’s chief vet, Dr Peter Angus, appeared before the board the following Monday, 21 December.

  *

  The trainer’s cobalt drama was being reported internationally, as well as throughout Australia, and even his most ardent supporters realised his reputation was being tarnished. Moody’s failure to recall conversations with his staff about cobalt was one thing; more unsettling was his lack of detail when it came to the daily running of his globally renowned stable.

  The blow that Jeff Gleeson had landed at the end of the first week of evidence also caused industry insiders to worry. Its implications were obvious: as a licensed professional, surely a vet had a duty of care to be absolutely sure about what he or she was injecting into each animal, and why?

  The trainer’s friends hoped the matter would be cleared up once Peter Angus appeared at the hearing. But their faith was short-lived. Dr Angus and his colleague Dr Amber Thiel admitted to the RAD Board that they had, in fact, injected horses at the Caulfield stable with syringes that had been made up for them. Often they were unsure what they were giving the horses, because they were not told what was in the IV shots.

  Fairfax Media went particularly hard on this revelation, reporting that Racing Victoria’s barrister was pointed in his cross-examination of the two vets. ‘I put to you that administration by a vet of a substance of unknown composition to a client’s horse always constitutes unethical and improper practice,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t know how to answer that,’ Dr Angus replied. ‘If I didn’t know [what was in the syringe], and someone just said, “Give it an injection,” then I’d say, “Yes.”’

  According to the senior vet, the syringes were stored near the horse boxes at Moody’s stables, and the system for mak
ing up the vitamin syringes had not changed since he began working for Moody years earlier.

  News Ltd added another layer to the scenario, noting that the two vets were asked ‘whether they would be aware if cobalt was in the syringes, as determined by its colour – and they said they wouldn’t.’

  Months later, Angus would quietly admit how rattled he had been while giving evidence at the hearing, how he had felt wrongfooted and unable to explain clearly how the vitamin shots at the stable had been handled. ‘It did [shake me],’ he says. ‘Oh, it absolutely did. I’ve got a pretty thick skin and I’ve worked in this industry for a long time … [but I felt] I did not have the opportunity to explain myself as well as I could have. So, yeah, it did shake me.’

  But the real fireworks came at the end of proceedings, when Judge Bowman adjourned the case into the new year, setting 16 February 2016 as the earliest possible date for the board to return. Matthew Stirling emphasised how dramatically this would affect Peter Moody’s business at the upcoming yearling sales, but the chairman was unmoved.

  ‘It effectively ends my business,’ the trainer told journalists as he left the compound that afternoon. The composure he had maintained throughout the hearing was starting to slip as he walked out to his car, his face revealing frustration and fatigue. The latest chapter of this narrative made the front page of the Racing Post, Britain’s respected racing daily: ‘Moody faces bankruptcy as hearing adjourned,’ the headline read.

  As the trainer and the legal teams left for a two-month break, Phar Lap’s old strapper and his best mate Reckless were still at their post, guarding racing’s headquarters. Like them, Australia’s leading trainer was very much up against the wall.