Lab accreditation at issue in cobalt cases
Trainers Lee and Shannon Hope will try to beat their cobalt disqualifications by arguing the laboratories that did the testing were not properly accredited at the time.
Like fellow Victorian trainers Mark Kavanagh and Danny O’Brien, the Hopes say the Perth-based ChemCentre and Hong Kong Jockey Club laboratories were not accredited to test for cobalt at the time horses from their stables returned positive results.
Racing Victoria disagrees and has raised the prospect of retesting samples.
Hopes’ legal counsel Tim Purdey said the scope of the accreditation was at issue, as that determines whether a facility is accredited to perform a certain test.
He said ChemCentre and HKJC are listed as official racing laboratories under the Australian Rules of Racing, but they need to be accredited by the National Association of Testing Authorities or another relevant body.
“The facility may well be accredited for testing for certain things but if it’s not accredited to test for cobalt at the relevant time, it’s not an official laboratory for the testing of cobalt,” Purdey told the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal.
He said the labs were not accredited to test for cobalt at the time the urine samples of three of the Hopes’ racehorses were examined, after races in June, July and September 2014.
However Racing Victoria counsel Albert Dinelli said there was no “bombshell” over the labs’ accreditation as described in a media interview with an advocate for the Hopes.
“There’s no issues that each of ChemCentre and Hong Kong Jockey Club were official racing laboratories, that is accredited to conduct tests,” he said on Friday.
“The only issue is in relation to the methods applied.”
Dinelli said Racing Victoria had the power to seek retesting of the samples and the labs were being asked if that could occur.
Purdey said the retesting would be the subject of legal argument.
Kavanagh and O’Brien’s legal counsel Damien Sheales, who will also represent the Hopes in their appeal, on Monday told VCAT it was clear ChemCentre and HKJC were not accredited at the time Racing Victoria brought in its cobalt threshold in April 2014.
The national rule came into effect in January 2015.
Lee and Shannon Hopes’ appeals against their respective three and five-year disqualifications, will now run alongside that of Kavanagh and O’Brien from August 1.
O’Brien was disqualified for four years and Kavanagh for three years.