Sam Kavanagh says got life sentence
Banned Sydney trainer Sam Kavanagh believes he has been given a life sentence over cobalt use and labelled “the greatest cheat in racing”.
Kavanagh said his cobalt case had destroyed his career and he had been bullied on social media and in the media.
“It’s ruined my family. It’s ruined my friends,” Kavanagh told a Victorian inquiry on Wednesday.
“Right now I’ve got a life sentence and I don’t believe I deserve one and it’s destroyed me and my family.”
Kavanagh was outed for nine years and three months for offences relating to cobalt and race day treatments, but that was reduced by three years on appeal.
He told his father Mark Kavanagh and fellow Flemington trainer Danny O’Brien’s appeal against their cobalt disqualifications that he would never harm his horses.
“Even though I’ve been put down as the greatest cheat that’s ever been put into racing, I’ve never knowingly given a horse something that I thought would harm them in any way,” Kavanagh said.
Kavanagh said he made an error in giving the horse at the centre of his case, Midsummer Sun, a race day treatment before he won the Gosford Cup in January 2015.
“It was stupid. It was cheating. I made an error,” he said.
But there was a big difference between that and using a prohibited substance that could harm a horse, he told the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal.
A key issue in the appeals by Mark Kavanagh, O’Brien and father-and-son training partners Lee and Shannon Hope is whether the labs involved were properly accredited to test for cobalt at the time.
Victoria’s Racing Analytical Services Ltd sent samples to the Hong Kong Jockey Club and Perth-based ChemCentre labs for analysis.
RASL lab director David Batty noted that Racing Victoria was “nervous” about the cobalt cases in a January 2015 email asking the labs to retain the samples.
“These cases have attracted a great deal of attention and the racing authority is getting a little nervous,” the email said.
HKJC’s racing laboratory head Dr Terence Wan said retaining the samples was normal practice anyway.
Wan said he told Batty in June 2014 that the lab’s method of testing for cobalt had yet to be accredited by the Hong Kong accreditation service.
That was because there was no international threshold for cobalt, meaning a measurement of uncertainty could not be determined.
Batty responded that the client wanted the sample sent to HKJC despite the method not being accredited, VCAT heard.
Wan said the accreditation issue did not necessarily mean a testing method was unreliable.
“It just hasn’t been assessed and endorsed by a third party,” he said.
Both Kavanaghs and O’Brien had used a substance called vitamin complex, obtained from Flemington Equine Clinic vet Dr Tom Brennan, in drips given to horses that returned cobalt positives.