Chief Stipe

The JCA has to follow precedent, guidelines and principles of natural justice. It can't just make a punishment up. Both the respondent and the informant have the right to appeal any penalty. Any such appeal would be judged on precedent, guidelines and principles of justice. Turnwald was sentenced as per the current rules. If the RIU or even GRNZ think the JCA got it wrong then they can appeal. Past positives to P which are not as frequent as the media would have everyone believe have been due to contamination. In this latest case it seems that the dog may have been given P however the evidence to support that hypothesis is limited. Certainly it was determined by the JCA and agreed by the RIU that the Trainer didn't deliberately administer P to the dog. Given the testing regime in place you would have to be an absolute idiot of a Trainer to do that. So Turnwald, as you say probably an innocent party, got a significant punishment. If it happens again then the punishment will be greater. Now that could happen either by accident or by deliberate activity by a third party. The only way any Trainer can control things and prevent that from happening is to train and transport their dogs in a completely closed system. As I have said before it would help all stakeholders if the RIU published the full results of positive tests detailing the levels that were present and making a statement on the likely impact on the dogs performance.

Mmmmm what happens when synthetic track maintenance goes awry!

That 7% tested represents over 3,000 dogs. So one P positive in 3,000 equals 0.03%. Bloody small iceberg!

What a totally unbalanced news report!!!! No comment from GRNZ!!!! The only thing that the RIU says is that they only test 7% of greyhounds a year. Don't they test every winner? That would be a minimum of 12.5%. Where do the anti-Greyhound mob get - "this is only the tip of the iceberg and is demonstrative of how the industry works"! Why didn't GRNZ and the RIU say that there are systems in place to detect drugs, give the number of greyhounds that are tested annually not the % and highlight that there are very few positives returned.

Well that doesn't include Angela Turnwald then does it.

Excellent couple of post @NZRacing As you may have gathered from my posts I think there should be a number of follow up actions done with regard to the Kerr case which highlighted some serious deficiencies in many racing administration systems. Addressing those issues would have made it a lot harder for Kerr to feed his addiction and protected a large group of innocent people being ripped off. In my opinion there is an opportunity here for the NZ-TAB, HRNZ and the RIU to go on the front foot and publicly announce changes that will close the gaps that are glaringly apparent. A couple of points though. If there are systems in place that enables the TAB/RIU/HRNZ to monitor Driver betting behaviour and obviously raise a flag when an event occurs they surely must have monitoring systems in place for offshore agencies otherwise it would be too easy to beat the system. So if they are doing that how much extra effort would be required to monitor the level of betting (losses) by a licensee? Systems wise it would be SFA. My reading of that figure was they were referring to LOSSES only i.e. Kerr LOST $1,000,000 over two years. His turnover must have been much much higher than that. I agree 100%. In my opinion the RIU contribution to the judgement added nothing other than an arse covering exercise by them. There should have been monitoring systems in place that highlighted the amount of money a licensee was gambling. That is perfectly withing the remit of the HRNZ licensee rules, the RIU betting analyst and the gambling problem prevention laws within both NZ and OZ.

Not as if Ladbrokes hasn't been in trouble before. GVC fined 5.9 million pounds for failings at Ladbrokes By Reuters Staff 2 MIN READ (Reuters) - Britain's GVC GVC.L said on Wednesday it would pay 5.9 million pounds in fines as its Ladbrokes Coral unit had failed to safeguard consumers from gambling addiction and sustained losses. GVC bought bookmaker Ladbrokes Coral for up to 4 billion pounds in 2018. The Gambling Commission found that Ladbrokes Coral did not put safeguards to prevent consumers from gambling harm and money laundering, the National Lottery Commission said, citing some cases where the company could have stepped in. In one case, the commission said the company did not engage with a customer who lost £98,000 over two-and-a-half years. The Commission also said Ladbrokes allowed a customer to gamble without taking steps to verify the source of funds or consider if the customer could afford to spend and lose that amount of money. GVC said it had taken measures towards safer gambling processes including verifying customers’ sources of funds and a near five-fold increase in staffing in its compliance and responsible gambling teams since 2016. Several betting companies, including Bet365, Flutter FLTRE.I, Sky Betting & Gaming and William Hill WMH.L, said earlier this year they would significantly increase funding for problem gambling treatment and safer gambling measures. Reporting by Tanishaa Nadkar in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D’Silva and Saumyadeb Chakrabarty

Why?

Hunter have you realised that every time that you have guessed the identity of someone you have been 100% wrong?! BTW I can assure you that Mark and Natalie don't post on BOAY. I'd they did I'd give them their own forum.

But "large" isn't a quantitative term. It is subjective relative to someone's assessment of what is large. I've had some ladies say I'm "large" and some say the opposite. The level in the sample is measurable and the RIU know the results. Why not publish them? Then we can assess what "they term LARGE". Otherwise everyone speculates and we get rumour and myth. Not only publish the result but publish what level would be deemed performance enhancing. For all we know Turnwald's dog could have had a zillionth of a molecule of P in its system which had zero effect on how fast it ran. So why don't the RIU publish the level and state what impact it had on the performance of the dog?

Is that the name of a horse and you are tipping it? Or are you accusing someone of being racist? Or are you trying to help BOAY's search ratings on Google? Basically what is your point?

So this "novel" idea was put forward obviously to elicit more interest and revenue. Otherwise why do it?! Apart from Brodie where is the promotion and advertising for it?

So you guys have kissed and made up behind the stables?

So will you asking for Going Stick measurements before each official trial or race meeting on behalf of the revenue providing punter's? Or will you be slipping the Track Manager a hundy to roll it pre-meeting?

Not even flick the odd used horseshoe at each other?

Not sure. When was it put in?

Gammalite what increase in punter revenue can we expect from these "novel" races? S

But it wasn't a slap of the hand for Turnwald was it? But it is all speculation isn't it as we don't know what level of P was in the dog and whether or not its performance was enhanced.

But how do you know that the P level that the dog had was sufficient to improve its performance? Was the dog going out second favourite at $4.50 an indication that large bets were made? Given that the favourite was paying half that. You may well be right as you infer that the dog was "got at". But that isn't Turnwald's fault nor is it something easy to prevent. To be fully transparent I believe that the JCA/RIU should release the levels that are present in a positive and determine if it was at a level that was performance enhancing or at least make a comment on it. That would avoid speculation. Recently there was a positive to morphine returned from a horse from a major thoroughbred stable. The RIU was certain it was environmental contamination. I have heard that the level detected was negligible and would not have been anywhere near performance enhancing let alone therapeutic. Releasing the level would make it apparent to all that the dog did or did not gain an advantage. The penalty and disqualification would still be the same.

Why Gammalite are you so adept at missing the point? A race less than 1609m (a mile) has no statistical standing in the harness racing industry. It is a novelty which doesn't even appeal to the harness racing enthusiast or punter. What is it's point? Why not only start 8 horses and race them in lanes from staggered starts? Why dumb down racing to appeal to some market segment that even the marketers don't know about!

Based on what? You are defaming someone but where is the evidence? I don't follow the Greyhounds (other than after a few beers at the pub TAB and taking a 1/8:1/8:F trifecta for a half) but where is Freeman's history of drug positives? Surely our wondrous RIU would have had their full time Betting Analyst look at the betting records?

Sorry I don't agree. Officially it WAS a different trainer.

Correct. Correct - but "believed to be" being the key phrase. My understanding is the source was confirmed. Well they did originally believing that the contamination occurred AFTER the race when some of the dogs owners were involved in the presentation. Some of the owners anonymously admitted to having used P. Further testing was done and given the level of P metabolites present versus the amount of P (there were more metabolites of P than P) the science said that the odds were high that the dog had ingested P prior to the race not after and before the sample was taken. The Trainer then could offer no idea or opinion of the source and it appears at their own expense had themselves tested for P use (note: depending on the tests undertaken P use can be detected over a considerable period of time). The results were negative so the JCA established that the Trainer wasn't a possible source of contamination. In the JCA Judgement all parties agreed that the dog must have ingested P somewhere between Foxton and Christchurch. As far as I know Turnwald dogs haven't returned any prior positives and the JCA accepted that in this case that the Trainer wasn't involved in administering or contaminating the dog with P. Given her prior relatively unblemished history and given the degree of post race testing that is done no Trainer in their right mind would deliberately administer a prohibited drug to their dog in the lead up to a race. So yes the fact that no explanation can be found is very suspicious BUT that suspicion can't and shouldn't be directed at the Trainer. Was the dog "got at" somewhere between Foxton and Christchurch? Was it when the dog was unattended on the Ferry? Was it during the walk around at Kaiapoi by a "friend"? What we also don't know is what level the P and its metabolites was present in the dog. I've posted about this issue for all codes. In my opinion the JCA should always publish the levels of a prohibited substance found in positive swabs. There is zero tolerance but what is the threshold for zero? Environmental contamination will become more and more an issue as testing accuracy improves. Because there was no clear link between the Trainer and how the dog ingested (or absorbed) P. In other cases as you point out employees were involved. A Trainer has a responsibility to ensure that their staff are drug free. For example I know that a stable such as Te Akau does regular workplace drug testing. Another reason for a shorter disqualification was the lack of any prior's. I'm not sure if you have read my posts on the other code forums about this issue but we now have a situation where the punishment for environmental contamination and the zero tolerance levels in racing far outweigh the crime. Just look at Turnwald's case - the dog loses the race, the owners and trainer lose a substantial stake (substantial for dogs!) and the Trainer loses income for 4 months! For something no one can prove she deliberately did and was unlikely to do and an undisclosed drug level which may or may not have been at a level that enhanced performance. I'm just waiting for the day that some of these Trainers across all the codes get together and take a class action against the RIU/JCA because at the moment justice isn't being done. The alternative is to put our horses and dogs in closed environments (like Hong Kong) that will have the welfare nutters going nuts!

I agree it is a nonsense. That distance has no recognition anywhere in terms of statistics. Just imagine it in a filly's record - MR 1:48.2 but only over 1390m!!!! Did they ask Trainers and Drivers before they did this? You'd be wasting your time if you had a horse that was slow out of the gate or even drew behind one that was. Or for that matter if you drew anything other than 1 to 4! May as well open up betting on Kidz Carts!