expensive case for mr negus

[the galah]

On the rib website they have the recent decsion as to the costs, bruce negus has to pay,in relation  a positive he had for one of his horses .

the positive occured 7 years ago. Yes,thats right,7 years.

He was found guilty of being in control of a horse who returned a positive, to a man made synthetic compound that does what testosterone does.

anyways,he was fined $5300,but heres the kicker,mr negus has to pay costs of $105,000.

who knows what he would have paid for his own legal fees on top of that.

now ,i read the decision,but wish i had read War and Peace instead, as it went on and on .

Obviously over 7 years ,evidence was gathered ,witness briefs obtained and scrutinised,research done,countless lawyer work undertaken,etc ,etc ,etc, over those years..The actual hearing took 4 days when they finally got around to it.

Now my very brief summary of the decision obviously is just that, brief.

But it seems mr negus had 2 horses tested in "out of competition testing" in 2017.

analysis of the blood taken showed one horse was positive to a synthetic steroid.The other horse had very small traces,but not worth pursuing due to the low levels.

now,apparently the detectable levels in blood last about 8 weeks although they quickly reduce in that time frame.

So,seems pretty straight forward you would think.

but no it wasn't and because of the circumstances mr negus obviously thought he had a defence.

His defence seemed to be based partly on the reducing levels in the subsequent tests,but that was rejected as a defence as the panel agreed on the balance of probabilities,with what the rib experts said,which was,thats what happens over time. e.g. test it 7 days after the sample is drawn from the horse,and the level will be...,test the reserve sample...a couple of weeks later and the level will be much lower.

Thing is,because this is the case,those in charge made the decision to send the reserve sample away for testing to be sure(,given detectable levels reduce that quick),whereas normally that is only done at the request of the person who is being charged. i.e. mr negus. Mr negus when originally interviewed by the rib was obviously a bit shocked and actually said at that point he wasn't going to get the reserve sample tested,but then thought about it a bit more,only to find it had already been done without his prior knowledge.

So the defence believed that was one of the grounds for defence. seemingly a procedural defence.

another was hair samples showed nothing. But turned out experts said thats not unusual for that synthetic compound.

Also clearly there were several other procedural issues that the defence raised and sounds like they did score many points in that respect.

Every little thing seemed to have been gone over with a fine tooth comb.

as was mr negus's rites to do so. 

thats a really short summary of something very complicated.

but at the end of the day,the panel who heard the case found,mr negus was the person in charge of the horse.

They don't have to prove he injected the horse himself.. They never do,as thats almost impossible unless they catch someone in the act.

The $105,000 costs awarded against negus were 50% of the costs,normally they award 60 %.

but gee,what a financial hit.

Edited 7 hours ago by the galah

[Chief Stipe]

There are a few things that seem inconsistent with the testing procedures for example the variations between samples and then between times.  One test decreasing then spiking 5 fold.  Seems odd.

But the catch all rule of zero tolerance means that very small levels represent a positive for presentation.  The investigation seems to be the usual assume guilt and not investigate where the substance came from.