Ruling on RV cobalt appeal

DANNY O’Brien and Mark Kavanagh’s training futures will become clearer tomorrow when the Supreme Court of Victoria’s Court of Appeal hands down its judgment on a Racing Victoria cobalt appeal.

RV appealed to the Supreme Court against a Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal decision to overturn the Racing and Disciplinary Board’s disqualifications of O’Brien and Kavanagh for allegedly treating horses with excessive cobalt.

In January last year O’Brien was given a four-year ban and Kavanagh was suspended for three years by the RAD Board.

But VCAT found RV had substantially departed from proper cobalt testing procedures between April 2014 and August 2015. Four horses being trained by O’Brien and one with Kavanagh recorded excessive levels of cobalt in 2014.

VCAT Judge Greg Garde was satisfied the trainers were not aware vet Dr Tom Brennan had administered the cobalt to the horses in a pre-race drip. He said O’Brien and Kavanagh were not negligent in relying on the vet to administer the drips. Dr Brennan was last year found guilty of administering the cobalt and banned.

VCAT said the trainers didn’t have any knowledge of the excess cobalt in the horses’ systems and blamed Dr Brennan.

RV appealed regarding two points of law surrounding the interpretation of the rules of racing made by VCAT.

The President of the Court of Appeal, Justice Chris Maxwell, said if there was any ruling in RV’s favour, the case would revert to VCAT to administer penalties to the trainers.