Betting suspended at Jewels

squad stepping up in a complete team effort that left the Southern Steel with no answers.

Making matters worse for the Steel, they lost wing defence Dani Gray when her leg buckled while simply attempting to bring down a pass in the fourth quarter.

The Pulse will now prepare for back-to-back matches against the Mystics, which should provide a further indication of where this team is at, while the Steel will be looking to bounce back against the struggling Stars. Betting on five races on Harness Jewels day at Cambridge on Saturday has been suspended by the TAB pending drug tests on nine leading contenders trained by Mark Purdon and Natalie Rasmussen.

The Jewels is one of harness racing’s showcase events.

The leading trainers advised stewards yesterday afternoon the horses may have been exposed to drug contamination during a float trip from Auckland to Cambridge.

Stewards have ordered the nine horses be swabbed, but the results will not be known until tomorrow, the eve of harness racing’s biggest event.

It is believed the driver of the truck transporting the horses became concerned about activities of two workers travelling with the horses and reported their possible drug smoking to the Racing Integrity Unit.

Purdon and Rasmussen have addressed the issue on their AllStars Racing Stables website.

The statement confirmed there was a remote possibility that contamination on the float trip could lead to irregular results in testing procedures during the Harness Jewels, so stewards were notified.

‘‘We have advised the appropriate bodies of the possibility and all our horses will be urine tested on Thursday,’’ Rasmussen said.

‘‘We are not expecting any adverse outcome from those but we just want to be sure and keep everything out in the open.’’