Cobalt: Former trainer Peter Moody slams moves to review protocols ‘too little, too late’

Peter Moody, made famous for training unbeaten mare Black Caviar, has slammed belated moves to review cobalt protocols, saying: ‘four years down the track, like fair dinkum … give me a break’.

Former trainer Peter Moody attends the Warrnambool May Carnival in May 2016. Picture: Colleen Petch

Former champion trainer Peter Moody has blasted belated moves to review cobalt protocols as “too little, too late”.

Banned for six months in 2016 after Lidari returned a positive test in 2014 to cobalt, Moody claimed he had been victimised by authorities.

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“Unfortunately, because I was top dog at the time, it made headlines for all the wrong reasons and the authorities wouldn’t have a bar of it being anything else,” Moody said on RSN.

“They (authorities) didn’t do their homework. They just didn’t do their homework and they just destroyed and wrecked careers.

“At the end of the day, it probably should have been a fine or a minor penalty and let’s go away and do some tests on this. Let’s not just take the word from one vet that’s running rampant through the industry.”

Moody surrendered his trainer’s licence after being banned.

The cobalt issue was recently shunted back to centre stage when the Australian Trainers’ Association wrote to Racing Australia urging it to review all protocols surrounding cobalt.

The ATA claimed the science was wrong, insisting cobalt levels could be breached using legitimate products in a normal feeding routine.

The letter was prompted by a string of cobalt positives. Some of the trainers involved had horses returning cobalt levels only slightly above the threshold limit of 100 micrograms per litre of urine.

Peter Moody surrendered his trainer’s licence after being banned, eventually calling time on his training career.

Racing Australia chief executive Greg Nichols confirmed during the week RA had given the Veterinary Advisory Committee the task of providing a fresh analysis of cobalt science with results due before RA’s November 12 meeting.

Moody said RA should have intervened years ago.

“Too little too late,” he said. “Whatever the science tells you, I think the results tell you that cobalt isn’t massively performance-enhancing.

“I think I said at the time if I had the option of giving the horse a shot of painkiller — a phenylbutazone or something like that — over cobalt, you’d do it every time to try and enhance a horse’s performance.

“It was made out to be this massive kryptonite and was blown out of all proportion and very wrongly so and unfortunately you are seeing people’s careers and livelihoods lost and taken away from them.

Trainer Danny O'Brien had his life turned upside down during the cobalt cases.

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“And now, and now, four years later down the track after myself, Danny O’Brien and Mark Kavanagh were splashed across the front page of every racing media outlet — radio and television — holding syringes indicating we were the worst things since sliced bread or whatever.

“And now they are going to speak to a regulatory body to determine … like fair dinkum … give me a break.”