Horse trainer Dick Leech to return to track after 12-month ban halved on appeal, conviction upheld

In slashing the 2023 Darwin and Alice Springs cup winner’s ban, the appeals tribunal rejected his ‘credible alternative explanations’ for a ‘bloody big hole’ in the gelding’s neck.

Dick Leech accepting the 2023 Horse of the Year award at the Top End Racing Awards for Write Your Name. Picture: Pema Tamang Pakhrin

Champion trainer Dick Leech will be able to return to the track in September after successfully challenging a 12-month ban for injecting one of his horses with an unknown substance on race day.

In March, racing stewards found the 2023 Darwin and Alice Springs Cup winner injected gelding Envenomate without permission ahead of a race at the Darwin Turf Club in February.

Envenomate was scratched but subsequent testing did not detect any prohibited substances and Mr Leech pleaded guilty to failing to record an animal remedy injection three days earlier, for which he was fined $500.

But the stewards imposed the 12-month ban after accepting evidence from veterinarians who examined the horse before and after the period in which Mr Leech was alone in the stables.

Mr Leech “strenuously denied” the allegation and appealed both the conviction and penalty, putting forward three “credible alternative explanations for the haematoma and dry blood” on the gelding’s neck.

Mr Leech argued there were “protruding wire ends” in the truck used to transport Envenomate on the day, which could have caused the “bloody big”, “number 8 wire hole”.

He also argued the scab from a previous injection could have dislodged in the “hot, humid conditions” or blood on the horse’s skin “may have been a result from a cutaneous capillary supplying the skin for thermoregulation”.

Mr Leech also argued the penalty was excessive and the stewards had failed to take into account its impact on his equine swimming pool and stock feed businesses.

Dick Leech argued there were ‘protruding wire ends’ in the truck used to transport Envenomate on the day, which could have caused the ‘bloody big hole’. Picture: Pema Tamang Pakhrin

But in rejecting Mr Leech’s appeal against his conviction, the appeals tribunal accepted the “compelling” and “definitive” evidence of a vet who examined Envenomate on the day.

It also accepted evidence from another vet who said she had “never seen a case of a horse that had been injected two and three days prior to a race start bleeding again at the track”.

“The tribunal notes that neither party to the appeal requested the tribunal to consider whether a person other than Mr Leech may have had access to Envenomate and whether they may have been able to administer the injection,” the decision reads.

“Given that this aspect of the stewards’ findings has not been challenged in this appeal, the tribunal has not considered this any further.”

The tribunal found the impact on Mr Leech’s businesses could be “appropriately dealt with by the stewards”, who could still give him permission to visit racetracks for those purposes.

“In all of the circumstances however, the tribunal considers that the period of disqualification imposed by the stewards is too severe and that the appropriate penalty is a disqualification for a period of six months,” the decision reads.

“With an approval … to attend at licensed racecourses … for the sole purpose of his swimming pool construction business (but not his stock feed business).”