Swab saga Swab saga: Now Metric Mile under investigation

BITTERLY disappointed Darwin Cup-winning trainer ­Stuart Gower said yesterday he was dumbfounded at the prospect that Saturday ­Sorcerer could be stripped of the $200,000 race.

Action from the Carlton Mid Darwin Cup Day - 5:40pm. Winning horse Saturday Sorcerer ridden by winning jockey Paul Denton.

BITTERLY disappointed Darwin Cup-winning trainer ­Stuart Gower said yesterday he was dumbfounded at the prospect that Saturday ­Sorcerer could be stripped of the $200,000 race.

As revealed exclusively in yesterday’s NT News, Saturday Sorcerer has returned an ­irregular preliminary swab from the race on August 4.

The second reserve blood sample is with a Melbourne laboratory for further analysis.

If the second sample is positive, the five-year-old gelding faces disqualification from the Territory’s feature horse race.

Gower said in 23 years as a horse trainer it was the first time one of his horses had ­returned an irregular swab.

“I have no idea what the stuff is (in the irregular swab),” Gower said from Adelaide ­yesterday.

“When I googled it, it came up as a bodybuilding (substance).

“I am very much in the dark. It has dumbfounded me that this is happening.”

Gower admitted Saturday Sorcerer’s win in the Metric Mile on July 16 had also come under the scrutiny of stewards.

He said he was now waiting for the tests on the second sample to be completed in Melbourne which could take a further two weeks to be ­released.

“I just don’t know what’s going on. I will just have to wait and see what happens,” he said.

“It is so disappointing because we enjoyed such as great Carnival.”

Questions started to be asked after Saturday Sorcerer was scratched from last Wednesday’s Balaklava Cup, his first planned outing since ­winning the Cup.

“That was my choice to pull him out,” Gower said.

“I don’t know how long he has had the stuff in his system or how it got in there ... whether it was in his feed or whatever. I want to make sure it is no longer in him.”

Thoroughbred Racing NT chief steward David Hensler reiterated yesterday that ­samples are initially tested at the Australian Racing Forensic Laboratory in Sydney.

“They referred the reserve portion to Racing Analytical Services in Melbourne,” he said.

Under the rules of racing, prizemoney is not paid out to a horse’s connections until swabs have been successfully completed to the satisfaction of stewards.