By: Luke Sheehan
Grafton-based trainer Gordon Yorke has been disqualified for 18 months, after being found guilty of presenting mare Follow Through to the races with an elevated cobalt level.
Follow Through finished second in a Class 1 at Grafton on July 13, 2017, but has now been disqualified from that race.
Yorke, who pleaded not guilty, had his suspension backdated to December 21, 2017, meaning he will next be free to apply for a trainer’s licence on June 21, 2019.
Yorke and Follow Through’s owners have been advised of their rights of appeal.
In determining the penalty, Racing NSW stewards factored in Yorke’s good record, precedent penalties, his plea and also the level of cobalt detected in the mare.
The National Measurement Institute (NMI) detected a cobalt reading of 4413 micrograms per litre of urine (µg/L) from Follow Through’s pre-race urine sample at Grafton.
At that time, AR178C(1)(l) had set the allowed level of cobalt in a horse at a maximum of 200 µg/L.
In case in NSW, trainer Kevin Moses was disqualified for 12 months for an elevated cobalt reading in Felix Bay from Hawkesbury on April 16, 2015. The horse on that occasion returned a cobalt reading of 262 µg/L from the NMI, and 250 µg/L from the ChemCentre of Western Australia (when the limit was 200 µg/L).
Since, the permitted level of cobalt has been cut from 200 to 100 µg/L – a change that saw trainer John Sprague disqualified for 12 months for an elevated cobalt reading found in Saint-Denis in a pre-race urine sample at Tuncurry on October 29, 2017.
In that instance, the NMI certified the cobalt levels at 185 ug/L, while Racing Analytical Services Limited determined a level of 177 ug/L.
In September, Racing NSW stewards have warned trainers about some commercially-available feeds that have been found to contain cobalt at above levels specified.
Trainer Garry McCarney was another in the NSW jurisdiction to be disqualified – for 15 months – after pleading guilty to two charges relating to elevated levels of cobalt, back in early 2017.
