By: Tom Biddington
Racing NSW stewards have issued eight charges against Kembla Grange horseman Paul Murray, 19 months after finding a bottle containing cobalt at his stables.
The charges relate to the high levels of cobalt found in swabs of his stable star Alma’s Fury, who won the Apollo Stakes in February 2013 and finished second in the Doncaster Prelude the same year.
The stored samples were tested after compliance officers found a bottle labelled ‘Concentrated Trace Minerals’ during a routine stable inspection in June 2014, which contained unprecedented levels of cobalt.
Although the national cobalt threshold was only introduced in January last year, Racing NSW has charged Murray on the basis that cobalt comes within the rules prohibiting substances which affect the blood system.
Murray, who has maintained his innocence since the discovery by stewards, did not enter a plea ahead of the inquiry resuming next month.
