Feature: Day of reckoning for Australian horse racing as five leading trainers face cobalt charges

Australian racing is coming to grips with its biggest crisis since the outbreak of equine influenza in 2007 brought the industry to an abrupt halt.

The crisis revolves around the use by Australian trainers of the performance-enhancing drug, cobalt, a trace element which apparently allows horses to run faster.

And, on Wednesday at Racing Victoria headquarters in Melbourne, the cobalt saga will come to a head when five leading trainers - including Peter Moody, the man who led unbeaten mare, Black Caviar, to worldwide fame - face stewards in an open hearing to "show cause" why they should not hand their licences in forthwith, even though the charges of administering cobalt will not be heard for some time.

Racing authorities in Australia have set a threshold for cobalt at 200 micrograms per liter (mcg/L) of a horse' s urine. Any reading higher than that is considered by stewards to be effectively performance enhancing.

Even at 200 mcg/L, Australia' s threshold is considered lenient, being twice the internationally recommended maximum.

Similarly to the influenza outbreak, which at its worst infected 47,000 horses in New South Wales alone, the cobalt saga has thrown Australian racing's showcase season into chaos.

The five leading Melbourne-based trainers are perilously close to being stood down, little more than a month before the beginning of the world-renowned Spring Carnival.

Moody, Danny O' Brien, Mark Kavanagh and Lee and Shannon Hope are all required to show cause to Racing Victoria (RV) stewards on Wednesday, in an open hearing at RV headquarters.

Moody is the most high profile of the accused, but Kavanagh and O' Brien have prepared horses that have won some of Australian racing' s greatest prizes, including a swag of Group 1 successes.

Horses of the five trainers returned cobalt readings between 200 and 640 mcg/L - up to three times the legal limit.

But it' s not just this group - the "Cobalt Five", as they' ve become known - that has made the headlines. Other developments in this Australia-wide saga include:

Last Tuesday, Racing Queensland stewards announced they had found illegal levels of cobalt from horses trained by both harness and thoroughbred trainers;

Last Wednesday, trainer Darren Smith failed to overturn a ban of 15 years imposed by NSW stewards for cobalt offences;

On Monday, a Tasmanian horse reportedly returned an illegal level of cobalt three times higher than any previously detected in Australia - at 19,000mcg/L;

This week, trainer Jamie McConachy was disqualified for 18 months in Queensland;

And next week, NSW stewards will begin hearings into the case of charges and suspended trainer, Sam Kavanagh, son of Mark.

A more permanent ban lies ahead for the "Cobalt Five" unless they are exonerated, as the offence carries a maximum three-year penalty.

If all five were to be stood down, more than a 1000 stable horses would be left without a trainer on the eve of Australian racing' s busiest period, the Spring carnival.

Stewards issued the notices on Friday last week, after veterinarian Tom Brennan changed his testimony to RV.

Initially, Brennan denied that he had supplied cobalt to O' Brien and Kavanagh but later retracted his original statement, admitting he had supplied the pair with "vitamin bottles" .

The contents of the two bottles were later found to have contained cobalt.

The issue of horse welfare is another aspect of concern.

According to Fairfax media, earlier this month, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) is considering legal action against those suspended from the sport for cobalt doping.

In the U.S and Britain high doses of cobalt have been linked to the deaths of race horses.

In Kentucky, U.S experts ran trials to set the threshold for cobalt, chief researcher Dr Mary Scollay remarking that excessive levels of the element "could be disastrous and could lead to a fatal bleeding episode" .

"The concept that horses have been given a heavy metal poison that causes distress means that the RSPCA will inevitably be involved, where that leads is anyone's guess but animal cruelty charges are extremely serious and anyone convicted will not be allowed to own a goldfish let alone train a team of race horses," a leading vet told Fairfax earlier this month.

It' s been a tumultuous year for Australia' s racing industry as a whole. In February, the Australian Broadcast Corporation (ABC) exposed underground live-baiting rings in both the Victorian and Queensland greyhound industries.

The practice of live baiting, which involves using animals such as rabbits, birds and pigs as bait to train racing dogs, has been outlawed and criminalized in Australia for decades. The scandal has led to a major overhaul of greyhound racing in the two states.

Of more immediate concern, though, is the cobalt doping affair and the seismic ramifications that any bans handed down on Wednesday will have on the industry' s reputation and integrity. Endi