THE SUNSHINE COAST NEWSPAPER COLUMN - PETER MOODY MAKES HIS FEELINGS KNOWN ON KEY ISSUE

By Graham Potter | Sunday, April 13, 2014

Graham Potter writes a weekly column for the Sunshine Coast daily. Due to demand from those having trouble accessing the paper these columns are now also published on HRO courtesy of the Sunshine Coast daily

Peter Moody has always been a straight shooter.

Earlier this week, Racing Victoria, The Australian Trainers’ Association (ATA) and anybody else who might have been close enough to feature as collateral damage took the full brunt of both barrels as a disenchanted Moody let fly at Racing Victoria’s latest integrity ruling which demanded trainers hand over codes or stable keys by the end of business on Friday to allow stewards to have on-going, unimpeded access to stable premises.

Moody, speaking on RSN, pointed out that handing over free stable access to stewards would make it impossible for any trainer to guarantee stable security.

"Who is governing the stewards? I could not guarantee anything because I am not the only one with the key to my stables,” argued Moody.” Do I now need security cameras everywhere to see what they do when they visit?”

From Moody’s point of view it became a question of who would be minding the minders!

All Moody was actually doing in his verbal outburst was to confirm his commitment to upholding his mandated responsibility … his duty of care … to all horses in his stable.

The law with regard to any transgressions that might take place with a horse states that the buck stops with the trainer and Moody was simply looking to protect his position.

But as strong as he was in putting forward his views, Moody found he was weak in numbers. Whatever his fellow trainers were saying in private, he garnered little support in public.

Moody resigned from the ATA in protest while reportedly being far from complimentary when describing the actions (or non-action) of both that association and some of its individual members. He said he felt like he was being treated as a criminal. He sought legal advice although quickly acknowledged he probably wouldn’t be financially equipped to sustain a legal battle with Racing Victoria. There was talk of establishing a ‘fighting’ fund, but at the same time Moody had to consider the position of his owners who would have rued lost opportunity had his horses been ‘stood down’ because of any dispute.

It looked like heading for a big bust-up but when Friday’s deadline arrived Racing Victoria released a statement saying ‘all Flemington and Caulfield-based trainers have complied with a request to afford RV stewards unimpeded access to their stables’ and that, ‘any misunderstanding between the stewards and Peter Moody regarding the requirements of Rule 8B has now been resolved.’

So was Moody wrong?

Personally I think trainers handing over the keys to their establishment to ANYBODY opens the door to more problems than it solves.

Surely the ‘sole responsibility of the trainer’ argument cannot be enforced in this situation with the burden of proof, should anything go wrong, now being much harder to pinpoint … and, because of that, in its worst case scenario and without casting aspersions on any party, could it even possibly provide a loophole that might tempt malpractice?

So I’m not really convinced we’ve heard the last of this matter.

But that’s all food for thought as we mull over another burning question.

How do you think local trainers react if this issue ever filters through to Queensland?

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