The case involving five trainers charged with presenting horses to race with a breast cancer drug in their systems has been adjourned until next month.
Trainers Smiley Chan, Mark and Levi Kavanagh, Amy and Ash Yargi, Julius Sandhu and Symon Wilde all face charges of taking horses with Formestane in them to race meetings last year.
Formestane is not approved for use in either humans or animals in Australia but is used overseas as a treatment for advanced breast cancer.
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As Formestane contains a synthetic anabolic steroid, the five horses involved were banned from racing for 12 months.
All bar one of the horses has since returned to racing.
The trainers maintain their horses’ results are the results of contamination during the testing of the samples.
The Victorian Racing Tribunal held a brief directions hearing of the cases on Tuesday morning.
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Barrister Damian Sheales, representing the five trainers, asked for the case to be adjourned for four weeks to allow discussions on whether the quintet will plead guilty or contest their charges.
Sheales said needed more time to take further instructions from his clients in such an unusual case.
“I would certainly be able to tell you in four weeks if it was going to be a contest,” Sheales told the VRT.
Racing Victoria’s legal counsel Marwan El-Asmar told the hearing he understood Sheales’s position and had no objection to the proposal to adjourn the matter.
VRT chairman Judge John Bowman said he was unavailable in the second half of July before proposing a three-week adjournment.
The parties agreed to return to the VRT on July 10.
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