Horse racing: Cody Cole back in training ranks after RIB decision quashed on appeal
One of New Zealand thoroughbred racing’s most talented young trainers is free to train again after having a 12-month disqualification quashed on appeal.
Trainer Cody Cole was disqualified from training in April after being found guilty of a serious racing offence because he failed to supply a urine sample for a drug test at the Matamata track in July last year.
Cole was notified he needed to provide a urine sample for drug testing on the morning of July 24 but asked permission to first return his horses to his Tīrau property then go back to the Matamata track to provide the sample.
That permission was granted but Cole submitted that when he got to his stables, one of his staff told him a horse had had an accident in a fence and Cole decided to stay with that horse until it had been treated by a veterinarian.
By the time that had taken place, the 10.30am drug testing window was gone and after failing to communicate more with the Racing Integrity Board inspector, Cole was later charged with failing to provide the sample.
But a Racing Integrity Board appeal committee of Alan Harper (chair) and James Rapley, KC, qaushed the original sentence in a decision released on Monday and Cole has been immediately reinstated to the trainer’s ranks.
The appeal committee stated that “a bold submission that an affirmative defence should be rejected out of hand will seldom suffice unless the evidence is plainly not creditable, or the excuse offered is clearly not reasonable”.
“That was not the case here.”
The appeal committee said the Racing Integrity Board had “not discharged its obligation to disprove the evidence given by the appellant [Cole] and therefore has not proved the appellant acted wilfully in failing to provide a urine sample by 10.30am.”
In more simple language, that means because the Racing Integrity Board had not proved Cole’s reason for not returning to the drug test was valid, which the onus had shifted to them to do, the decision was quashed.
The 36-year-old trainer was delighted to be cleared, even if his own actions around the incident were, at best, messy or naive, and says he wants to put the case and his time on the sidelines behind him.
“I have already spent four months disqualified but I won’t be dwelling on that or holding a grudge,” Cole told the Herald.
“I am back and it is a great time to be back, with spring racing just around the corner.
“So I just want to get back to training.”
He says even with the help of so many people and his father Tony Cole taking over the majority of his horses, he has “still lost at least 30 horses from the stable”.
“But I can’t worry about that. We have had a lot of good owners who stuck with us and Dad and the staff have been wonderful.
“So as far I am concerned, it is over and done with and I want to get back to training winners.”
Cody Cole is likely to have Atmospheric in the $400,000 Proisir Plate at Ellerslie on Saturday week, the first Group 1 of the season.
Michael Guerin wrote his first nationally published racing articles while still in school and started writing about horse racing and the gambling industry for the Herald as a 20-year-old in 1990. He became the Herald’s Racing Editor in 1995 and covers the world’s biggest horse racing carnivals.