Barely 24 hours after five Victorian stables were fined $24,000 for their horses testing positive to a substance used to treat breast cancer, breakthrough research emerged at an international conference in Melbourne that had the potential to clear their names.
The frustrated trainers spent three years and more than $75,000 in legal fees in a failed bid to prove their innocence before being found guilty of presentation charges by the Victorian Racing Tribunal (a horse testing positive to a banned substance on race day).
The trainers – Smiley Chan, Julius Sandhu, Symon Wilde, Mark and Levi Kavanagh, and Ash and Amy Yargi – were never able to prove the origin of the mysterious substance, formestane, that was found in their horses’ urine. Nor was the Racing Victoria integrity department that charged them.
But a day after they walked out of their tribunal hearing on March 23 this year, a UK research scientist and her colleagues delivered a bombshell presentation at the International Conference of Racing Analysts and Veterinarians 2026 at Melbourne’s Crown Casino.
LCG Group researcher Marjaana Viljanto, who has a PhD in analytical toxicology, presented a study titled Investigations Into the Possible Endogenous Nature of Selected Anabolic-Androgenic Steroids in Equine Urine.
Endogenous means naturally occurring.
Viljanto’s research, commissioned by the British Horseracing Foundation, found formestane “for the first time” in 92 urine samples of 136 horses (50 geldings, 50 mares and 36 colts, selected at random).
Viljanto and the British Horseracing Foundation were contacted for comment.
Two vets who provided evidence for trainers at the Victorian Racing Tribunal hearings said it was now time for Racing Victoria’s integrity department to hit pause on all formestane cases.
At least 24 thoroughbred and harness trainers have been caught up in the saga.
Consultancy vet Derek Major said based on Viljanto’s research it is “highly likely that there is endogenous formestane in a horse” – meaning the substance is produced naturally.
“The only valid alternative is that the substance is produced in the sample after collection (microbial formation),” Major said.
Formestane is used to treat breast cancer overseas, mainly in postmenopausal women. It is not imported for human or animal use in Australia.
It is on the WADA banned list because it has performance-enhancing qualities, but it has a testing threshold because it is produced naturally by humans.
Professor Colin Chapman, a pharmacist and veterinary surgeon who held senior academic positions with Monash University, said Racing Victoria should not keep prosecuting formestane cases because there is now “a huge amount of uncertainty about the allegation that the trainers administered formestane or a precursor of formestane to their horses”.
“Importantly, the formestane detected could have been endogenous – produced naturally within the body, of a horse” he said.
“This must be validated before any further steps are taken in relation to the prosecution of trainers found guilty of presentation charges and those awaiting prosecution.”
If Viljanto’s research is proven and published – a peer-review process that could take 12 months – the trainers will have been found guilty of taking their horses to the races with a substance the animals produced.
In other words, said Chapman, it would mean formestane should be treated in the same way as testosterone whereby there is an “international” threshold, below which it is not a prohibited substance.
This masthead spoke to trainers Wilde and Sandhu, but they declined to comment at this point in time.
A Racing Victoria spokesperson said it was “important to note that the Australian Rules of Racing are generally not retrospective”.
Racing Victoria said it had been aware of Viljanto’s presentation before the Melbourne conference, but not the “the specific detail”.
Two senior staff members from Racing Analytical Serices Limited (RASL) – the independent laboratory that detected the positive formestane swabs – and an RV regulatory vet were also aware of the presentation because they were on the conference’s organising committee.
This masthead does not suggest that Racing Victoria acted improperly or ignored relevant science. At the time of the tribunal hearings, Viljanto’s research had not been published or peer-reviewed, and its conclusions remain unvalidated.
“We did make an approach to the researcher prior to the conference in a bid to understand more on the planned presentation, however they were only able to supply limited information,” the RV spokesperson said.
Five horses, trained by five different stables and racing at five different tracks returned positive urine samples between February 22, 2023, and April 13, 2023. There was no common link.
The horses were banned for 12 months and their prizemoney lost. In the case of Wilde, the resale value of mare Sirileo Miss dropped from $800,000 to $400,000.
The trainers initially pleaded not guilty to the charges, but after a contested hearing lasting five days in December last year agreed to change their pleas to guilty after reaching an agreement with Racing Victoria.
Under the rules of racing, the trainers were snookered. There is no onus on stewards to prove the origins of a prohibited substance.
When handing down the penalty, VRT chairman Magistrate Peter Reardon said the tribunal could not make a “definitive determination of how these horses had the substances in their respective systems”.
“There was no incriminating evidence located in the stables or elsewhere,” Reardon said. “The level of the prohibited substance found in each horse was very low.”
But Racing Victoria said it had no intention of shelving current cases before the Victorian Racing Tribunal.
Patrick Payne is listed for an appearance on June 17, while Tom Dabernig, a member of the famous Hayes dynasty, is due to appear before the tribunal on Monday.
Payne’s runner Hard To Cross returned consecutive positive swabs to formestane, 4-hydroxytestosterone and 6a-hydroxyandrost-4-Ene3,17-Dione after winning races at Sandown on May 15 and May 25 in 2024.
Dabernig’s horse Ashford Street returned a pre-race urine sample containing formestane, 4-hydroxytestosterone and testosterone in October 2024. The horse ran last in the group 2 Caulfield Sprint.
“The penalties determined by the VRT, an independent panel, in the five cases to date has now created a precedent,” an RV spokesperson said.
“The expectation is that our stewards will be proceeding with other cases on the same basis and using that precedent until such time as there is validated information or evidence to the contrary.”
Racing Victoria does not accept that Viljanto’s research is evidence to the contrary.
“The limited information we do know from listening to the presentation was that it related to a limited number of samples and the findings were not derived from a quantitatively validated method,” the RV spokesperson said.
“As it currently stands, we are now awaiting the full manuscript of the research to be peer-reviewed and published which we understand is unlikely to occur until mid-2027.”
Racing Victoria said it had commissioned a study with RASL to determine if formestane and its metabolites were endogenous at low levels in racehorses.
If it were found to be endogenous, the RV spokesperson said, “it would most likely require a change to the national rules and a threshold to be implemented if attainable”.
A method already adopted by WADA for human athletes.
RASL laboratory director David Batty said his organisation hosted ICRAV 2026 and as a result had reviewed Viljanto’s abstract – a summary of her oral presentation – in August 2025 “with respect to its suitability”.
But he said when RASL scientific manager Dr Adam Cawley provided evidence to the Victorian
Racing Tribunal last December, the organisation, “was not aware of population studies
performed by LGC using a recently developed high-sensitivity screening method capable of
detecting very low (picogram per millilitre) levels of formestane in equine urine samples”.
News, results and expert analysis from the weekend of sport sent every Monday. Sign up for our Sport newsletter.
From our partners
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: www.smh.com.au
