Australian racing 'a laughing stock'

LEADING NSW provincial trainer Brett Cavanough has blown the lid on inconsistencies with equine influenza protocols being observed from racecourse to racecourse, saying they are making Australia a laughing stock.
Cavanough went to three race meetings in the past four days - Wagga Wagga on Friday, Albury on Saturday and Canberra on Sunday - and he was dumbfounded by the breaches of protocols that took place.
Despite this, the Albury trainer believes authorities have gone over the top with the measures demanded of people in the thoroughbred industry and that the time has come to relax them.
"What blew me out of the water completely was we went to Canberra yesterday, where they have very strict rules," Cavanough said.
"Canberra threw the gate wide open yesterday and they're in the national capital. Maybe we've got to start asking some questions.
"Owners were allowed into the stalls area where the horses are. They were allowed to pat their horses and touch their horses.
"Sydney jockeys weren't allowed to ride at Randwick (on Saturday) and come back to Canberra. But there were quite a few people who went to both places.
"They can go to the races in Sydney, see their horses at the stables after the races, then go to Canberra and step into a foot bath and wash their hands and see their other horses. What's the difference?"
Cavanough said another venue he went to left an entry point open that provided punters with access to an exclusion zone. And nothing was done to stop them.
"One race meeting I went to, the back gate was open and people were wandering straight through," Cavanough said.
"There was no foot bath or hand wash. They were just walking through the horse area to the public enclosure."
Cavanough received a list of protocols by fax from the Racing NSW stewards pertaining to racing this in Sydney, at Rosehill. He believes that the demands placed on trainers with runners at the meeting are too demanding, if not unrealistic.
"If I race horses at Sydney on Saturday, and this goes for anyone in the country, they go to Canterbury for seven days with only the one person in contact," Cavanough said.
"When they leave there they have to come home to a facility 100m from any other horse. You have to have one person who hasn't had any contact with horses for seven days to touch them. It's got to have dog-proof fences around it and a supervised vet. You've got to have a three-minute shower ... shower on the way in, shower on the way out.
"You need somebody with a stopwatch outside to time you.
"It's just unbelievable, some of the crap they're going on with."
Cavanough said that he was in a green zone but he had come in contact with people from purple zones at race meetings, highlighting the deficiencies in the protocols outlined by the Department of Primary Industry.
"I just question the DPI's protocols. I think it's getting to the stage where they've just got to throw the gates open," Cavanough said.
"We're the laughing stock of the world at the moment.
"And the three different places that I have been to in the last three days, there was just no comparison in the protocols."