KEY POINTS:
So the Supreme Court yesterday dismissed Lisa Cropp's appeal against an element of the methamphetamine charges she faces.
That's the news that isn't news. It was always going to be the greatest given on record that this was a race one of New Zealand's most successful jockeys was not going to win.
This was challenging the right of horse-racing authorities to test participants for drugs and alcohol for reasons of safety.
It needs little explanation that a 520kg animal travelling at 50km an hour through often narrow gaps does not need a 52kg jockey on its back impaired by methamphetamine.
The success of bucking the rights to test jockeys would be roughly similar to Pitcairn Island somehow putting a rugby team together from its 48 or so inhabitants and coming to play the All Blacks.
Cropp's case had little hope of being successful. At best it looked more like a delaying tactic.
Cropp's lawyers have taken the rights of racing to test to the High Court, then to the Court of Appeal and finally to the Supreme Court.
Meanwhile, Cropp's lucrative career has been rolling forward, albeit at a huge legal cost.
The first nonsense in this sad affair is that it has been allowed to drag along to this point - Cropp tested positive to methamphetamine at Te Rapa races on May 7, 2005.
Mercifully, New Zealand Thoroughbred Racing has fixed this for the future. Any rider now found in such circumstances will be stood down until the case is fully resolved.
The second, and most important, nonsense is that such cases are ever allowed to go to common law.
Horse racing is not a backyard game. It is a billion-dollar-a-year industry with, by necessity, its own robust laws, rules and regulations, well capable of handling even the most serious cases.
The original Judicial Control Authority case against Cropp can now continue with Crown Prosecutor Simon Moore driving the charges.
From the start only three points needed to be proven: (1) that Lisa Cropp is a jockey. That one wasn't difficult.
Then (2) that the nurse who received the urine sample at Te Rapa in 2005 was registered and authorised to be involved, which has never been in question and that (3) the laboratory which processed the sample had the right credentials.
The inevitable is in now in sight. Legal identities have guessed that Cropp's defence to this point could be as high as $250,000 to $300,000.
If the charges are found to be proven she will face the strong probability of prosecution costs. Racing detectives said yesterday over and above the court-awarded costs at the three levels of appeal, NZ Thoroughbred Racing has costs exceeding $100,000.
