Racing: Kiwi trainer emerges from doping disgrace

By PHIL TAYLOR

Star Australasian trainer Graeme Rogerson has entrusted his latest thoroughbred champion, Cox Plate winner Savabeel, to a trotting man who left New Zealand under a doping cloud.

The strapper who looked after Savabeel before and after his win in the A$3 million ($3.3 million) race was Peter Simpson, who quit New Zealand after pleading guilty to horse-doping charges.

For Simpson it was the comeback he predicted in 1994 when, on the eve of packing his bags in disgrace, he vowed to return to racing "because I'm too good at what I do not to".

After Savabeel's surprise win, Simpson shared the limelight, parading the horse after the race and being praised by Rogerson for his work. Simpson agreed to talk to the Weekend Herald but changed his mind.

Rogerson also declined to comment. "Anything you want to ask me about the horses, yes. Anything to do with people who work for me, no.

"I haven't got a problem but I won't talk about Peter."

Before Simpson left New Zealand he cited Rogerson as an example of a trainer who had climbed back to the top after a setback.

Australian racing authorities disqualified Rogerson from training in 1993, alleging he had given misleading evidence to a race inquiry. After negotiations, the ban was changed to a $A20,000 fine.

Racing Victoria chief stipendiary steward Des Gleeson said racing authorities were aware of Simpson's background.

He is based in Sydney and registered in New South Wales.

"They went through the interview process, they had his record from New Zealand, they had his record from America and they granted him a stablehand's licence."

The Rogerson stable pulled off a coup with Savabeel's Cox Plate win.

Only four 3-year-olds have won the event.

Group One weight-for-age races are fought between the toughest and most talented. To win the Cox Plate, the granddaddy of such races, youth and pretty bloodlines aren't enough.

Though Savabeel won his previous start, tipsters were unimpressed.

Yet Rogerson talked his horse up, claiming it would beat those with the big reputations.

History vindicated the horseman from Tuhikaramea, Waikato. His horse swept to the lead into the finishing straight and won clearly.

Rogerson is someone prepared to take a risk.

He did so with his prediction that Savabeel would win and in hiring Simpson, whose background is in harness, and whose name is associated with the first big "milkshaking" doping case in New Zealand.

In milkshaking, a tube filled with a sodium bicarbonate solution is inserted into a horse's nose, directing it to the animal's stomach.

It is supposed to neutralise lactic acid, which is produced by intense exercise and is considered an important factor in causing fatigue.

Simpson pleaded guilty to two charges of committing acts "detrimental to the interests of harness racing", involving administering unknown substances to two horses.

He was disqualified for nine months. It was a big fall.

Third in the trainers' premiership at the time, Simpson could not set foot on a racecourse during his ban.

He'd risen rapidly after going into partnership in 1990 with Peter Blanchard, who also had a meteoric rise, winning the trainers' premiership with a record 127 wins the previous season.

But in 1995 Blanchard admitted "tubing" a horse with bicarbonate. Savabeel is favourite for today's Victorian Derby.

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