Banned Sydney trainer Sam Kavanagh says a vet and clinic manager “poisoned” his reputation in an attempt to deflect the blame in three cobalt cases.
Kavanagh said he was under serious pressure from Flemington Equine Clinic vet Dr Tom Brennan and practice manager Aaron Corby not to reveal Brennan supplied a substance called vitamin complex.
Kavanagh, his father Mark Kavanagh and fellow Flemington trainer Danny O’Brien had all used the vitamin complex in drips given to horses that returned cobalt positives.
Giving evidence to Mark Kavanagh and O’Brien’s appeal against their cobalt disqualifications, Sam Kavanagh said Brennan and Corby were maintaining that the vitamin complex was not behind the cobalt positives.
“I was put under significant pressure from Brennan and Corby and they had spent a lot of time obviously talking to my father and Mr O’Brien, pleading their innocence that it wasn’t their product that had caused their problems,” he said on Tuesday.
Kavanagh said Brennan and Corby poisoned his credibility with his father, with whom he had a strained relationship, and O’Brien, fracturing their friendship.
“It was a lot to do with the poisonous talk from Brennan and Corby trying to deflect the blame on to me and get themselves out of trouble,” he told the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal.
Kavanagh admitted he “behaved badly and broke some rules” but said Brennan and Corby started rumours about other indiscretions to poison his reputation.
“They walked around the sales at Easter time that year (2015) telling all the breeders that I was dealing the cobalt and it wasn’t anything to do with them,” Kavanagh said.
He said the evidence was that Corby knew the bottle came from Brennan in February 2015.
“Yet he still came into my case and said he believed I got it from gangsters because I had large gambling debts. It was all false but it got front page news in the paper.”
A vitamin complex bottled found in Sam Kavanagh’s kitchen in February last year was found to contain cobalt.
Brennan had told Kavanagh to get rid of the bottle after news of his father and O’Brien’s cobalt positives on January 14 last year.
Brennan has named former Flemington Equine vet Dr Adam Matthews as the supplier of the vitamin complex, which Matthews denies.
Kavanagh said a friend in Queensland’s racing industry had told him trainers in that state who were connected with Matthews had been using a vitamin complex drip, although it was not necessarily the same substance.
“They didn’t have positive swabs, don’t get me wrong, but they were going exceptionally well,” Kavanagh said.
Corby has denied trying to cover up the clinic’s involvement or that he and Brennan tried to pressure Kavanagh.
