Stablehand denies Melbourne Cup top-ups

A key member of the ‘Aquanita eight’ who admits giving horses illegal top-ups says it never happened on Melbourne Cup day as it would be too risky.

Float driver Greg Nelligan has admitted administering race day treatments for trainer Robert Smerdon and implicated the other people banned over Australia’s biggest racing scandal.

The stablehand has told a tribunal he never gave a Melbourne Cup runner a top-up of sodium bicarbonate and Tripart paste, nor administered a top-up to a horse on Cup day.

In texts on the eve of the 2015 Melbourne Cup after Queensland trainer Liam Birchley asked him to organise a top-up, Nelligan claimed he had “two Cup horses as well”.

He texted: “Robert had me do one for the guy with the Cup horses a few years ago so it’s not out of the circle of trust but I still don’t tell him.”

Nelligan said he could not recall administering a top-up to Birchley’s horse on Cup day and did not think he did it.

He agreed with Birchley’s barrister Michael Grant-Taylor QC that it would have been impossible to administer a top-up to a horse on Melbourne Cup day without being detected.

“I think that that would be a day that I’d consider to be too risky,” Nelligan told the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal on Tuesday.

Nelligan told the appeal for trainers Smerdon, Birchley, Tony Vasil and Stuart Webb that he never gave Cup horses top-ups.

“I didn’t top any Cup horses up.”

Nelligan initially maintained only he and Smerdon knew about the bicarb top-ups on race days.

But he admitted the other members of the Aquanita eight also knew about the top-ups and were part of the “circle of trust”.

On Tuesday Nelligan claimed the “circle of trust” reference in his 2015 text was a joke.

“It was a joke, I think from a movie I saw.”

Nelligan, who was banned for life over 123 race day treatments over seven years, maintained the majority of times he only pretended to give horses top-ups and did not actually do it.

Prefacing every response with a legal claim that his answer may incriminate him, Nelligan said he gave top-ups because his friend Smerdon asked him to do it.

Racing Victoria barrister Jeff Gleeson QC suggested the real reason was because Nelligan was betting on the horses he topped up.

Nelligan said he did bet on some of the horses but denied it was the most important reason for his conduct.

Eight people associated with thoroughbred management company Aquanita Racing were banned over the cheating conspiracy.