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Scone trainer Luke Griffith admitted he had a drug problem to Racing NSW stewards on Thursday and it might have cost him his career after they disqualified him for four years on charges relating to the party drug ice.
"I have personal issues that I'm working through," Griffith told stewards during an inquiry in Scone, part of which was held in camera.
Griffith had three horses test positive to methylamphetamine after winning in January and February and was given a three-year disqualification arising from that.
He was given a further 12 months for testing positive to prohibited substances himself, which could be cut to eight months if he completed counselling.
It would be served after the three-year ban for the horses' positive tests, meaning Griffith would not be able to hold a trainer's licence until January 2019.
"I'm just absolutely shattered," was Griffith's only comment as he left the inquiry.
Racing NSW chairman of stewards Ray Murrihy chaired the inquiry and said it was the first case of this nature he could recall. He said "the so-called party drug had no place in racing or society".
He had repeatedly asked Griffith during the inquiry how the drug came to be found in his horses' samples.
"Have you been hearing some racecourse rattle that you could give it [methylamphetamine] over the tongue just before the race and it wouldn't show up in a swab?" Murrihy challenged Griffith at one point.
The trainer stayed composed but could not offer an acceptable reason.
He asked the inquiry at one point if it could have come from a person's sweat but Racing NSW veterinarian Craig Suann and Adam Cawley from the Australian Racing Forensic Laboratory rejected that.
"There is no way in the world I would give that stuff or anything to my horses on race day," Griffith said. "I know the rules. I have been in racing for a long time. It would be like playing Russian roulette."
Griffith, the leading NSW country trainer this season, had Another Halo and How Will I Know return positive swabs to methylamphetamine after they won at Tamworth on January 18, as did Incensual after it won at Taree on February 3.
Griffith was charged with two offences for each of the positive tests.
The first was that he presented a horse with a prohibited substance, methylamphetamine, in its system, to which he plead guilty. The second charge was of administering the prohibited substance to his horses. Griffith plead not guilty but stewards sustained the charge.
Murrihy said that, on finding Griffith guilty on all charges, he had not deliberately administered the drug to his horses, but pointed out that the trainer "had been making some poor decisions recently" in his life.
The positive swabs led to an investigation during which all of Griffith's stable staff were tested. It led to the trainer facing charges of testing positively to prohibited substances.
Stewards handled Griffith's personal matter in camera, eventually finding him guilty of two offences from tests taken at Tamworth on March 12 and Scone on April 21. Griffith has had three previous breaches of the prohibited substances rules in the past 15 years.
