Trainer pleads to move back home after lying about having a ‘leak’ and copping a three-year ban

Of all the excuses, veteran trainer John Leek jnr claimed he had pulled over in quiet street in a small country town and stepped into his trailing horse float for a leak.

But when Racing Victoria stewards opened the door to the float, he wasn’t emptying his bladder.

Instead, they caught the 72-year-old horseman attempting to stomach tube his racehorse – a drenching practise that is banned on race day under the rules of racing because it is considered performance enhancing.

That seemingly innocuous roadside stop in Terang on a crisp winter afternoon in July last year, as Leek was taking his horse The Storyteller to the Warrnambool races, has cost him his training licence for the next three years. He was disqualified by the Victorian Racing Tribunal last month.

But the decision has had wider ramifications. The ban means Leek can no longer live with his wife, Andrea, at their Nar Nar Goon North training property, about 10 kilometres from Pakenham racecourse in Tynong, because she is a trainer, too.

Under the rules of racing, a disqualified person must not “enter upon any training premises, complex or establishment of a licensed person”.

As a result of the ban, Leek has applied to the Racing Victoria board for a special exemption to move back home – a case that is yet to be heard. He moved out on August 31, seven days after the tribunal penalty was handed down.

If granted, he would be able to stay in the house and tend to cattle on the property, but could not have anything to do with his wife’s training operation, or her horses – one of them Cox Plate fancy Cosmic Crusader that is favourite for Saturday’s group 1 Underwood Stakes at Caulfield.

The property’s rural setting and rolling hills are crucial to Andrea Leek’s training model, and one of the key reasons she was sent the horse by prominent West Australian breeder and owner Bob Peters.

Leek, a former jumps jockey, said it was not an option to move her horses, including the classy six-year-old gelding, to an alternative training base so that her husband could move home.

“We’ve spent 26 years building it [their Nar Nar Goon North base] up to what it is now. So that won’t happen,” she said. “We would just have to get a house somewhere else.”

But the trainer said she hoped her husband would be given an exemption.

“It’s all up in the air at the moment,” she said. “It’s got to go to the [Racing Victoria] board, but, hopefully, they see the humanitarian side of things and allow it.”

She said she had always trained independently of her husband.

“Otherwise, you know, we would have gone in as a partnership,” she said. “But I always wanted to do it myself. I wanted to have my own identity and do it the way I’ve learnt, and it’s different to the way he’s always done it.”

Peters said he could not comment on Leek’s tribunal case, but said he expected his horse, Cosmic Crusader, to be trained at Nar Nar Goon North. Leek’s son, Mitchell, also trains at the property.

Leek’s ban was the result of an undercover sting. He was trailed by Racing Victoria stewards on the day he was caught. They waited for him on the Princes Freeway near Little River and followed his Ram ute to its fateful stop.

Leek and his driver Leigh Adamson stopped in Dow Street, Terang about three hours into a four-hour drive from Nar Nar Goon North to the Warrnambool races. The stewards captured his actions on a body-worn camera.

His horse, The Storyteller, was engaged to run in a 3100-metre benchmark 70 that afternoon. He was a 2-1 favourite, but was scratched because of Leek’s actions. The horse won the Galleywood Hurdle at Warrnambool 10 months later.

Initially, Leek told stewards he had stopped to “tube the horse”, but in later interviews changed his story and claimed he was desperate to have “a pee”. He said he had intended to go in the float, despite there being a row of trees on the side of the road where he had stopped.

He also claimed he used a twitch – a calming device that is attached to an animal’s nose – to keep his horse still so he could relive himself in the float, and not to tube it. He pleaded not guilty to the charge.

But legal counsel for the stewards, Amara Hughes, rejected his evidence, telling the tribunal: “It’s not normal to go to the toilet in a float with a horse who, on his own evidence, is purportedly acting in a distressed manner.”

Leek told stewards he later urinated in his car, beside the driver, because he had been prevented from going in the float.

The tribunal panel – consisting of Judge Marilyn Harbison and Dr Andrew Gould – found Leek guilty. They said attempting to stomach tube a horse was “extremely damaging to the reputation of racing”.

“The betting public must be able to trust that horses are presented to race free of drugs,” the tribunal said.

Counsel for Leek, Matthew Stirling, asked the tribunal to use its discretion to allow Leek to live in his family home because it was “an unacceptable intrusion into the private lives of himself and his wife”.

The tribunal ruled that it was a matter for the Racing Victoria board to decide.

News, results and expert analysis from the weekend of sport sent every Monday. Sign up for our Sport newsletter.

You have reached your maximum number of saved items.

Remove items from your saved list to add more.