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THE TURNBULL STAKES has a proud legacy, and an honour roll that includes genuine legends of the Australian turf: from The Barb in the 1870s to Eurythmic (1920), Ajax (1938), Bernborough (1946), Rising Fast (1954), Tobin Bronze (1966), Denise’s Joy (1976), Super Impose (1989), Sunline (2001) and Makybe Diva (2005). It is a prestigious event in its own right, as well being an avenue to some of Victoria’s most lucrative races. Run at Flemington in early October, it’s part of the build-up to Victoria’s Spring Carnival, a marker along the path that trainers take as they nurture their horses towards the Caulfield and Melbourne Cups, with the W.S. Cox Plate splitting them by a fortnight.

If a horse runs well in the Turnbull, history suggests he or she is an elite athlete with the ability to gallop strongly over a middle distance, with a burst of speed – the critical ‘turn of foot’ for which all trainers pray. In the lead-up to the 2000-metre contest in the spring of 2014, Lidari had been showing signs of being precisely this kind of performer.

Having arrived in Australia at the end of 2012, the new recruit had settled in well at Peter Moody’s Caulfield stables. The turf no doubt felt firmer under his suspect feet, and starting each day before sunrise would have been something of a culture shock for the bay. The local food and water probably tasted different too. Nevertheless, he accepted the new exercise and feeding regime with good grace – or the closest he could come to it – and made his Australian debut at Flemington on 13 April 2013. He finished second in a 1600-metre race, and repeated that placing a month later, over 1800 metres at the same track.

Three months after that, on the last day of August 2013, Lidari broke through for his first win for his new trainer – over 1400 metres at Caulfield, his home track. Winning at his fourth Australian start gave his connections hope for what might lie ahead. They had to wait another seven months for his second victory, which came on 8 March 2014 in the Blamey Stakes at Flemington, although he then floundered in two starts in Sydney’s much-hyped but very wet Autumn Carnival.

No matter: the spring of 2014 in Melbourne was what Lidari’s team were aiming for, and the horse was given another well-earned paddock break. When he resumed in August with a creditable fifth placing in the Group 2 Lawrence Stakes at Caulfield, it looked like things were going to plan.

Three starts later, he lined up for the Group 1 Turnbull, in what was certainly his toughest test since arriving in Australia. The field he faced was the real deal, horses on the same path towards both the Cups and, in some cases, the Cox Plate. If the six-year-old stallion was going to be a genuine competitor, he had to perform well here.

By now fully adjusted to ‘Aussie time’, Lidari was ready to prove he was worth the faith shown in him by his connections two years earlier. And from the moment he jumped in the race, with one of the country’s finest jockeys as his partner, it looked like he was about to do just that.

Steven Arnold had ridden many top horses in his time, and one champion: Arnold was the jockey who steered So You Think to his great victories in the spring of 2011. One of those wins was their unforgettable partnership in that year’s Cox Plate, that young stallion’s second victory in the premier weight-for-age event in Australasia.

So the rider understood just how critical the Turnbull was for both Lidari and Moody Racing, and he knew exactly what he was doing when he urged the stallion out of the barriers and took up a prominent position as the field moved towards the first turn. In OTI Racing’s vibrant silks of navy and yellow stripes, the pair was easy to spot – especially with Lidari sporting a prominent white nose roll and the jockey’s distinctive riding style. It was clear to all that they were determined to stay near the front of the field.

Intriguingly, up there with them was another bay wearing identical colours and a nose roll. This was Liadri’s younger stablemate, Brambles, a Queensland Derby winner also vying for spring glory for the same owners. The only thing that set them apart as they settled third and fourth in the race was the colour of their jockeys’ caps: Luke Nolen on Brambles wore blue, while Arnold on Lidari wore white.

Like Lidari, Brambles was keen to move forward, and not get too far back in the large field and run the risk of having to navigate tired horses in the run home. And as they swung into the home stretch, it seemed as if the stablemates would fight out the race between them. With Lidari and Arnold storming along the outside of the valiant leader, Entirely Platinum, and with Brambles and Nolen going with them on the inside, nearer the running rail, they gradually overhauled the pace-setter and prepared to slug out the final 200 metres.

Brambles seemed to have Lidari’s measure, throwing himself ahead of his older rival. What they couldn’t see, of course, was what was happening behind them, and they did not sense Lucia Valentina – a classy, strong mare from Newcastle – striding down the centre of the track, reeling them in with every bound. And then it was too late: she was rushing past them. Peter Moody’s pair rallied, and Arnold and Lidari pulled ahead of Brambles as they swept past the post. It was an exhilarating finish, franking the potential that OTI had seen in the galloper, as well as Moody’s work acclimatising the ‘international’.

Form analysts have marked this race as Lidari’s best performance on the Australian turf, and by a significant margin. The Ratings Bureau scored it at 105.3, up on his previous start (102.1) and on his previous best of 102.5. In layman’s terms, the horse had improved by 2.1 lengths.

Timeform Australia also ranked Lidari’s run in the Turnbull as his peak performance. But chief analyst Gary Crispe believes it was in keeping with the progress the stallion had made since joining Moody’s yard. ‘Lidari had continued to progress his Timeform rating in three campaigns to date,’ Crispe writes, ‘and as is usually the case with Northern Hemisphere–bred gallopers, they normally take a few campaigns to acclimatise and reach their potential. So Moody had every reason to expect his fourth campaign could be his best to date, and in terms of progressing his ratings profile, it was highly likely that Lidari would again peak this preparation, provided of course the tracks remained firm. In summary, the ratings profile exhibited by Lidari was consistent with a Northern-bred horse making steady progression through each of his first four campaigns and peaking marginally in the 2014 Turnbull Stakes, where arguably he was very well placed under that weight scale, as well as with an upward spiral in his ratings at that time.’

OTI’s Terry Henderson vividly recalls Lidari’s progression through the spring of 2014, including his sixth placing in the Caulfield Cup. ‘I can remember the conversations on Turnbull Stakes day, [and then] on Derby Day,’ he says. ‘Peter said, “Look, none of us really know whether he’s going to go two miles.” And he didn’t [know].’

According to Henderson, Moody asked: ‘Do you want to throw the dice?’

They did. By now, Lidari’s group of owners had expanded to include some of the biggest names in Australian ownership circles: Neil Werrett, one of Black Caviar’s lucky band of connections, and Queensland’s Glenlogan Park. None of them could have imagined, though, where Lidari’s good run in the Turnbull Stakes would lead, long-term.

He had done well enough to line up in the Melbourne Cup in November 2014, although he ‘didn’t race all that well’, as Henderson recalls. Officially, Lidari finished 19th in that year’s Cup field of 21. He was nowhere near the slipstream of Protectionist and Red Cadeaux, first and second past the post. It turned out the two-mile distance was beyond another OTI horse.

Three months later, in January 2015, the disappointment of the Melbourne Cup result must have seemed insignificant. Stewards advised the trainer that his enigmatic former French charge had tested positive to a higher level of cobalt in his system than was allowed under the rules of Australian racing. That was all it took for Peter Moody’s world to tip irrevocably.

It was a moment no one involved will forget. ‘Pete was in shock. We were all in shock,’ Terry Henderson says. ‘We were very surprised, and this was all fresh. Pete was extremely worried, because he had absolutely no idea where this came from. And I said, “Mate, just go through the whole process with this, because if you’re confident you’ve not been involved in anything untoward … well, you’ve just got to go through the process.” I’ve never known him to be as worried as he was.

‘When you run a stable that big, you’ve always got processes in place, and you’re always hoping those processes work, because you can’t be everywhere all the time. Now, there have been numerous occasions with many, many stables where the processes have slipped up – either in feeding practices, or in treatment processes – and the trainer bears the brunt of it, and this is the way it should be. And often, you know, not only are the stewards doing an investigation, the trainer himself is doing the investigation to try and find out what’s gone on.’

The owner has no idea what inquiries Lidari’s trainer made, at that early stage, to solve the mystery of the high cobalt reading. ‘Pete plays his cards close to his chest, as far as his business is concerned,’ Henderson says. ‘He’s not one that would go out and set up a mentor group to get through this. He paddles his own canoe … I do know that he’s not a guy that’s going to shirk any issue.

‘I think I can say, and I can’t say this about all trainers, but if there was someone I wanted to be in the trenches with, in Peter’s terminology, that’d be Moody. Because he is a fighter, and in fact that’s why he is where he is as a trainer. He’s had to come up … from the very basics of the industry.’

Well-intended as Henderson’s words were, the owner could not know how his advice about process and investigation would come to haunt the stable. How could he? The trainer had been drilled in stable process, after all, by one of Australia’s best.