UNDER-fire former jockey Allan Robinson had reassured race officials he would attend Monday's More Joyous inquiry only for his lawyer to reveal last night that he would be calling in sick.
"Without going into his health issues I can assure you he is not up to the task in his current condition," Chris Murphy said, reports RAY THOMAS in THE DAILY TELEGRAPH.
"He soldiers on.
"I can indicate that he is not going to be put at risk by the pressures of attending the Ray Murrihy investigation."
Robinson retired from racing in 2010 after a career-ending fall.
He, NRL legend Andrew Johns and Sydney brothel owner Eddie Hayson face being warned off racetracks around the world if they refuse to appear at the stewards' inquiry.
The trio have been asked to provide statements to Racing NSW stewards detailing their involvement, if any, in the scandal that has rocked Sydney racing.
Stewards are expected to make a formal request as early as today for Johns, Hayson and Robinson to appear in person and provide evidence at Monday's inquiry into More Joyous' All Aged Stakes flop.
"Any person that is asked to attend the inquiry and does not do so can be dealt with under the rules of racing," Racing NSW chief executive Peter V'landys said last night. "The board of Racing NSW or the stewards have the power to impose certain penalties including issuing a warning off. This may seem a bit extreme but it is not without precedent."
It's understood that Racing NSW investigators interviewed Johns today. Racing NSW chief steward Ray Murrihy said evidence from Johns, Hayson and Robinson is crucial to the investigation into what was said prior to More Joyous' flop in the All Aged Stakes last Saturday.
"The chances are all three will be asked to appear," Murrihy said last night. "We have already requested each provide a statement which the stewards will also consider." Johns and Hayson have been registered owners previously but it is understood neither has a share in a racehorse currently in training.
"As a recently registered owner our legal advice is that Andrew Johns, if asked, will be required to attend the inquiry," V'landys said. "We are going to try and get everyone to the inquiry that is pertinent to the stewards' investigation."
Johns is understood to have hired former ARL chairman and Sydney solicitor Colin Love to advise him.
The notoriously media-shy Hayson also has legal representation and is considering whether to appear at Monday's hearing.
Up until last night's tweet by Murphy, all indications were that Robinson would be attending and The Daily Telegraph understands he had assured race officials yesterday.
John Singleton, owner of More Joyous, has claimed bookie Tom Waterhouse told people More Joyous had a problem and could not win the race. Waterhouse has repeatedly denied those allegations and said a More Joyous win was a $300,000 better result for him.
Johns said on Channel Nine's The Sunday Footy Show that Waterhouse had said More Joyous was "off" but later clarified his comments and said Waterhouse had never mentioned the health of the horse. Singleton subsequently confirmed that Johns and Robinson contacted him about More Joyous on race morning.
Murrihy said stewards are "exploring the fitness of More Joyous in the week leading up to the race.
Gai Waterhouse, who has been sacked as More Joyous' trainer, has told stewards the mare received an antibiotic on Thursday morning but the trainer stated she did not believe it was an issue she needed to tell stewards about.
It is understood Racing NSW has received a request - believed to be from Gai Waterhouse - for legal representation on Monday.
"The rules don't allow automatic legal representation but if an application is made stewards will consider that," Murrihy said.
MORE JOYOUS SOAP OPERA JUST ANOTHER DRAMA IN THE HISTORY OF RACING IN SYDNEY
KEN CALLANDER also reports in the DAILY TELEGRAPH that the mix of racing, the sport of controversy, and Sydney, the city of sin, has always produced headlines and the likely duo has done it again with the More Joyous-John Singleton-Gai Waterhouse pantomime that started Saturday at Randwick and will come to a conclusion in the centre of Sydney's CBD on Monday.
At the moment it is just a headline. Could it develop into a scandal?
Who knows, but I am sure it won't be as scandalous as a Melbourne expose last November when Damien Oliver admitted having $10,000 on a favourite at Moonee Valley two years earlier in a race where he rode the second favourite.
The Oliver shocker (and I am still shocked) was incredibly all but swept under the carpet by Racing Victoria when it came to a hearing last November, with the leading rider receiving a 10-month suspension, which will conveniently allow him to ride at next year's spring carnival. What's more he was allowed to keep the $11,000 he won on the race.
What is striking about the Singo and Gai melodrama is the cast is almost of a Hollywood blockbuster standard. Mind you, the same headline performers have all been trotted out before.
Singo and Gai have made more front-page headlines than Russell Crowe and Nicole Kidman.
Gai is usually the heroine, but on Anzac Day 2005 a horse she trained, Love You Honey, painted her as the villain when it finished last in a race at Gosford and was then found to have traces of benzoylecgonine (a metabolite of cocaine) in its system. Gai was fined $15,000, which was quashed on appeal, although the offence was proven and Love You Honey disqualified.
Singo's trips to the front page are more associated with making money, spending money, getting married, getting divorced, getting drunk or getting involved in a brawl.
The other principal members of the cast are, as they say in reporting circles, "known" to stewards.
The No.1 witness for Singo, Allan Robinson, has had more run-ins with officialdom than Singo has had wives.
Some of the excerpts from his record show:
2009 - Three months disqualification under rule 135 (b) which deals with a jockey giving a horse all reasonable opportunity to win. It was his fourth breach of this rule in four years;
2009 - $400 fine for insulting behaviour when he called a chief steward's question a "suck question";
2007 - $500 fine for attempting to strike an apprentice with his whip;
2005 - $300 fine for misconduct for making comments to patrons at Newcastle race course;
2003 - Fined $1000 for handing a sum of money to a barrier worker;
2001 - Six months suspension for improper behaviour towards stewards; and
1999 - $500 fine for misconduct in relation to comments following a race at Newcastle.
The No.1 witness for Gai Waterhouse is her husband, Robbie, whose record with officialdom is widely known.
It is headed, of course, by being warned off in 1984 for his involvement in the Fine Cotton ring-in case. The warning off was lifted in 1998 and he was finally granted a bookmakers' licence again in 2001.
Within 12 months, Waterhouse was in trouble again over entering false and misleading entries in betting sheets, giving misleading evidence at an inquiry and for conduct prejudicial to the image of racing. His penalties of a $6000 fine on each of 13 charges as well as a 12-month disqualification were redefined after appeals.
Eddie Hayson, star witness No.3, has been in front of stewards once or twice, but it is as the co-owner of a brothel, Stiletto at Camperdown, that he has made the most racing headlines.
Ray Murrihy, the chief steward, has admitted he has had to talk to a number of jockeys pointing out that it may not be wise for them to congregate at Stiletto.
Andrew Johns, star witness No.4, has stayed clear of racing controversy, but as the greatest rugby league player of his generation it is impossible for him not to hit the headlines even when on the sideline.
If you go back through the history of racing in Sydney you can find scandal upon scandal. Men like Rufe Naylor and Grafter Kingsley could always be relied on to rig a race or two and, in the case of Kingsley, rig the scales so the jockey weighed in correctly.
The captains of industry could also produce a scandalous headline with the city's two best known media proprietors, Ezra Norton and Frank Packer, having a fist fight at Randwick 60 years ago.
Imagine the headlines today if Rupert Murdoch shaped up to Kerry Stokes?
Jockeys, on the other hand, are only flyweights, but in days gone by they could sell papers by engaging in some fisticuffs. George Moore and Athol Mulley traded blows in a famous stoush of the 1960s. Although it is more correct to say Moore delivered the blows and Mulley, still sitting down, received them.
In 1986, Peter Cook did not take too kindly to being knocked down in the Golden Slipper by Mick Dittman's mount Bounding Away and, on returning to the jockeys' room, Cook grabbed the winning jockey (Dittman) by the throat and the pair had to be separated by several heavyweights.
John Schreck, then chief steward, was obviously not a fight fan as he fined Cook $2000 and suspended him, and also fined Dittman $1000.
Then there's George Freeman, the most colourful racing figure of the time or, as police may have described him, the most significant gangster.
George was accused of everything bar causing the trains to run late, but his most notable racing extravaganza centred around a horse called Mr Digby, who was not registered in George's name, but was considered by most to be controlled by him.
In 1981, Mr Digby finished unplaced in a race at Randwick before coming out on the Wednesday at Canterbury and bolting in after being backed from $6 to $2.50. His trainer Harry Clark and his jockey Keith Banks were subsequently disqualified for 12 months following a retrospective inquiry into the Randwick run after the matter dragged on for almost six months.
George was said to "run" Sydney and was spoken of in hushed tones even when strong men gathered. He created perhaps an even bigger racing headline when photographed at Randwick racetrack with Dr Nick Paltos, his personal physician, and Murray Farquhar, then Chief Magistrate. The picture created a storm of Gai-Singo magnitude.
Paltos was in later years jailed over a mammoth marijuana importation.
Drugs have always been a problem and a headline grabber.
Apart from "milkshakes" (a bicarb stomach drench which helps buffer lactic acid) and anabolic steroids, the most notorious drug of recent times was timolol, a "go slow" which was used quite freely in Sydney in the 1980s before being tested for and stamped out by John Schreck and his panel.
Etorphine, or "elephant juice", the best "go fast" money could buy was introduced in Western Australia, where many cases involving big names were detected. The elephant in the room is whether elephant juice was used successfully in Sydney at the time. I believe it was and I think, in what might have been the biggest scandal of the past 30 years, it was swept under the table.
STORIES SOURCE: SYDNEY TELEGRAPH - NEWS LIMITED.
