THE explusion of punter and brothel owner Eddie Hayson from racetracks on Tuesday is nothing new to the Sport of Kings.
DAILY TELEGRAPH writer ADAM MOBBS has revisited some of the more infamous cases and heavy suspensions in Australian racing.
OLLIE'S MISS OPPORTUNITY
BACK in October 2010, in the midst of a domestic crisis and a bout of depression, Damien Oliver, via a jockeys' room phone call to professional punter Mark Hunter, placed $10,000 on Miss Octopussy in a race at Moonee Valley where he rode second favourite Europa Point.
The bet was revealed, by chance, via police surveillance relating to the still unsolved murder of racing identity Les Samba.
After a lengthy steward's investigation Oliver was disqualified for eight months and suspended for two.
Oliver, 41, gets back into the saddle on Friday at Geelong and steps back into Group 1 racing aboard Happy Trails in the Dato Tan Chin Nam Stakes at Moonee Valley on Saturday.
OH DANNY, BOY
WATCHING Danny Nikolic's life lately has been akin to witnessing a train crash. The talented jockey last week avoided jail time despite being found guilty of assaulting another jockey and a police officer who was investigating the murder of his father-in-law Les Samba.
That came after a long-running battle with Victorian race officials where he was accused of threatening not only chief steward Terry Bailey, but his family.
He has been the centre of inquiries into alleged tipping or race-manipulating (cleared or unresolved), abusing stewards, swigging beer behind barrier stalls and tossing mobile phones in anger after being pulled up for an illegal riding vest.
In recent years, Nikolic's life has been a succession of racing inquiries, court cases, police grillings, fines, crushing legal fees and the recurring image of the jockey in a suit, striding defiantly towards a carpark as cameras click.
Nikolic last week completed a year's suspension for abusing Bailey and can apply to resume track riding. He still has a year to serve before he can apply to ride in races again, an application that surely will be rejected unless Nikolic uncharacteristically appears before stewards with cap in hand.
JAILED JOCKEY
CHRIS Munce would've jumped at the punishment handed out to Oliver, after he paid a far heftier price when he was found guilty of conspiring to trade race tips in return for bets while riding in Hong Kong.
Munce was arrested in 2006 with $HK250,000 stuffed into his jeans pockets along with a sheet of paper containing notes allegedly relating to wagers on horse races he had tipped.
The sentence - 20 months in jail - hardly fitted the crime. Worse, it was to be served in Hong Kong. But, Munce returned to Australia in September 2007 to serve the remainder of his sentence at Sydney's Silverwater jail.
It was a welcome escape from trying conditions in Hong Kong, where he had to share a jail cell with 30 other inmates, sleeping on hard, wooden boards, immersed in Hong Kong's oppressive, suffocating heat.
Thirteen months later he was released from prison and is back riding at the top of his game, having beaten a bout of throat cancer earlier this year.
YOU'RE PULLING MY LEG
THESE days former jockey Mel Schumacher can laugh about a life ban - later reduced to just under six years - for the infamous "leg-pull" incident in the 1961 AJC Derby at Randwick when he lost the race on protest and was disqualified for grabbing the leg of rival rider Tommy Hill in a scrambling finish.
As the horses pulled up, the beaten rider yelled he was going to protest and Schumacher decided his reaction would be to claim Hill's allegation was "preposterous".
"But for the first time ever they were using a head-on camera that no one knew was there," Schlanger said. "When they showed it I thought 'what don't speak, don't lie'. I walked off the track with a life ban before the last.
"There was 80,000 people there and you could have heard a pin drop. It was like a funeral . . . my funeral".
CAUGHT IN THE ACT
IN July, Rosehill trainer Greg McFarlane was caught red-handed attempting to tube Ferocimo just hours before the grey gelding was due to race in the P & F Avellino 50th Anniversary Handicap (1500m).
McFarlane tried to tell racecourse detective Albert Gardner Ferocimo was in fact stablemate Belegic. He also refused to hand over a pair of jeans that possessed a "zip-lock bag of white powder" that contained bicarbonate.
Stewards last month handed him a hefty 18-month disqualification, then a further six months for hindering the stewards' investigation on the day.
The suspension was so severe because McFarlane had attempted to tube Ferocimo just hours before a Saturday metropolitan race. "And you've done it virtually outside the gates to Rosehill racecourse," chief steward Ray Murrihy told him.
McFarlane's employee Carmen Hepburn was also slapped with a 12-month disqualification.
She had only been working for McFarlane a month after she lost her job when another trainer, Con Karakatsanis, had to shut down his stables because of a tubing drama on Derby Day last spring involving Howmuchdoyouloveme in Melbourne.
URINE TROUBLE
TOOWOOMBA jockey Jason Warrington tried - and failed - to use a dildo to transfer urine into a sample for collection by stewards in 2007.
Warrington admitted he panicked after getting a phone call from stewards after returning home from trackwork in 2007, asking him to return to the course to provide a urine sample.
He had smoked marijuana at a weekend party and was concerned about returning a positive test.
"I managed to get hold of a device that would hold urine, and got some urine from someone I knew wouldn't be positive," he said at the time. "I've had at least 50 tests in my life, but the stewards made me drop my pants down to my ankles.
"It's embarrassing enough to give a sample in front of stewards, but to drop your strides was more embarrassing."
Acting chief steward John Hackett became suspicious of Warrington's actions while the jockey attempted to provide the urine sample and caught him squeezing urine from a dildo concealed inside his pants.
He copped a six-month ban for his troubles.
GOING OFF EARLY
JOCKEY Rhys McLeod couldn't believe his luck when he pinched a huge break just 600m from the finishing post during a race at Moonee Valley in 2002.
McLeod went for the whip and vigorously rode Mystic Outlaw out and was first past the post by 10 lengths.
The only problem was he'd gone a lap early and turned the 3000m night staying race into a one-horse 1200m sprint.
As the field gathered up poor tired Mystic Outlaw as they went around the tight Valley circuit a second time, McLeod could only sit up on his spent galloper as he fell away to a 72-length defeat.
McLeod, an apprentice at the time, was suspended for two months, profusely apologised to everyone concerned and declared "life goes on".
He went on to ride a double at the Saturday Caulfield meeting before starting his suspension.
DOG ACT
RON Gill and dog owner Andy Sarcasmo were handed life suspensions for bribing chief steward Rodney Potter to substitute dogs and tamper with drug tests from NSW's greyhound meetings during the early 1990s.
Potter told an ICAC hearing he had accepted money from trainers to swap drug tests since taking the role some time in 1992 or 1993.
"Most times, I would have to take the samples to the lab myself, cut the strap or replace the strap, either replace the sample or tip or it out ... ," Potter told an inquiry.
He was later sacked and served jail time after admitting to accepting up to $100,000 to tamper with dogs' drug tests.
Fellow trainer Rodney Bragg was banned for a decade. Cases against trainers Ken Howe and Ron Gill are still pending.
JOCKEY TAPES SCANDAL
IN 1995, the Australian Federal Police were covertly taping suspected drug dealer Victor Spink. What they also picked up was a lot of calls between Spink and several high-profile jockeys.
In one taped call Spink told Jim Cassidy he will give him $20,000 from his winnings to split between four jockeys. "It may as well be in your pocket than all those other pockets, or even the bookies' pockets," Spink said.
"Exactly," Cassidy replied.
Cassidy was banished from earning any income from horse racing for three years when he pretended to be involved with the fixing of races. In other words, he was found guilty of tipping horses on the apparent understanding that the race had been fixed for it to win.
The suspension was subsequently reduced to 21 months, but the damage had been done. Cassidy claimed while he may have been guilty for race tipping, all other charges were false.
The jockey tapes scandal also brought down fellow riders Gavin Eades and Kevin Moses.
Cassidy has never been far from the headlines. A two-time Melbourne Cup winner (Kiwi in 1993, Might And Power in 1997 and, if you share his belief, Hawkspur in 2013), Cassidy also received a three-month holiday for testing positive to marijuana in 2010, had his career almost ended after severing two fingers while using a pair of shears in the garden. Despite all this, he's on the cusp of recording his 100th Group 1 win.
COTTON-PICKIN' MESS
THE most famous failed sting in Australian sport. A superior-talented ring-in masquerading as 33-1 shot Fine Cotton would go in, win a race at Eagle Farm racecourse in 1984 and net those in the know millions.
Former bloodstock agent John Gillespie purchased a horse names Dashing Soltaire that looked almost identical to Fine Cotton, but was much faster. When the horse got injured and with the wheels of the scam already in motion, the group purchased Bold Personality, a faster horse than Fine Cotton but hardly a like-for-like looker.
The syndicate forgot the peroxide to whiten the legs of Bold Personality on raceday and had to use white paint instead. After winning the race at 7-2 ($4.50), the paint began to run on Bold Personality's legs, although stewards were already suspicious of the betting activity.
When trainer Hayden Haitana fled the track after stewards requested Fine Cotton's registration papers, the jig was up within 40 minutes of the race ending.
The scam claimed several high-profile scalps as Gillespie and Haitana served jail terms as well as being banned from the track for life along with father-and-son bookmaking duo Bill and Robbie Waterhouse and a handful of others.
