The Racing Appeals and Disciplinary Board has on Thursday afternoon disqualified champion trainer Peter Moody for 12 months, with half of it suspended.

Racing Victoria stewards had called for Moody to be given a two-year disqualification for allowing Lidari to start in the 2014 Turnbull Stakes ‘chock-full’ of cobalt.

But a day after finding him not guilty of administering cobalt to Lidari for the purpose of affecting performance, the RAD Board handed down the sentence which is due to begin at midnight on March 24, having found him guilty on Wednesday of administering the prohibited substance to his galloper.

Counsel for stewards Jeff Gleeson, QC, told the RAD Board they needed to impose a ‘significant sanction’ to the trainer because of his carelessness in failing to prevent Lidari racing with cobalt levels 40 times that of a normal racehorse and twice the legal limit.

Gleeson told the board that considering his carelessness and indifference to the charges and to how cobalt came to be found in Lidari, as well as his ‘slap-dash methods of administering injections’, the board should be ‘open to conclude that this is the conduct of a man who is contemptuous of his obligations’ and has ‘thumbed his nose at his obligations’.

He said Moody ran a defence that was utterly unsatisfactory.

“This is a gentleman who needs the clearest of messages,” Gleeson told the board.

Moody’s legal team then made their submissions calling for a substantial fine to instead, and also called Moody's fellow Caulfield trainer Mick Price - who prepares the two favourites for Saturday’s Golden Slipper Stakes at Rosehill - to give character evidence. Racing.com