DARLEY AUSTRALIA has made changes to its drugs policy after being ''embarrassed'' by a positive swab at Hawkesbury, for which head trainer Peter Snowden was fined $4000 yesterday, reports The Age/SMH. Its report by Chris Roots says: Snowden could offer no reason for Moravany testing positive to the prohibited substances phenylbutazone and oxyphenbutazone after winning a Class 2 event at Hawkesbury on September 3. He ''accepted guilt'' for the horse racing with the prohibited substances in its sy

DARLEY AUSTRALIA has made changes to its drugs policy after being ''embarrassed'' by a positive swab at Hawkesbury, for which head trainer Peter Snowden was fined $4000 yesterday, reports The Age/SMH.

Its report by Chris Roots says: Snowden could offer no reason for Moravany testing positive to the prohibited substances phenylbutazone and oxyphenbutazone after winning a Class 2 event at Hawkesbury on September 3. He ''accepted guilt'' for the horse racing with the prohibited substances in its system but told stewards it had prompted a revamp of the practices of using phenylbutazone, more commonly known as bute.

Sheikh Mohammed's racing and breeding operation has banned the oral form of bute from its stables in the review but Snowden was clearly still shocked by the positive test. ''It is an embarrassment to myself and the people I work for that this could happen,'' Snowden said. ''I pride myself on my impeccable record. I have been in Sydney for 25 years, four years as head trainer [at Darley], and before that I trained for seven years in Scone and I have never been to an inquiry like this one.

''We like to think we are the benchmark for racing in Australia, and this [positive swab] is an embarrassment to us.''

Darley has 350 horses in work at Warwick Farm, Flemington and its training facility, Agnes Banks. It has more than 1500 runners each year but the positive swab didn't sit well with anyone from the organisation.