Racing Victoria Chief Steward Terry Bailey has defended his stance on yesterday’s race-day treatment incident involving Tres Blue and Dunaden. Both horses were allowed to run in the Melbourne Cup despite having been treated with a cream called flamazine, an anti-biotic treatment for greasy heel.

Bailey was widely criticised later for allowing both horses to run, yet last month he had scratched Happy Trails from a race and later disqualified trainer Paul Beshara for six months.

“They are like chalk and cheese the two cases,” Bailey said this morning.“With the Happy Trails case the horse had clearly been injected and we didn’t know with what substance. Yesterday we were aware of the treatment involved, and it did not contain any banned substance,” he said.

Bailey also informed Racing Network of the clause in the new race-day treatment rules which says, at the discretion of the stewards, if permission is sort to use something on a horse on race-day, permission “may be given”.

“In this case, the mistake both Gai Waterhouse (trainer of Tres Blue) and the trainer of Dunaden (Mikel Delzangles) made was not asking us for permission.

"I asked our vet what his advice would have been if they had sort permission to use the cream, and he said he would have had no issue with it.

"In other words, if they had asked permission to use the cream, we would have given it on the day,” Bailey said.