Harness racing is embroiled in a drug-testing scandal after two up-and-coming drivers from Sydney submitted urine samples that were found with all but mathematical certainty to have come from the same person.
In a bombshell case like few others in Australian sport and racing, Jack Brown, 20, and Lucas Rando, 22, have been handed interim suspensions following a scientific examination of samples they gave during a race meeting at Goulburn last month.
According to Harness Racing NSW, DNA analysis conducted by the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine determined it was 180 million times more likely that urine obtained from the duo “originated from the same individual than from an unrelated person chosen at random from the population”.
Brown and Rando, who have steered metropolitan winners on the marquee Saturday night program at Menangle Park, the racing code’s headquarters south-west of Sydney, were believed to have attended a buck’s party the night before the race meeting in Goulburn on October 21.