July Day race samples stolen... I piss you not

Sure they probably expected cash?

Once the boxes were opened i guess contents is technically compromised and no use to anyone.

durbs wrote: It really looks like they where not after the specimens otherwise they would have dispersed of them properly and not on the side of the road.And if they knew what was inside the box why did they force it open?

I would imagine a courier van being tailed from the racecourse, thinking it may contain the daily take ( :sick: :blink: ), held up, specimens opened later to find no cash and dumped on the side of the road somewhere.

Personally, no foul play suspected but who knows

sa racing, the gift that keeps on giving

Country full of crooks and hijacking

This is really "taking the piss" a bit too far !!

With the poor reputation of horseracing at the moment, what with NHA rules being ignored and transgressed (even by the NHA themselves), the embracing and protecting of fraudsters, nepotism, cobalt use, asset grabbing etc. it is difficult to assume anything else but another transgression against the rules and ethos of horseracing.
If u were the perpetrator and u knew the first finger would be pointed immediately in your general direction, you would instruct the 'hijackers' to open the boxes so that it would look like just another cash heist or hijacking attempt and that would throw any investigation off the scent and away from your direction.

.....saw a headline from some publication they had on TT that this mystery had been solved.....

....so what's the story....:huh:

Will try and post its in the Citizen

On 9 July 2018 the NHA issued a Press Release relating to the theft of sealed post-race specimen boxes containing specimens which were collected at the Vodacom Durban July 2018 race day at Greyville Racecourse. These boxes were taken from the courier company at gunpoint by unknown assailants. Some of these specimen boxes were later noticed by a member of the public where these were abandoned in a nature reserve in Durban.

The police subsequently took three of the boxes into evidence. The boxes that were found had all of the 20 specimens intact. Some were Original specimens and some were Reference specimens. Original specimens are routinely analysed at the NHA Laboratory. The corresponding, identical Reference specimens are normally kept intact as a mechanism for independent analysis at an alternative racing laboratory. These boxes were subsequently released by the police to the NHA and they were then forwarded to the NHA Laboratory. Whilst all the boxes were physically forced open, all of the contained specimens were still intact. All of the bottles and the bottle seals were also intact. This was a significant observation as it showed that none of the specimens were tampered with at any stage. It was therefore still possible to analyse these intact specimens.

Although these urine specimens were not ideally stored whilst the police investigation was ongoing, the NHA Laboratory however still followed normal practice and screened the specimens for the presence of any prohibited substances. The deterioration of these specimens was not ideal as they were compromised by the abovementioned incident. However, employing the highly sensitive screening instrumentation of the NHA Laboratory, no prohibited substances were in fact detected in these specimens.

Further preventative measures have been instituted with immediate effect in order to ensure that similar incidences do not occur in the future.

This matter has now been finalised and the file has been closed.


NHRA press release

......why so long to make an announcement......procrastination leads to undue speculation.....:S

surely there's sufficient real estate to host a laboratory on course!!