Paul Moroney says he's relieved to have escaped a suspension for a second positive drug test in nine months.
Moroney and his Australian-based brother Mike, who train in partnership at Matamata, were fined $17,000 by the Judicial Control Authority (JCA) in Hamilton today.
They will also have to pay a total of $7500 in costs, but Paul Moroney will not be suspended as New Zealand Thoroughbred Racing (NZTR) inspectors had wanted.
The Moroney brothers had earlier admitted a drug negligence charge after their horse Mae Jinx won at Matamata on December 23 with a prohibited substance in her system.
The two-man JCA panel of Murray McKechnie and Richard Seabrook accepted that the administering of the drug Indomethacin, contained in an anti-inflammatory, two days before Mae Jinx was due to race was inadvertent and unintentional.
The drug is used in stables but is not allowed to be in a horse's system when they race.
Mr McKechnie said suspension "has been very narrowly avoided".
Panel members noted that Paul Moroney had planned to relinquish his licence at the beginning of the next racing season on August 1 - plans which were in place before the Mae Jinx positive test - and that a succession plan was in place.
Several new staff members are set to join the team at Matamata, among them Andrew Clarkin, who heads to Matamata from Mike Moroney's Melbourne stable and is likely to take over from Paul Moroney as trainer in August.
Paul Moroney has only held a trainers licence himself in recent seasons. He said he had enjoyed training but the stable felt it was best for him to return to concentrating on his bloodstock agency and management work, which will still largely service his brother's team.
NZTR inspectors said last month when seeking a suspension of at least three months that the stable was "a shambles" and "dysfunctional".
Chief racecourse inspector John McKenzie said the Moroney stable was guilty of "gross negligence", that medication was not properly secured and that systems tracking medication use in comparison with when the horse was due to race were inadequate.
Mr McKenzie also sought a fine of $7000 for Paul Moroney and one of $3500 for Mike Moroney.
He said Paul Moroney was more culpable and that Mike Moroney, though a training partner, was also a victim.
The Moroney brothers' lawyer Richard McIlraith said a suspension would be unduly punitive, particularly as some publicity had already had a serious negative impact on the stable.
He said the only serious aggravating factor was that there had been a similar positive test to the same drug in another stable horse in April.
Mr McIlraith said systems had been put in place to ensure the administering of medication was done correctly but that it had fallen over in December.
Paul Moroney said after the hearing that the charges and subsequent publicity alleging a dysfunctional stable culture had cost him one major client who he was set to buy for at the yearling sales earlier this month.
"It was an inadvertent thing that's happened, something we would far rather have avoided," he said.
"We had systems in place but unfortunately they didn't detect what had happened."
He said it was unfortunate this had happened so soon after the stable star Monaco Consul, who had been trained at the Matamata stable until early October, scored great victories in the Spring Champion Stakes in Sydney and the Victoria Derby in Melbourne.
"You don't win races like that if your stable is dysfunctional," he said. "It feels like I've gone from hero to zero."
The fine is the largest ever imposed for drug negligence but that partly reflects the raising of the maximum penalty from $15,000 to $25,000 by NZTR on October 5 last year.
