In the past week, from The Durban July meeting to this weekends Saturday meeting at Turffontein, no horses have tested positive for TCo2. That's a landmark for South Africa who have had a spate of positives prior to that.

The good news is that the last one was at Fairview on Friday 5th July.

The onus has switched from the blame laid at the NHA's testing procedures to the trainers taking responsibility for administering the elements that create elevated TCO2 levels.

This means that the trainers have no choice but to present horses that have levels within the stipulated range.

TCO2 has been the most public form of drug control South African has seen to date.

The media hasn't been immune to the wrath of trainers either. The media, the independent ones anyway, form a fair conduit between the industry and the public. If one trainer is mentioned, so should others.

The Joburg trainers, as a whole, had been singled out as the so called 'culprits' when testing started but the issues have seen trainers country wide getting positives. Most notably many Western Cape but also Eastern Cape and KZN have also been found to have presented horses with elevated levels.

In fact, Kenilworth produced a single day high of 7 a few weeks ago with a range of the country's top trainers having to scratch horses due to it. To the relief of everyone in racing including the sponsors, the Durban July was a 'clean' day in this respect.

With the levels of each scratching not published, it makes it difficult to comment definitively on what the industry terms as 'outlier' readings - one's that are beyond any reasonable doubt.

Much more is to be learnt from the next season as testing comes to every meeting bar none - so is the aim of the NHA anyway.