Malta organised only 468 races in 2007, tested 33 horses, and found 15 positive tests, Dean Hoffman, one of North America’s most prolific harness racing journalists and member of the US Harness Racing Hall of Fame, has revealed

He said he checked Malta’s stats for 2007 against its 2006 totals and found that Malta reported zero positive tests in 2006. And undoubtedly the reason for that is that Malta reported that it conducted absolutely no drug tests in 2006, Mr Hoffman said.

Last year there were 134 positive tests in Italian harness races, giving it the dubious distinction of leading European trotting in this category.

One reason that Italy led is that it holds far more races than any other European nation. Last year there were 15,769 races in Italy compared to 10,929 in France and 9,118 in Sweden.

France, the powerhouse in European trotting, tests horses that are racing, training, qualifying, and even out of competition. From the 12,771 tests made after racing, France reported 26 positives while two of the 474 tests taken after horses trained were positive and three of the 1,842 tests taken after qualifiers proved positive. Twenty out-of-competition tests yielded no positive tests.

Sweden took 3,216 tests on its 9,118 races and found two positive tests in 2007.

Most of the other countries showed a negligible number of positives - four out of 6,170 races in Finland, one positive in 4,480 races in Norway, and none in 2,461 races in Denmark.