RV calls for help on cheats Dayle Brown. Racing's rulers have denied suggestions they are losing control following a series of damaging claims about drug use, race fixing and criminal involvement in the industry. But they accept that racing's image is taking a hit - unfairly, they insist - as a series of revelations that strike to the core of the sector's integrity continue to issue from media, insiders and police. Racing authorities said on Tuesday they wanted to take tougher, swifter action to weed out cheats and any criminal element infiltrating the industry, but their hands were tied unless information uncovered by police in a criminal investigation can be given to racing authorities. Police are not permitted to pass on such findings - sometimes discovered through phone taps - because a body such as Racing Victoria is a regulatory organisation and not a law enforcement agency, a situation RV chief executive Bernard Saundry described as "very frustrating." Dayle Brown, the head of RV's integrity operations, said: "We need the co-operation of the enforcement bodies so we can act, but we have been stymied from getting access to this information." Brown said that fostered a public image that racing regulators were "in a state of paralysis, that we can't go forward" when authorities had been seeking information sharing for several years. He explained that for the situation to change there needed to be amendments to the Telecommunications (Interception) Act of 1979 - a policy decision governments needed to take. "We have not lost control of the image," Saundry said, but acknowledged it had been tarnished by a series of high-profile headlines. The sport's $15 million investment on integrity and its improved surveillance procedures were evidence that it was working to stamp out cheats. RV's new chairman, Robert Roulston, backed the CEO. "My view of racing is that 99.9 per cent of this industry is trying to do the right thing and race for prizemoney," he said. I really don't accept wide-ranging opinions in the media that racing is full of crooks. Our view of racing is that it's a clean sport, and probably less corrupt than other sports. But Saundry said that racing's integrity services were well ahead of most other sports. There were 14,000 drug tests for the 9000 horses competing in Victoria - an average of 1.5 per competitor and well in excess of other activities. "I would challenge any other code to have that sort of testing regime," he said. We continue to invest in people and systems. We can only act on what we have got. But when people break the rules they will be caught. Saundry said changing the Telecommunications Act "has got to be the priority," adding that Racing Integrity Commissioner Sal Perna had made that a priority in his recommendations.