Early on the morning of Monday, March 9, I was starting work on an article on trainer Mark Casse, who one week earlier had published an op-ed in Thoroughbred Daily News titled Clenbuterol - it has to be stopped, and now.
“Clenbuterol is the most abused drug in our industry,” Casse states as his lead into the article.
Clenbuterol is a bronchodilator that was designed to be used in the treatment of asthma and respiratory diseases. Casse went on to state that, if used inappropriately:
- It increases muscle mass
- It improves endurance and stamina
- It boosts energy levels
However, it has some potentially dangerous side effects:
- Bone loss
- It alters bone micro-architecture
- It produces an irregular heartbeat
The drug has been banned by every major sporting body in the world and was banned by the International Olympic Committee over 20 years ago. However, it remains legal in Thoroughbred racing in the U.S. with very short withdrawal periods.
It is a performance-enhancer due to the increased muscle mass and the increase in endurance and stamina, but it can have deadly consequences due to the bone loss and irregular heartbeat.
Casse is convinced, based on what he has observed, that the abuse of Clenbuterol has contributed to more breakdowns.
The above is how I started an article in late March, which I will discuss shortly.
I was truly struck by Casse’s strong and very articulate article on how some of his fellow trainers were “taking an edge”… read cheating ... with their rampant use of Clenbuterol. Clenbuterol was used in the treatment of asthma and other respiratory diseases. It had many of the same attributes as anabolic steroids that had been banned from racing well over a decade ago.
Casse has a tremendous reputation as a Thoroughbred trainer and a person of strong character. He has won 14 training titles at Woodbine and 12 Sovereign Awards in Canada. He is a member of the Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame and a member of the National Racing Museum’s Hall of Fame and has trained many Classic winners on both sides of the border.
What was more impressive to me, though, was that he had the courage to speak out forcefully against cheating by his fellow trainers and owners.
Remarkably, the racing industry responded forcefully and quickly to Casse’s op-ed. Exactly one month after its publication, the Canadian Pari-Mutuel Agency announced that the guidance for Clenbuterol use had been extended from seven days out from raceday to 28 days. The California Horse Racing Board (CHRB) announced that Clenbuterol will still be allowed to be administered, but the horse would go on the vet’s list and a clean test would be required for the horse to be removed from the vet’s list.
Oaklawn Park has also just recently announced that the use of Clenbuterol will not be allowed within 60 days of a race and will be monitored through hair testing, and Gulfstream Park has just announced new Clenbuterol protocols for their Championship meet.
The Mid-Atlantic region of racetracks (including Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York Thoroughbred tracks, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia) announced in late October that the current rule of no administration within 14 days of a race will be changed by each state to that an administration of Clenbuterol would require the horse to go on the vet’s list. Before being allowed to come off the list, the horse would need to test negative for Clenbuterol in blood and urine and complete a satisfactory workout observed by a regulatory veterinarian.
Calling out cheaters
I have very high regard for Mark Casse for the public statement he made regarding Clenbuterol.
Turning back to the morning of March 9, I was preparing to write a column commending Casse for his courage and insight in calling out cheaters, which remarkably few industry participants, such as other trainers, owners, racetrack executives, regulators, etc, would ever do.
As I was sitting at my desk that morning, I received a call from a trainer at Belmont Park who said that there were rumors flying around that backstretch that Jason Servis and Jorge Navarro and 27 others from the Thoroughbred and Standardbred industry had been served indictments that morning. The indictments read, “The charges in this indictment result from a widespread, corrupt scheme by racehorse trainers, veterinarians, PED [performance-enhancing drug] distributors, and others to secretly administer those PEDs to racehorses under scheme participants’ control.”
Click here for my article from March 31.
Staying on the topic of Clenbuterol, on November 12, Dr Scott Palmer, the equine medical director for the NY State Gaming Commission, announced that nearly 100 Thoroughbreds previously trained by the trainers who were indicted on March 9 indicated that 77 percent of these horses showed the presence of Clenbuterol.
The horses, who were required by racing authorities to join other stables, were tested following the indictments this spring. There was no indication of any administration listed in the horses’ medical records, according to Palmer.
Further congratulations to Mark Casse on his calling out the industry hypocrisy on the use of Clenbuterol. That work and the timing of the Servis-Navarro charges may have created the momentum for people in the industry standing up for what is right for the future.
Dynamic event
Well, I firmly believe that the most exciting and dynamic event in the many years that I have been in and around Thoroughbred racing is the unanimous passage by the House of Representatives of H.R. 1754 - the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act of 2020 - on September 30.
The purpose of the bill: “To improve the integrity and safety of horseracing by requiring a uniform anti-doping and medication control program and a racetrack safety program for covered horses, covered persons, and covered racehorses to be developed and enforced by an independent Horseracing Anti-Doping and Medication Control Authority.”
Before I continue into the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority, I would like to refer you to an article by Barry Irwin, CEO and Founder of Team Valor, one of the most successful international racehorse-owning partnerships.
Irwin has been at the forefront of people who have fought to rid the sport in America of the use of drugs, both legal and illegal. The lack of will and progress among those charged with regulating the sport in the United States has finally driven Team Valor out of America to race in Europe until such time as the sport is cleaned up in the U.S.
Barry Irwin’s insight
Here is an excerpt from an insightful article by Irwin published in The Paulick Report in September.
“Cheating by trainers, vets and owners with illegal and unknown Performance Enhancing Drugs has until very recently gone largely unchecked because those agencies charged with regulating the sport have shown no interest in addressing the problem.
“Horsemen’s organizations, state regulators, racetrack operators, racing boards and the media, with few exceptions, have not done their job of creating a positive culture. Trainers bent on cheating come up with any number of reasons that are as lame as the unsoundest horse in the barn to be able to keep their candy. State regulators will not rock the boat for fear of losing their jobs. Racetrack owners have been operating under the false notion that exposing cheaters will hurt their business. Racing boards are peopled by political appointees that want to defer rather than regulate. The media has enough clued-in writers and analysts to make a difference, but instead of being real they have made a light industry of glorifying trainers that cheat because that is what is expected of them.
“Okay, so now that a rejuvenating breath of fresh air is about to be ushered into the sport thanks to installing USADA to oversee drugs in racing and the horsemen's pleas to retain all of their drugs has been silenced, will those movers and shakers in racing agree to play the game on the level?”
Racing’s unsolvable problem
I believe that Irwin has the most comprehensive knowledge of how people cheat in Thoroughbred racing of anyone that I know. I completely agree with what he has written. However, USADA have had similar, difficult assignments and have prevailed because of their intelligence, their talent, their resources and their belief in the importance of fair, clean sport worldwide.
The fact that Thoroughbred racing is regulated by individual states where the regulators are often not familiar with Thoroughbred racing and do not have the resources to catch cheaters even if they were so inclined is racing’s fundamental unsolvable problem.
Cheaters in racing are able to succeed because the state regulators do not have the knowledge, the technology, the resources, the proper testing labs and, most importantly, the desire to protect the integrity that will insure the future of the sport. As a result, many aspects of Thoroughbred racing are tainted by the lack of integrity.
People cheat in racing because there are no serious consequences for their illegal acts. The industry does not have any culture or organization to protect the rights of clean athletes and the integrity of competition throughout the country. The current Thoroughbred racing culture of ‘go along to get along’ and ‘taking an edge’ will not sustain Thoroughbred racing into the future.
USADA was founded 20 years ago. It is recognized as the official anti-doping organization for all Olympic, Paralympic and Pan American sport in the United States. It is also the administrator for the UFC Anti-Doping Program.
The struggle to ensure that sports are clean has intensified over the last decade. The anti-doping community has notched major victories, with the USADA finally bringing down cycling superstar Lance Armstrong in 2012 and the World Anti-Doping Agency (with the help of Bryan Fogel’s documentary Icarus) breaking open Russia’s state-sponsored doping program just months before the 2016 Rio Olympics.
One year ago, USADA had embarked on a 4-year investigation into the Nike Oregon Project and original project leader (and three time New York Marathon winner) Alberto Salazar, who was banned for 4 years last October. The penalty stemmed from violations that included trafficking in testosterone, tampering with the doping control process and administering improper infusions of L-carnitine, a naturally occurring substance that converts fat into energy, the anti-doping agency said in a statement.
Win-at-all-cost culture
USADA has the breadth of knowledge, intelligence, skills and experience in these integrity matters that sadly do not exist in the Thoroughbred industry.
USADA and a number of its executive team are known to many participants in racing.
CEO Travis Tygart spoke at the Jockey Club Round Table in August 2012 on the topic Preserving your rights and the integrity of competition. Here is a brief comment from the presentation that resonated with me.
“I think when athletes make that determination to cheat, it’s because they feel like they have to do it to win, that the culture has overtaken the rules. So they’re not going to be victims, [it’s] the win-at-all-cost culture. You have to have effective testing. We have out-of-competition testing. We literally have the information, cell phones, home addresses, training venues for our athletes - about 3,000 of them 365 days a year, seven days a week, 24 hours a day. We show up at their houses, we show up at their training centers. We take blood, we take urine”.
Tygart is very aware of the legislative initiative that the Thoroughbred racing and breeding industry has undertaken since the Horseracing Integrity Act was launched in 2015. As a result, he has become familiar with the importance of this federal legislation and the organisation’s potentially important role when the legislation passes the House and the Senate.
They have provided the racing industry with information on how things get done in D.C.
Serious threat
Edwin Moses, Chairman of USADA, and two-time Olympic Gold Medal 400-metre hurdler, spoke at the 2015 Jockey Club Round Table on The anti-doping matrix of effectiveness. Here are some of his insightful remarks:
“USADA was first approached about potential horseracing and anti-doping legislation by members of Congress in 2012, and since that time we’ve heard from many of you who are concerned that your sport is facing the same challenges that Olympic sport was facing 15 to 20 years ago.”
One can see that USADA clearly understands that the illegal doping of our horses is a serious threat to the integrity and the future of the industry.
The very good news was that on August 31, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell held an event at Keeneland attended by Thoroughbred racing leaders and announced his support for the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act, which expanded the House legislation to include a number of racetrack safety initiatives.
The suggestion has been that both Churchill Downs and Senator McConnell signed on with the expansion of the original House bill to include the safety initiatives. Whatever happened, the bill quickly gathered momentum and important new supporters. The newly revised H.R. 1754 - Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act of 2020 passed the House of Representatives on September 30 on a unanimous House vote.
Improved bill
There are clearly two new elements in the bill that improve it immensely.
First, the addition to the legislation of a racetrack safety program to develop, implement and enforce standards for safety and performance accreditation for racetracks is very helpful. The Jockey Club Safety Committee, the Jockey Club-Grayson Research Foundation, the Equine Injury Database, the NTRA Safety and Integrity Alliance and the Thoroughbred Safety Coalition can all contribute to the improvement of many racetrack safety initiatives.
A simple example: Thanks to the Jockey Club, who created the Equine Injury Database in 2008. It was remarkable that the industry had not tracked the horses dying on our tracks. How could that be? Further, we need to demand that all tracks should allow the Jockey Club to publish information from all tracks. If a track does not want to publish this information, it clearly means that it does not want to improve what it is doing. Engaging all the industry should be an important strategic collaborative effort for the benefit of the entire industry.
Second, the critical component of this legislation is setting up the Horseracing Safety and Integrity Authority under the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which gives this new authority independence and potentially access to resources that no individual state racing board could ever achieve. However, the full details of the financing and specific obligations of the states are not fully reflected in the details of the bill.
Click here for a complete copy of H.R. 1754 - Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act of 2020.
The bill would create the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority, a private, independent, self-regulatory nonprofit organization tasked with developing and implementing both a horseracing anti-doping and medication control program and a racetrack safety program. The authority will be governed by a nine-member board of directors, made up of five members independent of the industry and four representing the Thoroughbred racing industry but having no conflict of interest issues.
Two standing committees will report directly to the board.
The Anti-Doping and Medication Control Standing Committee will have seven members and will provide advice and guidance to the board on the development and maintenance of the horseracing anti-doping and medication control program. A majority of the members will be independent, selected from outside the equine industry, and a minority will be selected from within it. Similarly the Racetrack Safety Standing Committee will have seven members and a majority will be independent selected from outside the equine industry with a minority from inside it.
FTC oversight: The authority shall submit to the FTC, in accordance with such rules as the Commission may prescribe under section 553 of title 5, United States Code.
Enforcement role
The program effective date in the bill is July 1,2022. There had been some mention in the press that it would be January 1, 2022, but that appears to be incorrect.
One of the very most important paragraphs of the bill is that the authority shall seek to enter into an agreement with USADA under which the agency acts as the anti-doping medication control enforcement agency under this Act. Since the Racetrack Safety Component of the bill was added only one month before the bill was passed, there is no specific stipulation on what entity might do that work for the authority.
There is substantive language on rule-making, selection of labs and possible ways that the authority will interact with state racing commissions, which clearly will be resolved before the program effective date.
As for when the Senate might take up consideration and hopeful passage of the bill, the plan suggested after the House bill was signed is that there was optimism that the Senate would/could consider the bill during December before the holiday recess. It is difficult to know if that is possible at this time.
Turning a blind eye
As I said at the outset of this article, the passage of the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act of 2020 by the House of Representatives is the most substantive development since I went to my first Thoroughbred race at Belmont Park on December 1, 1980. However, the House passage of it means nothing without passage through the Senate. Sadly, the most important thing that I learned by the end of my eight years at the Daily Racing Form and eight at NYRA is that the racetracks, the state regulators, the horsemen’s organizations, the veterinarians and many of the trainers turn a blind eye to the cheating that occurs daily at every racetrack in America.
Now that I have the knowledge from learning more about USADA and the great work that they do it is clear that industry participants - be they owners, breeders or bettors - will not participate and spend money on a rigged game.
Jason Servis was the leading win percentage trainer in the U.S. in 2019 at 29 percent and #8 in the country in earnings (with $11,089,040) between Bob Baffert and Michael Maker. Jorge Navarro was #2 leading win percentage in 2019 at 28 percent and #16 in the country in earnings of $6,805,611.
Think about it and do something if you care about this great industry. Mark Casse did. We can get the cheaters out of the sport if we commit to do so.