It has been a challenging few weeks for Bob Baffert, due primarily to Medina Spirit’s betamethasone positive after winning the Kentucky Derby. However, the four positive tests on his horses going back to Justify’s 2018 Santa Anita Derby might raise questions on how rulings are interpreted under the new national medication rules being developed by the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority (HISA) and its medication and safety enforcement entity.
First, what I am about to assert is strictly my own opinion and a possible interpretation of how USADA (United States Anti-Doping Agency) might consider ruling in similar cases if these circumstances rise again.
Justify tested positive after winning the Santa Anita Derby for scopolamine, which is performance-enhancing at the level tested. But, in a controversial decision, the California Horse Racing Board ruled that the positive test could have been the result of Justify possibly eating contaminated food, and the CHRB voted unanimously to dismiss the case.
In the spring of 2020, two Baffert-trained horses at Oaklawn Park - Charlatan, who won the Arkansas Derby, and Gamine, who won an allowance - both tested positive for lidocaine, an analgesic used to treat pain. The Oaklawn stewards ruled that the lidocaine resulted in a disqualification of both Baffert horses, but the Arkansas Racing Commission overruled the DQs.
Gamine then tested positive after running third in the Kentucky Oaks for betamethasone, the same drug that was discovered in the Medina Spirit test after the Kentucky Derby. She was disqualified and placed last (the stewards did not let the result stand as reported in an earlier version of this article).
In the other three cases, the horses were victims of environmental contamination. It is not clear to me, however, that these standards will be recognized in the national USADA drug enforcement rules. But that is simply one opinion. It is true that one of the major criticisms of the current 38-state individual regulatory rules and enforcements is that they are often inconsistently applied.
Shortly after Medina Spirit’s positive test, I started asking industry experts what the timing and protocols for the announcement of the result of the split sample would be. I was stunned to learn that there are no firm rules about how, where and when the split sample would be tested.
A much longer journey
Fortunately, Natalie Voss had done some good reporting in the Paulick Report, first following up on the Arkansas Derby positive by Charlatan and also the positive on Medina Spirit.
The split sample has that name as two samples are drawn from each horse after the race. The winning horse’s initial test results for a major stakes are usually available late on race-day.
However, the second sample has a much longer journey. First, the trainer of a horse that tests positive usually has the opportunity to select the lab. His or her choice may depend on what drug the horse tested positive for.
Here are some thoughts from Dr Scott Stanley, faculty member at the University of Kentucky’s Maxwell H Gluck Equine Research Center and UK Veterinary Science, in an article by Voss last July:
“In the busy season - late spring and summer months - those turnaround times often increase because of the heavy workload at most equine labs. This year is much worse because most of the equine testing labs were shut down because of Covid-19 and the few labs still operating had reduced staff with social distancing required. Taking all these circumstances into consideration, I wouldn’t be surprised if any split sample this spring were to take six to eight weeks.”
The Arkansas Derby was run on May 2 last year and the Oaklawn stewards confirmed to the Paulick Report that, as of July 1, the split sample results were not complete.
Voss also spoke with Dr Mary Scollay, executive director of the Racing Medication and Testing Consortium (RMTC) and former equine medical director for the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission. Here are a few comments from Dr Scollay:
“If a split sample is negative, or if the split sample laboratory finds the substance in question at a level below the regulatory threshold, then there is no violation of the rules and therefore no ruling issued.”
Scollay said that, in her experience at the Kentucky commission, it was extremely rare for a split to come back negative. In her role at the Kentucky commission, it wasn’t uncommon for labs to tell her it might take weeks before they would be able to promise a result, or even months.
Major impact
This type of turnaround time for evaluating split samples may work for regular racedays, but for Graded stakes I certainly hope USADA could accelerate the process. Delays in reporting split samples of race-day positives reflect negatively on the integrity of the drug testing protocols.
The Thoroughbred industry enthusiastically awaits the HISA with USADA taking control of all industry medication, safety and integrity issues by July 1, 2022. Clearly, USADA is going to have a major impact on all aspects of consolidating the highly decentralized and largely inefficient integrity policies of the individual states.
Here is an excerpt from an article by Jim Chairusmi at the Wall Street Journal regarding comments by Travis Tygart, President and CEO of USADA:
“Several horsemen interviewed by the Wall Street Journal pointed to the passage of the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act, which is set to take effect in July 2022, as an opportunity for the industry to clean up its drug problem.
“The federal legislation will remove oversight of medication and testing issues from individual states to an independent authority that would contract the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency to oversee enforcement. In an interview prior to the Kentucky Derby, USADA chief executive Travis Tygart said horseracing’s current anti-doping system is ‘really poor, with major loopholes in it’.
“We have to have sanctions that deter — so someone who might be willing to cheat says, ‘It’s not worth it because I might be kicked out of the sport for a long period of time’,” Tygart said. But people are going to still take the risk. We saw that in cycling and other sports. People will try to get away with it. We’ve got to detect it and sanction them in a way that doesn’t allow them to profit from their cheating, which currently happens pretty regularly and easily I think.”
The mentality of cheating ‘is the same’
Here are a few brief excerpts from Tygart in an exclusive TDN Writer’s Room podcast on February 11 (the interview with Tygart starts at 102:17):
“It is obviously a huge responsibility, but one that we’re fully ready to embrace to learn the nuts and bolts of the industry that we don’t know,” Tygart, who grew up near Ocala, Florida, said about USADA entering a new domain in racing.
“We’re honored to be part of it. We feel that it’s a tremendous privilege. We recognize that we’re going to have to work every day and night to prove that we’re the right organization for this. “Cheating, honesty, ethics and the rule of sport are the same across all sports. So while some might want to say there’s a difference between equine anti-doping and medication control programs and what happens in humans, the mentality of cheating and trying to get an advantage against the rules is the same. So we’re really looking forward to putting in a gold-standard program that people in the industry can have a lot of satisfaction and pride in, that it’s being done at the highest level, with an equal opportunity to win playing by the rules, which is all any athlete - whether you’re a trainer, owner of a horse or a human athlete - can ask for.”
As I wrote at the start of this article, HISA cannot get here soon enough.