In my most recent article, I wrote of the danger of HISA and USADA not finding a way to work together. I received a broad range of responses in print and on podcasts and I am grateful for those. However, for readers not familiar with USADA, their management and their operation, perhaps I did not provide enough detail to support this position.
I truly believe that USADA (the United States Anti-Doping Agency) can benefit Thoroughbred racing in a way no other organization can.
On March 28, 2014, a little over two months after the launch of this site, I wrote an article headlined The time is now for medication reform. It was in response to an outrageous undercover video secretly filmed by a PETA employee in the Steve Asmussen barn and aggressively reported by the New York Times. Of course, long after the damage was done to Asmussen’s stable - 20 months later on November 23, 2015 - the New York State Gaming Commission dismissed allegations of widespread animal abuse against him, although it did fine him $10,000 for seemingly minor transgressions involving the use of a feed supplement.
‘Enough is enough’
However, the most interesting development at that time was a press statement by Ogden Mills Phipps, Chairman of the Jockey Club, on Friday, March 28, 2014.
He said, “Enough is enough. The horses deserve better. Owners and trainers deserve better
“And in a sport based on the integrity of competition, certainly fans who wager their hard-earned money deserve better.”
What truly intrigued me was what Phipps clearly stated next:
“At the Round Table Conference last August 2013, I said that the Jockey Club supported these reforms on a state-by-state basis, but the clock was ticking. I emphasized that, if the state-by-state approach failed to produce the needed changes, we would look for alternative means to implement these reforms.
“One alternative avenue is federal legislation.
“The draft legislation proposed by some federal lawmakers involving [USADA] is a highly attractive model. USADA has the experience, the knowledge and the credibility to bring much needed integrity to our sport.
“The time to draw that proverbial line in the sand is rapidly approaching and the Jockey Club’s Board of Stewards plans to do that no later than the 62nd annual Round Table Conference on August 10, 2014.”
One thing I have always known about Phipps is that he was a man of his word! The racing industry could never rely on progressive changes from the 33 state racing commissions. More from Phipps later in the article.
And, speaking of USADA, their President, Travis Tygart, and his team over many years had been aggressively pursuing their investigation of 7-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong. There has been extensive coverage of Armstrong and there is no need to cover it in detail here. However it is important to understand the critical role that USADA played in bringing him to justice.
US federal prosecutors pursued allegations of doping by him from 2010 to 2012, around the same time that USADA was investigating him. The US effort convened a grand jury to investigate doping charges, including taking statements under oath from Armstrong’s former team members and other associates. They met officials from France, Belgium, Spain and Italy, and requested samples from the French anti-doping agency.
On February 2, 2012, federal prosecutors officially dropped their criminal investigation with no charges. The closing of the case by US attorney André Birotte Jr was not without controversy. The decision was a surprise to many.
But USADA were still on the case, and that June they accused Armstrong of doping and drug trafficking, based on blood samples from 2009 and 2010, and testimonies from witnesses, including former teammates.
Armstrong, denying all doping use in a statement, was suspended from competition in cycling and triathlon. He was charged in a letter from USADA, along with five others, including former team manager Johan Bruyneel. USADA said Armstrong used banned substances, including the blood-booster erythropoietin (EPO) and steroids, as well as blood transfusions dating back to 1996.
Armstrong’s violations
USADA announced on August 24, 2012, that Armstrong had chosen not to move forward with the independent arbitration process and, as a result, he received a lifetime period of ineligibility as well as disqualification from all competitive results from August 1, 1998, through the present.
The anti-doping rule violations for which Armstrong was sanctioned are:
- Use and/or attempted use of prohibited substances and/or methods,. including EPO, blood transfusions, testosterone, corticosteroids and masking agents.
- Possession of prohibited substances and/or methods, including EPO, blood transfusions and related equipment (such as needles, blood bags, storage containers and other transfusion equipment and blood parameters measuring devices), testosterone, corticosteroids and masking agents.
- Trafficking of EPO, testosterone, and corticosteroids.
- Administration and/or attempted administration to others of EPO, testosterone, and cortisone.
- Assisting, encouraging, aiding, abetting, covering up and other complicity involving one or more anti-doping rule violations and/or attempted anti-doping rule violations.
Armstrong was stripped of all seven of his Tour de France titles by the International Cycling Union (UCI).
The decision means the governing body accepted the evidence of doping presented by USADA, which said Armstrong not only used performance-enhancing drugs to achieve his titles but was also the heart of “the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen”.
“Lance Armstrong has no place in cycling,” UCI president Pat McQuaid said, the BBC reported.
Salazar under scrutiny
While Alberto Salazar did not achieve the same level of success and acclaim as Armstrong, he was one of the most popular track and field competitors in the 1980s and 90s, when he won the New York City Marathon three years in a row (1980-1982) and the Boston Marathon in 1982. He went on to become the highest-profile track coach in the US while he ran the Nike Oregon Project from 2001 to 2019.
The Oregon Project was created by Nike Vice President Thomas E Clarke after he reportedly became dissatisfied with the performance of American athletes in long-distance events since the early 1980s. When the project began, Salazar chose some of the top runners of the time whom he believed had great potential. Eventually, however, he concluded that, since these athletes were older, their training habits had become ingrained and were difficult to overcome.
This led him to take on younger athletes instead. His new focus led him to coach Matthew Centrowitz, Galen Rupp and Adam and Kara Goucher. Salazar believed they went on to more success because he was able to work with them from a younger age.
In 2002, the Oregon Project came under scrutiny from USADA, which formed a think tank to discuss the ethics of what was known as high-altitude houses.
In 2006, the subject of high-altitude houses was revisited more thoroughly by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), which claimed they could be equivalent to blood doping and therefore should be banned.
On May 19, 2017, an article appeared in the New York Times about a leaked and unverified USADA report that claimed Salazar worked with athletes to increase their L-carnitine levels. The main accusation involved was that the intravenous method could potentially have violated USADA anti-doping rules if the amount infused was too high.
‘Toxic and unhealthy culture’
USADA chief Tygart said this in a statement about the next development:
“Getting to this final point in the Nike Oregon Project case has been a long and difficult road, but we are pleased that the CAS [Court for Arbitration of Sport] panel upheld multiple anti-doping rule violations and 4-year sanctions against both coach Alberto Salazar and Dr Jeffrey Brown. Hopefully, this sends a powerful message that, when athletes come to us with information of doping violations or other misconduct, they know we will listen to them and protect them by pursuing the evidence, no matter the power, influence, or financial resources of those in violation — even those, like here, who orchestrate cover-ups and attempt to obstruct the truth.”
USADA announced that the investigation included 30 witnesses, 5,780 pages of transcripts, and 2000 exhibits of evidence.
Tygart’s statement went on: “While this CAS case dealt only with technical anti-doping rule violations, the whistleblowers who came forward prompted an ensuing investigation that resulted in a cascading effect, exposing a toxic and unhealthy culture at the Nike Oregon Project, and unacceptable behaviors and practices against athletes that were carried out by people at the top of the program sworn to protect them.”
Dubious activities
The USADA investigation had taken six years and it uncovered a host of dubious activities at the Nike Oregon Project, including widespread misuse of prescription drugs, a strange experiment involving testosterone and improper injections of a substance that eased muscle fatigue. Salazar and Brown had “demonstrated that winning was more important than the health and well-being of the athletes they were sworn to protect”, Tygart said.
The Oregon Project, the training group that inspired Britain’s multi-Olympic and world championship gold medallist Mo Farah and subsequent Dutch double Olympic champion Sifan Hassan, has since been shut down by Nike. Nike chief executive Mark Parker said he had acted because the Oregon Project had become an ongoing distraction to its athletes.
Tygart gained tremendous respect and visibility when he was promoted to president of USADA in 2007. In short order, he had worked on the Mitchell BALCO baseball steroid investigation, the Armstrong doping scandal and the doping allegations of Salazar at the Nike Oregon Project.
There is no question in my mind that Tygart has more knowledge and insight into the subtleties of performance-enhancing drugs in all sports than certainly any Thoroughbred racing executive.
The Salazar and Armstrong cases were clearly the most important international prosecutions in sport the world had ever seen. Both cases involved hugely talented athletes with strong corporate and tremendous financial backing.
In the case of Armstrong, US prosecutors pursued allegations of doping against Armstrong and his two teams, the US Postal/Discovery Team and Team Radio Shack, from 2010-2012. The US prosecutors convened a grand jury, interviewed a broad range of riders, sponsors and people involved with all aspects of cycling. On February 12, 2012, U.S. Attorney, Andre Birotte, Jr. dropped their criminal investigation “without explanation”.
Mark Daly, a journalist at BBC Panorama, wrote a number of articles on the Oregon Project, including Alberto Salazar: The inside story of Nike Oregon Project founder's downfall. Here are a few of his thoughts:
“This was a hugely complex case, and one which did not have a slam-dunk positive drug test to stand upon. But Tygart’s team specialize in these rare, non-analytical positive cases (Armstrong being the case in point) and believed there was enough done behind closed doors to protect both the innocent until proven guilty, and the integrity of the cases. Once again, people started to think it all had gone away.”
Tygart and the USADA team spent six years working on the Salazar case. I would imagine they always thought their cases on Armstrong and Salazar were never going away until they were solved.
Report on sanctioned competitors
Reading through the work that USADA did on those cases, and following the current seven racing industry people that have taken pleas in the Navarro, Servis et al indictments (which you will see below), I am even more convinced that performance-enhancing drugs used by athletes have a lot more in common with performance-enhancing drugs in horses than differences.
Here are some performance-enhancing drugs that feature prominently in racing and in athletics: Anabolic steroids, Thyroxine, EPO, Testosterone, Furosemide. There are many others. I would strongly encourage you to read the USADA annual report, which has a complete list of 2021 sanctioned competitors in chronological order. You will see each athlete’s name, sport, illegal substance, sanction terms and sanction date.
A similar report would be tremendous for US racing.
In the meantime, I was reminded by what Phipps said in his statement on March 28, 2014: “The time to draw that proverbial line in the sand is rapidly approaching and the Jockey Club’s Board of Stewards plans to do that no later than the 62nd annual Round Table Conference on August 10, 2014. If the major racing states have not implemented these reforms, the Jockey Club will reach out to federal lawmakers who have previously proposed federal legislation for our industry and to other supporters of this approach.
“We will aggressively seek rapid implementation, including steps leading toward the elimination of all race-day medications.”
Powerful statement
Well, at the end of the 2014 Round Table, Phipps made this brief but powerful statement: “I emphasized that, if the state-by-state approach failed to produce the needed changes, we would look for alternative means to implement these reforms.”
‘Dinney’ Phipps retired as chairman of the Jockey Club on August 8, 2015, and Stuart S Janney III was named as his successor. Consistent with Phipps’s thinking, in late 2015 Janney decided that, if the industry and elected officials wouldn’t act, the Jockey Club would pursue courses of action of its own.
Once again, I would like to refer you to this excellent article by the Washington Post writer Gus Garcia-Roberts, who outlines in detail the important decisions and steps the Jockey Club took to engage 5 Stones Intelligence. They were directly involved in assisting the 28 indictments on March 9, 2020, of Thoroughbred and harness trainers, companies and individuals who packaged and sold illegal, unbranded performance-enhancing drugs.
Garcia-Roberts wrote, “Janney envisioned a private investigation that would espouse widespread doping in the sport. However, he found initial meetings with detective agencies uninspiring. Stuart Janney turned to Travis Tygart, President of USADA, in part because of the investigative work that USADA had done in the Lance Armstrong and Alberto Salazar cases. Tygart suggested a more formidable force.
“5 Stones Intelligence was, at the time, secretly playing a central role in uncovering the conspiracy involving massive Russian state-sponsored doping of its athletes. The intelligence agency was founded by David Tinsley, a former DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) supervisor known for pursuits of some of the most sophisticated criminals on the planet.”
Another strong benefit with 5 Stones, is that, like David Tinsley, many of their investigators have worked with the DEA, which helped engage the FBI and federal law enforcement in assisting with the arrests.
Let’s now turn to the progress of the Navarro, Servis et al indictments.
The first seven cases resolved by the court to date
There are still a number of indicted parties who will be sentenced. However, these seven cases will result in more years in prison and money owed in restitution, fines and forfeiture than any previous case in racing history.
In most cases involving drug positives, the purse has already been distributed to the owner, trainer, jockey etc before any horse or trainer is disqualified. So those profiting connections should have the responsibility to repay any ill-gotten gains that any party has received involving a drug positive.
If a trainer is cheating by using illegal, performance-enhancing drugs, the owner is almost certainly very familiar with the trainers’ practices and all parties that participated in receiving a portion of the purse should be required to return this money to the racetrack or stewards for redistribution to the owner cheated out of a placing in the race.
It should also be noted that the specific indictment covers just five states - “By evading PED prohibitions and deceiving regulators and horseracing authorities, among others, participants sought to improve race performance and obtain prize money from racetracks throughout the United States and other countries, including in New York, New Jersey, Florida, Ohio, Kentucky and the UAE, all to the detriment and risk of the health and well-being of the racehorses.”
Others being defrauded
I presume that this indictment notes only five US states because it was under the jurisdiction of the US Federal Court of the NY Southern District of Manhattan, which has limited geographic reach. I believe that, if this level of cheating occurred in only five of the 33 states that have racing, there are many, many other owners throughout the US similarly being defrauded.
What is shocking to me is that cheaters are never called out or exposed by honest trainers, who are in the majority at any racetrack. This indictment is proof positive that there are trainers cheating through the use of performance-enhancing drugs that are not being caught by the 33 racing commissions across the country.
In fact, it is entirely possible that the seven individuals alone (with more convictions to follow) who were successfully prosecuted in this case have resulted in more jail time and monies owed for restitution, forfeiture and fines than the rest of the cases prosecuted around the country in 2020.
How long has this cheating been going on?
Paragraph 8 of the first indictment states that, in addition to his contribution to the Navarro doping program, since at least 2014 defendant Seth Fishman has manufactured and shipped illegally misbranded and adulterated PEDs.
This would suggest that Fishman has been selling adulterated PEDs for over six years up until his arrest on March 9, 2020.
Even in the limited jurisdiction of these five states, cheating other racing participants out of purse money would appear to be an acceptable practice. This activity has to stop or why would anyone want to own a horse when there is no aggressive prosecution of cheating/stealing racing participants?
Where would the racing industry be today if Stuart Janney, Jeff Gural and others had not consulted with Travis Tygart and retained 5 Stones Intelligence, resulting in the Navarro, Servis et al indictments?