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Horse racing commissions should throw the book at horse-trainers-turned-cheaters
It’s time to pull horse racing out of the slop. As 2006 mercilessly shuts down, the nation’s leading trainers have been suspended and several jockeys banned.
A trainer in Louisiana (Steve Asmussen) gets a six-month suspension and a trainer in New York (Todd Pletcher) a 45-day suspension for the exact same offense.
A 45-day suspension and $3,000 fine were meted against leading trainer Todd Pletcher after one of his horses was found with a banned substance following a 2004 race at Saratoga.
Meanwhile, 2006 leading trainer Scot Lake was suspended for 30 days, to be served Dec. 24 through Jan. 22 of 2007, by order of the New York State Racing and Wagering Board.
Lake is already 19 days into the fulfillment of a previous 30-day suspension handed down from the Delaware Park Thoroughbred Racing Commission when one of his horses, Secret Run, tested positive for the drug after winning Delaware’s fifth race on June 7.
But suspensions have become virtually meaningless.
We prefer to see racing commissions rely more on extremely heavy fines to truly punish trainers. By doing so, racing commissions would protect both the wagering public and the racing participants.
[…] Clean horse trainers realize how unfair it seems and how downright stupid it appears when Hall-of-Fame and award-winning trainers received race bans left and right for using banned drugs to their horses but just walk away with meaningless suspensions. […]
Wow. How cut and dry and judgemental. Here’s a view from an insider: not only are there no consistant national rules in racing, but here’s a scenario in the day of the life.
The horses are being called over to the paddock for their race. The trainer leaves the barn and heads over to the paddock. The horse is left in the care of a groom who proceeds to the paddock and is stopped just prior by the horse identifier who lifts the top lip to check the tatoo usually without protective gloves. The horse is saddled and a rider is legged up. Then the horse proceeds to the track and is handed over to a pony person who warms up the horse and it is now handed over to an assistant starter. Hmmm, I just counted five different people handling the horse from the barn to the starting gate. And that’s not counting the trainer.
I understand the absolute guarantor rule has two sides and horse racing should be regulated with strict controls. But let’s keep an open mind. Not only are the testing procedures resultant in tiny miniscule amounts of certain illegal drugs being detected, those amounts being totally negligible to the performance of the horse, but the race track cannot provide security for the horses once they are out of site of the trainers.
(Todd Pletcher) a 45-day suspension for the exact same offense.
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January 5th, 2007 at 4:43 am
[…] Clean horse trainers realize how unfair it seems and how downright stupid it appears when Hall-of-Fame and award-winning trainers received race bans left and right for using banned drugs to their horses but just walk away with meaningless suspensions. […]
Sharon Crute
January 20th, 2007 at 3:15 pm
Wow. How cut and dry and judgemental. Here’s a view from an insider: not only are there no consistant national rules in racing, but here’s a scenario in the day of the life.
The horses are being called over to the paddock for their race. The trainer leaves the barn and heads over to the paddock. The horse is left in the care of a groom who proceeds to the paddock and is stopped just prior by the horse identifier who lifts the top lip to check the tatoo usually without protective gloves. The horse is saddled and a rider is legged up. Then the horse proceeds to the track and is handed over to a pony person who warms up the horse and it is now handed over to an assistant starter. Hmmm, I just counted five different people handling the horse from the barn to the starting gate. And that’s not counting the trainer.
I understand the absolute guarantor rule has two sides and horse racing should be regulated with strict controls. But let’s keep an open mind. Not only are the testing procedures resultant in tiny miniscule amounts of certain illegal drugs being detected, those amounts being totally negligible to the performance of the horse, but the race track cannot provide security for the horses once they are out of site of the trainers.