Month: February 2022

Juan Vazquez To Sit Out For A Month, Two Of His Runners Suspended 90 Days Over Levamisole Positives

Trainer Juan Vazquez is facing a month-long suspension after two positives for levamisole from fall 2021.

The Pennsylvania Thoroughbred Racing Commission issued rulings on Feb. 10 disqualifying Hollywood Talent from the Grade 3 Turf Monster Stakes at Parx on Sept. 25, 2021, and stablemate Louie's Wish from a waiver claiming race at Parx on Aug. 30, 2021.

The Hollywood Talent disqualification was a costly one, with the $168,000 first-place purse now going to second-place finisher Beer Can Man, owned by Little Red Feather Racing and Sterling Stables LLC.  Hollywood Talent is owned by Vazquez' King Star racing stable.

Vazquez was suspended 15 days for the violation of Louie's Wish, running Feb. 21 through March 7, and 15 days for Hollywood Talent's positive test, to run March 8 through March 22. He was also fined $500 for each violation and assigned four multiple medication violation points for each.

The rulings state that both horses have been disqualified from their winning finishes, although the Equibase charts only reflected a disqualification of Hollywood Talent as of press time.

Additionally, both horses will also be suspended for 90 days, from Feb. 21 to May 21, during which they will be ineligible to start. Hollywood Talent has not started since the Turf Monster, but Louie's Wish posted an official workout at Parx on Feb. 16

Vazquez, whose win percentage for this year so far is 18 percent, is well-known for a lengthy violation history. In 2017, The Jockey Club revoked the stud book privileges for him and a handful of other trainers with repeated violations. There are 125 records relating to violations for Vazquez in the database ThoroughbredRulings.com dating back to 2006, although it is important to note that some violations generate multiple records in this database if stewards issue subsequent rulings rescinding or modifying previous ones.

The Racing Medication and Testing Consortium in 2017  issued an advisory on levamisole, which can be found in dewormers used for cattle, pigs and sheep.

Vazquez has 10 days from the date of the ruling to appeal the commission's actions.

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Undergraduate Research Study Shows More Turnout Time Means Less Time Off

A group of Centenary University students have recently completed a study showing that increased turnout time may lead to a reduction in soft tissue injuries. The research project, led by undergraduate Abigail Reilly and associate professor Dr. Jesslyn Bryk-Lucy, examined six years of data collected from the horses used in the school's riding program. They discovered that the horses turned out for at least 12 hours a day had a 25 percent lower incidence of soft tissue injuries. 

Injuries to tendons and ligaments often require time off from training, resulting in lost riding and competition time. Factors contributing to soft tissue injury include fitness level and an increase in acute workload.

Tendons adapt and change in response to equine movement, Reilly said. She hypothesized that horses that are allowed pasture time move more, promoting development of collagen fibers, which give tendon elasticity. Turnout time also increases fitness levels.

Reilly used the school's horses, which are not elite athletes, to investigate if horses that are turned out regularly have a higher baseline fitness level and are therefore less prone to injury. She used the medical history of 146 horses donated to the Centenary University Equestrian Center between 2014 and 2020 to determine the date of the initial injury, which was confirmed by the resident vet using ultrasounds, MRI or the process of elimination in exams. 

Reilly then compared the data of horses that received more than 12 consecutive hours of turnout to those that didn't get at least 12 hours of time on pasture. Injuries were only included if the horse was in an established herd on a set schedule for more than 30 days. Twelve hours of turnout was chosen as it has been shown to be the amount of time required for a physiological change in response to exercise to occur.

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Reilly found that 51 percent of horses who received less than 12 hours of turnout sustained a soft tissue injury (45 of 89 animals), while only 25 percent of horses that got more than 12 hours of turnout sustained soft tissue injuries (14 of 57).

The results suggest that the more turnout time non-elite horses receive, the less likely they are to sustain a soft tissue injury. The findings support the idea that a horse on multiple hours of turnout maintains a baseline level of fitness that better prepares them for heavier workloads. 

Read more at Horse Sport. 

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The Comments Section: Your Reactions To The Jockey Club’s Rescission Of The Mare Cap

Over a year after permanently disabling comments on The Paulick Report, the comments section is back! Well, sort of. We can't fire up story comments again. The number of hours our staff was collectively losing in moderation was too great, and the few bad actors out there made it too labor-intensive to continue, even as we tried many different systems to combat them. The good news is, we are still including reader voices here on the Paulick Report with this feature. Read a previous edition here.

In this edition, we're collecting the many, many thoughts we're seeing in the Twitterverse and in our inboxes about The Jockey Club's decision on Feb. 17 to rescind the cap it had instituted on the number of mares bred to stallions born in 2020 or after. Read the full announcement from The Jockey Club here.

 

Want to email us your thoughts? Click Ask Ray in the red header bar. Please include a good contact email where the staff can reach you with questions. 

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Mandatory Payout On Sunday For Santa Anita’s Rainbow Pick 6

With the likelihood of a $5 million pool, Santa Anita's popular 20 cent Single Ticket Rainbow Pick 6 Jackpot will offer players a mandatory payout on Sunday, Feb. 20.  First post time for the Arcadia, Calif., track's nine-race card is at 12:30 p.m. PT and Sunday's main event is the Grade 3, $100,000 San Simeon Stakes for older horses at about 6 ½ furlongs down the hillside turf course.

There is a Single Ticket Jackpot carryover into Friday of $592,337 and providing there is no Single Ticket winner on Friday or Saturday, track officials project Sunday's total Rainbow Six pool will exceed the $5 million mark.

With nine races carded on Sunday, approximate post time for race four, the beginning of the Rainbow Six, is 2:05 p.m. PT.

With the San Simeon slotted as race eight, a total of 52 horses have been entered in races four through nine, creating average Rainbow Six field size on Sunday of 8.6 runners per race.

For Sunday's entries and additional information, please visit santaanita.com or call (626) 574-RACE.

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