As many people are aware, I have been a member of WHOA and a supporter of HISA from the beginning. I want what we all want. Uniform and sensible medication rules and testing that promotes the integrity of our sport while protecting the innocent and punishing the cheaters. So when I received a call advising me that a horse I help manage was disqualified for an acepromazine positive, I was surprised to say the least.
My initial reaction and explanation to the owner was the horse must have had the drug administered and it failed to clear his system in the expected time. Texting back and forth with his Hall of Fame trainer, I learned this was not the case. He was adamant no one in his barn administered the horse ace at anytime. So the $64,000 question: how did it get there? Contamination, nefariousness by some unknown person? And more importantly, what sense does any of this make? Here is a horse who ran his heart out beaten a nose in a graded stakes. So he certainly didn't perform like a horse with a tranquilizer in his system.
I have had it explained to me several times why we test to the minuscule levels that we do and how these levels can have an effect on a 1,200-pound race horse. But, honestly, the explanation still doesn't resonate with my layman brain. And although my desire and conviction is not diminished that we as an industry will benefit from uniform rules and testing, I am at a loss to understand how rulings like this serve this purpose. Forget the fact that a Hall of Fame trainer with a record of now two violations in his 43-year career is penalized. The real harm to our sport is an innocent owner loses the purse and no one has a good explanation of how the illegal (and minuscule) amount of the drug got in his horse's system. How does that keep an owner in the game or attract new ones? Now that HISA has hit the reset button, can't we please come up with sensible rules and testing so the innocent are protected and the guilty are punished? The system remains broken. There must be a better way.
Craig Bandoroff is the owner of Denali Stud in Paris, Kentucky.
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