California Horse Racing Board | Horse Racing Free Tips

No Lasix for Most Santa Anita, Del Mar, Golden Gate Stakes in 2021

Lasix will now be barred through at least 2021 in the vast majority of stakes races at California’s three major commercial tracks–Santa Anita Park, Del Mar Thoroughbred Club, and Golden Gate Fields.

The Lasix ban was part of a revised race-day medication agreement between the Thoroughbred Owners of California (TOC) and the managements of those three tracks.

The California Horse Racing Board voted unanimously Dec. 17 to approve the terms of that medication agreement for the upcoming Santa Anita and Golden Gate meets. The Del Mar-specific commission approval will presumably come up for a vote closer to the start of that meet in July.

The agreement also includes language mandating a stand-down period for intra-articular injections, a rule that has been agreed to among the parties and approved by the CHRB since March 2019.

An exception to the no-Lasix rule was written into the agreement that will allow the drug’s usage in California-bred stakes races for 4-year-olds and up, so long as that provision is agreed to in writing by the TOC and the track hosting the stakes race.

In a separate vote, the CHRB unanimously advanced a set of proposed rule amendments that deal with the requirements for horses being on and getting removed from the state veterinarian’s restricted list.

The changes were largely administrative and were proposed for the purpose of bringing the CHRB’s rules into alignment with Assembly Bill 1974, which was signed into law Sept. 29 to “protect and advance the health, safety, welfare, and aftercare of racehorses.”

That new law takes effect Jan. 1, 2021.

Pending a final vote after the public commentary period, one of the key provisions that will be changed in CHRB’s related Rule 1688 will be that, “The official veterinarian may require any horse on the Veterinarian’s List to undergo diagnostic procedures, including, but not limited to, diagnostic imaging, endoscopy, and biological sample analysis as part of their veterinary examination prior to being allowed to train or race…”

The revised version of Rule 1866 goes on to state that the owners of the horse desiring to get off the vet’s list shall “pay all costs associated with the administration of diagnostic imaging.”

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It Ain’t Over Yet: Bolt D’Oro Connections File Appeal In Justify Scopolamine Case

Just eight days after the California Horse Racing Board decided it would not disqualify Triple Crown winner Justify from his win in the 2018 Santa Anita Derby due to a scopolamine positive, connections of Bolt d'Oro, the runner-up in that race, have filed an official appeal to overturn that decision. According to the Thoroughbred Daily News, CHRB executive director Scott Chaney revealed the appeal at the outset of the board's Thursday meeting, and indicated that the appeal would be considered during a closed-door session on Jan. 21.

“The board of stewards at Santa Anita issued a [Dec. 9] decision in which they concluded that a disqualification was not appropriate,” Chaney said during the CHRB meeting. “I made the decision not to appeal that ruling. The board has since received a request to appeal and overturn that decision from the connections of the second-place finisher in the race in question, Bolt d'Oro. The board will decide whether to entertain that request during the executive session at the January board meeting.”

The CHRB initially faced public outcry when a New York Times report published in September of 2018 revealed that post-race samples from both Justify and his Bob Baffert-trained stablemate Hoppertunity, winner of the 2018 Tokyo City Cup, contained scopolamine. Prior to its publication, the CHRB made the decision in a closed-doors executive session during the summer of 2018 not to pursue disciplinary action or disqualify horses after a cluster of positive tests for scopolamine across multiple barns, which CHRB staff determined was a result of exposure to jimsonweed in hay.

In January of 2020, Bolt d'Oro's owner Mick Ruis filed a petition in Los Angeles County Superior Court asking for a writ ordering the CHRB to set aside its decision to dismiss Santa Anita Derby winner Justify's positive test in the Santa Anita Derby and to order disqualification of Justify with a redistribution of the purse.

The CHRB's settlement of that civil suit included an agreement to file a complaint seeking disqualification of Justify from the 2018 Santa Anita Derby. Connections of Justify and Hoppertunity subsequently filed suit in Los Angeles Superior Court seeking a temporary restraining order to prevent the stewards from hearing the case. The application for that restraining order was denied.

The hearing was held on Oct. 29, 2020, and the CHRB handed down its decision to dismiss the complaint on Dec. 9.

Now, another closed-door session of the CHRB will determine whether Ruis' appeal will be considered.

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With Newly Filed Appeal, Justify DQ Case Sparks Back to Life

The long and complicated case over whether to disqualify 2018 Triple Crown winner Justify for his GI Santa Anita Derby scopolamine positive sparked back to life Dec. 17, eight days after the Santa Anita Park board of stewards dismissed complaints against two Bob Baffert-trained horses that had been filed by the California Horse Racing Board (CHRB) as part of a legal settlement.

At the outset of Thursday’s regularly scheduled CHRB meeting, the board’s executive director, Scott Chaney, explained how because of a newly filed appeal, the 2 1/2-year regulatory odyssey that a previous version of the CHRB largely adjudicated in secret would once again hinge on another closed-session vote by current CHRB members Jan. 21, 2021.

Chaney said as part of his monthly report that “the board of stewards at Santa Anita issued a [Dec. 9] decision in which they concluded that a disqualification was not appropriate. I made the decision not to appeal that ruling. The board has since received a request to appeal and overturn that decision from the connections of the second-place finisher in the race in question, Bolt d’Oro. The board will decide whether to entertain that request during the executive session at the January board meeting.”

CHRB members did not ask questions about Chaney’s report when given the opportunity to comment on it after he was finished.

On Oct. 29, the stewards listened to four-plus hours of back-and-forth testimony and cross-examination that largely centered on scopolamine’s classification at the time of Justify’s positive. Baffert’s attorney also argued that the stewards shouldn’t even be re-hearing the case at all because the CHRB already adjudicated it without imposing any penalization or race disqualification in an August 2018 executive session.

That controversial 2018 commission vote took place privately after a detailed–but not publicly disclosed at the time–investigation that led to the exoneration of Justify and Baffert based on a finding of accidental environmental contamination by jimson weed.

Although Justify was the “headline horse” in that case, the stewards on Oct. 29 were also tasked with re-adjudicating a scopolamine positive from MGISW Hoppertunity, another Baffert trainee who similarly tested dirty when winning the GIII Tokyo City Cup S. the day after Justify won the Santa Anita Derby.

For context, the two positives of the Baffert trainees were not isolated cases. In roughly the same time frame in 2018, the CHRB received post-race findings for scopolamine on five other horses whose levels did not trigger complaints for positives. The CHRB eventually considered those other findings to also be the result of unintentional contaminations from ingesting tainted hay.

But it was more than a year before news about Justify’s positive and non-penalization became widely known. On Sept. 11, 2019, the New York Times broke the story that Justify tested positive when he won the Santa Anita Derby, a GI Kentucky Derby points qualifying race that vaulted him into contention for the Triple Crown that he would eventually sweep.

That revelation sparked a January 2020 lawsuit initiated against the CHRB by Mick Ruis, who owned and trained the 2018 Santa Anita Derby runner-up, Bolt d’Oro. In his suit, Ruis alleged that the CHRB’s secret vote to dismiss the case led Ruis to suffer “the loss of purse caused by the CHRB’s failing to disqualify Justify and re-distribute the purse for the positive test result.”

Eight months later, as part of a negotiated settlement to get Ruis to drop his lawsuit, the CHRB again met in closed session, voting Aug. 20, 2020, to reverse its previous course of no action and to proceed with a complaint seeking the disqualification of Justify and the redistribution of the purse from that stakes.

That led to the Oct. 29 hearing, which then produced the Dec. 9 order of dismissal signed by stewards John Herbuveaux, Kim Sawyer, and Ron Church.

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Cal Trainers Warned Off CBD Use in Horses

The Cannabidiol (CBD) market is growing faster than a garden weed, and as the vast roots of this multi-billion dollar industry reach further into everyday life, it’s hardly surprising that the racing industry has had to take accommodating actions.

This can be evinced in a California Horse Racing Board (CHRB) notification sent to trainers Friday, warning that use of these CBD products can lead to a positive “for CBD and/or CBD metabolites in blood and urine,” and that, because CBD is currently unclassified in California, a positive would by default result in a class 1, category A drug violation.

“My recommendation to the horsemen is do not use this product on a racehorse that is going to be subject to testing, which is basically all of them,” CHRB equine medical director Rick Arthur told the TDN. “The risk is so out of proportion to the reward that it would be foolish to use this product on a racehorse.”

Under CHRB rules, a class 1, category A violation can lead to a minimum one-year suspension or a maximum three-year suspension. It can also result in a minimum fine of $10,000 or 10% of the gross purse, or a maximum fine of $25,000 or 25% of the purse.

The Association of Racing Commissioners International (ARCI) currently classifies CBD as a lower class 3 category B penalty. The CHRB will likely begin the process of updating the state’s rules to align with the ARCI’s CBD classification early next year, but because of California’s “very cumbersome administrative law process,” the formal adoption of those rules could take another year, Arthur warned.

Until then, a CBD positive will remain a class 1, class A penalty. Still, the stewards have the authority to “modify the penalty out of any sense of fairness,” Arthur said, pointing to language pertaining to “mitigating circumstances” in the rules.

“I suspect that the ARCI has a penalty category B is a [possible] mitigating circumstance,” he added. “But that’s not up to me, that’s up to the stewards.”

Arthur declined to comment if Friday’s notification was sent as a result of any recent CBD positive finding awaiting adjudication, but he added that up to this point in California, there has been no formal complaint filed for a positive finding of either CBD or Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the compound in cannabis that creates a psychoactive “high.”

“This has always surprised me because marijuana is commonly used on the backside,” Arthur said.

While derived from both marijuana and industrial hemp plants, CBD is not responsible for any psychoactive effect. Nevertheless, while CBD products are required to contain less than 0.3% THC, lack of regulatory oversight means that some CBD products contain much more THC than that. The ARCI designates a CBD product with more than 0.3% THC as a class 1, category A substance.

The purported benefits from CBD use in horses include treatment of inflammation, ulcers, laminitis, colic, and decreased anxiety. However, “None of these claims are substantiated with independent, peer reviewed research in the horse,” according to a Racing Medication & Testing Consortium (RMTC) cannabidiol bulletin from last year.

Among some of the findings in published literature, CBD has been shown to help ameliorate the pain of osteoarthritis in dogs and ease anxiety in humans. One recent study out of Colorado found a potential correlation between CBD use in dogs and reduced seizure frequency.

In terms of its potential performance enhancing effects–a loaded term with all sorts of broadly applicable connotations–the U.S. Equestrian Federation (USEF) Equine Drugs and Medications Rules prohibit CBD and CBD metabolites in competition.

“CBD, both natural and synthetic forms, are likely to affect the performance of a horse due to its reported anxiolytic effects,” the federation wrote last year. Anxiolytic effects are those related to anxiety and stress reduction. “This substance is no different than legitimate therapeutics that effect mentation and behavior in horses.”

According to Mary Scollay, RMTC executive director and chief operating officer, there are any number of studies currently underway, including on horses, digging down into what medical properties CBD actually has.

“As it stands right now, there is no scientific basis for use in the horse,” said Scollay. As the scientific literature continues to pour in, “we might have to revisit the classification,” she said, but added that she wouldn’t expect any such reclassification “to change much.”

Experts point to the wild west nature of the CBD market at present, with much variability in purity, strength, and safety of these products. A recent study out of Europe found that more than two-thirds of the 14 CBD products tested contained concentrations that differed by more than 10% from the label. As such, in its bulletin the RMTC offers no recommended withdrawal times.

“Bad guidance is worse than no guidance,” said Scollay.

The CHRB notification to trainers states how CBD and its metabolites can be detectable for 72-96 hours after ingestion by the horse, though it provides no indication of dose. According to Arthur, the 72-96 hour designation comes from a study that will be ready for publication early next year.

Arthur said that he is unaware of how widely used CBD products are on the backstretch. Scollay said that when she was working as Kentucky Horse Racing Commission equine medical director, CBD products were starting to become aggressively marketed,” and I was getting lots of calls, people were asking lots of questions about it.”

Scollay warned, too, of the increasing popularity of horse bedding made from hemp plants, and the residual risk of contamination.

“The question there is of the potential for exposure, and is that sufficient to generate a positive CBD test?” Scollay said. “I have heard that at least one project has indicated that that is the case.”

“The all-natural aspect of it, some people equate that to benign,” Scollay said, of CBD products in general, “and that’s not a logical leap.”

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