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View From The Eighth Pole: Of Rulings And Squeaky Clean Racing

We get questions all the time from readers about rumored drug positives or possible suspensions of trainers. It's seldom easy tracking down official rulings since there is no single, all-encompassing resource that provides timely, up-to-date information on such things.

In another era, Daily Racing Form was the go-to publication for stewards and commission rulings. The Form had a chart-calling crew at every racetrack in the country and forwarded copies of all official rulings to DRF offices. The rulings were published alongside entries and race results, sometimes almost as fillers, in editorial or statistical sections of the Form. If you wanted to find out who got caught smoking in the shedrow, parking illegally in the stable area or was fined or suspended for a post-race positive test, America's Turf Authority had 'em all.

Now it's not so easy.

The Jockey Club operates a website, ThoroughbredRulings.com, where you can search for regulatory rulings by trainer name, track or regulatory authority. But the information published there is not always complete or timely.

The Association of Racing Commissioners International keeps a regularly refreshed page of recent rulings – not just for Thoroughbred racing but also Quarter Horse and Standardbred – but it's also not entirely up to date or comprehensive and there is no search function to find rulings that may be more than a few weeks or months old. The ARCI does have a more comprehensive website for its members to access but it is not available to the general public (or media).

Individual racing commissions or government bureaus post rulings on their websites with varying degrees of efficiency and functionality. Some, like the New York State Gaming Commission or California Horse Racing Board web pages, are maintained regularly and have useful search functions. Others, like the Maryland or Indiana racing commissions, have outdated or incomplete information.

This is something that the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority can put on its “to do” list, though not sure where that project will rank by priority.

Squeaky Clean Racing In New York
In searching the New York State Gaming Commission website recently, I could only find one ruling for a medication violation in all of 2021 at New York Racing Association tracks – a phenylbutazone positive for Jeffrey Englehart-trained Runningwscissors after a third-place finish in a stakes at Aqueduct on Jan. 9. The ruling states that Runningwscissors was disqualified from any part of the purse money (though Equibase still credits the horse with a third-place finish and the purse money). Englehart served a 10-day suspension and was fined $1,000.

I could find zero positive tests in the New York State Gaming Commission rulings database in 2020 and zero positives in 2019 for NYRA tracks. Zero. That's one positive for the last three years at NYRA tracks.

By comparison, in 2019, the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission reported 37 medication related rulings. California had 99. Pennsylvania 80. Florida 55. West Virginia 57. Ohio 24.

Perhaps New York's testing laboratory at Morrisville State College, under the direction of Dr. George Maylin, is using different criteria for calling positive tests than laboratories testing for other racing states. Maybe the Morrisville lab isn't very good. Or maybe, just maybe, racing in New York is cleaner than anywhere else in the country.

While I don't know about the criteria used by Maylin to call positives, the idea that his lab is not very good is foolhardy. Maylin was the head of drug testing at Cornell University going back to the early 1970s until moving his test tubes and lab kits to Morrisville State College in 2010. That's nearly 50 years of being the kingpin for drug testing of New York racing, bridging Oscar Barrera to Jorge Navarro and Jason Servis.

The only conclusion I can come up with for the absence of medication violations in New York is that there aren't any. Not only is there no cheating going on, but horsemen there don't make the kinds of mistakes they occasionally do in other jurisdictions or have contamination issues from poppy seed bagels and grooms urinating in stalls. It must be the cleanest racing in the U.S.

Well done, New York racing. Well done.

That's my view from the eighth pole.

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USADA’s Dr. Tessa Muir: Industry Confidence In Anti-Doping Program Key Element To HISA Success

How will equine medication rules and enforcement be different once the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority becomes the federally mandated regulatory body for Thoroughbred racing next year?

For starters, for the first time, regulations related to medication, testing and enforcement will be uniform in every racing state. That's a tremendous achievement in itself.

Efforts to form uniform rules go back decades to the days of the National Association of State Racing Commissioners (predecessor of the Association of Racing Commissioners International). There has been incremental progress, through development of model rules that only went into effect if individual state racing commissions and sometimes legislators bought into them. Too often they didn't adopt them as written.

The enabling legislation creating the Authority, the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act, overcomes those hurdles. The Authority is a non-governmental agency that will have federal oversight from the Federal Trade Commission, especially in its formative stage. Prior to July 2022, when the Authority is scheduled to be operational, the FTC will be required to accept, reject or amend the rules that the Authority is now developing to regulate medication and safety policies.

Dr. Tessa Muir, who joined the United States Anti-Doping Agency as head of its newly created equine program earlier this year, is part of the team developing those regulations. While USADA does not yet have a contract with the Authority, it's fully expected that it will be the agency named to that position, enforcing anti-doping policies in much the way it does for athletes in the Olympics, Paralympics and UFC fighters from the world of mixed martial arts.

Muir has worked as a regulatory veterinarian with Racing Victoria in Australia and before then spent six years with the British Horseracing Authority as a veterinarian assistant and anti-doping manager.

“We are diligently working with the Authority,” Muir said in an interview with the Paulick Report. “The core rules that we are developing will form the basis of the program. Implementation is that final step in bringing HISA to reality.

“Alongside the rules,” Muir added, “we are working with the Authority and hope to have a contract in place with them ASAP.”

In parallel with development of medication regulations, which will lean heavily on existing guidelines from the International Federation of Horseracing Authorities and the Association of Racing Commissioners International, Muir said USADA and the Authority are also working through a business model to determine staffing or contract labor needed to enforce its program. Among other things, there will be a need for investigators and what USADA refers to as doping control officers.

“One of the really great things with combining USADA and its human side with its equine side – assuming we do have a signed contract with the Authority – is that there will be some crossover between what goes on in the human world and the equine world,” Muir said. “Clearly, there are a lot of things that are also different, but again, where possible, we'll be trying to leverage resources sensibly to make it as streamlined as possible.

“What we are looking to do is to take the best elements from good anti-doping programs, whether they be equine or human, and create consistent, thorough and robust rules that fit the U.S. Once we have those rules, we can enforce them to ensure clean racing, the health and welfare and long-term soundness of our equine athletes.”

USADA and the Authority will also need to establish laboratory standards and an accreditation program before determining which of the existing drug testing laboratories will be utilized. While laws in some racing jurisdictions currently require testing to be conducted at in-state university labs, the assumption is that the enabling federal legislation will supersede such state laws.

Muir said post-race sampling will continue to be a part of a USADA anti-doping program, but it's obvious a significant focus will be on out-of-competition testing. Achieving what she calls a “gold standard” program will not happen overnight. Muir puts an 18- to 24-month timeline on that goal.

“A lot of it relates to collection of the data and to have a smart testing program, whether that be in or out of competition,” Muir said. “You have to develop the technology and the information and intelligence from the investigations to form that big picture on how you conduct testing.”

Muir describes best practices out-of-competition testing as an “anywhere, anytime”program that will be accompanied by a “whereabouts” requirement. That means the location of horses may need to be reported to the Authority or to USADA at all times so that surprise visits by doping control officers may take place.

“The intent of the (federal law) is that horses are accessible at any time at any place from the point of their first workout until they retire from racing,” Muir said. “In order to conduct that 'no-advance-notice' testing anywhere at anytime, you need whereabouts information in order to find the horse. That really is a critical underpinning for prevention, deterrence and detection of misuse of substances. Whilst specifics of how that may look are currently not finalized, if you look at any good anti-doping program in the world, whereabouts is a really key component. And that requires locations, not just while horses are in training but when they are in other locations resting or pre-training.”

Muir said testing is not the only way to catch violators, since some substances can be very difficult to detect.

“When you look at blood doping agents or illicit substances, it's not just things like EPO that are potentially difficult to detect,” she said. “There are other substances such as insulin, which have relatively short detection windows but potentially a much larger window for effect.

“In general terms, detection of a prohibited substance in a sample is only one of a number of different anti-doping rule violations. That detection isn't necessarily the only way to determine that someone has broken the rules.”

Muir listed anonymous tip lines as an important tool, though realizes that racing, like other sports that have struggled to control performance-enhancing drug use, there seems to be a de facto code of silence among many participants.

For that to change, Muir said, the industry will need to buy in to the principle that clean racing is better for everyone.

“The testing investigations comes under the responsibility of the enforcement agency (presumably USADA), but the tip lines and other things must have industry ownership,” she said. “When it comes to the responsibility for clean racing and preventing, deterring and detecting people who might be doing the wrong thing, it's the responsibility of the whole industry to call that out and prevent it and to stand up for clean racing.”

Muir admits that won't happen if the industry lacks confidence in USADA and the Authority.

“People have got to have confidence in those enforcing the rules, that they are acting on and doing the right thing,” she said. “I've had a lot of respect for USADA for a long time: that voice for the clean athletes and those doing the right thing. On the equine side it's the same proposition: standing up for the good people who are doing the right thing. They need to have trust that those enforcing the rules are going to help stand up for their rights.”

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Maryland THA Issues Warning on Adjunct Bleeder Medication

The Maryland Thoroughbred Horsemen's Association issued the following statement to its members Tuesday:

“Effective immediately, horsemen are urged to discontinue the use of any and all adjunct bleeder medications for horses in training, including in particular, aminocaproic acid–commonly called Amicar.

Amicar and several other adjunct bleeder medications were placed on the Prohibited List in 2013 under the Association of Racing Commissioners International Uniform Classification Guidelines for Foreign Substances and Recommended Penalties Model Code and the National Uniform Medication Program. Aminocaproic acid, for example is a Class 4 substance and penalty Class C.

“It is important to understand that these medications cannot be regulated by withdrawal time guidance and/or a testing threshold and their use, no matter how far in advance of a race, may trigger a positive post-race test.

“Any trainer who chooses to continue the use of these medications for training in the future will run the risk of a post-race positive test.”

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CBD: Should It be Used on the Backstretch?

In March of 2018 when the ground around Ontario was frozen solid as a rock, Warren Byrne took a nasty spill.

He had just hopped on a hot-headed unraced 3-year-old gelding when it took off blindly. Byrne was pitched onto the hard ground, breaking his upper arm–an extensive fracture that required a plate and seven screws.

After the surgery, doctors warned Byrne that he was suffering bone-density issues from a medication he had long taken, describing the problem as being akin to early osteoporosis. He also reacted badly to the prescribed opioid painkillers, and instead, was given a set of cannabidiol (CBD)-containing products to manage the pain.

At the nine-week follow-up, the surgeon looked at Byrne's X-rays and laughed. “He said, 'get the hell out of here. You have enough bone regrowth here I could take some out and give it to my next patient,'” recalled Byrne. A little more than two weeks after that, Byrne was back on a horse.

A former bloodstock agent and show jumper, Byrne ascribes the rapid turn-around in his bone density problems to CBD, and was so enamored with the part it played in his convalescence, he started his own company called CannaHorse, which gears CBD products to the horse community.

His fledgling business–recently invested in by animal health giant Bimeda–capitalizes on the fast-growing popularity of CBD in human use to treat a score of common problems besides fractures, including arthritis, anxiety, and inflammatory diseases. Athletes are using it to manage many common physical stresses that come with high-level training and performance.

The rollout of CBD products in the world of equine athletes has been rockier, due mainly to a lack of hard research into its effects in horses and in the longevity of CBD and its metabolites in the horse's system. That, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved it only for human use.

Just recently, a CBD positive in California prompted the California Horse Racing Board (CHRB) to issue a memo to trainers warning of the consequences of CBD use, especially in a marketplace that's currently largely unregulated.

“You have to be really careful when you use these herbal products because you really don't know what's in them,” said CHRB equine medical director Rick Arthur. “And there are products out there that have CBD in them that they may not be aware of.”

Coady

But Byrne said he believed that as the rules surrounding the use of regulated therapeutic medications continue to tighten in horse racing, and as the scientific literature behind CBD continues to grow, CBD could provide a useful alternative tool to manage the typical aches, pains, and stresses of training and racing.

“As more and more people are starting to see cannabinoids are medically beneficial, I think we're hopeful this becomes a holistic issue for horses,” he said.

Primer

While derived from both marijuana and industrial hemp plants, CBD is not responsible for any intoxicating effect. What it does is stimulate the endocannabinoid system (ECS), described as “one of the most important physiologic systems involved in establishing and maintaining human health,” impacting as it does things like sleep patterns, mood, memory, appetite, and fertility.

Endocannabinoids–molecules made within the body–and their receptors are ubiquitous throughout the brain, organs, connective tissues, glands, and immune cells.

CBD already has its foot firmly in the door in the human sport's world. In 2018, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) approved its use in athletics, and many international sports federations, said Byrne, have followed suit.

Indeed, leading lights from the worlds of UFC, golf, and track and field tip their hat to CBD use. This year's Olympics at Tokyo will be the first time athletes will be legally permitted to use it at the games. But at present, equine sports have largely pressed the handbrake.

In May of 2019, the U.S. Equestrian Federation (USEF) prohibited CBD and CBD metabolites in competition, warning that CBD products are likely to affect the performance of a horse due to its reported anxiolytic effects, which are those related to anxiety and stress reduction. “This substance is no different than legitimate therapeutics that affect mentation and behavior in horses,” the federation wrote.

Its burgeoning use prompted the Racing Medication & Testing Consortium (RMTC) to issue a cannabidiol bulletin in 2019, warning of some of the risks from CBD use in racehorses, especially when it comes to the threat of a positive finding, the consequences of which are not inconsiderable. The Association of Racing Commissioners International (ARCI) currently lists CBD as a class 2 category B penalty.

While CBD products are required to contain less than 0.3% tetrahydrocannabinol (THC)–the main psychoactive ingredient in cannabis–poor regulatory oversight of the CBD market means that some contain much more THC than that. The ARCI lists THC a class 1, category A substance.

Extracted THC and CBD | Getty Images

Among some of the research conducted in small animals, CBD has been shown to potentially ameliorate anxiety in rats and osteoarthritis in dogs, and even help reduce the frequency of seizures in dogs. As for horses, the RMTC release noted how at that time, “no peer reviewed published research was identified that evaluated the effects of CBD.”

Since then, however, researchers out of Murray State University in Kentucky have studied the pharmacokinetics–the behavior of the drug in the body–in Quarter Horses fed pellets containing CBD up to a maximum of 250 milligrams.

They found that after 12 hours, none of the horses had levels of CBD above the lower level of quantitation. The results suggested a peak concentration in the system after two hours.

This March, a group of researchers from U C Davis published a paper showing the drug's behavior in Thoroughbreds administered oral doses of CBD up to two milligrams per kilogram (mg/kg).

They found that in the majority of cases, CBD was below the level of quantitation at 72 hours, but that two common CBD metabolites were above that level at that same point in time, suggesting that certain CBD metabolites are going to be an important factor in determining any future CBD product withdrawal time for competition.

While neither study found any negative behaviors or effects from CBD in horses–including any gastrointestinal or cardiac issues–Arthur said the findings of the UC Davis study shows how ingredients that remained in the blood had an inflammatory effect at 72 hours.

Indeed, this recent University of Kentucky study found that CBD appears to have an anti-inflammatory effect in senior age horses.

Arthur said that this effect could “conceivably” lead to questions of equine welfare and safety.

“All we're saying is that drugs have an effect longer than you can measure the drugs,” said Arthur. “EPO's probably the best example. We can find EPO for 48, 72 hours at most. But the effect lasts for weeks, possibly months.”

Coady”

According to Byrne, there's an important physiological difference between the anti-inflammatory effect that CBD has versus a commonly prescribed anti-inflammatory like phenylbutazone, or bute.

“The way the endocannabinoid system works is to push the body towards homeostasis,” he said. “That's the crux of why WADA feels that it's safe. It's not going to block the pain. It's not going to numb the pain. It helps the body manage the pain better.”

Future studies

The overall science, however, behind CBD use in horses is still noticeably scant, which is why CannaHorse conducted its own private study in Prague in January looking at the effects from low doses of CBD administered orally to horses.

The data's still being processed, said Byrne, but he was able to share how CBD did not trigger gastrointestinal problems, cause sedation, harm the liver, or change blood pressure and heart rate outside of usual ranges. In this regard, “it has lined up with all the other studies that have been done,” said Byrne.

Unlike some of those other horse studies, however, those tests conducted in Prague suggested CBD helped calm the horses and reduce anxiety, said Byrne.

The results of the January study precipitated the launch of their first product, called Equilibrium, for which the company has earmarked further research.

One planned study will seek to see if it has any calming effect on horses boxed up and vanned for three hours. Another is a fracture healing study, geared around horses with bucked shins. The other will test the product's CBD elimination time, including metabolites, from the horse's system.

Testing concerns aren't just driven by the uncertain elimination times. CBD products are largely unregulated, leading to much variation in purity, consistency, and safety. Indeed, inconsistencies in concentration are said to occur frequently even among batches from the same manufacturer.

Byrne, however, swears that his products–designed, he said, by a team of equine science specialists–are created in such a way they maintain their quality and consistency to a much higher degree than others.

Using a manufacturer in California, he said, they isolate only “pharmaceutical grade” cannabinoids and terpenes, another part of the hemp plant with therapeutic properties.

“When we combine them, we're able to create a very repeatable product, which is very rare in cannabinoid medicine,” said Byrne.

Because of this consistency, Byrne said that he's confident CBD in Equilibrium can be eliminated from the blood within 48 hours. However, “The million-dollar question is: Can we get the metabolites to clear that quickly? That I can't tell you,” said Byrne. “When it comes to withdrawal times, that's what we really need to [focus] most of the further research on.”

Given these hovering question marks–and the potentially serious consequences from a CBD positive–Byrne said that he treads lightly when discussing his products to figures in racing. “I have not spent much time pursuing the racing world,” said Byrne. “Having this around the racetrack is probably not something I want to be pushing at this point.”

That said, Byrne does push back against claims in some quarters about the ease with which the use of CBD products in humans is said to possibly lead to inadvertent positives in horses via skin-on-skin touch.

He pointed to a human study showing how the topical application of a THC-containing product didn't trigger a positive finding in blood or urine.

“One of the popular products for people who want the pain relief, but they have to be careful of passing the drug test, is topical THC,” said Byrne, who described topical THC as a much stronger analgesic than topical CBD. “People will use it because it does not break the blood barrier, unless there was an open wound or something.”

Arthur, however, is more circumspect. “This is all relatively new,” he said. “We don't know all the ways horses can be exposed with CBD.”

Arthur added that one of his colleagues at U C Davis believes “it may be possible if someone smoked marijuana in close proximity to a horse, you might be able to [transmit] some of these cannabidiol metabolites. But we don't know that for certain.”

Sarah Andrew

Legal maze

Another reason for Byrne's cautious approach to promoting his products concerns the legal maze that surrounds how CBD is sold and prescribed across the country, with some states banning the sale of certain CBD products for both human and animal use.

Indeed, according to Arthur, the team at U C Davis had to “jump through hoops” to get their CBD study approved by the FDA.

Does Arthur see a future, however, where CBD products are widely used on the backstretch? “I could certainly see a pharmaceutical with cannabidiol in it that you could actually control and measure the withdrawal time, set at an appropriate threshold or screening limit.”

In the meantime, interest in CBD is likely only to grow, said Byrne, pointing to “a name you would know in Kentucky” who voiced interest in CBD to help an 18-year-old mare who hadn't had a foal in three years.

Byrne said he explained CBD wasn't necessarily a fertility drug, but that it could be a useful tool to help reduce her nervous energy and manage inflammation issues she had been troubled with.

“They had the mare on it for about 18 days. She was bred last Thursday, and was checked prior to breeding, and had two follicles that were as big and healthy as she had had in the three years this man had taken care of her. She ovulated properly, and the vet did not need to prescribe her an anti-inflammatory,” said Byrne.

“This is a single situation,” Byrne added. “It's a long, long way from carrying a foal term. But it's interesting anecdotally.”

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