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Quarter Horse Connections Hit With Lengthy Suspensions For Clenbuterol And Albuterol

The New Mexico Racing Commission has doled out several lengthy suspension sentences related to post-race findings of clenbuterol and albuterol in the state this year.

Earlier this month, trainer Humberto Tena was given a 1 1/2-year suspension and a $15,000 fine after runner True Romance tested positive for clenbuterol after finishing third in the Zia Quarter Horse Futurity Trials on July 10. The suspension is retroactive from July 24 and will continue through Jan. 24, 2022. Tena was assigned six points on his license under the multiple medication violation point system and has also been fined $15,000. True Romance is raced under the stable name 21 Partnership, identified as Anwar Elias in the Nov. 12 ruling.

In October, trainer Robert Duane Sanderson was also suspended 18 months for a finding of albuterol in trainee Mr. Desert Wrangler after the fourth race at The Downs at Albuquerque on Aug. 23. Sanderson's suspension is retroactive from his summary suspension Sept. 3, 2020 and is set to continue through March 3, 2022. Sanderson was also fined $15,000 and given six MMV points on his license. Mr. Desert Wrangler is owned by Ramon Trejo, who failed to appear before the commission on the matter.

New Mexico stewards said last week they had not received notices of appeal from either Sanderson or Tena.

Earlier this year, a clenbuterol finding in Gabbis Mountain triggered a year-long suspension and a $10,000 fine for trainer Janell Sanderson. This is the first year of training for Sanderson, who saddled 25 horses and six winners in 2020. Gabbis Mountain had formerly been one of them for owner Jorge L Fernandez, having won the fifth race on June 5 at Ruidoso by disqualification. Janell Sanderson was also summarily suspended June 12 after the commission alleged she failed to comply with an order for out-of-competition testing for ten horses in her care.

All horses have been disqualified from the affected races and declared unplaced, and purses redistributed.

New Mexico has zero tolerance for clenbuterol and albuterol in both Quarter Horses and Thoroughbreds.

Clenbuterol can be prescribed legitimately as a therapeutic medication to treat respiratory illness in horses, but can also be abused for its anabolic-like side effects if given repeatedly over time. Albuterol, well known for its therapeutic use for human breathing conditions, was rumored to have become the choice of trainers looking for the same impacts of clenbuterol after that drug was banned in the state.

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New York Advances Clenbuterol Restrictions

The New York clenbuterol clampdown that was foreshadowed earlier this month by New York State Gaming Commission (NYSGC) equine medical director Scott Palmer, VMD, has been codified into a series of proposed rule amendments that advanced Nov. 30 by a unanimous 5-0 commission vote.

The new clenbuterol regulations follow a model rule of the Racing Medication and Testing Consortium (RMTC) that was approved last August. After publication in the New York State Register and a public commentary period, the commission will have to vote again to formally adopt the changes.

According to a brief written by NYSGC general counsel Edmund Burns that was included in the informational packet for Monday’s meeting, “The proposed rule amendments would require the attending veterinarian to receive written approval of the Commission’s Equine Medical Director of a clenbuterol treatment plan for an identified horse prior to the start of such treatment.

“The proposal would also require horses treated with clenbuterol to be placed on the veterinarian’s list and not be removed until a workout for a regulatory veterinarian is performed and the horse is found to be negative for clenbuterol in blood and urine…

“In addition, horses on the veterinarian’s list for clenbuterol use would be required to submit to periodic tests while on such list to ensure that no more clenbuterol is administered to the horse than necessary to complete the pre-approved treatment regimen and to ensure that muscle-building and fat-reducing effects have dissipated before the horse is removed from the veterinarian’s list.”

Over the course of about two decades, clenbuterol in Thoroughbred racing has devolved from being a legit drug administered to effectively treat airway diseases to a substance of performance-enhancing abuse that is now more often intentionally given to bulk up horses, allowing them to gain a pharmaceutical edge that makes the animals stronger and faster.

Speaking during a Nov. 11 video press conference hosted by stakeholders and regulators who make up an alliance of Mid-Atlantic racing interests, Palmer described the abuse of clenbuterol in this manner as “basically an end-run around on our anabolic steroid ban.”

Beyond the NYSGC, the Maryland Racing Commission, Gulfstream Park, and Oaklawn Park are among the jurisdictions and racetracks that have recently or are in the process of tightening clenbuterol rules to some degree. On May 1, the Canadian Pari-Mutuel Agency started banning clenbuterol 28 days out from race day at tracks country-wide. Back on Jan. 1, the California Horse Racing Board enacted clenbuterol rules that are similar to New York’s proposal.

Additionally, NYSGC executive director Robert Williams told commissioners Monday that “Pennsylvania has indicated that it will soon commence regulatory change, and it is expected that Delaware, New Jersey and Virginia will also consider the rule proposal.” West Virginia, he said, needs to change its clenbuterol rules via the state legislature.

Also on Monday, the commission unanimously adopted 13 new rules during the monthly meeting, with six pertaining specifically to Thoroughbred racing. They were:

A rule to restrict the administration to Thoroughbred horses of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) “such that only one clinical dose may be administered during the week before the horse races. The proposal would limit the administration to the intravenous route, and adopt stricter thresholds for the two most commonly used NSAIDs, flunixin and phenylbutazone, as has been recommended by the RMTC and adopted as a model rule by the Association of Racing Commissioners International (ARCI). The proposal also reduces the list of NSAIDs that could be administered lawfully within one week before the horse races to only three by eliminating the NSAIDs that are not widely used and for which the appropriate lab threshold is unclear.”

A rule requiring trainers to maintain a record of serious bleeding episodes, kept for up to four years, unless given to a subsequent trainer or owner or reported to the NYSGC. The commission will establish a reporting system to collect such information, and a trainer will be permitted to delegate this duty to the treating veterinarian.

A rule to allow a horse eligible for furosemide administrations to be removed from the furosemide list for the limited purpose of running in a race whose conditions forbid the administration of furosemide.

A rule requiring Thoroughbred trainers “to keep a record of equine drug administrations not recorded in veterinary records, including the drug, dose, and date and time of administration.” This requirement will create a record of drugs that are administered after having been dispensed by veterinarians, and will make such records available for inspection for a period of six months.

A rule to revise the Thoroughbred out-of-competition (OOC) sample collection rule, “intended to conform our existing rule to [the ARCI] model rule [that] has received widespread industry support. The new rule will authorize “an effective collection program that protects the constitutional rights of horse owners and trainers when a regulatory jurisdiction seeks to collect” OOC samples.

A rule to “strengthen the health and fitness protections and upgrade the licensing requirements for jockeys, apprentice jockeys, exercise riders and outriders who ride a Thoroughbred horse,” which also mandates a baseline concussion assessment for all licensees who horseback.

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Turns Out, Milkshaking May Not Do Much For Performance After All

Despite its use by trainers looking for an edge since the 1980s, a new study has suggested that the process of “milkshaking” a horse may in fact do nothing to enhance performance. A study published in September in the Journal of Equine Science rounded up previous research trials looking at the use of sodium bicarbonate in Thoroughbred and Standardbred racehorses.

The research team looked at seven randomized and controlled trials that spanned 74 horses and had been published in peer-reviewed journals. Horses were given sodium bicarbonate between two and a half and five hours ahead of exercise and had their results compared to control horses who did not get sodium bicarbonate. Exercise took different forms in different trials; sometimes the two groups of horses were put on a treadmill while in others they worked over the track. Both the time to exhaustion and performance were measured, and researchers could not find that the administration of the “milkshake” improved either factor in a statistically significant way. In fact, for treadmill exercises where time to exhaustion was measured, milkshaked horses actually performed slightly worse than their controls.

Sodium bicarbonate, usually given in the form of baking soda mixed with some sort of liquid, is typically given through nasogastric tube within hours of race time. It has long been believed by horsemen that the baking soda acts as a neutralizer of lactic acid, which is responsible for the feeling of achey or tired muscles during exertion.

For lead author Dr. Joshua Denham, lecturer in exercise science at RMIT University, the findings were not a surprise.

“Some recent reviews on the influence of sodium bicarbonate on endurance performance in humans have emphasized equivocal findings,” said Denham. “Given we know humans are prone to placebos, I was always skeptical about its utility as an ergogenic aid.”

Milkshaking has been banned within 24 hours of a race by most racing authorities, but the study suggests it “remains an issue in modern horse racing.” TCO2 tests, designed to pick up on the administration of sodium bicarbonate, are part of the standard pre-race testing procedures in most states, though not all horses in all races are tested in some places.

Besides being an uncomfortable and apparently unnecessary procedure, milkshaking can be dangerous if it goes wrong. In addition to potential gastric upset and possible injury to the nose and throat that can happen during tubing, an inexperienced practitioner can also send the tube down the trachea rather than the esophagus, sending the sludgy solution into the horse's lungs instead of the stomach.

It's not totally clear why people first began milkshaking horses, except that sodium bicarbonate ingestion was at one time thought to improve human athletic performance. The study authors note however that previous research shows this improvement at exercise periods of around four minutes in people, while flat races are significantly shorter. Of course, it's also possible human test subjects may have been influenced by a placebo effect.

“Although it's certainly not my area of expertise, I'm tempted to speculate that early positive findings in humans prompted trials in racehorses,” said Denham. “Some positive results may have occurred by chance or because the trials were always going to show positive results – whether it was on purpose or not. It reminds me of the church bell fallacy: Although one church bell rings at noon and another a block over rings one minute later, the first bell ringing did not cause the second one to chime. Once someone believes in something, it can be easy for them to pass on that information – whether it is accurate or not.”

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Waiting For New Defendants In Federal Case? You Could Be Waiting A While

Not for the first time, prosecutors hinted Tuesday that there could be additional indictments or additional co-defendants coming in the bombshell federal drug misbranding case from earlier this year — but again, they declined to commit to a timeframe about when any additional action could be coming.

The case focuses on an alleged horse doping ring that prosecutors say included trainers Jason Servis and Jorge Navarro, among others. A superseding indictment released earlier this month revised charges slightly, adding a wire/mail fraud charge against one subgroup of defendants and leaving out several defendants who had been named in the original documents unsealed in March. It remains unclear whether the defendants not named in the new indictment plan to enter guilty pleas. All defendants, either through Tuesday's telephonic conference or through their attorneys, entered pleas of not guilty to the charges in the new indictment.

Read more about the superseding indictment here.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew C. Adams had emphasized in previous conferences that the government's investigation is ongoing and he does not know what new information could still come to light. Defense counsel for Jason Servis and Dr. Seth Fishman expressed frustration with the open-ended nature of Adams' summary of the case, asking U.S. District Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil to set deadlines for the government to produce any further superseding indictments. Vyskocil declined to do so. Adams emphasized that his office did not anticipate any new indictments or new defendants would serve to slow down the existing case.

Adams also took a moment to highlight one distinction he said the government made in its superseding indictment about the types of substances described in the charges. Adams pointed out that it will not be up to the government to show whether or not the drugs named were effective at manipulating a race outcome.

“A drug that is promoted and intended to be a performance enhancer, but is a dud, is nevertheless a misbranded/adulterated drug for the purposes of this indictment and the intent remains the same for the creation and administration of those drugs,” said Adams.

Much of the discussion Tuesday focused on the difficulty of the enormous volume of evidence defense counsel must sort through as they prepare their various pre-trial motions. Adams said his office is making every effort to turn over as much information as possible well ahead of the timeframes normally required of prosecutors in this type of case, specifically so there will be as few large caches of data to go through as possible later on. Adams said his office is still in possession of nine electronic devices seized at the time of the defendants' arrest in March which experts are struggling to unlock and access and he does not know when or whether that information will become available to him.

There are a number of requirements in place for the government to provide evidence in its possession to the defense ahead of trial. That evidence is going through an expert whose job it is to identify any disclosure issues with the evidence, help to organize it, and provide it to the many defense attorneys involved — which avoids technical issues with the evidence, but also slows the process.

By all accounts, there are hundreds of thousands of pages of documents, transcripts, records, receipts, emails, and other evidence already disclosed in this case — terabytes of digital information. Fishman's attorney also revealed there were a number of drug test results and communications with the Hong Kong Jockey Club's drug testing lab as part of that evidence, though he did not expand further on what those results were.

Partially as a result of that volume of evidence, the timeline for the case was laid out only in part by Vyskocil Tuesday. Attorneys were asked to provide their first round of motions by Feb. 5; that first round is likely to include motions from defense attorneys to dismiss all or parts of the superseding indictment. The first round of motions is likely to be considered by the court at some point in April, with May as a possible target for a second round of attorney motions. Those dates could be revised further, depending on how much new evidence surfaces in the meantime.

Last week, a status conference for drug maker Scott Mangini set tentative deadlines for attorney motions and a trial date of May 10. Mangini's case also had a superseding indictment filed which did not substantially change the charges against him but which removed previous co-defendant Scott Robinson from his case. Robinson entered a plea in the case earlier this fall.

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