Northview Stallion Station Open House Saturday

Northview Stallion Station's stallion roster will be available for inspection during an open house Dec. 10 from 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. in Chesapeake City, Maryland. The roster includes: Eclipticalspraline, Engage, Galawi (Ire), Golden Lad, Great Notion, Hoppertunity, Irish War Cry, Madefromlucky, True Valour and Uncle Lino.

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Friday Racing Insights: American Pharoah Half To Hoppertunity Debuts At Del Mar

Sponsored by Alex Nichols Agency

8th-DMR, $80K, Msw, 3yo/up, 6 1/2f, 10:27 p.m.

   A $475,000 KEESEP yearling purchase by the Three Amigos, AMERICAN REFUGEE (American Pharoah) will be the 13th foal to race out of the GSP mare Refugee (Unaccounted For). This makes him a half-brother to MGISW & $4.7 million earner Hoppertunity (Any Given Saturday) and MGISW & 'TDN Rising Star' Executiveprivilege (First Samurai). This is also the family of champion 3-year-old filly & MGISW Davona Dale (Best Turn). Trained by Bob Baffert, who famously campaigned his sire and both of his half-siblings, and owned by the trio of Mike Pegram, Karl Watson, and Paul Weitman who also raced both half-siblings, American Refugee posted a near-bullet work July 23, going five furlongs in :59 1/5 (3/86) and followed that up with six furlongs in 1:12 4/5 (2/5) July 29. TJCIS PPs

4th-ELP, $80K, Msw, 2yo, f, 5f, 3:14 p.m.

   From the first crop of Triple Crown champion Justify, AUNT SHIRLEY debuts Friday for owner/breeder WinStar Farm LLC. The chestnut filly is out of a half-sister to MG1SW Decorated Knight (GB) (Gailieo {Ire}). Third dam Mariah's Storm (Rahy) is best known for producing the likes of European horse of the year and leading sire Giant's Causeway (Storm Cat) and New York-based sire Freud (Storm Cat). Second Dam Pearling's half-sister You'resothrilling (Storm Cat) has gone on to produce eight straight winners from as many to race including: G1 Tattersalls Irish Two Thousand Guineas winner Gleneagles (Ire) (Galileo {Ire}), MG1SW Happily (Ire) (Galileo {Ire}), G1 Prix de Diane Longines winner Joan of Arc (Ire) (Galileo {Ire}), and G1 Etihad Airways Irish One Thousand Guineas victor Marvellous (Ire) (Galileo {Ire}) amongst others. TJCIS PPs

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View From The Eighth Pole: Veering Off Into La-La Land

I seriously doubt if trainer Bob Baffert or anyone in his stable knowingly gave scopolamine to Justify prior to his victory in the Grade 1 Santa Anita Derby on April 7, 2018. But the drug showed up above the threshold limit in post-race testing for both the eventual Triple Crown winner and for Hoppertunity, another Baffert runner, who won the G3 Tokyo City Cup the following day at the Arcadia, Calif., track.

Scopolamine has found its way into California hay supplies via jimson weed, so it's not unreasonable to conclude the positive test was a result of environmental contamination. It's also unlikely that the drug's presence at a low yet impermissible level had any impact on performance.

But rules are rules.

According to California Horse Racing Board rule 1859.5 (Disqualification Upon Positive Test Finding), a positive test of drugs in classes 1, 2 or 3 (as defined by the CHRB) “shall require disqualification of the horse from the race in which it participated and forfeiture of any purse … regardless of culpability for the condition of the horse.”

In April 2018, scopolamine was a Class 3 drug under CHRB rules.

CHRB members, meeting in executive session on Aug. 23, 2018, circumvented those rules by voting to not pursue the matter, acceding to the recommendations of the CHRB's equine medical director, Dr. Rick Arthur, and the board's then-executive director, Rick Baedeker.

There is an old expression that “we don't know what we don't know.” In this case, we don't know how many previous times the board took such actions, stopping an alleged medication violation before it reached the stewards for a hearing. We do know the CHRB has prosecuted numerous cases of positive drug tests that any rational person would assume resulted from environmental contamination.

So what was different about this case?

For starters, by the time this came before the CHRB in August 2018, Justify had a) won the Triple Crown, b) had his breeding rights sold for a record $75 million, and c) been retired from racing. He was also trained by a Hall of Famer who had become the “face” of the sport.

Additionally, there was a can of worms labeled “Derby Points” that some might try to open if Justify was disqualified from the Santa Anita Derby, a race that gave the son of Scat Daddy the points needed to qualify for the Kentucky Derby field.

So the CHRB voted behind closed doors to end the investigation and successfully tamped down what could have been an embarrassing situation – until a September 2019 report by Joe Drape in the New York Times exposed what had happened.

There's another old expression that “it's not the crime, it's the coverup.” Scopolamine positives have been called before in California. Trainers were not sanctioned but their horses disqualified. No one likes when that happens, but it's a matter of following the rules. Maybe the rules need to be changed to accommodate environmental contaminations, but until that happens it isn't right for regulators to circumvent the rules they don't like.

The New York Times article hit as California racing was trying to recover from the high-profile equine fatality spike at Santa Anita earlier in the year that thrust the sport in the national spotlight in a most unflattering way. The handling of the Justify case only poured gasoline onto the regulatory fire.

The controversies riled the office of Gov. Gavin Newsom and dominoes started falling at the CHRB. Chuck Winner had already stepped down as board chairman when the Justify story broke. Vice chair Madeline Auerbach resigned from the board when she was passed over to chair the organization. Executive director Baedeker announced that he was retiring and other staff positions changed. New appointees came from outside the industry and without direct investment in racing or conflicts of interest.

Mick Ruis, who owned Santa Anita Derby runner-up Bolt d'Oro, sued the CHRB in January 2020, claiming he was entitled to the $600,000 first-place money from the race. In July, Ruis reached an agreement to settle the lawsuit when the CHRB said it would file a complaint to conduct a purse disqualification hearing on Justify. That hearing, which also included a complaint filed on Hoppertunity's positive test, was conducted on Oct. 29.

Here's where things start veering off into La-La Land.

The three stewards, John Herbuveaux, Kim Sawyer and Ron Church, did their due diligence sifting through the evidence and testimony. They put together a lengthy findings of fact and timeline, including making note that scopolamine changed from a Class 3 drug to Class 4 months after the Santa Anita Derby and Tokyo City Cup were run. The stewards did all the things you would expect them to do when conducting a hearing of this type and then making a determination.

Then they took the ultimate copout. No matter what the evidence was, no matter what the rules stated, they dismissed the complaint “because the CHRB has already ruled on this matter, in executive session, at the Aug. 23, 2018, meeting.”

Are you kidding me?

Unless this was some kind of carefully orchestrated kabuki theater involving CHRB members, staff and stewards to go through the motions of a hearing in order to satisfy the terms of the settlement agreement with Ruis – which seems highly unlikely – the final order by the stewards is mind-boggling.

If the stewards felt as though the matter was dismissed in August 2018, why did they go to the trouble of conducting a hearing? Couldn't they have sought clarification from legal counsel at the CHRB as to whether or not the matter was settled?

The order by the stewards may not be the final word. Attorney Darrell Vienna, representing Ruis, pointed out that California's Business and Professions Code, section 19517, states the CHRB “may overrule any steward's decision other than a decision to disqualify a horse due to a foul or a riding or driving infraction in a race, if a preponderance of the evidence indicates any of the following:

“1) The steward mistakenly interpreted the law.

“2) New evidence of a convincing nature is produced

“3) The best interests of racing and the state may be better served.

“…Furthermore, any decision pertaining to the distribution of purses may be changed only if a claim is made in writing to the board by one of the involved owners or trainers, and a preponderance of the evidence clearly indicates to the board that one or more of the grounds for protest, as outlined in regulations adopted by the board, has been substantiated.”

Within hours of the decision by the stewards to dismiss the complaint, Vienna filed a claim with the board on behalf of Ruis, asking for the CHRB to overrule the stewards.

The ball is back in the CHRB's court, but these are not the same CHRB members who opted to bury this matter in August 2018.

That's my view from the eighth pole.

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No Change In 2018 Santa Anita Derby Results As Stewards Dismiss Complaint In Justify/Hoppertunity Case

Justify's win in the 2018 Santa Anita Derby, and that of stablemate Hoppertunity in the 2018 Tokyo City Cup, will stand. The Santa Anita board of stewards voted Wednesday to dismiss a California Horse Racing Board (CHRB) complaint into the results of both races without any change in the final order of finish. The Board brought the complaint as part of a settlement agreement in a civil suit from Ruis Racing, which owned Bolt d'Oro, runner-up to Bob Baffert-trained Justify in the Santa Anita Derby.

The CHRB faced public outcry when a New York Times report revealed that post-race samples from both horses contained scopolamine, but that the board voted in a secretive, closed-door meeting not to pursue action against trainer Bob Baffert. CHRB equine medical director Dr. Rick Arthur advised the board that several other horses also showed levels of scopolamine in their systems around the same time, which led him to believe the tests were the result of environmental contamination. Scopolamine can sometimes be found as a result of exposure to jimson weed, which grows in California and may sometimes end up in hay or bedding.

“Even if this panel were to disagree with the CHRB's decision to dismiss these matters or the way the CHRB handled the situation it cannot be argued that the CHRB lacked the authority to do so,” read the stewards' decision. “The law specifically allows such actions to take place and the CHRB followed the law.”

Stewards heard evidence from the CHRB and connections of both horses on Oct. 29. The horses' connections went to court in an attempt to block a stewards' hearing on the 2020 CHRB complaint but were unsuccessful.

The complaint brought this year after the Ruis civil suit focused only on whether Justify and Hoppertunity should be disqualified. It was not designed to impose sanctions on Baffert or any other individual.

In a written explanation, the stewards said their decision came down to the timing of changes to the classification of scopolamine. At the time of the races, scopolamine was a Class 3 drug by California rule, which would have required automatic disqualification of a horse regardless of the reason it was present in a post-race sample. However, by the time of the closed meeting for the board to discuss the Justify finding, the Association of Racing Commissioners International (ARCI) had changed the classification of the substance to a Class 4. The CHRB voted on in a regular, open meeting held on Aug. 23, 2018 to adopt an amendment to its drug rules which put them in line with ARCI guidelines — including, among other things, changing scopolamine from a Class 3 to a Class 4. The presence of Class 4 or 5 substances in horses post-race does not include automatic disqualification as a penalty.

It was in the closed-door executive session portion of that same Aug. 23 meeting that the board heard information about the scopolamine positives, including that of Justify, and voted to dismiss the whole thing without filing a complaint or referring the matter to the stewards for a hearing. CHRB rules at the time permitted the board to handle the case this way, with no public disclosure.

Wednesday's stewards' decision acknowledges that Arthur warned the board during that executive session “there might be a perceived lack of transparency should the CHRB fail to go public with the decision and that it would probably not remain a secret.”

The decision went on to question how the outcome may have been different had it gone through the normal channels for a post-race finding and done so more quickly.

“It is the stewards' opinion that had this board of stewards heard the Justify and Hoppertunity complaints prior to Aug. 23, 2018, both horses would have been disqualified.”

See the full stewards' decision here.

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