Joe Drape | Horse Racing Free Tips

FX And New York Times To Team Up On Documentary Series That Will Focus On Racing’s Problems

FX, a division of Disney Entertainment, has announced that its series “The New York Times Presents” will feature a documentary called “Broken Horses” that will examine “the systematic issues, questionable practices and urgent calls for change that have shaken horse racing to its core.” The series will air sometime in 2024 and will be shown on FX and Hulu.

FX has posted a short video on-line featuring Arthur Hancock, who says: “We've got to get rid of the bad actors in the sport and we've got to get rid of all these drugs.” That is followed up by a recording of two individuals discussing how a horse “galloped” after given a substance that one of the individuals admitted was a doping agent.

Over the last several years, The New York Times's coverage of horse racing has been extremely negative and focused on breakdowns and doping, so the sport should be prepared for the FX documentary to pick up on the same themes and to cast a harsh light on the sport.

According to press release issued by FX, New York Times reporters Joe Drape, Melissa Hoppert, Rachel Abrams and Liz Day investigated the period surrounding this year's Triple Crown races when an unusually high number of horses broke down.

The press release continues: “With confidential documents and recordings and exclusive interviews, “Broken Horses” provides a vivid tour of the business and political forces that control the Sport of Kings and resist measures to implement changes that could decrease horse deaths. It is a story of reckless breeding and doping, of compromised veterinarians and trainers, and of fans who are drawn to the sport's beauty and pageantry but increasingly wonder how long one of America's oldest sports can continue to have its social license renewed.”

Executive Producers are Esther Dere, Jason Stallman, Liz Day, Sam Dolnick, Stephanie Preiss, Ken Druckerman and Banks Tarver. Dere also serves as the Showrunner of “The New York Times Presents.” Rachel Abrams is Senior Producer.

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NY Times: Forte Failed Drug Test After Hopeful

The New York Times is reporting that Forte (Violence), the Kentucky Derby favorite who was scratched on the morning of the race with a bruised right front hoof, failed a drug test after his win in last September's Hopeful Stakes at Saratoga.

Forte won the Hopeful by three lengths over a muddy track at odds of 6-1.

In a story published Tuesday just after 7 p.m., the Times writes, “Shortly after leaving the winner's circle, however, Forte was given a post-race drug test, which he failed but has yet to be adjudicated before New York regulators, according to two people who are familiar with the matter but are not authorized to speak about it. The positive test was for a substance used to relieve pain and reduce inflammation, according to those two people.”

The Times story does not say what that substance was.

The story, written by Joe Drape, quotes an unnamed spokesperson from the New York Gaming Commission as saying, “This matter likely would have been adjudicated months ago but for the repeated procedural delays sought by the trainer's counsel.”

The trainer's counsel, according to Drape, is lawyer Karen Murphy, who did not issue a comment to The Times.

The story says that, “After several delays, New York racing officials are scheduled on Wednesday to hear from Forte's trainer, the Hall of Famer Todd Pletcher, about the failed drug test from September, according to the two people.”

A spokesman for the New York Gaming Commission confirmed the accuracy of Drape's story. “We see no inaccuracies in the story as published,” said Brad Maione, Director of Communications of the NYSGC, in response to a request for comment from the TDN.

Texts and phone calls to owner Mike Repole, trainer Todd Pletcher, and Murphy were not immediately returned.

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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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Baffert’s Lawyer: Drape’s `False’ Story `Debunked’

Bob Baffert’s attorney issued a statement Tuesday saying that New York Times reporter Joe Drape’s reporting in 2019 on Justify’s scopolamine positive was a “false story and narrative” which “were definitively debunked” in last week’s California Horse Racing Board hearing on the matter.

The statement from attorney W. Craig Robertson III reads, in full:

“On September 11, 2019, Joe Drape of the New York Times published an article concerning trainer Bob Baffert and Triple Crown-winning horse Justify. The article strongly and inaccurately suggested that Mr. Baffert had intentionally doped Justify with scopolamine in the 2018 Santa Anita Derby, and falsely stated that scopolamine was a performance-enhancing substance. Mr. Drape similarly implied that the California Horse Racing Board, which had investigated the facts surrounding Justify and determined that there had been no wrongdoing, was corrupt and covering up for Mr. Baffert’s alleged misconduct.

“Last week, Mr. Drape’s false story and narrative were definitively debunked. In a public hearing on the Justify case, the California Horse Racing Board, which now consists of members that are entirely different from the allegedly `corrupt’ ones in place in 2018, stipulated that the presence of scopolamine in Justify: (1) was the result of environmental contamination, specifically that Justify was inadvertently exposed to hay containing a naturally growing plant called jimsonweed, which contains scopolamine; and (2) there was no performance-enhancing effect on Justify in the Santa Anita Derby. Thus, it has now been conclusively and legally established that the entire premise of the (2019) New York Times story on Justify was false.

“Mr. Drape’s coverage of Mr. Baffert continues to be inaccurate in other significant respects. For example, recently he has repeatedly accused Mr. Baffert of medication violations in Arkansas and Kentucky involving “banned” substances when, in fact, each of those cases involve lawful, therapeutic medications. These representations are similarly false and must be corrected.”

On October 22, Drape wrote that Gamine had tested positive for a “banned substance” in the Times. Robertson responded at the time, “Betamethasone is a legal, commonly used anti-inflammatory medication. It is not a `banned substance.’ ”

Robertson’s Tuesday email to the media said that Baffert would be issuing his own statement Wednesday.

In August, the CHRB announced that the win by Justify in the 2018 running of the GI Santa Anita Derby would come under official administrative scrutiny by the organization, but that Baffert, the trainer of the eventual undefeated Triple Crown winner, would not have a CHRB complaint lodged against him “due to substantial evidence that the scopolamine resulted from environmental contamination from jimson weed.”

The CHRB has yet to issue a ruling following last week’s scopolamine hearing.

A now-controversial 2018 commission vote to exonerate Justify and Baffert was not publicly disclosed, and took place privately after a detailed investigation that substantiated the environmental contamination by jimsonweed. In roughly the same timeframe in 2018, the CHRB received positive post-race tests for scopolamine on five other horses from other barns, and the CHRB eventually treated them all as unintentional jimsonweed contaminations from ingesting tainted hay.

“This case was correctly decided by the CHRB in 2018. It was a final and binding decision. And nothing has changed since then, and you all should simply affirm that decision so that we can put this matter to bed once and for all,” said Robertson at last week’s hearing. “When that investigation was complete, there were two things that were clear, undisputed and undeniable. Number one, that this was a case of innocent environmental contamination from hay and it was not a case of any intentional administration of any drug or medication. And number two, that the trace levels of scopolamine…had no effect on the performance of these horses and no effect on the races.”

Drape revealed the scopolamine positive in a New York Times article September 11, 2019 in which he wrote, “Justify should not have run in the Derby, if the sport’s rules were followed” and suggested that the investigation had not been detailed at all.

“It decided, with little evidence,” he wrote, “that the positive test could have been a result of Justify’s eating contaminated food. The board voted unanimously to dismiss the case. In October, it changed the penalty for a scopolamine violation to the lesser penalty of a fine and possible suspension.”

Testimony at last Thursday’s hearing indicated that change in classification of scopolamine was already in the works long before Justify’s positive.

In the story on the hearing, the TDN’s T.D. Thornton wrote, “The CHRB, by its own regulation, follows the Association of Racing Commissioners International (ARCI) Uniform Classification Guidelines for Foreign Substances and Recommended Penalties when establishing model rules for drugs. The ARCI once classified scopolamine as a Class 3 drug (lower-number classifications are more severe). But in December 2016, the ARCI reclassified it to a lesser Class 4 offense.

“Arthur testified that the CHRB fully intended to follow the ARCI’s model rule that reclassified scopolamine (and other drugs that also changed classes). But since California’s Office of Administrative Law doesn’t allow the CHRB to change rules by automatically referencing another authority’s code, the racing agency has to go through a drawn-out process to make even minute changes such as drug reclassifications. So because of this bureaucratic backlog, scopolamine in 2018 was still technically Class 3 in California, even though Arthur and the CHRB considered it to match the ARCI’s newer Class 4 downgrade.

“Arthur explained how as the equine medical director, he has regulatory leeway to take into consideration mitigating circumstances, and that’s what he did when recommending no initial penalties for the scopolamine positives.”

“It is inherently unfair to hold somebody to a classification that is outdated because of regulatory inefficiency,” Arthur said at the hearing.

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