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HISA And Oaklawn Park Designate Area For Intra-Articular Injection Treatments

The Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority and Oaklawn Park have launched a new pilot program under which a designated area will be available for veterinarians to administer any intra-articular corticosteroid injections at the racetrack during the track's 2023-2024 race season beginning Friday, Dec. 8, HISA said in a press release Wednesday.

As HISA laid out in its Strategic Response to recent equine fatalities, many stakeholders, including a significant number of individuals calling into HIWU's confidential tip line, have questioned whether Covered Persons are properly and accurately reporting intra-articular corticosteroid injections.

In order to address this issue and ensure injections are administered in compliance with HISA's Anti-Doping and Medication Control regulations, HISA proposed two possible solutions: (1) a designated area at the racetrack for all intra-articular injections to be administered; or (2) the requirement of a short video of the veterinarian performing the intra-articular injection to be uploaded with the injection report.

Oaklawn has volunteered to test the first of these potential solutions. Under this pilot program, Oaklawn will offer a designated private location at its Summer Bird Barn for intra-articular injections and will compensate Covered Persons who volunteer to have them administered there up to $250 for the first 100 intra-articular corticosteroid injections this season.

All intra-articular corticosteroid injections prescribed and administered by a veterinarian at Oaklawn must be observed in-person by the track's Integrity Officer, Beverly Fowler, or another designated racetrack employee, regardless of whether it is administered in the designated location.

The pilot program will be used to determine the feasibility and value of this approach, as well as to identify challenges that would need to be resolved for it to be successful nationally.

“HISA is thankful for Oaklawn Park's willingness to test this process, which has been used successfully in sport horses for many years,” said HISA CEO Lisa Lazarus. “By testing this concept, the Oaklawn team is contributing meaningfully to HISA's efforts to make the sport safer and more transparent. Based on horsemen and veterinarian feedback and results, designated intra-articular injection treatment areas may eventually be presented to the Racetrack Safety Committee to consider promulgating a uniform rule.”

“Oaklawn Park is pleased to be a leader in equine health and safety,” said Louis Cella, President, Oaklawn Park. “It is clear to us that the sport must evolve and continue to do everything in its power to keep horses safe. We support HISA's efforts to explore new methods of ensuring safety and integrity and we appreciate our horsemen's support and engagement.”

Prior to each intra-articular injection at Oaklawn this season, the trainer or veterinarian must inform the Integrity Officer of the day and time it will be administered to ensure she or a designee are present. Injection appointments may be scheduled by calling the Integrity Officer at (501) 762-3864.

The veterinarian and Integrity Officer, or their designee, must fill out and sign an accompanying form and submit photos of the medication that is being injected. A copy of the form will be provided to the veterinarian administering the injection, the trainer, the Integrity Officer's office and the State Veterinarian.

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HISA and Palantir Develop AI-Enabled Tool to Help Identify At-Risk Horses

The Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority (HISA) has partnered with Palantir Technologies, a leading provider of artificial intelligence systems, to create a data-enabled tool to assist industry stakeholders in identifying horses at risk for injury before they race, according to a press release Tuesday morning from HISA. The tool will generate a daily report for each racetrack, flagging any horses entered in that day's races who may present potential risk factors for injury. This enables identification of at-risk horses with increased efficiency and accuracy and will inform the hands-on pre-race inspections of each runner.

The new tool HISA and Palantir have developed reviews health information and historical entry data to determine whether each horse entered in a race is at increased risk for injury based on various factors. The tool accounts for such risk factors as the length of a horse's previous layoff (if any), term with current trainer, history on the vet's list and other indicators of previous injury or poor performance. The process for evaluating these records for each horse entered in a race had previously taken veterinarians an average of five hours per race. This same review can now be accomplished in a matter of minutes.

“HISA continues to work with leading partners like Palantir to utilize data and technology in its mission to reduce equine injuries and fatalities,” said HISA CEO Lisa Lazarus. “Our hope is that this revolutionary technology is used to more efficiently and accurately identify horses at risk of injury as part of the screening process for determining if they're fit to race. This powerful, AI-enabled tool will streamline and automate a process that had previously taken significant time away from veterinarians' hands-on care of horses. We're excited to be working with the experts at Palantir on this and future initiatives.”

“Palantir is proud to support HISA in its embrace of technology to reduce equine injuries and fatalities,” said Palantir's Head of Global Commercial Ted Mabrey. “HISA came to a Bootcamp for Palantir's Artificial Intelligence Platform (AIP) this fall and has rapidly scaled its implementation independently. HISA is proving that real world outcomes, in this case equine safety, can be achieved in weeks with the acceleration that AIP and boot camps provide.”

“By leveraging Palantir's technology, HISA is helping to significantly reduce the time it takes to identify horses potentially at risk,” said Steve Keech, Director of Data Usage and Technology Innovation for HISA. “We look forward to rolling this tool out to all racetracks under HISA's jurisdiction. This collaboration with Palantir puts us at the forefront of sports technology, and I have no doubt this partnership will be a game-changer for the safety of equine athletes.”

HISA said they expected to begin using this tool in early 2024. It will send daily reports to racetracks and regulatory veterinarians around the country that will provide them with data and resources .

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60 Minutes Airs Expose On Horse Racing Doping

The CBS news program “60 Minutes,” which aired Sunday evening included a segment that covered horse racing's worst problems, horses breaking down and dying and the use of performance-enhancing drugs on horses. 60 Minutes often reaches as many as 12 million viewers. The segment was hosted by correspondent Cecilia Vega.

Though the program gave ample time to Jockey Club Chairman Stuart Janney III, Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority CEO Lisa Lazarus, Meadowlands owner Jeff Gural, and others who have been working to solve the problems, it left no doubt that the sport has pressing issues that if left unsolved threaten its existence.

“Horse racing has reached its moment of reckoning and we wanted to know, `can the sport really be reformed or is it too late?'” Vega said.

What followed was a recantation of the rash of fatalities that surrounded the GI Kentucky Derby and other major events, which included graphic footage of horses dying on the track.

“People who are not in your world see this headline of more than a dozen dead horses and they think, `what is going on in that industry?'” Vega asked Lazarus.

“My response is that HISA is here now and we're going to address it,” she said.

She continued: “There's clearly a problem that needs to be addressed and now we have some tools to fight it. We really owe it to those trainers who have spent their lives in this sport who have an incredible amount of integrity to get rid of those who tarnish this sport.”

It was not hard to get industry leaders to admit that doping is a major issue that has yet to be brought under control.

“(Doping) is a big problem,” Janney said. “It strikes at the integrity of the sport. There's nothing about it that is acceptable.”

Asked how the sport can clean itself up, Janney replied: “You put people away. You send them out of the sport and some of them go to jail.”

That very process began in March of 2020 when more than 33 veterinarians, trainers and drug distributors were charged by the Justice Department for using and manufacturing performance-enhancing drugs.

“The FBI said this led to broken legs, cardiac issues and in some cases death,” Vega said.

The show played wiretaps of conversations between convicted trainer Jorge Navarro and a another trainer in which Navarro bragged about how the drugs he was using made his horses run faster.

“I (expletive) gave it to this horse and this horse (expletive) galloped. He galloped,” Navarro said to the unidentified trainer.

“Amino acids?” the other trainer asked.

“Yeah, some amino acid injectable. Small bottle,” Navarro replied.

They also played wiretaps from harness trainer Nick Surick in which he spoke of how he was put in charge of disposing of horses that Navarro had killed.

The FBI was assisted by 5 Stones Intelligence, which was hired by The Jockey Club and Meadowlands owner Jeff Gural. Janney said 5 Stones was told to not be afraid to go after the biggest names in the sport, like Navarro and Servis.

“I said I'm not interested in you going in an finding a relatively unimportant person working in someone's barn who has made a bet they shouldn't have made or has done something immaterial to what we're talking about,” he said. “I want you to go after the important people that I think are corrupting the sport.”

Before they were arrested, Servis and Navarro were clearly worried they could be caught and that the penalties could ruin their careers. A wiretap caught them saying the following:

Servis: We can't do it in broad daylight, we got to do it like…”

Navarro: “I know. I'll keep it at my…I'll keep…I'll keep it in my car. I ain't worried about that.”

Servis: What about, what I am-I don't want people to see that (expletive). We are dead. We are dead.”

Shaun Richards, who was the lead FBI agent on the case that nabbed Navarro, Jason Servis and others, spoke a hopeful note, that the progress made with the arrests has put investigators, HISA and others on the right trail.

” We're right where we need to be,” he said. “We have a really good subject identified and we are getting fantastic evidence.”

Vega asked Lazarus “How long will it take to clean this up?”

“It will probably take years to be truly confident that we've got a fully clean sport,” she said.

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Given 22-Month Suspension From HIWU, Trainer Poole Calls Process A ‘Joke’

When two members of Gulfstream Park's security team and a veterinarian descended on his barn on the morning of June 2, the 62-year-old trainer Jeff Poole didn't think he had anything to worry about. According to the Jockey Club's Thoroughbred Regulatory Rulings website, Poole, who has been training since 1989, had never had a violation of any kind. And his recent record–he had won 11 races combined since 2021–hardly suggested that he was a trainer who was taking an edge.

Even when investigators found in his office a tube of Thyro-L, which is used with horses for the correction of conditions associated with low-circulating thyroid hormone, Poole wasn't that alarmed. He was given a prescription for the medication in September to use on a horse that was subsequently transferred to another trainer a month later. He says he had not used the drug on any horse since. At the time, it was perfectly legal to use the drug if a prescription had been obtained and in the states Poole raced in, Florida and Ohio, it was not illegal to possess the medication.

Then everything changed on May 22 when the Horseracing Integrity and Welfare Unit (HIWU) took over, handling the drug testing at most U.S. racetracks and levying the penalties for those who were found to have violated HIWU rules. Under the new Anti-Doping and Medication Control (ADMC) rules, the mere possession of Thyro-L was a serious violation as the drug had been designated a banned substance. Suspensions for banned substances carry suspensions of up to two years.

Jeff Poole was in a lot of trouble.

“I was totally unaware I had (Thyro-L),” he said. “I would have thrown it away. I wasn't even using it and they don't accuse me of using it. All they've accused me of is having it. It is not a performance-enhancing drug. This is a joke.”

Poole got the prescription for use on a horse named King Andres on Sept. 27, 2022 while the horse was training at Thistledown. After that race, he was transferred to the barn of trainer Randy Faulkner. The Thyro-L prescription was written by Dr. Scott Shell. In what may be nothing more than a coincidence, Shell was provisionally suspended by HIWU for being in possession of banned substances, none of which were Thyro-L.

From Thistledown, Poole shipped to Tampa Bay Downs and then to Gulfstream. He said that on each occasion his employees packed up everything that wasn't nailed down in his tack room and office, which included the tube of Thyro-L. While it should have been thrown away, it was simply forgotten and thrown in with the rest of Poole's belongings.

One thing Poole cannot do and has not tried to do is claim ignorance. He admits that on March 15, 2023, while at Tampa Bay Downs, he sat in on a presentation from HIWU Chief of Science Dr. Mary Scollay in which Scollay warned trainers that new rules were about to go into effect and that they needed to get rid of medications that were about to fall into the banned substance category. Thyro-L was specifically mentioned.

“I'm hitting myself over the head,” Poole said. “This is so stupid. I could have gotten rid of the stuff. I just didn't think about it. Too much else on my mind.”

Poole decided to fight, which led to having a hearing before an arbitrator that took place on July 26. That gave him plenty of time to think, beginning with why someone would have inspected his barn in the first place.

“They said someone tipped them off that it was in my office,” Poole said. “As far as I'm concerned, they must have sent a stool pigeon into my place. I never would have let anybody in my office who wasn't a friend. And if a friend saw it and knew what was going on, they would have said 'Jeff, get rid of that stuff. You're not allowed to have it anymore.'”

He's also followed other HIWU cases and claims a pattern is emerging whereby it seems that the majority of those who have been suspended are small-time trainers with limited resources. (Ironically, in his ruling, arbitrator Jeffrey Benz referred to Poole as a “high-level trainer of thoroughbred racehorses.”)

“(HISA CEO) Lisa Lazarus talks about how they're not trying to get rid of the little people but it looks to me like that's exactly what they're trying to do,” Poole said. “They gave me 22 months and I never had a bad drug test on a horse ever. They don't care about destroying a man's life when it's totally unnecessary. Horses are my life.”

Lazarus has had to respond to accusations that HISA is targeting small stables many times. When asked to comment on Poole's accusations she said “The ADMC program is completely unbiased” and referred to a letter to the editor she wrote to the TDN that addressed that issue.

During the first weeks of his suspension, Poole did nothing. He remained convinced that his side of the story would hit home with whomever was to decide his fate and that he would be exonerated. He was, of course, wrong.

“I thought this would all be straightened out,” he said. “I never dreamt they'd do this to me. I sat for months with no income. It got to the point where I couldn't keep doing it. I couldn't make a red cent. There was nothing but money going out.”

Once the arbitrator ruled against him, upheld the 22-month suspension plus a $10,000 fine and ordered Poole to pay $8,000 in arbitration costs, he knew he had to do something. While most trainers who have been provisionally suspended by HIWU have sat on the sidelines, Poole moved his stable to Mountaineer Park. HISA does not have jurisdiction over West Virginia racing. The same goes for Louisiana. So Poole is free to race in both states.

“West Virginia is not my home,” he said. “This is not where I want to be. My home is in Tampa, Florida. Every year I look forward to going home. After Mountaineer closes, my only option is to try to get stalls in Louisiana at the Fair Grounds. That's not a place I ever wanted to go to in my life, but it's either that or welcome to Walmart.”

Poole realizes he made mistakes. He was told by Scollay that Thyro-L was going to become a banned substance and that he needed to get rid of it if he had any in his barn. He ignored her warning. He also understands the trainer responsibility rule. No matter what he might think about the rules regarding Thyro-L, he was in possession of a banned substance and under the trainer responsibility rule he had set himself up for a penalty.

But what he can't understand is why he was suspended 22 months and fined $18,000 for what he considers to be a very minor offense.

“I expected to probably be fined for not discarding it,” he said. “But 22 months? If they think that's fair, that's beyond me. Officials, trainers, owners, everybody is telling me how unfair it was what they did to me. But I didn't see it coming. I don't think I deserve anything more than a possible fine.”

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