Mountaineer Park | Horse Racing Free Tips

‘Ongoing Power Outage’ Forces Second Straight Cancellation At Mountaineer

Both Sunday and Monday's cards at Mountaineer in New Cumberland, WV have been cancelled due to an “ongoing power outage,” track announcer Peter Berry posted on Twitter.

High winds and heavy rain hit the area on Sunday, and power outages have been reported across the region.

Mountaineer races on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. No plans have been announced either by Berry or on the track website for the cards on Tuesday, Nov. 17, or Wednesday, Nov. 18.

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Serrano’s Drug Test Raises Questions About How Racing Will Deal With Medical Marijuana Cards

The legalization of medical marijuana has been spreading across the United States for the past several years, and on July 27, stewards at Mountaineer Park faced a decision that racing jurisdictions around the country will likely see more of in the near future.

Jockey Keivan Serrano underwent a random drug test on July 26, and was found to have THC, or tetrahydrocannabinol, in his system. (THC is the primary psychoactive compound in marijuana.)

Serrano possesses a medical marijuana card, though it was obtained in Ohio. Mountaineer is located in New Cumberland, W.V. and Ohio's medical marijuana office does not have any reciprocity agreements with other states.

West Virginia passed a medical cannabis bill three years ago when Senate Bill 386 was signed into law on Apr. 19, 2017. The bill's language set a goal of having infrastructure such as dispensaries, medical marijuana cards, etc., in place within two years, but it still hasn't happened.

“Medical marijuana is legal in West Virginia,” said West Virginia attorney Harley Wagner. “The legislation has been passed, it's just that the components to it actually coming to fruition aren't in place yet.”

Until then, any individual caught with marijuana in their possession in West Virginia is still able to be cited by police. Wagner explained that for a small amount of marijuana, the case could be taken to court and the citation could be expunged after six months if the person does not accrue any similar citations.

Serrano did not have any marijuana in his possession when he was tested by the stewards at Mountaineer. At the time of his testing — after the races on July 26 — Serrano said he was straightforward with the testing agent about his medical marijuana card, and included the information on the official testing report.

Serrano said stewards called him the following morning to tell him he'd tested positive for THC, as he'd expected. They asked about Serrano's card, and why he had the prescription.

“I use it to sleep at night,” Serrano said. “We race at night, and sometimes I don't get home until 11:30 at night, then I'd have to get up again at five the next morning. So it helps me sleep.”

Serrano said the stewards asked him to send them the documentation he had in his possession, because West Virginia racing rules indicate that a licensee testing positive for a prescription drug is not subject to penalties, under rule 178-1-24.3.v. He also said that the stewards told him this was their first time dealing with a medical marijuana card held by a licensee.

It was Serrano's second positive test for THC in 2020 — he also tested positive at Fonner Park in Nebraska back in March.

Serrano found out via the ARCI website on July 29 that he had been summarily suspended by the stewards, pending a hearing scheduled for Aug. 5.

According to Joe Moore, executive director of the West Virginia Racing Commission, Serrano was suspended because he “did not produce a document which identified the amount or dosage of medical marijuana that was permissible for him to ingest in appropriate and specified intervals, nor did he produce a document that would have allowed the Stewards to determine whether the amount of THC in his system was consistent with a prescribed dosage.”

The level of THC in Serrano's system at the time of the test was not made public in the official ruling.

Serrano made waves on social media after the suspension became public, announcing he was leaving the sport of horse racing, but the 22-year-old said his retirement from the saddle had been on the horizon for a while.

“I've always struggled with my weight, and I always told myself that if I ever got scared or if I got too heavy, that I would stop,” Serrano said. “I don't want to not give owners and trainers 100 percent, because that's something I pride myself on.”

Serrano plans to return to school in Puerto Rico. He'll attend pre-med classes online beginning in August with the goal of one day becoming a neurosurgeon.

“I had a good run,” said Serrano, who retires with 105 wins from 1,129 starts. “I don't have any regrets.”

In the meantime, the West Virginia racing commission has not officially made a determination regarding the use of medical marijuana in licensees, including jockeys.

“The West Virginia Racing Commission has not addressed medical marijuana in its rules inasmuch as the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources (WVDHHR), the state agency responsible for administering West Virginia's medical marijuana program, has not implemented the program and rules in West Virginia,” Moore explained. “It remains to be seen how the state of West Virginia will address the recognition of other state programs and other state medical marijuana authorization cards. Until such time as the Racing Commission has more direction and guidance from the WVDHHR, it is premature to make amendments to the rules of racing.”

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Breeders’ Cup Presents Connections: Scaling The Mountain Isn’t For ‘The Faint Of Heart’

The standings at any given track are certainly not the end-all, be-all when it comes to measuring a trainer's performance with racehorses. That said, the current standings at West Virginia's Mountaineer Park present a compelling picture of an up-and-coming young trainer who has finally earned a chance to show what he can do.

Ben Delong has saddled 14 winners from 46 starters at Mountaineer this year, placing him second in the standings behind Jay Bernardini, who has 15 wins from 133 starts. The 34-year-old Delong is in the middle of a career year, despite the pandemic, posting his highest-ever earnings and poised to eclipse his highest number of winners.

“I'm on a hot streak right now, but I'll be honest with you, I'm just feeding faster horses,” Delong said, laughing. “I had some new owners who did well at the end of last year, and they started sending me new horses. I used to have 15 to 20 horses, and now I have 45 to 50. It's just having the quality of horses and going where I think they're going to be live.”

Delong isn't stabled at Mountaineer in New Cumberland, W.Va., but instead bases his operation at the Ashwood Training Center in Lexington, Ky. Being at Ashwood allows Delong to be hands-on with the horses from the first time they wear a saddle all the way to the winner's circle, and everything in between. He even drives the trailer hauling the horses to the races, more often than not.

“I'm just not suited for a nine-to-five (kind of job),” he said. “I guess I'm on the five-to-nine schedule instead.”

Perhaps the biggest win of his career came last fall at Churchill Downs, when Delong saddled A Girl Named Jac to win a maiden special weight event at odds of 17-1. The filly was his first winner beneath the Twin Spires.

A $5,500 yearling purchase at the Keeneland September sale in 2018, the Ontario-bred daughter of Point of Entry was sent to Delong to be started under saddle. He liked the filly from the start, so when the owners approached him in 2019 about training her in exchange for an ownership stake, Delong agreed.

“I took her on a deal because I liked the horse, and because I only had about eight horses at the time, so I was more than willing to jump on it,” he explained. “She turned out to be a pretty decent little horse.”

A Girl Named Jac finished third in her debut at Indiana Grand on Nov. 1, then returned to win the Churchill race in mid-November. In February, Delong and the other partners sold her at OBS for $75,000.

It was a big deal for the long-time gallop hand to prove he could both see and develop a horse's potential, not only to the outside world, but to himself as well. Delong never got the opportunity to be an assistant under a big-name trainer, or to learn the art of training through any of the more traditional methods.

Instead, he was raised around the backside of Fairmount Park in Illinois by his father, a former jockey. Delong wanted to travel as soon as he was able, so he left his home track at 17 to work the circuit between Prairie Meadows in Iowa, Remington Park in Oklahoma, and Oaklawn Park in Arkansas. Delong galloped for different trainers, freelancing early on, and eventually picked up a salary job for Wayne Catalano.

Things changed when he and his fiancée, Cassie Corvin, had a daughter in 2009. Delong knew he needed to stabilize his lifestyle, and in 2011 he made the move to Lexington and got a job galloping for Kellyn Gorder. He kept freelancing on the side as well, and it was one of those freelance mounts, a horse named Compromisin I'mnot, that drew Delong into the training business.

The owner was looking to move the mare and wound up giving her to Delong. He took out his trainer's license, and Compromisin I'mnot gave him his first winner in 2013 at the now-defunct Beulah Park. In all, the mare ran in-the-money 12 out of 14 starts, and Delong knew he wanted to keep training.

Without an assistant position on the horizon, however, Delong started out training a few cheap horses of his own while galloping full-time. He would run them wherever he thought they could do well, often shipping out of town to do so.

“It's easier to ship and know you're going to get a check,” Delong said. “I'll never turn my back on the little small tracks. I'm obviously from one, I never look down on them.”

It took until 2018 for Delong to eclipse $100,000 in earnings; he won 20 races that year.

“I definitely had to learn by trial and error,” said Delong. “I was a very stubborn individual as I got into it, but as I got older, I realized asking for help is not a bad thing. Though, if it wasn't for being so stubborn, I probably would have chosen a different path!

“I guess you could say I worked under dad, because he taught me all I know about horses. He's pretty sharp with horses, since he trained and was a jockey, and he galloped for a lot of years for a lot of people. When I've got a question I don't know the answer to, he's my go-to guy.”

Though his father is now semi-retired at age 65, he still lives at Ashwood and helps out when he can. Delong racing remains a family operation, through-and-through; Delong's fiancée works Saturdays and Sundays at a hospital in Elizabethtown as a radiology technician, and she gets up early Monday mornings to help exercise horses at Ashwood.

“I couldn't do it without her,” Delong said. “We had plans to get married before COVID hit, but we put them on the back burner. We're gonna make a date soon enough, but we both have plans for the future and neither one of us is going anywhere; that piece of paper isn't going to change our life or our commitment.”

Delong also has a trusted assistant, Sherman Mitchell, whose 23-year-old son, Austin “Worm” Mitchell, is learning to be a groom and helps haul horses to the races when Delong has other commitments. (Worm earned his nickname because as a young boy he loved fishing so much that he used to carry worms around in his pockets.)

“He wanted to move forward and do like I did, working side by side with his dad,” Delong said of the younger Mitchell, now his barn foreman. “I can really rely on him. He goes above and beyond anything I could ask him to do, and he definitely wants to make sure the horses are where they need to be.”

Despite the pandemic and its effect on racing this year, things are looking up for Delong in 2020. He remains committed to the game because he loves the horses, but he admits there were times it wasn't easy to keep making his way to the track every morning.

“The racetrack is a very hard game,” Delong said. “It's not for the faint of heart, and you have to be willing to do a lot of going without to get where you want to be. Everybody wants to be able to move to the top of the game, but I'm a day-by-day kind of guy. Obviously I've got to deal with what I've got in front of me, and when I've got that kind of horse to go to that level, I'll be ready for it.”

At the end of the day, he just wants to provide a better life for his daughter, who hopes to be a marine biologist.

“Hopefully I can give her more than I had,” Delong said.

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‘It Was A Ride, All Right’: Serrano Gets Himself Out Of Sticky Spot In Mountaineer Ride

Keivan Serrano is not someone who panics when he finds himself in a tight spot.

“One thing I learned is not to panic, because panic can make it a lot worse,” said the young jockey. “I go out there and there's no fear. The day that I'm scared to do what I do, is the day I need to stop.”

That's why, when he saw Side Tracked drift to the right out of the Number One gate in Sunday's third race at Mountaineer, he began weighing his options. At first, Serrano thought he could steer his colt, a maiden named Bungalow Flash, to the right to avoid the domino effect. Then he saw Just Doing to his outside, wandering toward him, and found himself squeezed between two horses and forced out of the tack.

“I thought I was going to fall,” he said. “To be completely hoenst with you, this is one of my main stables and I knew we had a really good shot to win the race. I was going to do everything I could to stay on this horse. The only thing I felt behind me was the eight horse, so I just sort of pushed off him and pushed back in[to the saddle].

“It was a ride, all right.”

Serrano said he was able to work his feet back into the stirrups while remaining mindful of the colt's mouth, not wanting to balance against the reins and check the horse.

In the end, his patience paid off – Serrano finished third, just a nose behind runner-up Juliano.

“I came into the race with all the confidence in the world in this horse,” he said. “Up until we did finish the race, I thought I was going to get the second.”

It isn't the first time he's used this move of pushing off a rival to pop himself back in the tack – just last year, he found himself in a similar position out of the gate in a turf race at Mountaineer and got himself righted again.

Cheating gravity is all in a day's work for Serrano, 22, who said he's living out a longtime dream of becoming a professional jockey. Growing up in Puerto Rico, Serrano said he always had horses and had hoped to go through the island's popular Escuela Vocacional Hípica, but found he ultimately didn't qualify. He moved to New York at the age of 18 and wandered the backstretch looking for someone to give him a job as an exercise rider. He had never galloped a horse before, but didn't mention that.

“I had never touched a racehorse in my life,” he said. “I went around telling people, 'Yeah, I'm an exercise rider.' I'd ridden horses before, just not racehorses. I'm 18, I'm thinking it's the same thing. I remember getting on horses and the first one I got on was a tank – big, tall. I had never been that high off the ground. Of course, it ran off with me. I didn't know what I was doing.”

That was in September 2016. Serrano later went to Ocala, as many aspiring jockeys do, to sharpen his skills with young horses just learning themselves. He got his license and began riding in March 2017.

Serrano said he learned to ride Thoroughbreds by feel. Horses were not a foreign language to him. As a kid, he studied jockeys on television and picked up a $100 horse to practice riding, honing his position as best he could from what he saw. By the time he got to New York, his sense of balance was well-developed, as was his sense of horsemanship.

Serrano said he still maintains contact with one particular four-legged teacher back home in Puerto Rico – a filly out of a mare he rescued when she was pregnant. The mare foaled uneventfully, but not long after that, things started to get complicated.

“At about two and a half months old, the mare started rejecting the foal and I had no idea why,” he said. “I finally pulled her away and started bottle feeding her until she could nibble on grass, on grain. She'd follow me around my hometown like a puppy. I could take her to the beach and run around, she'd jump in the water with me. That was pretty cool.

“Before I left Puerto Rico, I had five horses. I sold them all except her. I donated her to this place in San Juan where they could use her as a therapy horse for kids with special needs. I thought that was something she could fit perfectly in. I get updates on her — she's three now and she does her job very well.”

These days, Serrano can be found predominantly at Mountaineer, where his unconventional route to the saddle is paying off — he's the meet leader by earnings.

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