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NYRA Announces New COVID-19 Protocols For Jockeys

The New York Racing Association, Inc. (NYRA) has announced COVID-19 health and safety protocols for jockeys during the 2020/21 Aqueduct winter meet, which will open on Thursday, Dec. 10 and run through Sunday, March 28.

The 56-day Aqueduct winter meet will include 42 stakes races worth $4.57 million in purse money. In order to mitigate risk and reduce the spread of COVID-19, Aqueduct will be closed to riders that are not regular members of the NYRA jockey colony as of Dec. 31.

To account for NYRA's 10-day holiday break from December 21 through Dec. 30, jockeys interested in being included in the regular NYRA jockey colony must contact NYRA for consideration by Dec. 31.

Members of the regular NYRA jockey colony who travel to ride at any other racetrack during the Aqueduct winter meet will be required to provide two negative COVID-19 tests taken within a 5-day window in order to return to ride at Aqueduct. Jockeys traveling out of state who have completed the required testing will then be physically isolated in the jockey quarters for three additional calendar days. All COVID-19 testing must be performed in New York state.

In addition to race day safety protocols which include standard health screening and temperature checks, the jockey quarters at Aqueduct have been substantially altered to provide maximum social distancing and reduce density. All areas accessed by jockeys during the regular course of a race day are closed to outside personnel, including credentialed media, and are cleaned and disinfected throughout the day. Jockeys are not permitted access to the barn area at Belmont Park.

Jockey agents must produce a negative COVID-19 test in order to gain access to the barn area. Races will continue to be drawn via Zoom. Valets working in in the jockey quarters are not permitted in the barn area.

Live racing during the Aqueduct winter meet will generally be conducted Thursday through Sunday until the end of February and the addition of special Monday cards on Jan. 18 for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and Feb. 15 for Presidents' Day. Live racing in March will be offered Friday through Sunday through the conclusion of the winter meet on March 28.

For additional information, and the complete winter meet stakes schedule, please visit https://www.nyra.com/aqueduct/racing/stakes-schedule.

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Kentucky, New York Move Toward Tougher Restrictions On Clenbuterol

Trainers in several states could soon contend with tougher restrictions on the administration of clenbuterol, a bronchodilator prescribed for respiratory issues which veterinarians say can be misused. At a Dec. 1 meeting of the Kentucky Equine Drug Research Council (EDRC), committee members passed a proposed rule change for the drug which would move administration time from 14 days pre-race to 21 days pre-race, with a requirement the horse be tested for the substance before being cleared to run.

Clenbuterol is a beta-2 agonist which is known as an effective solution for horses battling respiratory ailments — a particularly common problem in racetrack barns which often have poor ventilation. Like other beta-2 agonists, however, it can also decrease body fat and increase muscle mass, particularly by converting slow twitch muscle to fast twitch muscle when used repeatedly.

At a September meeting of the EDRC, Kentucky Horse Racing Commission equine medical director Dr. Bruce Howard revealed that nearly 100 percent of Kentucky-based horses from trainers currently under federal indictment showed signs of clenbuterol administration when they were hair tested. Howard has also seen instances of veterinarians prescribing the drug to every horse in the barn.

The measure to move back the drug's administration time was not without debate. Dr. Andy Roberts, member of the EDRC and longtime Standardbred veterinarian, raised concerns about the harness population's ability to treat horses for illness under a 21-day withdrawal.

“I don't want to diminish the concerns about clenbuterol, because I think it's not illegitimate to want to control its administration to legitimate therapeutic purposes, however I think the Standardbreds are taking it quite strongly in the shorts in this because our horses race every week,” said Roberts. “There's almost no opportunity to put horses on clenbuterol already. Several other states already recognize this and have shorter withdrawals on clenbuterol.”

Roberts asked Howard whether out-of-competition testing at Red Mile had detected any clenbuterol use thus far, and Howard said it had not.

“That's because you've taken the drug out of my hands on a therapeutic basis,” said Roberts, who also maintained that the repartitioning effect of clenbuterol on muscle lasts for 11 days. “Passing rules based on speculation that somebody else is doing something — and I say this specifically from a Standardbred point of view because these horses are in to go often enough that you have already severely limited my ability to use this drug properly. People would rather leave horses sick and end up with pleural pneumonia than treat them with clenbuterol. That means we are over-regulating it.”

The 21-day window is based on the limit of detection by drug testing laboratories tasked with finding clenbuterol in a horse's urine sample. Blood and urine tests would be used to clear a horse to race after clenbuterol administration. Hair samples would show clenbuterol administration for up to six to twelve months after administration, but are highly variable depending on hair growth rates.

All EDRC committee members except Roberts voted for the increased restriction.

The vote comes a day after commissioners in New York expressed an interest in restricting clenbuterol use there, too. The Daily Racing Form reported the New York State Gaming Commission voted to require veterinarians to seek permission from the equine medical director before administering the drug, and that horses receiving clenbuterol must pass drug tests showing it has cleared the system before being permitted to run. That is similar to rule language being considered in other Mid-Atlantic states. In Canada, clenbuterol administration was pushed out to 28 days pre-race earlier this year. The American Quarter Horse Association announced a zero tolerance policy on clenbuterol in 2014, which has subsequently been picked up by several states where Quarter Horse racing is a central part of the calendar.

Experts have raised concerns about the potential for clenbuterol abuse for years, but the drug has made more headlines this year, as influential trainers like Mark Casse have called it one of the “most abused drug in our industry.”

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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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Rice Emails Suggest Entry Information Did Not Necessarily Convert To Additional Wins

On the sixth day of a hearing examining her receipt of information from the New York Racing Association (NYRA) racing office, trainer Linda Rice said the emails provided to her by entry clerk Jose Morales had minimal impact on her decisions about which races to enter or the results of those races.

Rice continued her testimony started Wednesday before a hearing officer as part of the the proceedings, which will determine whether her actions were “inconsistent with and detrimental to the bests interests of racing generally” or were “improper acts and practices relating to racing” according to state rules. An investigation by the New York State Gaming Commission uncovered evidence that between 2011 and 2015, Rice received faxes and emails from former entry clerks Jose Morales and Matt Salvato, giving her the names and past performance records of horses prior to draw time. Senior racing office management has said the names of trainers and horses in a given race are not to be released until after a race is drawn (with stakes races being the exception).

On Thursday, Rice described the circumstances around her first getting this type of information from Morales. As the horse shortage in New York began to worsen, Rice remembered that racing office personnel became more aggressive about “hustling” races, or trying to convince trainers to enter their horses. She recalled being in the racing office several times when a clerk would print out current entries with horse names and past performance records and let her look at the sheet. She also said she witnessed this happening with other trainers.

Rice said she often asked NYRA stakes coordinator Andrew Byrnes to provide her lists of stakes nominations along with an idea of which horses were probables for a stakes race, which is not considered confidential information. She recalled one morning when Morales called to say he had faxed her this information on a stakes race she'd requested, along with entry and past performance information for a race she hadn't asked about, which he was tasked with hustling.

“I thought for a second, 'That's odd,'” she said. “But I'd already had him slide the races across the desk in the racing office and seen other racing clerks do it so I didn't think much of it.”

Rice is accused of receiving this information on an ongoing basis, both for races Morales was hustling and for races she requested to see. Morales initially faxed the information to Rice's office but switched to using email when the fax machine was out of order one morning. Fax transmission records are no longer kept from the period of time in question, so the commission's evidence focuses on copies of emails accessed by investigators.

Rice revealed that of 74 or 75 emails with race information, she entered horses in 23 of the races included in those emails. She won three of those races. Rice said there were around 80 races on the NYRA circuit she entered during the same period of time for which she did not receive any information from Morales. For the period of time covered by the emails, Rice said she won 16 percent of her races, a bit lower than her usual 20 percent.

There were many factors that determined whether or not Rice would enter a horse in one of the races for which Morales provided entry information. She said she typically points horses at races two or three weeks ahead of time and is not inclined to change the horse's program just because the office is hustling a race. She also bases some of those decisions on whether or not a preferred rider is available, in addition to the usual factors like a horse's performance in workouts, physical condition, etc.

Rice also addressed testimony from earlier in the hearing that she had a tendency to enter a race and then later swap out one horse for another. This wasn't due to any insider info from Morales, Rice said, but more likely because turf races would attract so many entries that the racing office would give preference to horses who had not yet run at the meet. If she learned a race was oversubscribed and her entry had already run at the meet, she might swap another horse in that was more likely to make the final cut.

Andrew Turro, Rice's attorney, completed questioning the trainer at the conclusion of Thursday's hearing. Thursday had originally been scheduled as the final day for the hearing, but commission counsel has not yet had a chance to cross examine her, or to present any rebuttal evidence. An additional two days have been blocked out to conclude the hearing Dec. 9 and 10. No timeframe has been provided as to when the hearing officer may make a decision in the case.

Read previous coverage of the Rice hearing here.

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