Parx Trainer Vega Handed 730-Day Suspension By Pennsylvania Stewards, Plans Appeal

Trainer/owner Ricardo Vega, who operates Richard Vega Racing Stable, was hit with a 730-day suspension on June 29 for possession of 21 loaded syringes, 18 needles, one filled IV bag and an IV catheter. Vega was summarily suspended by emergency order in late May after a large-scale raid at Parx turned up prohibited items, though previous rulings had not included many details about what was found.

The ruling, which was issued by the Pennsylvania board of stewards, stated the contraband was found in a locked tack room belonging to Vega, though Vega's attorney, Alan Pincus, has said previously the tack room was utilized by multiple trainers and was not kept locked.

The ruling did not specify what substances were in the equipment found in the raid. Pincus said he has not been provided with test results on the substances but pointed to comments made by Pennsylvania Horse Racing Commission executive director Tom Chuckas at a June 29 commission meeting saying the May raids turned up “nothing of substance.”

The suspension is scheduled to run from June 29, 2021 to June 28, 2023. Pincus told the Paulick Report he filed an appeal of the June 29 stewards' ruling with the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania.

Vega has not saddled a horse since May 19 due to the summary suspension that was put in place ahead of the stewards' hearing on the matter. Pincus has also filed a request for a stay of the summary suspension, and said July 6 the courts have not yet decided whether Vega will be permitted to train while the appeals process is worked out.

Vega is a member of the Parx Hall of Fame and has trained winners of over 1,100 races to earnings of more than $19.5 million. He took out his trainer's license in 1992 after starting in the business as a hotwalker in Florida in the 1980s and working as an assistant to Al Hinson. He is a graded stakes-placed trainer and is the conditioner of Dulce Realidad, Philadelphia Park's Horse of the Year and Champion Three-Year-Old Filly in 2008 and 1999 Philadelphia Park Claiming Horse of the Year Open Ice Hit. Among other clients, Vega has trained horses for Dun Roamin Farm, the nom de course for Pennsylvania Thoroughbred Horsemen's Association president Sal DeBunda, who represents the THA as a member of the Pennsylvania Horse Racing Commission.

According to a report presented at a regular meeting of the Pennsylvania Horse Racing Commission May 25, state investigators searched six barns, six tack rooms, five grooms' quarters and five external tack rooms. They also completed 66 out-of-competition tests. Although he could not reveal specifics, commission executive director Tom Chuckas said at that meeting the raid revealed “a significant amount of contraband … dealing with medications, either unlabeled, compounded, or expired.

“I regret to say that there were contraband that have no business on the backside, like needles and syringes and some other things that we discovered,” Chuckas said.

Pennsylvania state code prohibits anyone other than licensed veterinarians from possessing syringes, needles, or injectable medications on the backstretch.

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Pennsylvania Casinos Reopen Monday

Pennsylvania casinos have been greenlighted to reopen as of Monday, Jan. 4, rekindling revenue streams that fund Thoroughbred purses in the state.

Governor Tom Wolf announced Dec. 30 that because COVID-19 mitigation efforts have been working to tamp down the spread of the pandemic, he will allow more stringent safety restrictions that went into effect Dec. 12 to expire as planned.

But that doesn’t mean a full-blown opening for the 13 casinos in the state: Mitigation efforts will roll back to what they were on Dec. 11, which still caps casinos at 50% of occupancy. Similar restrictions were also eased for other social activities, like indoor dining, gyms, theaters and high school sports.

Parx and Penn National are the only two Thoroughbred tracks operating in Pennsylvania at this time of year.

“I think that’s really good news. We can go back to getting monies from the casinos, and that’s very important to us,” said Pennsylvania Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association President Sal DeBunda in a video message posted to the organization’s website Dec.31.

DeBunda noted owners will still not be able to enter the winner’s circle to pose with their horses, “so it’s not a total open situation, but it’s back to the old rules before the mitigation rules were put in.”

Earlier this week, Penn National had announced a contingency plan to stay open through the month of January based on maintaining a nightly handle benchmark of $1.4 million in the event that Wolf had decided to extend the casino shutdown.

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