Tag: The Paddock

Louis Grasso first came across my radar screen when I began investigating Eclipse Award-winning owner Michael Gill's Elk Creek Ranch in Pennsylvania in 2010. Gill, who had been the leading North American owner by wins and money earned in 2009 – the fourth time he led both categories – had assembled what I called a “Gang of Misfits” at the training center that included a number of current and future felons and rule breakers.

Grasso was one of those misfits.

Based on information provided by a whistleblower working at Elk Creek, Grasso, a New York-based veterinarian who primarily dealt with Standardbreds, would drive to the Chester County facility on a regular basis to treat Gill's horses with medication that Gill's principal vet, the late Kevin Brophy, apparently didn't have.

Years earlier, Grasso had been forced to surrender his racing license in New York and New Jersey after being the central figure in two criminal cases involving illegal medication. He was convicted in federal court in 1991 for selling anabolic steroids to an undercover agent and in 2005 was caught by Delaware police with what a racing commission source said was a “treasure trove” of prohibited drugs – including blood doping agents – after a high-speed car chase. He eventually pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of resisting arrest and put on probation with the threat that any violation may result in charges involving the confiscated drugs.

Veterinary boards took no action against Grasso.

It was not particularly surprising when I learned Grasso was one of those rounded up in the March 2020 FBI bust after a lengthy investigation into illegal doping in both Thoroughbred and Standardbred racing.

The indictment of Grasso was an eye-opener.

The volume of his doping was prodigious. Prosecutors alleged he supplied illegal drugs – including snake venom, a “pain shot,” and blood-doping agents – to trainers across the United States.  In 2019 alone, the indictment states, Grasso submitted false prescription information for drugs containing erythropoietin (EPO) to more than 10 pharmacies in at least seven states. Just for one trainer, Grasso is said to have ordered 4,000 units of EPO.

Grasso deceived government agencies, racing regulators, pharmacies, and the betting public, prosecutors said, ordering powerful drugs for non-existent animals using licenses of other veterinarians in some cases to try to avoid suspicion. He then peddled them to trainers seeking an illegal edge. He was caught on wiretap talking about horses who may have died because they were “over juiced” by a trainer. “I've seen that happen 20 times,” he added.

Grasso, who pleaded guilty to one count of drug adulteration and misbranding on May 11, 2022, goes before U.S. District Judge Kevin Castel in New York for a sentencing hearing on Oct. 27. He faces five years or more in federal prison.

Glenn Garber, Grasso's attorney, submitted a letter to the judge asking for leniency for Grasso, who is 66 years old and said to be in bad health after contracting COVID earlier this year and “nearly died.” Garber believes 18 months of home confinement is “sufficient.”

Grasso submitted his own letter to the judge, asking him to “find it in your heart to give me some kind of break.”

He wrote: “From the onset I would like to say I take full responsibility for my actions. I did wrong and accept whatever you decide the proper penalty is for me. Unfortunately, I did not think in my wildest dreams that it would come to this, but I accept what lies in front of me.”

In other words, Grasso, like so many criminals who go before a judge, is sorry. Sorry he got caught. He even admits that in his “wildest dreams” he'd never face consequences for doping horses.

The rest of his letter focuses on growing up in a “middle class Italian family,” being a good family man, and living modestly. “I don't have much in the way of money or possessions,” Grasso wrote. “I have no savings, I have little cash. … Because of my limited savings, I realize that I will probably have to work in some capacity for the rest of my life.”

Grasso then goes into great detail about his health challenges due to COVID, listing all the medications he has to take and the effects it's had on him. “I feel like I will not make 70 based on how I feel and how I am progressing,” Grasso writes.

And then, at the end of a 1,200-word letter, Grasso finally writes that he “regrets” his actions. “I apologize to all the parties involved,” he said. “I apologize to the federal government, the state, your court, my family, and the veterinary profession.”

There is no apology to the sport, nor to the honest owners and trainers who were cheated out of wins, purse money, and dreams because of Grasso's doping. No apologies over the horses who were doped to perform or even died from being “over juiced” by his illegal drugs. And there was certainly no apology to the betting public, which had to learn how to handicap cheaters rather than the racing lines in the past performances.

This is not remorse. This is pathetic. Bad health or not, Grasso is a three-time loser who deserves the maximum sentence possible.

That's my view from the eighth pole.

The post View From The Eighth Pole: Veterinarian Grasso Deserves Maximum Sentence For Horse Doping appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

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Which trainers produce the most successful stallions? The logical answer is that it's the trainers who have the most successful racehorses. the classic and Grade 1 winners with good pedigrees who are sought by stud farm owners.

But not all Grade 1 winners are created equally and success on the racetrack does not guarantee similar results in the breeding shed.

Over the last 25 years, six trainers have led the year-end earnings list in North America: Todd Pletcher, 10 times; Chad Brown, 4; Steve Asmussen, Bob Baffert, and the late Robert Frankel, 3 each; Brad Cox, 1. Brown holds a narrow advantage over Asmussen and Pletcher in 2022, with a lot of money still to be earned in the final 10 weeks of the racing year.

Of those six trainers, Baffert is the leader by Grade 1 wins, with 235 since his first G1 victory in 1991. Pletcher has won 183 G1 since 1998; Frankel 171 since 1979; Brown 133 since 2011; Asmussen 76 since 1999; and Cox 33 since 2018.

Not on the list of year-end money leaders since 1998 but worth mentioning are three horsemen with more than 100 Grade 1 wins each: D. Wayne Lukas (leading money winner in 14 of 15 years from 1983-'97) with 220 G1 wins; William Mott, 135 G1; and Shug McGaughey, 130 G1.

With those accomplishments as prologue, let's look at which trainers have produced the most successful sires with current runners.

To compile a list of the most successful sires, I used three sire lists from Bloodhorse.com. Included are the top 50 sires by Average-Earnings Index,  the top 50 sires on the current-year earnings list, and the top 10 from the list of leading sires of 2-year-olds of 2022.

After duplicates were removed, the list comprises 79 sires that stand or stood in North America and have current-year runners.

Twelve of those 79 stallions (15 percent) were trained by Pletcher, the all-time leading money-winning trainer whose clients supply him annually with a steady stream of elite homebreds and high-priced auction graduates. It's 14 if you include Quality Road and Keen Ice, who began their careers and won major stakes for James Jerkens and Dale Romans, respectively, before joining the Pletcher stable.

Ten of those 14 are in the top 50 leading sires by 2022 earnings, including Quality Road (2), Uncle Mo (5), Munnings (7), Speightstown (9), Constitution (11), and Violence (20).

By 2022 stud fees, eight of the Pletcher 14 (including Quality Road) stood for $25,000 or higher, led by Uncle Mo ($160,000). The others are Quality Road ($150,000), Speightstown ($90,000), Constitution ($85,000), Munnings ($85,000), Liam's Map ($40,000), Daredevil ($25,000) and Violence ($25,000).

Baffert, who also has deep-pocketed clients with their sights set on classic races, is next with 10 of the 79 sires in our  hybrid list of leading stallions, including current freshman sire leader Justify and the late Arrogate, second behind the sensational Gun Runner on the second-crop list.

Of the Baffert 10, five are among the top 50 leading sires by 2022 earnings: American Pharoah (12), Pioneerof the Nile (13), Midshipman (22), Arrogate (38) and The Factor (41). 

Baffert graduates Justify ($100,000) and American Pharoah ($80,000) stand for stud fees of $25,000 or higher. 

Asmussen is next with five on our hybrid list of 79 leading sires, all five of them in the top 50 by 2022 earnings.  

The leader of that group is Curlin, ranked fourth by 2022 earnings and who stood for $175,000. Gun Runner, with just two crops to race, is No. 6, standing for a private fee; Maclean's Music, No. 17,  stood for $50,000. Kantharos ($20,000 stud fee) is 26th and Tapiture ($10,000), 29th.

Note that Curlin began his career for Helen Pitts and was purchased and transferred to Asmussen before his second start.

Nine other trainers each have two horses on our hybrid list of 79 leading sires: Chad Brown, Robert Frankel, D. Wayne Lukas, Richard Mandella, William Mott, Aidan O'Brien, Doug O'Neill, Dale Romans (three if Keen Ice is included), and Al Stall Jr.

Brown is relatively new to having former runners standing at stud. His two entries on the hybrid list of 79 leading sires, Good Magic and Practical Joke (with one and two crops to race, respectively), made our list by virtue of being top 10 sires of 2-year-old runners in 2022. Unlike Pletcher and Baffert, Brown's program has tilted more toward fillies and turf racing but seems to be evolving.

Brad Cox is an even later arrival to the supply chain for stallion farms, having not won his first Grade 1 race until 2018. It will be several years before we have any indication of how well his former runners perform at stud.

The post Pletcher Stable Graduates Excel On List Of Leading North American Sires appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

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Last week as New York Yankee slugger Aaron Judge chased, tied, and eventually bettered Roger Maris' American League record of 61 home runs, much was written by Major League Baseball scribes and general sports writers about the troubled history America's pastime experienced in its Performance Enhancing Drug era that began around 1986 and lasted for roughly 20 years.

In the years immediately after it became public knowledge that the flurry of record-breaking blasts generated by the likes of McGwire, Sosa, Bonds, and Canseco had been fueled by PEDs, MLB popularity among its fans and the general populace suffered. Eventually, it surged once again and baseball has regained its position as a very popular form of entertainment.

Horse racing — be it Thoroughbred, Quarter Horse, or Standardbred — by all accounts based on visual, statistical, analytical, and chemical evidence, is very much still in the midst of its PEDs era.

This raises two important questions: can PEDs ever really be reined in and when the inevitable downturn in interest from horseplayers, fans, and the general public sets in, will those once interested in horse racing ever return in large numbers?

Thanks to many dedicated sportsmen and women — in the face of stiff and sometimes nasty opposition from those favoring the status quo — stakeholders were successful in gaining rare bipartisan support to pass federal legislation in both houses of Congress that holds the promise of cleaning up horse racing.

Even though the troops assembled to root out cheating with PEDs will not begin their duties officially until Jan.1, 2023, those bent on stopping them continue to fight against legislation that was duly signed into law by former President Donald Trump.

When the anti-doping professionals are ready to swing into action, there will be a very real fear that these men and women may not be successful in their appointed rounds, due to a smaller budget than they require, a focus on drug testing at the expense of investigative pursuits, and a holdover of employees from non-federal jurisdictions with a history of ignoring drug violations and violators.

On the recent weekend of Pennsylvania's biggest annual day of Thoroughbred racing at Parx, when two Grade 1 races with million-dollar purses were carded, a heretofore little-known organization with the grandiose name of Organization of Racing Investigators was involved with racing officials at the Bensalem track in conducting searches that gained a decent amount of news coverage for finding syringes, a “buzzer,” and a gun illegally in the possession of licensed individuals on the backstretch.

Apparently this group has been in existence since 1991, which begs the obvious question, “Where have these backstretch cops been for the last 31 years?” While they may be well-intentioned, they have in the past at their annual meetings denied entrance of at least one Turf writer and only recently have hired a public relations employee to generate news releases like the one that detailed the findings on Sept. 27 at Parx.

My purpose in trotting out this group for inclusion in this Op/Ed is not to disparage them or their efforts in any way, but to highlight one of the issues that the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority faces going forward in its efforts to identify drug cheats.

Let me explain.

Going forward, 5 Stones investigators will play an outsized role in setting up the systems that will be employed to catch cheaters. They are brilliant in their techniques and above reproach for their integrity. And their results in international sport have been astonishing at the highest level, including their part in the investigations that led to more than two dozen federal indictments in 2020. But they are a small group and they will have to rely on additions to their cadre of professional investigators.

The source of these new troops most likely will be investigators that have worked on the state or racetrack levels. They have worked for racing commissions and racing associations that have failed so miserably over the years to address concerns over rampant PED use that federal legislation had to be enacted to upgrade racing's task in developing and maintaining a game that is conducted on a level playing field.

For years regulators have sat on their hands across the nation. And, as such, they either did not encourage their investigators to root out cheating or tamped down enthusiasm for following leads that might lead to the type of news headlines that they thought would put racing in a bad light.

And now the efforts of all the men and women that banded together to put partisan politics aside to pass legislation to save their beloved sport and their livelihoods could to a certain extent lie in the hands of so-called professionals that have let us all down year after year for decades.

I worked as a civil service employee for the better part of a decade in the 1960s, including in the Los Angeles County Probation Department, so I have seen first hand what the mentality is of those charged with upholding the law. The overriding thing I learned about these civil servants is, first and foremost, their focus is on not losing their jobs. Like politicians, they rarely choose standing up for what is right if it might jeopardize their employment status.

The rubber will meet the road sometime next year, after the anti-doping unit is up and running, when it will become known if these hitherto reluctant local investigators can be developed into a viable force for good, or if they will be as useless as they have been in the past.

Hopefully, freed of having to do the bidding of regulators with agendas not in line with the best interests of racing, these professionals will rise to the occasion and help to right the ship. There have to be plenty of local investigators that had to bite their tongues or quit their profession in the past that will welcome the chance to work for a new group that actually wants to seek out crime instead of sweeping it under the rug.

The other major hurdle for the new group charged with overseeing the sport is whether 5 Stones will receive enough funding to have a positive impact on the enterprise of catching crooks.

Setting up systems, hiring and teaching professional investigators, buying equipment, developing leads and moles is a very expensive undertaking. It is very costly and time-consuming work. If 5 Stones is inadequately funded they will have very little opportunity to succeed at a level that will be impactful.

A likely threat standing in the way of the boots-on-the-ground group's funding is their “sister” in the exercise of catching bad guys, the science of testing for illegal substances.

Much was made of HISA not hiring the United States Anti-Doping Agency, which had an inside track for the job since inception of the idea of enacting federal legislation to stop illegal drug use in racing. I have no knowledge of exactly why USADA was bypassed for the job, but many rumors have been floated about the reason, including that it wanted to spend what was considered to be too much money on testing.

While I was a major supporter of USADA being named, I must confess that if the rumors about overspending on testing are true, that I consider this a positive sign going forward if it actually reflects the operating policy of HISA, as testing in and of itself can amount to an enormous waste of valuable and precious funding that could otherwise be used for investigative work.

It is well known in the cat-and-mouse game between cheaters and cops that tests only serve to confirm an illegal action. They rarely catch a cheater. No test works unless a test has been developed to detect an illegal substance. But testing for unknown substances is a fool's errand. The best way to develop a test is for investigators to seize an illegal substance, develop a test and then use this info to find positives.

So grunt work by cops on the beat is the answer and requires the bulk of funding. Testing without knowledge of what one is testing for is a complete waste of time and money.

If the budget of the investigators is adequately funded and if the newly hired investigators turn out to be dedicated to their task, racing can get on the right track.

Those of us that have spent our lives in this game have enough faith in the sport and product to believe that racing can win back our lost fans and generate enough new ones to keep the enterprise from sinking into oblivion with the setting sun.

Barry Irwin is the founder of Team Valor International racing partnerships

The post Irwin: Boots-On-The-Ground Investigators Can Help End Horse Racing’s PEDs Era appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

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