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Friday Racing at Laurel Cancelled Due to EHV-1

As Laurel Park continues to face lock downs due to EHV-1, the Maryland track cancelled Friday's nine-race program as a number of horses entered on the Mar. 12 card are now under quarantine. The Maryland Jockey Club will try to have the remaining horses–that aren't under quarantine–from Friday's program fill cards on Saturday and Sunday. Laurel will remain open for simulcasting Friday. The Stronach 5, Friday's national wager, was to feature two races from Laurel. It has been postponed to Mar. 19 with a carryover of $154,931.

Statement issued by 1/ST RACING's Chief Veterinary Officer, Dr. Dionne Benson, Regarding EHV1 at the Maryland Jockey Club Laurel Park:

“As reported, late in the day on Mar. 8, the Maryland Jockey Club was notified that a horse stabled at Laurel Park tested positive for equine herpes virus (EHV1). As per our standard veterinary protocols, the affected horse was immediately removed from the barn and is currently being treated at Marion duPont Scott Equine Medical Center.

Upon notification of the diagnosis, the Maryland Jockey Club, again per standard veterinary protocol, immediately closed the backside prohibiting horses from leaving the stable area.

Thanks to the contact tracing efforts of the veterinary team, I can confirm that the ill horse had recently been in two different barns and other horses in those two barns had contact with horses in two additional barns. Out of an abundance of caution for all other horses on-site, the Maryland Jockey Club quarantined barns 1, 4, 10 and 11. These barns are now under strict monitoring and quarantine requirements, including separate training from other horses at Laurel Park, prohibition from racing for horses from these barns, and increased biosecurity protocols. The team at the Maryland Jockey Club is working with the Maryland State Veterinarian, the Maryland Racing Commission, and the Maryland Thoroughbred Horsemen's Association to ensure all mandated biosecurity protocols are strictly followed.

As has been reported, the backside at Laurel Park will remain closed to horses shipping out for at least two weeks from the notification date, Mar. 8, and live racing is cancelled for Friday, Mar. 12. Pimlico Race Course will also be subject to the same restrictions on horses leaving the stable area.

As of this morning, no additional cases of EHV1 have been identified at the Maryland Jockey Club. The 1/ST RACING veterinary team will continue to monitor this situation closely and will provide additional updates as they become available and are relevant.

Given the current high prevalence of EHV1 in the equine communities, our teams at all of our 1/ST RACING venues have been instructed to increase health check monitoring for all horses on our premises.

The health and safety of the horses who are race, train and stable at 1/ST RACING venues is top priority. The Maryland Jockey Club will continue to follow the requirements and recommendations of the Maryland State Veterinarian until the individual barn and backside quarantines can be safely lifted.

On behalf of the Maryland Jockey Club and 1/ST RACING, I would like to thank the horsemen for their ongoing cooperation and patience.”

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Churchill vs. TOC Lawsuit Withdrawn; Neither Side Wants to Say Why

After alleging last month that a disagreement over advance-deposit wagering (ADW) hub rate fees was so egregious that it amounted to a “shakedown” that needed to be fought in federal court, a subsidiary of the gaming corporation Churchill Downs, Inc., dropped its lawsuit against Thoroughbred Owners of California (TOC) Mar. 8.

According to a “notice of voluntary dismissal” filed Monday in United States District Court (Central District, California, Western Division) by Churchill Downs Technology Initiatives Company (CDTIC), an agreement between the parties was reached Mar. 5 that apparently settles the matter “without prejudice.”

But the details of that agreement were not disclosed in court filings. And when given the opportunity on Tuesday by TDN to explain what led to the apparent resolution, neither TOC president/CEO Greg Avioli nor Scott Edelman, the CDTIC's attorney, responded to email queries.

In a spat that centered on which entity should benefit from the pandemic-related boom in at-home betting, CDTIC filed a Feb. 2 complaint asking a judge to rule that TOC couldn't use a state law to force CDI into either accepting lower rates, abandoning its recently signed agreement with Santa Anita Park, or entering into arbitration to settle the dispute. (Santa Anita itself was not a defendant in the suit.)

According to CDTIC's complaint for declaratory and injunctive relief, the dispute arose Oct. 28, 2020, when Avioli allegedly asked CDI's then-executive director of racing, Mike Ziegler, to “voluntarily return the equivalent of 1% of the total amount generated from California residents wagering on those platforms in 2020.”

In addition, according to the complaint, “Mr. Avioli proposed that all ADW providers agree to a 3% hub fee for the 2021-2022 term–a rate CDT has never agreed to in its history of operating in California.”

CDTIC had not wanted to disclose details of those hub fees in court documents, and had even been granted permission from the judge overseeing the case Feb. 9 to instead file those financial details as sealed documents that the public couldn't view. Hub fees are generally not disclosed by industry entities because such figures are deemed competitive secrets.

According to the original complaint, “TOC threatened that if CDT did not comply with its 'voluntary' request, it would demand arbitration pursuant to [a California law]. Contrary to Mr. Avioli's false characterization, the revenue ADW providers earned in 2020 was not a 'windfall,' but the result of increased demand for online wagering.”

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Laurel Locks Down Over EHV-1; Kentucky Urges Caution On Ship-Ins

Four barns at Laurel Park were placed under quarantine and shipping out was barred for horses stabled at Maryland's two Thoroughbred tracks Mar. 9 after a symptomatic horse at Laurel tested positive for equine herpesvirus type 1 (EHV-1) and was removed to a veterinary facility.

On a national scale, active cases of the highly contagious respiratory disease are being monitored in several states right now, including in Florida at the World Equestrian Center in Ocala.

On Mar. 7, the Kentucky Department of Agriculture state veterinarian's office issued written guidance related to this recent spate of EHV-1.

“In the past seven days we have learned of multiple occurrences of EHV-1 impacting equine events throughout the world,” Rusty Ford, the equine operations consultant for the Kentucky state's veterinarian, said in that statement.

“Additionally, as we are coming to the time of year that we historically see an increase in movement of equine exhibition and racing stock into Kentucky, I want to remind all associated parties that mitigating risk of disease introduction is a shared responsibility that requires commitment from each individual exhibitor, trainer, event managers, facility operators, veterinarians, and animal health officials,” Ford said.

That statement urged stabling facilities in Kentucky to review biosecurity protocols and elevate their responses to minimize direct contact between horses via shared water, feed supplies and equipment.

Speaking during a Tuesday informational videoconference, Steve Koch, the senior vice president of racing for The Stronach Group, whose tracks include Laurel Park and Pimlico Race Course in Maryland, detailed the plan of action at both venues.

Horses will be allowed to ship into both Laurel and Pimlico and can travel between those two tracks to train and race, but can't exit for another jurisdiction until the quarantine has lifted, Koch said.

“Chances are–and this is me speculating, and maybe I shouldn't,” Koch said, “but chances are, you're going to run out of places to go anyhow, because no one on the East Coast racing is going to want our horses shipping into their facilities.”

Koch said the EHV-1 protocols were initiated “on Saturday, [when] there was a horse showing some symptoms [at Laurel]. By Sunday, this horse [had] been tested for herpesvirus…. That horse had contact in both barns 10 and 4…. Upon further analysis, it was quickly evident that both barns 11 and 1 also has some fairly close contact with these horses and the respective shed rows. So currently barns 1, 4, 10 and 11 are on a lockdown situation.”

Koch said Laurel training was “set aside” on Tuesday, but starting Wednesday, “we will look for a way to give [horses in the locked-down barns] some training hours.”

Koch added that “It's more complicated than just extending training hours. The track crew has to know; there's complications with when we get to the race days on Friday how that will work. But we are cooking up a plan, and you'll hear that from day to day as we get in together.

Horses in Laurel's quarantined barns, however, will not be allowed to race.

“The quarantine we're currently looking at, assuming there's no further symptoms; no further positive horses, it's a 14-day quarantine,” Koch summed up. “And then we can lift the veil. The trick is we have to be super-diligent throughout those 14 days…and all horses need to be asymptomatic throughout that period.”

The highly contagious EHV-1 can spread during any time of the year, but winter typically brings a spike in cases nationwide.

The winters in the years 2016-18 saw a sharp increase in reported EHV-1 cases. But during those outbreaks several agricultural regulators told TDN it was unclear if those statistics represented actual spikes in EHV-1 cases or if veterinarians and testing methods are just getting better at detecting and reporting them.

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Louisiana Commission Stonewalls Broberg Even After False-Positive Exoneration

One day after learning he had been exonerated by split-sample test results that negated an original “ridiculous” finding of three serious drug violations in a single mare who won a Nov. 24 race at Delta Downs, trainer Karl Broberg told TDN that Louisiana State Racing Commission (LSRC) officials turned down his offer to have the mare's hair tested while the case was being adjudicated to prove that no Class 1 and 2 drugs were in the system of Tiz One Fee (Tiz the One).

Broberg also said the LSRC has thus far been uncooperative about engaging in any substantial dialogue about how the potentially career-ending false positives might have been triggered, and that regulators have stonewalled his efforts to obtain a copy of the testing contract between the commission and the lab it employs, which is run by the Louisiana State University School of Veterinary Medicine.

Broberg, who is currently second on the continent in training wins for 2021 and led North America in victories every year between 2014 and 2019, said that one of the most maddening aspects of the months-long ordeal was the time he spent trying to figure out if someone had intentionally spiked the food of a mare he knew had not been medicated with the alleged substances-oxycodone (a Class 1 drug, the most severe category according to Association of Racing Commissioners International standards), plus levamisole and citalopram (both Class 2).

“The anguish I went through for the two months waiting for the split to come back, thinking that it could essentially be the end of my training career, speaks for itself. It was [expletive] horrible,” Broberg said.

“My initial reaction was that somebody got me,” Broberg said. “That somebody had done something intentionally, and most likely put it in the feed tub or something like that. So you're going through all of these scenarios wondering who could possibly hate you enough and be a sorry enough human being to do something like that to an animal.”

The Paulick Report first broke the story of the false positives Mar. 8, detailing Broberg's account of how after being notified of the initial results Dec. 28, Broberg sent a check for $3,750 Jan. 12 to the testing laboratory at the Kenneth L. Maddy Equine Analytical Chemistry Laboratory at the University of California at Davis to have the split samples tested for confirmatory purposes.

Broberg said that in addition to being out the cost of testing the split sample, the false positives cost him an opportunity to run Tiz One Fee in the $50,000 Premier Lady Starter S. at Delta Downs Feb. 10, a race in which Broberg said she would have been heavily favored to win.

“No explanation. No apology,” Broberg told TDN. “I wasn't able to run the horse during that two-month time frame. I went to the stewards to offer to have hair pulled and sent off for testing to show that there's nothing in the horse. [They said] that was not an option, that the horse would not run until a ruling had been issued.

“I mean, I've never even heard of a horse testing positive for three different drugs,” Broberg continued. “More than anything, I'm just curious as to how something like this gets to that point.”

Charles Gardiner, the executive director of the LSRC, did not reply to a request from TDN to explain the commission's side of the story prior to deadline for this article.

“I think the laboratory needs to be looked at,” Broberg said. “When they come up with these ridiculous results to begin with, do they immediately send [the findings] off like that, or does common sense come into play? [As in] 'Hey. We should probably run this [test] again.'”

Broberg said he has requested the details of the LSRC/LSU testing contract, “but you would think I'm asking for top-secret information, because there's not much interest in sharing that with me at this point.”

Andrew Mollica, a New York-based attorney, in 2014 helped Hall-of-Fame trainer Bill Mott fight an alleged drug overage case against the New York State Racing Commission on the basis that regulators failed to provide Mott with a split sample he could test. Mollica told TDN Tuesday that Broberg's ordeal underscores not only the need for trainers to be guaranteed the right to split samples, but that commissions need explicit rules that mandate such cases get thrown out when the independent tests come back clean. Mollica said that is still not the case in at least two states that he knows of, New York and New Jersey.

Mollica said even though Mott dropped his civil lawsuit against the New York commission in 2018 and served a negotiated seven-day suspension, the challenges that Mott presented in court helped bring about a protocol change in November 2017 that now gives New York horsemen the option of sending a “referee sample” to an independent lab.

“Broberg's case exemplifies why split samples are essential for due process,” Mollica said. “The denial of split samples is a denial of due process. Broberg didn't do it. The test proves it. The reality is that jurisdictions, like New York, didn't [provide split samples] for years. And the fact that we were able to at least initiate them now shows that we're on the right track.

“But we're not there yet,” Mollica continued. “The regulation in New York doesn't mandate that you can be exonerated by a split sample. They don't even acknowledge that. New York wants to continue to litigate, even if you prove the [original] test was no good. And New Jersey's even worse. New Jersey goes as far to say in threshold matters, if your threshold comes back under {the allowable amount], the mere fact that we found it, you're guilty.”

Broberg said it was unclear whether he would purse some sort of remedy in the court system.

“I really don't know at this point,” Broberg told TDN. “A simple apology from someone would be a nice start, instead of being treated like you're a crook and [told] you should just be thankful the split came back clean and you should just shut up and go on.”

Asked if he had a message for other trainers based on what he just went through, Broberg said this: “That there's got to be easier ways to make a living in another endeavor.”

After a long pause, he added, “I'm disgusted by the entire thing, if you can't tell.”

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