Meadowlands owner Jeff Gural issued the following statement to media on March 6 regarding horses associated with Rene Allard. Harness trainer Rene Allard was included in a superseding indictment filed in federal court in December. The indictment was part of a drug adulteration and misbranding conspiracy case that also included Louis Grasso, Donato Poliseno, Thomas Guido III, and Richard Banca. The defendants were alleged to be involved in a scheme to “manufacture, distribute, and receive adulterated and misbranded PEDs and to secretly administer those PEDs to racehorses under scheme participants' control.”
The indictment revealed that an office at a Middletown, N.Y., training center where Allard operated was searched by federal agents who found bottles of injectable products labeled “for research purposes only.” That case was originally filed around the same time as a larger case brought by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York against alleged doping rings which included a number of Thoroughbred and harness trainers, assistants, and veterinarians.
Meadowlands management has become aware that Rene Allard is training a stable of horses in South Florida. As a result, The Meadowlands, Tioga & Vernon Downs will exclude any horse being trained or that has been trained in that stable in any stake and is actively investigating who owns the horses that are or have been in his stable this winter.
Those owners who currently have or have had horses in Allard's stable this winter are advised that all horses owned wholly or in part by them will be excluded from participation in all Meadowlands, Tioga & Vernon Downs races and that all of horses owned wholly or in part by them will be deemed ineligible to for any/all Meadowlands, Tioga & Vernon Downs administered stakes races for a minimum of three years.
If owners affected by the above are a minority partner on horses with owners that are not affected by the above and are being trained by accepted trainers, they must legitimately divest their interest in those horses, which will be required to be done and demonstrated to the satisfaction of The Meadowlands before the March 15 stakes payments will be accepted on those horses.
The affected owners should notify their partners on the horses that fall into the above category immediately.
“This news is particularly disturbing after the indictments of March and a later superseding charge in December of last year,” said Meadowlands President Jeff Gural. “We, along with the Thoroughbred Jockey Club, spent much time and money employing the Five Stones investigators to prepare a case to get the feds interested which led to all of those indictments. We will continue to partner with The Jockey Club to fund the continuing investigation by Five Stones. We could use support in this initiative and welcome anyone who would like to aid in the funding of this necessary and important endeavor.
“To learn that people actually give this guy horses to train after what was discovered by the federal investigation boggles the mind. The only reason to do this, that I do this, is to clean up racing so we might have a future and to protect the guys that do try to follow the rules.
“Horsemen seem to have this absurd unspoken bond that they protect each other. Well let me be perfectly clear, trainers that break the rules and use performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) are stealing from you, not me. They are beating your horse with a PED-enhanced horse then, they are buying or claiming your horse and them beating you with your own horse. I just don't get it.”
Meadowlands investigator Brice Cote will respond to questions at Bcote@playmeadowlands.com
The post Gural Reveals Indicted Trainer Allard Still Operating, Bans Horses And Owners From His Barn appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.
