Archive for the ‘Big Brown’ Category

By Ray Paulick

Big Brown got it done in Sunday’s $1-million Haskell Stakes at Monmouth Park in New Jersey, but it wasn’t easy, as the Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner was in an all-out drive to get past long shot pacesetter Coal Play in the final 70 yards of the 1 1/8-mile race to win by 1 3/4 lengths.

 

Copyright ©2008, The Paulick Report

Lidocaine and clenbuterol, the drugs associated with the latest positive tests for Steve Asmussen and Rick Dutrow, are commonly used therapeutic medications with specific uses. Both also have the potential for being abused and are prohibited substances.

The positive tests will be widely covered in the mainstream media because Dutrow and Asmussen are trainers of the two leading Thoroughbreds in America, Kentucky Derby winner Big Brown and 2007 Horse of the Year, Curlin, respectively.

Asmussen’s positive in Texas was for lidocaine, a short-acting anesthetic similar to procaine. Dr. Thomas Brokken, a racetrack practitioner in South Florida and past president of the American Association of Equine Practitioners, said lidocaine is a lot like the numbing anesthetics used by human dentists.

“Usually it’s very short-acting, with a half-life in minutes,” he said. “Normally, I was use it to repair lacerations, suture fillies up behind, or to block horses that are lame and I need to find out where they are lame,” Brokken said. “That’s about all I use it for. Some may use it in an epidural for a horse sore in its back or pelvic area.” A Class 2 drug according to the Association of Racing Commissioners International classifications, lidocaine has a recommended withdrawal time in Texas of 96-120 hours.

Dr. Ron Genovese of the Cleveland Equine Clinic in Ohio, said he no longer uses lidocaine in his practice, preferring to use mepivacaine for lameness examinations and other procedures where an anesthetic is required. Both Dutrow and Asmussen, along with multiple Eclipse Award-winning trainer Todd Pletcher, have been penalized for past mepivacaine positives.

Dutrow’s Kentucky positive was for clenbuterol, a Class 3 drug with a recommended 72-hour withdrawal time in Kentucky (the recommended withdrawal time in New York, where Dutrow is based, is 96 hours). Clenbuterol, typically given to horses daily in the form of the Ventipulmin syrup, is used to help clean up mucus in a horse’s airways.

“A lot of horses have mucus,” Brokken said. “Clenbuterol doesn’t heal anything but it opens the airways to help the macrophages clean up debris in the throat. The macrophages work on oxygen, so if there’s no oxygen they don’t perform well. Clenbuterol opens the airways to oxygen.”

Stephen Reed, a veterinarian at Rood and Riddle Hospital in Lexington, Ky., estimates that 50% or more horses in training have some degree of mucus.

Genovese, who sees horses mainly at Thistledown racetrack in Ohio, said he sees very little use of clenbuterol in his practice. “It’s expensive,” he said. “But mucus is a chronic, irritating factor in the racehorse business. You have to understand that when horses put in bad performances, people have to search for reasons, which is understandable. You can’t talk to the patient. We scope it and and you can see they breathe in a lot of dirt or Polytrack. Many trainers or owners see that and think one and one adds up to two.”

Some trainers racing on circuits with higher purses use the drug on a majority of their horses to help them train more vigorously, since it improves their breathing. “I use that medication on many of my horses and only once can ever remember having a problem with it,” Dutrow told the New York Times.

Clenbuterol is used illegally with other livestock, including sheep and cattle, to produce more defined muscles. “The drug does have a partitioning effect,” Reed said. “It selects for lean body mass. Some trainers use it for a minor anabolic effect. If used correctly for problems in the lungs, however, it can have a great benefit.

 “One of the things that worries me,” Reed continued, “is that some of the newer, more sophisticated testing is able to detect levels that couldn’t be therapeutic but would indicate the drug is on board. In the current day and age, regarding medications in any athlete, human or equine, having nothing on board is the way to go. As a bronchialdilator, it has the potential to help. It shouldn’t be given close to the time of racing.”

By Ray Paulick

Copyright ©2008, The Paulick Report

The wise guys are out in force: “Knock me over with a feather,” they are saying in response to the latest news about Rick “No Show” Dutrow, who will be handed a 15-day suspension from the Kentucky Horse Racing Authority, which also will redistribute the $20,000 second-place purse won by Salute the Count in the Aegon Turf Sprint Stakes at Churchill Downs May 2. The former claiming horse owned by Michael Dubb and Robert Joscelyn tested positive for an extremely high level of clenbuterol, a bronchial dilator that has come into vogue as a training aid among many horsemen over the last 10 years but is not permitted on raceday.

The violation came one day before Dutrow-trained Big Brown won the Kentucky Derby.

Why just 15 days for Dutrow, who according to the Association of Racing Commissioners International has at least 72 previous rulings against him for a variety of violations since 1976? The New York Times, which broke the story, quotes former trainer John Veitch, the chief state steward for the Kentucky Horse Racing Authority , as saying 15 days and forfeiture of the purse would be Dutrow’s penalty for a first offense, according to Kentucky rules. Veitch told the paper the level detected (and confirmed by an independent lab of Dutrow’s choosing) was two times that of the legal threshold and the highest he had seen in four years as Kentucky’s top racing official.

First offense?

If I get speeding tickets in 25 states and am then caught in Kentucky going 10 miles over the limit, I hope I can get the same kid-glove treatment and am looked upon as a first-time offender. Somehow, I doubt that will happen. Why, then, is Dutrow’s track record of rules violations in multiple states being ignored in Kentucky?

Larry Jones, the trainer of star-crossed Kentucky Derby runner-up Eight Belles, recently had a positive test for clenbuterol in Delaware on a horse owned by Jim Squires. By all accounts, if confirmed in a split sample, this would be Jones’ first medication violation in 25 years of training. According to Delaware Park stewards, the standard penalty for a first offense would be a $500 fine, forfeiture of purse and a seven-day suspension of the trainer. Not much different than the sanctions that will be imposed on Dutrow.

Considering the number of violations Dutrow has had during his career (including a 2004 case involving clenbuterol in New York), the Kentucky penalty given him would be the proverbial slap on the wrist.

This is the kind of problem that federal lawmakers looked into last week, when Dutrow was among a group of owners, trainers, veterinarians, regulators and racing officials asked to testify before a House of Representatives subcommittee hearing on Thoroughbred racing and breeding. The trainer was the only no show, however, claiming to be ill. During the hearing, House members zeroed in on racing’s inability to enforce national standardized rules and penalties due to the structure that has 38 different state racing commissions regulating the sport and the absence of a league office that other major league sports have.

If the Congressional inquiry made racing industry leaders look impotent then, how do they look now, in the wake of the wrist slap against Dutrow?

This case is only going to further motivate Congress to take action, unless someone in the Thoroughbred industry moves beyond forming committees, making recommendations and pontificating about “consensus building” and the “power of persuasion.”

It is clear the Thoroughbred industry, as presently structured, is incapable of policing itself adequately.

By Ray Paulick

Copyright ©2008, The Paulick Report

He is our Felix Unger, almost compulsive in his quest to clean things up in an industry that has more than a few problems. He is Mr. Clean without the earring, standing proudly with arms crossed, a slight smile on his face showing his sense of accomplishment. He is a friend of politicians, a mover and shaker in the Thoroughbred industry, serving on numerous committees and boards on multiple organizations across the alphabetical landscape that is the Thoroughbred industry.

He is Robert Clay, the owner of Three Chimneys Farm in Midway, Ky.

Clay has been in the news a great deal this spring. Along with Serengeti Stable, Clay was co-breeder of Eight Belles, the filly who ran a game second in the Kentucky Derby but broke down after the finish and was euthanized. He was blamed by some, including the acting chairman of a Congressional committee that looked into the welfare of the Thoroughbred in a June 19 hearing, for producing “a genetic disaster waiting to happen” in the case of Eight Belles.

Knowledgeable people inside the industry are not questioning his part in producing Eight Belles, who was an exceptionally fast and sound filly before her demise. But some are wondering why Robert Clay (along with son Case, who is president of the farm) was so quick to embrace and recruit Big Brown to his Three Chimneys stallion barn, considering the baggage the son of Boundary brings with him.

Big Brown is trained by Rick Dutrow, a sleazy racetrack character whose list of regulatory violations, stretching from California to New York, is prodigious by any measure. Before Big Brown’s victory in the Kentucky Derby, Dutrow freely admitted that all of his horses, including Big Brown, get regular injections of the anabolic steroid Winstrol. Controversial veterinarian Steve Allday said he stopped working for Dutrow a couple of years ago because Dutrow asked him to do things Allday refused to do.

Then there is the IEAH Stable, the ownership group that bought majority interest in Big Brown last September from Paul Pompa Jr. One of IEAH’s first trainers, Greg Martin, is a confessed cheater who was convicted of a felony for juicing an IEAH runner in 2003. IEAH co-president, Michael Iavarone, is a former penny stock trader who worked at four now-closed “bucket shops,” including one firm shut down by regulators. Iavarone was fined, censured and suspended for making unauthorized trades. Yet IEAH portrayed Iavarone as a “high profile investment banker on Wall Street.” IEAH also stiffed Keeneland on the purchase of several pricey yearlings in 2003.

Clay and the Big Brown team truly are the “odd couple,” with either Dutrow or Iavarone capable of playing the part of Oscar Madison, the sloppy, corner-cutting counterpart to Clay’s pristine Felix Unger, who has the reputation for doing everything by the book.

Perhaps, however, Dutrow and Iavarone are angels with dirty faces. Before the Triple Crown’s final leg, Iavarone and IEAH pledged to give a substantial portion of the Belmont purse Big Brown was expected to win to support a scholarship fund for the son of a stricken police officer on Long Island (I’m not sure where that stands, since Big Brown earned nothing in the Belmont after being eased). In addition, Dutrow said he’d stopped giving Big Brown anabolic steroids before the Preakness. Then, in a surprise announcement on June 22, Iavarone said he was swearing off drugs for his entire stable because of his concerns for the “integrity” of the sport.

So, how did Robert Clay, whose mantra has been personal integrity in the horse business, wind up doing this deal?

“My mother taught me to take people as they come,” Clay told me. “They (Big Brown’s owners) have done nothing but what they said they would do and more, and have been totally straightforward in their business dealings with me.”

Clay wouldn’t comment on the reports about Iavarone’s embellished resume and prior problems, which were published May 28, the same day Case Clay helped Big Brown’s owners ring the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange.

Rick Dutrow, however, seems to be another story.

“The trainer and owners are two kettles of fish,” Clay said. “I don’t have a relationship with Dutrow, and Dutrow speaks for himself, obviously. I guess it would be fair to say we don’t have the same styles. I have no control over the trainer, nor his scheduling.”

Published reports valued the Three Chimneys-Big Brown stallion deal at around $50 million, with sources saying Three Chimneys bought just 10% of the horse. That type of valuation would typically command an initial-year stud fee north $100,000, even for a horse like Big Brown who doesn’t have a top stallion pedigree (and no other stakes winners in the female family until the third dam). Big Brown’s puzzling display in the Belmont will make that difficult, if not impossible, to achieve.

“Those days of $100,000 are over,” said one bloodstock agent who specializes in the stallion market. “Of course, how he does in the Haskell and other races could help.” Another bloodstock agent suggested something closer to $50,000 as a realistic first-year fee.

Clay acknowledges that Big Brown will enter stud with question marks. “He’s got feet problems,” Clay said. “Dynaformer’s got feet problem, too; the worst feet of any horse on the farm. Do we not take a horse to stud because of feet problems? Dynaformer does not pass bad feet along. It doesn’t mean that won’t happen (with Big Brown).”

Clay said the publicity over Dutrow’s use of anabolic steroids with Big Brown is “concerning,” though he pointed out that countless other horses have been retired to stud after racing on steroids.

“Steroids is like Lasix,” he said. “You can’t find a trainer who doesn’t use it. It’s the industry’s responsibilities to make the rules that we want to live by, and not the trainer’s responsibility to not abide by the rules. If I were to speculate, I’d say (steroids) don’t have anything to do with their genes. If we are being fooled, then we are taking the wrong genes to the breeding shed. I’m not smart enough to know the answer to that. I think we ought to take any performance enhancing drugs out of the sport…period. But the resistance to that is broad.”

Clay said Three Chimneys doesn’t give its yearlings steroids. “Never have, never will,” he said. “I am a big advocate of what Keeneland is doing, taking steroids out of the sales. I’m not sure taking steroids out of racing is as simple as it sounds.

“Big Brown is the most famous horse that raced on steroids,” he said, “and it concerns me that I’ve got a poster child horse.”

By Ray Paulick

Copyright ©2008, The Paulick Report