Posts Tagged ‘clenbuterol’

By Ray Paulick

The Delaware Thoroughbred Racing Commission has upheld a stewards ruling against trainer Larry Jones involving a test for a higher than permitted level of the bronchodilator Clenbuterol in Two Bucks Stable’s Stones River, who won a June 8 allowance race at Delaware Park.

The stewards have suspended Jones seven days, fined him $500 and ordered the purse money won by Stones River to be redistributed. The ruling was the first of any kind against Jones, who has trained horses for 25 years.

The hearing was conducted on Monday, and both Jones and Two Bucks owner Jim Squires appeared. Jones was represented by attorney Brent Caldwell, according to John Wayne, executive director of the commission. “The commissioners were very impressed and complimentary of Caldwell’s defense,” Wayne said. Nevertheless, the five commissioners voted unanimously in public deliberations to uphold the ruling, which was more lenient than the guidelines established by the Association of Racing Commissioners International. Those guidelines call for a suspension of 60 days to six months and up to a $1,500 fine. Clenbuterol is classified as a Class 3 drug by RCI. 

"The commissioners felt that the stewards’ ruling fit the criteria as a first-time offense ever for Mr. Jones," Wayne said. 

Wayne said the final decision and order prepared by the commission’s deputy attorney general will be forthcoming.  “At that point,” he said, “Mr. Jones has the option to appeal the commission’s decision to Superior Court if he so desires.”

Copyright © 2008, The Paulick Report

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Tommy Simon’s Vinery Stable has moved 21 horses from the barn of trainer Steve Asmussen, not long after an allegation of a positive test for traces of the therapeutic anesthetic  lidocaine from an Asmussen-trained  horse that won a maiden race at Lone Star Park in Texas May 10.

 

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