“I’m the luckiest guy on the face of the earth.”

Doug O’Neill steals the line from Lou Gehrig, but he says it with the same sincerity and conviction as the Iron Man. He really believes he might be the luckiest guy on the face of the earth.

The question that goes through my head is, how could he see himself as lucky? He’s certainly had his share of adversity, and not all of it of his own making. He’s had one brother, Danny, die from cancer at only 38 years old. Another brother, Dennis, Doug’s main horseflesh evaluator, battled non-Hodgkins lymphoma into remission. He’s been crucified in the public media, posted as Exhibit B for what’s wrong with horseracing.

Nobody says it to him directly of course, but everyone has heard his nickname – Drug O’Neill. Instead of anger, he jokes that if his mother had known how people would twist his name, she would have named him something different.

I came to Santa Anita to find out what goes on behind the scenes at the racetrack and write about it. I decide I have another task. Finding out why the hell Doug O’Neill is so sanguine.

MEETING DOUG O’NEILL

It was serendipity that I came to know Doug. I had written an article about his New York conviction for oxazepam in September 2014, and a few days after it came out I got a tweet from Glenn Sorgenstein, one of the principals at W C Racing, owners of Goldencents. He had seen the article and wanted to know if I would be willing to talk with him. We spent a good hour on the phone talking about Doug and his current problems. Then Glenn asked if I wanted to talk with Doug directly.

The next day I had my first of many conversations with Doug. I wasn’t sure what to expect. Like most people, all I knew was what I had read, and a lot of that wasn’t flattering. What I didn’t expect was to fall into a conversation with him as easily as if I had known him for years. He was open and forthright, not dodging any of my questions. I waited for the anger, maybe some self-pity, but it never came.

I originally had  no plans to attend the Breeders Cup, but after talking with Glenn and Doug, I decided to go. That was perhaps the highlight of my racing life, but it is a story for another article.

I met Doug for the first time for breakfast at a Denny’s on Huntington Avenue in Arcadia on Breeders Cup Day. That was as close as he was allowed to Santa Anita. He ordered a plate low in fat and calories, and most likely taste. I smiled to myself, noting he and I suffered from the same affliction – a love of food and a metabolism that refused to allow us to enjoy it without adding a pound or two. I showed my solidarity by ordering scrambled egg whites – with a side of whole wheat pancakes. The egg whites were made edible with enough tabasco, but the pancakes weren’t salvageable even drowned in syrup.

Normally Doug would have been at the barn attending to Goldencents, the reigning BC Mile champion who would be defending his title later that afternoon, but he was serving the extra suspension California had put on him in light of an almost certainly bogus oxazepam conviction in New York.

It was there that I asked him if he would be willing to let me shadow him for a few days, starting in the morning and going through the race day. I thought if I could watch what he did, how he acted around the barn I’d have a better understanding of whether Doug O’Neill was the guy pilloried in the press or the one I’d started to know. He readily agreed.

I called Doug in February to make arrangements.

MARCH 24-25

I drove into Arcadia on a Tuesday afternoon and left a voicemail for Doug that I would see him first thing Wednesday morning on the backside. It turns out he was flying back from the Ocala two-year olds in training sale in Florida. It underscored one of the things you can’t avoid noticing about Doug – he is always running to get to the next place he needs to be, and it always seemed that there were lots of places he needed to be.

On Wednesday at about 5:30 AM I entered the track through Gate 8 off Baldwin Avenue. The employee’s lot was already packed with cars.  There were hundreds of grooms, exercise riders, hot walkers, jockey agents, trainers and assistants already hard at work. The track opens for training at 5:00 and all horses have to be exercised by 10:00. There is a renovation break every hour on the main track when the watering truck and tractors re-groom the surface. The turf course is only open for training on Thursdays, but I can already see the dogs – the temporary rails that keep horses off the inner part of the course – set up a good distance from the inner rail in preparation for the next day’s work.

I call Doug and when he answers the phone I let him know I am at the track.

“Great,” he says. Then pauses and asks, “Which track?”

“Santa Anita,” I say.

He informs me that Wednesday he is at Los Alamitos. During the Santa Anita season only the horses that are racing are stabled there, with the rest of the string either turned out at nearby Sunshine Farms or getting ready for a return to the races at Los Alamitos. He says he has around 44 horses total in training, half at Santa Anita, half at Los Alamitos.

I tell him that I’m just going to hang out at Santa Anita this morning and he offers to meet nearby for a late breakfast after training is closed. Sounds great, I tell him.

“Alright, brother. I’ll give you a call later this morning.” Brother is Doug’s all-purpose moniker for just about every man, sister for the women.

I get a call from Doug at about 11. “Can we do lunch in Santa Monica instead of breakfast?” Sure, I say. “Great, I’ll text you the address. About 1 o’clock.” Always wanted to see Santa Monica anyway.

With the help of GPS I find my way to the OP Cafe on Ocean Park Boulevard in Santa Monica. Doug is there with two of his long time friends. We all chat for a few minutes before his buddies excuse themselves, leaving Doug to continue eating another ultra-healthy looking meal and me looking to order something I’m sure won’t taste anything like those pancakes from Denny’s. Doug directs me to the breakfast menu where he proudly points out a listing of choices labelled as “Doug O’Neill’s Winners Circle.”

Doug explains that Mark, one of the guys I met, owns the Cafe. The OP has become their middle aged headquarters, the place where the Santa Monica crew hangs out. Doug moved from Michigan to Santa Monica as a youth and that’s where he’s been ever since.

“I’ve known those guys since high school. I couldn’t have made it through all the adversity without my family and them,” he says. This gives me a lot of insight into my question. He’s faced the loss of one sibling and a scare with another. He tells me all the public scorn has been nothing compared to having to deal with what happened with his brothers, and he made it through with supportive friends and a close family.  A friend of Doug O’Neill is not just an acquaintance. Doug is genuine, loyal and generous to those he is close to. In return those people are fierce supporters. In three days I met no one in Doug’s orbit who didn’t think the world of him, from his lifelong friends to the members of Team O’Neill to the owners he trains for to a hundred other track denizens.

(Note to self: if you want to feel lucky, tune out the negative, know who to rely on, and live life knowing how fragile and fleeting it can be.)

I ask Doug about his family. He’s been married 16 years, one son, 12 and one daughter, 10. He met his wife in grade school and somehow with Doug that fact doesn’t seem at all surprising.

Doug reminds me that I have to go through Los Angeles  to get back to Arcadia, and if I don’t get started  the traffic will be horrendous. It’s actually all relative. Denver has its version of traffic jams, which in LA would barely be worthy of mention by Copter whatever.  To me freeway traffic in LA at 11 AM is nerve-wracking. I’m actually seeing driving on a Los Angeles freeway as one of those things everyone should do once in their lives, with a t-shirt reading “I Survived the 5” as a prize. We make plans to meet first thing in the morning.

THURSDAY MARCH 26

This is one of those weeks where the weather is delightfully monotonous – and perfect. It’s cool in the morning, although not cold, with the promise of plenty of sun and temperatures around 80 by the afternoon. Doug and I meet near Clocker’s Corner, where there is a substantial gathering of people, all of whom seem to know each other. O’Neill is dressed in his standard trainer’s garb – long black, baggy cargo shorts, a tee shirt, black socks and running shoes – sort of surfer dude meets revenge of the nerds. Gary Stevens is working the crowd as he does most mornings if he doesn’t have a horse to exercise. Jockey agents, some with their clients, search for trainers they need to talk with. Bob Baffert is wandering around looking like someone who couldn’t figure out where he had left the car keys, and despite the fact he is Bob Baffert nobody seems to be paying particular attention except the newbie, me. Coffee and breakfast items flow out of the small cafe at the back of Clockers Corner at a brisk pace. It’s open only until workouts are done, but they feed a lot of people in that time. The only thing I wasn’t sure I saw in the corner was clockers.

Doug and I walk back to Barn 88 toward the far end of the stable area, past dozens of runners either heading out to or coming back from a work. It’s a tricky walk in the pre-dawn since you simultaneously have to watch for the horses and look down on the ground to make sure you aren’t stepping in anything unpleasant. The smell is simultaneously sweet and assaulting, what I could describe as “racetrack.”

A large sign reading “Team O’Neill” is mounted on the side of the barn. This isn’t just rhetorical. Doug wants everyone to see themselves under the umbrella of the moniker – it is as much their name on the side of the barn as Doug’s.

When I ask him why he has been successful, he doesn’t hesitate to credit the people he has. “I find the best people and I make sure they want to stay a part of my team. Everyone has an essential job and I make sure they understand how critical they are to the success of team O’Neill. I’ve got people who have been with me for years, and not every trainer can say that. That kind of consistency and teamwork are what make my barn successful.”

Doug has a small office at one end of the barn that attracts a steady flow of visitors. I look on the wall and there is a battered plaque reading

Live well, laugh often, love horses.

One more part of the answer. I will learn it is the essence of O’Neill.

The parade to the office is non-stop. Jockey agents looking for a ride, horse transport people coordinating the myriad of cross-town and long-distance moves. Dr. Ryan Carpenter, Doug’s veterinarian, has already made his morning rounds. He and Doug “lay hands” on all the horses stabled there daily, looking for any evidence of soreness or sickness. All the horses will get their temperatures taken, and if any are feverish they’ll be watched closely all day.

Once the horses pass morning check, Doug pulls out the workout schedule he prepared the night before. What order, how far, how fast, who will be up. He treats it like a document that came out of a diplomatic pouch, making sure it is in his care at all times. He runs through the schedule with his assistants and his barn manager, the word is spread to the rest of the team and the workout day begins.

The horses first scheduled to go out start walking in a designated area on the side of Barn 88. There is a strip of grass down the middle, making it look like a miniature paddock walking ring. I don’t see an automated horse walker at Barn 88. The runners are warmed up and cooled out by their grooms. Once the horses are warmed up one of the exercise riders hops on board, and the horses head out to the track.

Doug has to take a call. The phone seems at his ear incessantly. This time it is one of the people with the company transporting a horse he has for a race in Pennsylvania. Doug explains which trainer will be stabling the horse and to make sure the horse gets to that trainer’s barn. I decide to wander up shed row while Doug makes sure the horse is delivered where it is supposed to be.

There are stalls on both sides of a long barn, each one filled at least six inches deep with clean wood shavings. There are workers mucking out the stalls of the horses that are outside being prepped to work, and despite the seemingly unpleasant nature of the job, they occasionally burst into song, in Spanish naturally. One of the workers has a boom box playing rancheras at a volume only loud enough for him to hear it and sing along. At the end of the barn opposite Doug’s office is an area for bathing the horses and a shoeing area. It is all very well maintaned and clean, at least for a horse barn.

By the time I walk back Doug is temporarily off the phone and checking the work list again. One of the exercise riders,  “Shorty,” is sick and won’t be coming in. I find it interesting that even among a group not known for its stature, some rider still merits the nickname Shorty. Doug calls over to Los Alamitos to see if he can get some help from the riding crew over there.

“Can you send me two riders at about 8:30? One of my guys didn’t make it in today. I can give them three horses each to work. $45.” Once the arrangements are made, he marks it on his sheet and lets the barn manager know. I ask if they get cash. “Never,” he says, “they go through payroll just like everyone else.”

“C’mon,” Doug says, “Let’s go watch the horses gallop,” and back to the track we go. We’ll make the trip from track to barn four or five more times before the morning works are done.

Two of Doug’s horses are cantering in company down the stretch, but by the time they hit the half mile pole on the backstretch they’ve picked up the pace noticeably. Doug tells me that every horse is on a schedule, which is why the workout sheet is so important. “I like to gallop my horses a little faster than a lot of trainers do, somewhere between a slow gallop and workout speed.” I watch the two horses gallop down the lane on the rail. “Maybe send them along at 14’s – 14 second eighths. They usually get an actual work once a week or so, but they are on the track every day.”

It’s time for a renovation break so we grab some coffee and head back to the stable. More phone calls. A jockey agent stops by and asks if Doug has anything. “No, not today,” Doug says, “but I’m keeping him in mind.” The agent thanks Doug and moves on.

I’ve brought my iPad to take notes and I see Doug has a computer in the office. I ask if the computer works and he admits it doesn’t in a tone that leads me to believe it didn’t break down recently. The folded piece of paper with handwriting on it in Doug’s pocket starts to make more sense.

I ask about wi-fi and he directs me next door to his business person Sharla. “No wi-fi,” she says, “but you can borrow my computer if you need to.” I thank her and tell her no problem – I brought a regular paper notebook that will work.

One of the horses that worked is being unsaddled outside the office. As the saddle is removed steam rises off the horse’s back. Doug heads outside to check the horse and discovers some filling in one of his ankles. He puts in a call to Dr. Carpenter to come check it. Doug will find out later the news is not so good. The horse is going to be sidelined for a while. The injury isn’t serious, but there is no way Doug will run the horse until it is healed. Doug consults with Dr. Carpenter and they agree to give the gelding an anti-inflammatory shot and send him off to Sunshine Farms for 60 days. Doug makes a call to arrange for the transport.

“The owners won’t be happy,” he tells me, “but what can we do? No way the horse can run on that ankle. Better to let it heal and bring him back healthy.”

I ask him about the injection. He tells me his policy is that he would never inject a joint less than a week out from a race. He tells me not only is he at a point in his career where he doesn’t have to race sore horses, but as the plaque reads, he really does love his animals. Nothing I’ve seen so far suggests otherwise.

By this time the horses are getting ready to be out on the track as soon as the renovation break is over. Doug and I watch a few of them walking around the stable ring. There are buckets filled with water at the end of the ring, and occasionally a groom will lead a horse over to drink. One horse refuses to drink and I avoid the opportunity to mention something about leading a horse to water…. Once a horse has drunk from a bucket it is cleaned and filled with fresh water.

Once the exercise riders mount we walk out to the track to watch the workouts. As much as is possible given everything going on, Doug likes to watch every horse on the track. This time we head to the grandstand just beyond the finish line and go into one of the private boxes. “A group of us invested in the box. It’s a nice place to watch the races, and the workouts in the morning.”

It has a couch, some chairs and a long table for eating. There is a betting machine, six large TV screens, and a refrigerator filled with soft drinks and water. As I’ll find out in the afternoon, there are plenty of attendants to take care of ordering food. At the end of two days I get known as “the ketchup guy” since I constantly seem to be asking for more ketchup for my burger and fries.

Doug and I talk about the horses on the track. “That one looks like a sprinter, big hinds and built downhill,” I comment trying to sound like I know what I’m talking about. Doug agrees. “Yeah, does seem to have a sprinter’s build.” Even if I was totally off base, I had the feeling he wouldn’t embarrass me by saying so.

I ask more questions about training. Ever try interval training like they  push with humans? No, doesn’t seem to work the same way for horses. How do you decide on a jockey? Well, with Paul Redham’s horses, he likes to use Mario Guttierez. W C Racing likes Bejarano and Drayden Van Dyke. Some jockeys match up better with certain horses and if we find that match I like to stay with that jockey. I tend to be loyal to the riders who have been straight with me. If I give them a horse they’ll get plenty of chances to succeed.

It is a recurring theme, and perhaps if there is a weak spot in Doug’s personality it is being loyal and trusting to a fault. I’m not sure Doug could get confrontational. At a point later on when I ask Doug about some of the medication violations earlier in his career, he says, maybe I trusted some people more than I should have. But that loyalty and trust in people is also what defines Doug O’Neill as much as anything. It is what makes his friends fiercely protective of him. He really doesn’t have the ability to be any other way. In three days I never saw him bark at anyone. I watched him absorb the rider’s comments on a mount that was favored but lost, even soothing the rider when he seemed worried about Doug’s reaction.

Doug O’Neill is loyal and trusting. Still, he is perhaps his own biggest critic.

We once again head back to the barn and on the way we run into Drayden Van Dyke who is riding Papa Kade in the second race today. Van Dyke doesn’t look like he has to shave often, if at all. Doug exchanges pleasantries, introduces me, and talks a bit about the horse before we again start for the barn.

Doug says, “Drayden is a great rider, natural instincts, good hands. He’s like Bejarano in that he has a natural jockey’s build. He’ll be a top rider for a long time.” I ask if he likes to give jockeys detailed instructions. He says, “most of the time I just tell the jockey to get a feel for how the race is being run and how the horse is going and to put the horse in the right spot to win.” I think he’s far more patient than I would be – my jockey instructions would probably be as long as my blogs.

Jack Sisterson, one of Doug’s assistants stops by. He’s heading out to catch a plane that afternoon to Turfway Park where one of the stable stars, Sharla Rae, is in a stakes on Saturday. Sisterson drew the job of attending to the filly while she is in Kentucky. I asked Doug why all the way to Turfway? He said she loves the polytrack and there are fewer choices for that surface these days. Need to go where the purses are.

The training day is coming to an end and Doug tells me he needs to do a conference call and then he’ll head over to his mom’s house to shower and dress for the afternoon. Doug has four horses in – one each in the second and eighth races, two in the seventh. We agree to meet at the paddock before the second race.

I’m hanging out at around 1:00 when they walk the horses into the saddling area. Doug is not walking the horse in. He’s a little late – that’s not uncommon – but he gets there before they put the saddle on. When he lists all the balls he was juggling you feel like you should be the one apologizing. The trainer outfit has given way to a pair of khaki’s, a button down shirt and dress leather shoes. Maybe he’ll get his picture taken today. I spy Glenn Sorgenstein, owner and breeder of the number 4, Papa Kade and we walk down to the saddling stall together. Papa Kade is shipping back from Golden Gate where he had just won a mile race on the polytrack. Despite DRF Formulator sharing that O’Neill is almost 30% with horses going from synthetic to dirt after winning the last out, Papa Kade is ice cold on the board and ultimately goes off at 38-1.

We all head up to the box to watch the race. Glenn tells me he’s flying out tonight to watch Sharla Rae and shows me a video Jack Sisterson sent of Sharla Rae galloping over a sloppy Turfway track. The race goes off and Papa Kade prompts the pace for a while, but ultimately fades out of the picture, only beating one horse. Glenn is disappointed – he has a great affection for all his horses, and especially those that he has raised from a foal. It’s not just a business for him. He’s emotionally invested in all his animals, stopping by in the mornings to check on them, attending their races, even the ones 3,000 miles away, and feeding them carrots afterward, win or lose.

Glenn Sorgenstein is a highly successful businessman. Along with his partner, Josh Kaplan, they make up W C Racing. Most people think the W C stands for West Coast, but it is actually the initials of Wilshire Coin, the business he and Josh own. He is another one of those people who thinks the world of Doug and it is a telling endorsement. Glenn would tolerate nothing less than an honest, caring horseman, and watching the two of them together, I get the feeling Doug would never do anything to disappoint Glenn.

We all head down to the track to chat with Van Dyke after he dismounts. Papa Kade just didn’t have it today. Papa Kade and his groom head back to the barn, Doug and I make our way back to the box and Glenn takes off for the airport.

By the time we get back jockey agent Tom Knust is sitting on the couch reading a racing form. Tom gets the credit for originally pairing up Kevin Krigger with eventual BC Mile champion Goldencents and is one of the people close to O’Neill.  As soon as Doug sits down, he pulls the phone out and starts calling and texting. He tells me he tries to call all his owners a couple of times a week. Even beyond the owners, the list of phone calls that need to be made is voluminous. He takes a break from the phone to pull up a video of two animated kids composing a message to their grandmother, and we all watch. It’s also Doug O’Neil to mostly have pictures and videos of his family on his phone.

We all take advantage of the break between races to order lunch. O’Neill orders a piece of grilled chicken with asparagus. I throw caution to the wind and order a hamburger – with fries. Mine is delicious, O’Neill’s sustaining. My solidarity with the waist-watching diet only goes so far. The NCAA tournament is on one of the TV’s that surround the box. The UCLA-SMU game is coming down to the wire. Somebody mentions they have UCLA in their bracket, and when SMU gets called for goaltending, he feels like he stole the game. Based on the tweets, so does everyone else. Doug mentions that I referee basketball, and despite watching all the replay angles they have multiple times, I conclude the official could have sold that call either way. That seems to satisfy everyone.

We head down to the paddock to saddle Frandontjudge and Susan B. Good in the seventh. Kent Desormeaux has the mount on Susan B. Good and if there is someone who can match O’Neill for exuberance and positive attitude at the track it it is Desormeaux. As he usually does, O’Neill stretches the horses legs. He tells me it may help loosen them a bit, but what he is really looking for is to make sure the horse doesn’t react to it. Neither horse threatens, making up two of the last three across the wire. When Desormeaux pops off the horse he starts explaining that she was running like the track was a hot stove, demonstrating with his hands. Doug takes it in and says we have to get to the paddock to saddle Joshie Hit a Homer in the eighth.

On the way to the way to the paddock Doug gets a call from Desormeaux’s agent who assures Doug that Desormeaux really wants to ride the horse back. Doug issues one of his natural responses – you got it brother. I ask him if Desormeaux will get that mount again and he says, absolutely.

Joshie has been in four turf races in search of a maiden victory, but is trying the dirt today. I ask what Doug was thinking. He said they don’t write $30K claimers for turf maidens and the horse needed a race. He’s actually bred better for the dirt (being by Stevie Wonderboy, the horse that propelled Doug to prominence) and goes off at 9-2, but like the other O’Neill runners he doesn’t give us any reason to root.

We find the owners and they are visibly disappointed. I realize the dilemma that faces all trainers. If you tell the owners their horse is ready to run and he doesn’t they are irritated, but if you tell the owners the horse doesn’t have much of a chance they’re wondering why he’s running. It turns out they are also the owners of the horse who got sent to the farm this morning with the bad ankle and, as predicted, they are unhappy with that development. Doug does his best to soothe them as we walk out of the track. I say goodbye to Doug and tell him I’ll see him first thing tomorrow, and I leave him to finish the conversation with the owners.

FRIDAY MARCH 27

The fact that I am still on something of a high from getting to shadow Doug makes it a little easier to get up and be out of my room by 5 AM.

We start with the same routines, except this morning Doug’s main assistant Leandro Mora is back from spending a few days hiking in Yosemite. Leandro is the person who took over for Doug during his suspension, and has been with Doug for years. I asked Leandro if he’s thought about going out on his own, and like a lot of the other people who work for Doug he says he is content where he is. He is sincere and direct and I have no reason to suspect he is just giving me a politically correct response.

He also tells me all the stable workers have been asking about me, who I am, what I’m doing there. Mora is proud of the fact that they all know to pay attention to anyone who isn’t one of Team O’Neill. O’Neill has learned to be cautious, if not suspicious, when it comes to unknown people being around the barn.

Mora seems as perpetually upbeat as everyone else around the barn, and he reinforces it with a world-class smile. He grabs a helmet puts it on his head so that it sits at a goofy angle, and heads out to act as lead pony for one of the horses. Everyone in the stable agrees that underneath the easy going exterior, Mora is a first-rate horseman. He’s a perfect match for O’Neill.

Today I notice a monitor in the corner of Doug’s office with feeds from a series of video cameras. I ask and Doug says, “I paid for the security monitoring system. I couldn’t wait for Santa Anita to install something. The system has two weeks of storage and you can clearly see every stall in the barn.”

O’Neill is clear that he will never again have a situation like Wind of Bosphorus in New York where the burden of proof fell on him to convince the stewards no one in his barn had given the horse oxazepam. If it happens in California he’ll have video to provide as evidence.

O’Neill has also hired  his own private security guard, Marcus Semona, to patrol the stable area. O’Neill told me that as far as he knows he is the only barn to have its own security guard.

I can attest Semona is doing his job. When he found me talking with Jimmy Jimenez he made sure he documented who I was. O’Neill knows that the negative part of his reputation follows him around, and he knows if he has a horse test positive he’ll have to work that much harder to convince the CHRB he was doing everything right.

This morning when we head out to the track Doug has a stopwatch with him. Two horses will be recording official workouts and Doug tells the riders he wants them to go :49 for four furlongs. On the way out he stops by the hut that separates the public area from the backside to let someone know two horses will be recording workouts.  We find a spot in the grandstand and when the horses break off at the half-mile pole he clicks the stopwatch. At the wire he catches the four furlong time as :48.86 and snaps a final time of 1:04 after they’ve galloped out to the 7/8 pole.

“Exactly what I wanted,” he says.

Doug decides to stay out at the track for a while to watch workers until the next renovation break. I tell him I’m going back to the barn to talk with Dr. Ryan Carpenter, Doug’s new – actually he’s been there a few years now – veterinarian, who is scheduled to give a Lasix shot to a horse named Blind Dreams running in the first race. She’s running for the first time as part of Team O’Neill. She got her name because she lost an eye shortly after birth. Fortunately it was her right eye, which means she is not inclined to drift out.

Dr. Carpenter is there right before 9, exactly four hours before post time with a syringe in his hand. Dr. Carpenter is a relatively young, but accomplished as a both a practicing vet and a surgeon. O’Neill is glowing about having him on board.

I ask if it is a 10 cc shot, and he says, no, only 5 cc’s. He said he and Doug have agreed to give horses the smallest dose they can get by with and that only more serious bleeders or very large horses would need a full 10 cc shot. Blind Dreams didn’t fall into either category and 5 cc’s would work fine for her. Dr. Carpenter said some horses get as little as 3 cc’s.

As a side note, I’ve talked with other trainers and many of them are cutting back on Lasix dosages, perhaps not enough to satisfy the WHOA supporters, but certainly reflecting modern thinking on the introduction of therapeutics.

He approaches Blind Dreams on her left side, the side with the working eye, so she doesn’t get panicky and quickly locates the spot in her neck where he’ll make the injection. The whole thing is over in a few seconds and Blind Dreams seems none the worse for wear.

I spend some time talking with Dr. Carpenter about how Doug manages the health of his charges. Dr. Carpenter repeats something Doug has said to me a few times: it’s all about the horse. Like most vets he believes in the value of therapeutic medication, but just as strongly believes horses should not be treated to run through an injury, and he assures me he would work for no trainer that believed anything different. Dr. Carpenter was a good find for O’Neill. Since Dr. Carpenter has joined Team O’Neill there haven’t been any positive tests. O’Neill believes he can trust Dr. Carpenter to take care of the horses the right way, critical given how O’Neil does business, and Dr. Carpenter can make sure O’Neill isn’t getting called into the stewards’ office for a medication positive. O’Neill has a hard line policy – nobody administers medication except Dr. Carpenter.

I’m thinking of heading back to the track when I run into Jimmy Jimenez who is setting up to re-shoe Caradini. (You can read about Jimmy the Shoer in one of my earlier blogs from this week). I asked O’Neill how good he thought Caradini could be and he said she will eventually be a Grade 1 winner. She’s in a maiden today and will likely be one of the favorites.

During the shoeing one of the track vets comes by to check Caradini. I ask what he is looking for and he says mostly he is looking for joint soreness or any lameness. He says the examination obviously wouldn’t reveal any structural problems, but it would give a good indication about whether the horse is fit enough to run. Lots of feeling and manipulating the joints. Caradini looks bored by the whole thing, but the track vet is satisfied she is ready to race.

By the time I get done talking to Jimmy, it’s close to noon and I decide too late to head to my room to change, so I amble over to the paddock to wait for Blind Dreams. A little past 12:30 Leandro Mora and the assigned groom are leading the horse to the saddling area and I fall in with them. Doug joins us and we go through the very practiced routine.

One thing I noticed was that at all times everyone was aware that a horse could get jumpy. It seems the more you are around horses the more you don’t take any good behavior for granted. A lot of “watch out,” especially directed toward me.

Blind Dreams goes off at 3-1, makes a mild move down the backstretch and closes well in the stretch to miss second by three-quarters of a length. Two more chances for me to sneak into a win picture.

Josh Kaplan shows up by the fourth race. His horse, the newly shod Caradini, is entered in the sixth.

The next horse up is the Redham runner One More in the fifth. She runs close up early but gets swallowed in the stretch, finishing fourth at 23-1.  Caradini is the last hope of the day for Team O’Neill. She has a horror trip, getting fanned very wide on both turns and trying to close into a fairly mild pace. She went off a close third choice and the disappointment in the box is obvious.

THE ANSWER

I figure the time had come to ask O’Neill about what everyone wanted to know – the medication and drug positives. I had pulled up the last ten years of records and they broke down this way:

Administrative violations (e.g., late to the paddock, failure to file foal papers) – 20

Therapeutic overages – 8

Omeprazole (generic Prilosec, used to treat ulcers) – 1, KY-2010

Etodoeac (used to treat arthritic inflammation) – 1, CA-2011

Dantrolene (used to treat muscle cramping) – 2, CA- 2005, 2011

Dexamethasone (anti-inflammatory steroid) – 1, CA-2005

Flunixin (NSAID) – 2, CA-2008, 2013

Phenylbutazone (NSAID) 1,  CA-2009

Other overages – 4

TCO2 – 2, CA-2006, 2010

Oxazepam – 1, NY- 2013

Testosterone (steroid) – 1, FL-2010

The Administative violations are really at worst parking tickets, and generally a trainer gets dinged for the same reasons people wind up with one on their windshield. If you’ve had one, you know what I mean. There are a myriad of racing rules, and it is the rare trainer who doesn’t run afoul of one sooner or later.  For me, these are of no importance in defining Doug’s character.

I’ve written about the oxazepam violation and it is hard to conclude anything other than cross-contamination. O’Neill was railroaded, perhaps because he is Doug O’Neill and perhaps because incorrectly punishing a violation is far better for the tracks than not punishing one.

The TCO2 violation for Argenta in 2010 was almost certainly due to a Lasix bump. Even though the violation was undeniable, it became a federal case (literally) because it wasn’t enough for the CHRB to fine O’Neill for a simple violation of a the TCO2 standard. CHRB wanted to label O’Neill as a “milkshaker.” They were going to get him for cheating and take care of him once and for all. O’Neill fought the case, and proved the TCO2 violation was not due to the horse being fed a milkshake, but he really had no chance to wiggle out from underneath the overage. Doesn’t matter that nobody was purposely trying to spike the horse, somebody on Team O’Neill messed up somewhere and O’Neill was stuck with the tab. He was left with over $400,000 in legal bills when CHRB could have done a simple test at the beginning of the investigation to prove the overage had nothing to do with milkshaking, saving both O’Neill and the state hundreds of thousands of dollars.

I decided not to go through each  violation and instead I asked O’Neill the larger question – why all the violations earlier in his career? O’Neill doesn’t deny anything other than the oxazepam violation and that he never milkshaked Argenta. He hesitated, not so much out of unwillingness to answer but I thought out of embarrassment. He admits that in the end whatever happened to him was his own fault. It’s a hard thing for someone to blame themselves for not paying closer attention or placing too much trust in people who turned out to be sloppy or operating too close to the edge, but O’Neill tells me that is exactly what he did.

He wasn’t trying to make excuses. Doug O’Neill didn’t take care of business, maybe believing everyone else would or maybe believing it wasn’t that big a deal. He learned a hard lesson.

I spent three days pretty much following Doug wherever he went, and it was clear how dependent he was on Team O’Neill. Everyone needed to do their job and do it well. He’s hands on with some things, but given all the responsibilities a trainer has, it is impossible to be everywhere at once. The precision, the coordination it takes to keep everything running efficiently is far greater than I ever knew. You don’t just condition horses, you run a complex business on the side.

We are all colored by our life experiences, and the test of a person is not whether he never makes a mistake but whether he learns from his mistakes and takes care not to make them again. I want to believe everything I saw in three days with Doug O’Neill tells me he has embraced that.

I’ll confess that I like Doug O’Neill. It’s almost impossible not to like him once you get to know him. He’s a great guy. He extended himself to me far beyond my expectations. He didn’t put anything out of bounds. He included me inside his circle. I want him to be clean and I want him to succeed, and I think that is the other thing Doug knows. He wouldn’t just disappoint himself, but all the people who have been there when he needed them if he messed up again.

O’Neill has also gained great perspective. He takes time off to do things with his kids, understanding how important family is. He leans on the people who truly love him for advice and centering. He has hired a team of people who are loyal and hardworking. He’s taken steps to fix all the things that gave him a less than stellar reputation. He’s changed some of the people who work for him and some of the people he trusted. He’s gotten a different veterinarian and that has made a large difference. He has video surveillance, a private security guard, and everybody on board paying attention to everything going on.

He’s come to grips with the idea that with all the good things that come with success, there will always be petty jealousies, especially in the self-contained community that is a the racetrack. He, above anyone else, realizes how lucky he is in all the most important things in life, and I think I finally understand why he told me he was the luckiest man on the face of the earth.

It isn’t about what happens on Twitter or Facebook. It is about having a job you love and family and friends that support you through the good times and bad.

People can dwell on Doug O’Neill’s past, but in his mind that is exactly what it is. The past. And he wants nothing more than to prove the past does not portend the future. I asked him the last question we all needed to know. Will we ever see Doug O’Neill’s name in a headline about a positive drug test?

He looked at me, and his voice dropped. “I will do everything within my control to make sure I never have another violation for drugs.”

I hope the world puts the past in a drawer and gives him an opportunity to prove that.

 

James D. Jimenez, a.k.a. Jimmy the Shoer, pulls his truck up to the back of Barn 88 at Santa Anita. He opens the rear doors at the end of the bed of his Ford F-250 diesel pickup and hidden within is an agglomeration of equipment that he slides out just beyond the bumper of the truck. It looks heavy enough to tip the truck over. Lest anyone wonder what it is, there is a sign prominently displayed on the top that says “Blacksmith Shop.”

“This is my office,” Jimmy says, “everything I need to shoe a horse.” He smiles and tells me, “I get a lot of comments on that sign but it’s true. It’s a mobile blacksmith shop.”

Groom Dago Torres brings today’s customer, a promising filly owned by W C Racing named Caradini,  to a shoeing area that trainer Doug O’Neill outfitted specifically for the task. Hard rubber mats cover the ground – Jimmy says it is best for the horses to have a flat surface to stand on so they feel secure and balanced. Caradini stands calmly – after all she’s already done this a dozen or so times.

“We shoe them every 25 to 35 days,” Jimmy replies in answer to my question. “I like to check them at 25 days and decide when they’ll need reshoeing. This one is right at 35 days so she’s definitely due.”

Jimmy opens one of the side panels in the truck to reveal a collection of shiny aluminum shoes. Just like human shoes they are sized by number. Jimmy holds up two shoes side by side, one a size 3 and the other a size 8. It looks like the difference between a shetland pony and a clydesdale.

“Most horses fall between these two, but occasionally we’ll see one with feet that small or that large,” Jimmy says, anticipating my question. “I keep detailed notes on every horse I shoe, for two full years,” he says as he is flipping through the file on his computer. “That way if the horse changes owners and the new owner needs to know about the history of the horse’s foot health, I’ll be able to find it quickly.” He finds Caradini, looks at what he has previously written, then grabs a pair of front and back shoes and places them on his anvil.

Having the proper shoes and having them fitted properly is crucial for any horse, and more so for a thoroughbred. When the horse is shod properly, it hits the ground in a level fashion, distributing the force of stride uniformly through the feet and up though the bones of the leg. Proper shock absorption is perhaps the most important factor in keeping a race horse sound. More than that, running comfortably will bring out the best in a horse. If the horse is improperly shod, it hits unevenly causing excess stress on the feet and legs, and inevitably soundness problems. For a job not many racing fans think about, it can make all the difference between a horse staying in training and winning and spending time recovering from leg problems.

You can see the village smithy in Jimmy’s look. He’s medium height with a full head of closely cropped hair that was once fully dark but is quickly being overtaken by white. His forearms are as thick as a thoroughbred’s front leg, his chest barreled in a way that would seem to make it impossible for any piece of clothing to be loose fitting. His thick and calloused hands betray a lifetime of hard use.

Jimmy dons his leather farrier’s apron and working gloves with the top of the forefinger on each hand snipped off to expose his finger so he can safely hold the nails. Once properly outfitted he  walks over to Caradini to check how she looks while standing, making sure there are no poblems that could complicate things. He looks at her balance and makes sure she is standing straight. He checks that the hoofs are the same height and level, both front and back. I notice what look like some small chips where the hoof meets the shoe.  Jimmy assures me these are nothing to be concerned about – it’s common, especially as it gets closer to the time when the nails need to be trimmed. Today Caradini passes the inspection. Her hooves are healthy and the shoeing should be straightforward.

Before she can be fitted with new shoes, the old shoes have to come off. Jimmy pries the shoe a bit and then gently rocks it off with a shoe puller. He props her foot on a device called a hoof stand, essentially a metal rod with a flat top for the horse’s hoof to rest on, smoothing the outside.

Caradini is standing calmly for the whole procedure and I ask if all horses are as well behaved. “No,” Jimmy says, “some horses need to be given a mild tranquilizer to stay calm enough to get through being shod. Most of the trainers I work for give me permission in advance to use a tranquilizer on a non-cooperating horse.” Jimmy takes Caradini’s front foot between his leg and moves into an uncomfortable-looking, bent over position to trim the hoof. He takes a curved knife specially made for trimming the hoof and starts taking off some of the excess growth with skillful strokes. He then grabs a nipper that looks like something Torquemada may have invented and deftly nips off the quarter inch or so of growth that has appeared since the last shoeing. As long as the farrier only clips the insensitive part of the hoof, the horse feels nothing more than we might feel when we clip our own nails.

“I use a shoe with no toe grab on the front. Here in California you can use stickers running on the dirt, but not on the turf. Tears up the course too much. I just think the best choice for most horses is the regular front plate regardless of surface. On the back we’ll use a shoe with a small toe clip.” Once the hoof is trimmed Jimmy uses a rasp to make the bottom smooth and level and then fits the shoe, reshaping it with his hammer to make sure it is exactly conforming to Caradini’s hoof. He uses his rasp and his grinder to bevel the bottom of the shoe and then the outside. “Beveling the shoe helps to limit the potential of the horse catching it on something and having it pull off. It’s easier than you would think for a horse to catch a shoe – happens all the time.” Jimmy shows me a shoe that he keeps in his truck. It is bent in different directions. “The horse that was wearing this shoe only pulled it part way off and ran on it the whole race. He wound up lame because of it and never did recover to race again. If  a horse is going to catch a shoe, it’s better for the whole shoe to come off.”

Once the shoe is fitted and shaped it is nailed on. Jimmy said, “Usually we’ll use six to eight nails to attach the shoe, but I’ve had to attach shoes with as few as two nails. They still stayed on. But three or four nails on each side is best to hold the shoe securely.” He holds the nails in his mouth, grabs one at a time, and quickly drives them in straight. He made the whole process look like easy, the way people highly skilled at something really difficult do.

Jimmy runs through the exact same process for each shoe until Caradini is standing with four of the prettiest aluminum shoes you’ve ever seen on a horse. Dago starts to lead her back to her stall, and I’m sure I see a bounce in her step that wasn’t there an hour ago.

Although some of the morning cool lingers, Jimmy is covered in sweat. He tells me, “It’s hard work and it takes a toll on your body. In the last few years I’ve had a couple of shoulder surgeries and a few other injuries. I’ve started cutting back, and now I only work for a couple of trainers. Doug O’Neill and owner Paul Redham will always have a special place because it was with their horse, I’ll Have Another, that I got to shoe the winner of the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness. That gave me my own Triple Crown since I had previously shoed Touch Gold in the Belmont. That was a lifetime goal for me. I guess maybe if I keep shoeing I’d like to have a second Kentucky Derby winner.”

Jimmy is one of the hundreds of people who work in anonymity on the backside, the hidden engines behind the glamour of race day. They are an indispensable part of getting a horse to win, and while trainers and jockeys get most of the notice, they will freely heap praise on the grooms, exercise riders, hotwalkers -and farriers – who all play a critical part in the success of any stable.

Remember the proverb for want of a nail? A morning with Jimmy the Shoer and you realize a horseshoer is as important today as he was back then, and there are few better than James D. Jimenez.

“Faced with the choice between changing one’s mind and proving there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.

– John Kenneth Galbraith

The majority of race tracks are not populated by horses with the qualifications of Dortmund or California Chrome, or by trainers with the name recognition of Todd Pletcher, Bob Baffert or Steve Asmussen. The base of the racing pyramid is built with horses named Grant or Get a Notion, animals that are kept in racing condition by trainers who toil in relative anonymity at tracks often ignored by the people who often forget racing occurs at places other than the cathedrals of the sport like Saratoga or Churchill Downs or Santa Anita. The base of the pyramid is built on the blue collar efforts of guys like Bill Brashears, conditioners keeping $3,500 claimers healthy enough to run and plying their trade in the minor leagues of racing at tracks like Turf Paradise, Arapahoe Park, Farmington, Rilito, and Albuquerque.

Brashears comes across exactly like what he is. A  guy who shoots straight and understands that you treat people with unambiguous honesty and fairness, expecting the same in return. He is guileless and smart and hard-working, a trainer’s trainer. Success in his business is based on relationships, knowing who the good guys and not so good guys are. Who can be trusted and who needs to be taken with a few grains of salt. In Bill’s world you give the good guys the benefit of the doubt until they give you a reason not to. The bad guys – better to just not deal with them.

He treats his horses with the kind of care you only see from someone with a love for the thoroughbred and a passion for watching them run. He is not the guy described by a cynical racing executive as being willing to do anything that will allow him to win. It is simply not in his nature to do anything less than treat his horses as if they were family, the core of Brashears Racing. You can see him metamorphose around his horses, the hardscrabble exterior melting away into a doting grandfather, feeding them peppermints and affectionately scratching at their muzzle. He admits that when he climbed over a fence at 13 so he could see horses run, he was hooked. He trains not simply because it is a job, but because it is so much a part of who he is. He’ll never amass a fortune running at the smaller tracks, but that was never his goal. If Bill Brashears is remembered as a trainer who worked his butt off and played by the rules and was an example to any trainer hoping to make a mark in racing  the right way, he will be satisfied.

What a lot of trainers, including Bill Brashears, are having trouble with is believing they could do everything what they thought was the right way, but have still been hit with medication positives. In Brashears case the offending drug was Banamine, a medication that has been used for years to help control inflammation.

Horses are athletes and they suffer from the same affflictions common to all athletes. It is nothing less than humane to treat horses with therapeutic medications, drugs that will provide comfort to the animals while they recuperate. What a therapeutic like Banamine doesn’t do is mask pain in a way that will allow a horse to run as if nothing is wrong. Ask any veterinarian – if you are trying to mask an injury, you would have to use a fairly strong narcotic not the equine equivalent of ibuprofen.

Again ask any veterinarian – inflammation is a natural process and it is critical for survival. It is defined as “a protective immunovascular response that involves immune cells, blood vessels, and molecular mediators. The purpose of inflammation is to eliminate the initial cause of cell injury, clear out necrotic cells and tissues damaged from the original insult and the inflammatory process, and to initiate tissue repair.”

The problem is that often this process becomes excessive, creating a vicious cycle and causing more tissue damage and pain than the injury itself might. Inflammation can produce different products, including prostaglandins and other inflammatory “mediators” that help bring about these effects.

According to Thal Equine Hospital in Santa Fe, NM, “This is where anti-inflammatory drugs are helpful. Their role is to dampen inflammation by reducing the formation of these mediators, and thus reducing the signs of disease (swelling, pain and fever, for example) while still allowing healing to take place.”

In other words, anti-inflammatory drugs are precisely what are indicated for certain conditions. One might even argue it is cruel not to give a horse with inflammation a medication.

Banamine belongs to a class of drugs known as non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (“NSAIDS”), which includes familiar human drugs like aspirin and ibuprofen. They are drugs that have been used safely and effectively for decades. It is generally the veterinarian’s drug of choice for soft tissue inflammatory conditions (sore muscles) and is considered kinder to a horse’s stomach than phenylbutazone (bute) for treating joint swelling. Banamine is also a good choice for horses that have a tendency to tie-up. The Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Association has stated, “Class 4 or 5 therapeutic medications (mostly NSAID-type medications such as Phyenylbutazone) are used to ease the aches and pains of training – akin to a person taking an Advil before or after a competition. It will not make that individual run any faster or jump any higher than his or her natural ability to do so.”

For those concerned about the welfare of the horse, NSAIDs, when used as prescribed, do not put a horse at substantially elevated risk of catastrophic injury.

So if you are a racing commissioner and you believe it is necessary to set a standard for Banamine, the question you should ask is straightforward: at what level is the analgesic benefit of Banamine essentially negligible? Whether or not Banamine might have some residual benefit to inflammation should be irrelevant, since good veterinary practice has already established that reductions in inflammation often speed healing. If a horse is not receiving an analgesic effect, it would be hard to argue the drug is performance enhancing. THAT is the level at which we should set the standard. Most vets and pharmacologists agree that any post-race level below 50ng/ml and a withdrawal time of 24-hours from administration will completely ensure elimination of the analgesic effect

Racing is governed for the most part by politically appointed boards and commissions. The commissions are not normally filled with experts on pharmacology, and they are often at the mercy of long-time administrators, people like Rick Arthur in California, Joe Gorajec in Indiana, and Dan Hartman in Colorado. These are the people who populate the Association of Racing Commissioners International (ARCI), a group on the record as calling for “the racing industry and member regulators to embrace a strategy to phase out drugs and medication in horse racing.” (ARCI Press Release March 28, 2011)

The chairman of the ARCI at the time of that press release? Dan Hartman, Executive Director of the Colorado Racing Commission. He becomes an integral part of Bill Brashears story.

In that press release Hartman is quoted as saying that “a five-year phase out [of Lasix] is reasonable to bring North American racing policies in line with what is going on in other parts of the world like Europe and Hong Kong.”

Hartman’s successor, William Koester, Chairman of the Ohio State Racing Commission, added, “Today over 99% of Thoroughbred racehorses and 70% of Standardbred racehorses have a needle stuck in them four hours before a race. That just does not pass the smell test with the public or anyone else except horse trainers who think it necessary to win a race. I’m sure the decision makers at the time meant well when these drugs were permitted, however this decision has forced our jurisdictions to juggle threshold levels as horseman become more desperate to win races and has given horse racing a black eye.”

Koester’s statement is meant to inflame (no pun intended) by referencing needles stuck in horses, as if it was some willy-nilly attempt to torture helpless animals. When I was shadowing Doug O’Neill I watched his vet, Dr Ryan Patterson, administer a Lasix shot and if you had blinked you would have missed it. The horse had no negative reaction at all. Koester further pounds home the point that trainers are medicating their horses only to gain an advantage and win races, seemingly arguing they are not doing it to ensure the horse’s health is being managed so that it can race without distress. Not passing the smell test and black eye for racing are the justifications for trying to make all racing drug free. It reminds me of a quote from Arnold Glasow. “The fewer the facts, the stronger the opinion.” As long as administrators with the power to make the rules for racing insist the seamy underbelly of racing is legal therapeutic medication, it can become the facts.

The press release states that ARCI intends to move toward “enacting a policy of zero-tolerance.” (Note: Once Koester took over as chair, he quickly backed off that statement, stating the ARCI does not subscribe to a policy of zero-tolerance, but bear in mind it was Hartman who approved the press release.)

Hartman concludes, “We regulators are the only voice in racing for the animals and betting public. It’s time we raise the bar in service to both.”

To reference the famous Pogo line, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”

I have already written about why we cannot be Hong Kong (http://halveyonhorseracing.com/?p=910). Basically, North America  runs more races in a week in August than Hong Kong’s entire racing year. To populate those races we need ten times the number of horses in training than Hong Kong does. How does North America compare with Dubai and its 23 racing days a year? I’ll go out on a limb and say if we were racing at a couple of tracks the equivalent of three weeks a year we could have Dubai’s drug policies too. Look at the standards for Europe or Australia. Other than Lasix, there is often not a significant difference between those jurisdictions and North America for therapeutics, and some threshold levels for therapeutic medications are even higher than the ARCI standards.

The upshot of the zero-tolerance Dan Hartman favors is almost certainly the demise of small tracks and reduced field size at the tracks that survive, incredibly ironic when one considers one of the small tracks that would suffer is Colorado’s own Arapahoe Park.

ARCI has relied on studies commissioned by the Racing Medication and Testing Consortium (RMTC) to establish post-race residual levels and recommended withdrawal times. In the case of Banamine (flunixin), a study done by Heather Kynch, Rick Sams, Rick Arthur, and Scott Stanley on how quickly flunixin was cleared in exercised horses provided the initial recommendation on which the flunixin standard was based.  They tested one model (called the sedentary model) in which four non-exercised horses were tested and it was determined a probable threshold level of 20 ng/mL with a withdrawal time of 24 hours. For those not familiar with the nanogram (ng) it is a billionth of a gram. However, subsequent testing using a racehorse model took 20 horses in training and determined exact plasma concentrations of Banamine, concluding that 99% of horses would have less than 50 ng/mL, and thus recommended a threshold value of 50 ng/mL 24 hours after administration of the recommended dose.

If 20 sounds like a small number for testing animals to set a standard, according to the European Agency for the Evaluation of Medicinal Products study on the Evaluation of Medicines for Veterinary Use (2000), 19 is the minimum number of animals that need to be tested to conclude a 95% confdence level that 95% of the population will be below a respective standard.

Think about this for a minute. Like a lot of ARCI standards, the testing is not to determine at what level a medication stops being performance enhancing (or retarding) but at a level at which almost all horses would have cleared all but a residual amount of the medication by some time in the future. Remember, the ARCI objective as plainly stated by Dan Hartman in 2011 was to eventually rid thoroughbred racing of the scourge of “drugs and medication.”

It also points out something else that is critical when looking at new standards – the availability of new mass spectrometers that can measure ridiculously small amounts, even less than nanograms down to picograms – trillionths of a gram. As Dr. Steven Barker said to me once, “show me a lab measuring amounts in picograms and I’ll show you a lab with an expensive new machine they need to justify.”

Despite the RMTC study recommendation, the ARCI in April 2013 adopted the 20 ng/mL (with a recommended 24-hour withdrawal time) standard. It is critical to note that even at the time ARCI adopted the standard it was cast as a  “95/95 standard.” As noted above, this means there is a 95% level of confidence that 95% of the horses tested would fall below the standard. In plain terms, one in 20 horses would still be expected to fail a post-race test. By that measure, if a track tested the first and second place finishers of a ten race program, and they all had been given 10 cc’s of Banamine, at least one of them had a probability to come back over the standard.

Think about this. ARCI had a chance to adopt a standard (50 ng/mL) that would have all but guaranteed no undeserved positives and no performance enhancement, and instead picked a standard where non-pharmacologically merited violations would abound.

Dr. Steven Barker at LSU didn’t equivocate on the adoption of the original ARCI standard. “The Banamine standard is too high, and it is because ARCI didn’t pay any attention to pharmacologists. With the recommended dose, there is no analgesic effect 24 hours after administering Banamine.”

So with Dan Hartman at the helm, Colorado adopted the ARCI therapeutic medication schedule of 20 ng/mL for Banamine and in March 2014 the Colorado Racing Commission staff and the track stewards had a meeting with the veterinarians who worked on track at Arapahoe Park. Dr. James Dysart, Bill Brashears’ veterinarian in Colorado, and a vet who has been practicing about as long as Bill Brashears has been training horses, was in attendance at that meeting and asked specifically about what treatment changes would be indicated in 2014. According to Dr. Dysart, he was clearly told, if you practice as you did last year there should be no problems. With regard to Banamine, in March Dr. Dysart was told 10 cc’s with a 24 hour withdrawal time would prevent positives.

So when it came to Banamine Dr. Dysart did exactly as he did the year before and by July Bill Brashears had three Banamine positives. There were six positives in all in Colorado and half belonged to Brashears.

I asked Dr. Dysart why there were not more positives, and based on his practice, he indicated many trainers had thrown in the towel and switched to bute. Whether the reason was the change in flunixin standard, cost or efficacy, trainers made the switch.

After Brashears was hit with the first Banamine positive, he and Dr. Dysart huddled and decided to drop the dosage by 20% to 8 cc’s and increase the withdrawal time closer to 25 hours. Amounts and times for all horses are documented on the medication sheets maintained by Dr. Dysart, and there is no disagreement that the  dose that was administered had sufficient withdrawal time based on the information Dr. Dysart was given in March. After Brashears had five horses test clean after the first positive, he figured they had found the right formula.

Unfortunately, this turned out not to be the case. Brashears was informed that two horses that raced about 10 days apart in July came back positive (both under 30 ng/mL), even after receiving the 8 cc dosage. Brashears had no way of adjusting dosage or withdrawal time for the third horse since the results of the testing for the second horse had not yet been given to him. In fact, Brashears was informed of the last two violations at the same time, well after he could have made a further adjustment. Based on that Brashears expected the second and third violations to be combined into one.

Until he was given notice of the last two positives, Brashears sensibly was given a warning after the first violation, made a documented adjustment in an effort to comply, and as far as he could see had success with the new protocol, so he stuck with it, not realizing at 20 ng/mL he was still in danger of a violation.

Meanwhile something interesting happened at the RMTC. The high number of Banamine positives in different jurisdictions in 2013 caused them to reexamine the 20 ng/mL standard ARCI had adopted. Remember, the initial RMTC testing suggested 50 ng/ml would ensure 99% of the horses treated appropriately would test negative, and at best with the 20 ng/mL standard ARCI adopted we would still expect 5% positives. It turned out the reality was alarmingly beyond 5% positives.

RMTC then did another study that included 16 horses (less than the 19 required for statistical validity) that were exercised under laboratory conditions, and four (25%) of the 16 showed residual levels over 20 ng/mL after 24 hours. But, given the umbilical tie between ARCI and the RMTC, rather than suggest the standard was wrong, it was determined the withdrawal time was too short. In fact, the subsequent RMTC study concluded at least 32 hours was required to maintain 95/95 compliance with a 20 ng/mL.

In April 2014 ARCI revised the recommended withdrawal time for flunixin a mere year after originally adopting it, but left the 20 ng/mL in place.

This was a critical conclusion because changing the withdrawal time instead of the residual standard ultimately would have the effect of eliminating the therapeutic value of Banamine. At 24 hours the analgesic effect is essentially gone, and approaching 32 hours really limits the anti-inflammatory effect. In other words, this could be seen as an indirect way to ban Banamine consistent with the ARCI stated goal. This was also critical because the ARCI standard was not actually either 20 ng/mL or 32 hours, it was simply 20 ng/mL. Regardless of when Banamine is administered, 24 hours or 32 hours, if the level is over 20 ng/mL the horse is in violation.

According to Dr. Dysart, veterinarians in Colorado were not told the recommended withdrawal time had changed to 32 hours until July. Since the 32 hours was nothing more than a recommendation, there was no need to provide notification of rulemaking. That would only be necessary if the standard was proposed for revision.

The new recommendation came too late for Brashears though. He had to hope the Colorado Racing Commission saw that he and his vet had done everything the Commission assured them would maintain compliance and be lenient with their punishment.

Brashears asked for split samples to be tested for the second and third violations, and both confirmed he was over the 20 ng/mL standard (but well below 50 ng/mL). Brashears appealed, resting his case on the fact that his veterinarian did exactly what he had done hundreds of times and was assured he could continue doing it before the season without risking a violation. In front of a hearing officer he lost and on he went to his final appeal to the Colorado Racing Commission.

Brashears’ attorney made the relevant arguments, and once the testimony and final arguments were completed the Commission voted on a motion to saddle Brashears with both the second and third violations as separate events. One of the five commissioners was absent from the hearing, and the vote on the motion was 2-2, which normally would have been a win for Brashears. In a rare occurrence, the Commission moved to go into executive session where they got the missing commissioner on the phone, and re-voted on the motion. When they came back Brashears had lost his appeal 5-0.

I asked Dan Hartman if this was a regular practice. He said no, but the Assistant Attorney General was consulted and opined it was a perfectly legal procedure. It was never clear exactly what happened to go from 2-2 to 5-0, but Brashears was ultimately assessed a $1,500 fine and 15 days.

One of the people privy to the discussions in the executive session suggested that the Commissioners were advised that letting Brashears off the hook could leave them vulnerable to a subsequent action by Brashears. The concern was that it would essentially be an admission that Colorado had committed an error by leading the veterinarians to believe either historical protocols were sufficient for compliance or that a 24-hour withdrawal time indicated compliance.

Brashears is not new to the game, and he understood a violation, even if it is for a bad standard, is a violation. Despite believing he had done nothing wrong, he was willing to bargain with the Commission, offering to pay a fine (less than the $1,500) if the days were waived. It appeared the Commission wanted nothing less than what Brashears was ultimately given.

Bill Brashears has paid an even higher price than the fine, the loss of purse money and the cost of an attorney. He’s lost clients. After all, owners don’t want to be associated with someone with a medication positive, regardless of the circumstances. He’s lost the ability to even make a living during his suspension. Most of all he’s lost some of his belief that if you do right by racing, racing will do right by you.

For Brashears part, he has sworn off racing again in Colorado. He is firm in his belief he didn’t cheat, and that he was the pawn in a bigger battle over medication in racing. In the end, Colorado not only will lose a long term trainer, but a guy who cares about his horses and about training them the right way. It’s hard to imagine this was a success for anyone.

I asked Bill Brashears what bothered him the most. He said, “What makes me the most upset is [Arapahoe Park General Manager] Bruce Seymore telling me at the first Commission meeting that he knew I was innocent but that they were going to hang me anyway. I believe Hartman knows I’m innocent but their grand plan of Colorado being medication free would go down the tank if their first experiment went so wrong. Spending thousands of dollars in attorney fees for their screw-up and I’m still doing 15 days and being fined $1,500 and the division [the Colorado Division of Racing] calling it trainer responsibility. Where’s their responsibility?”