This is an original story I researched and wrote a while ago. I sent it to the Blood Horse for publication and they agreed to publish it. Unfortunately, they only offered me $100 for the piece. I turned it down. So instead of publishing it for $100 and letting thousands read it, I’m publishing it for free for maybe dozens to read. Given that, I’m asking that if you read it, pass it along so that it gets as wide a distribution as possible.

Mollie and Tenbrooks

By Rich Halvey

“Run O Molly run, run O Molly run

Tenbrooks gonna beat you to the bright shinin’ sun.

To the bright shinin’ sun, O Lord, to the bright shinin’ sun”

All things considered, 1878 was not history’s most exciting year. Thomas Alva Edison patented the phonograph, prompting the first known occurrence of a parent saying, “You call that music? In my day, we had real music!” Who can forget that 1878 was one of the numerous years when Greece declared war on Turkey. It was also the year of the first of three assassination attempts on Italian king Umberto I; the anarchists may not have been great shots, but they were persistent.

And, oh yeah, it was the year of the Mollie McCarthy/Ten Broeck match race.

In 1878 three sports captured the imagination of the American public. Horse racing dominated the sporting news of the time, exploding in popularity through the last half of the 1800’s until by 1890 there were 314 tracks in operation. Boxing was a distant second followed by the growing sport of baseball. Football was popular on college campuses, but the formation of professional teams with paid players was over two decades away, and nearly half a century from becoming the respectable National Football League. Basketball would not even be invented until 1891. Horse racing all but stood alone atop the 19^th century sports world.

The 1870s were a time of change in American racing. Up until that decade, most racing consisted of horses going long distances two- to five-times in a day. The famous 1823 race between American Eclipse and Henry, so beautifully chronicled by John Eisenberg in his book The Great Match Race, was typical of the time, with the horses having to win two-out-of-three four-mile heats. By the middle of the century, horses such as Lexington, perhaps the greatest of the so-called four-milers, were heroes on the track and favorites in the breeding shed.

While the English had all but abandoned the multiple-heat, long-distance race by 1870 in favor of single-heat “sprint” races, change was more gradual in America. Still, the movement toward what we today think of as the prototypical racehorse—fast-breaking and hard-running—was inexorable and irresistible. By 1880, the era of the four-milers was over, and racing took the shape modern fans would recognize.

MERIWETHER LEWIS CLARK

The track we know today as Churchill Downs was the brainchild of Meriwether Lewis Clark, Jr., nicknamed Lutie, grandson of the former Missouri governor and famed explorer General William Clark and the great nephew of Louisville founder George Rogers Clark. When his father, Meriwether Lewis Clark, Sr., married Abigail Prather Churchill, the Clark’s gained a connection to one of Kentucky’s first families.

Armistead Churchill, Jr. brought his family to Louisville in 1787, in the process changing the family name from Churchhill to the current well known spelling. He purchased 300 acres of land, part of which included the grounds on which Churchill Downs now sits.

Lutie Clark was only six when his mother died and his bereaved father sent him to live with his aunt and her two sons, John and Henry Churchill, holders of most of the original Churchill property. It was during his time with the Churchills that Lutie developed a taste for custom made suits, good food, and of course horse racing.

By his mid-twenties, Lutie Clark’s love of excess showed both in his physical girth and his personality. He was described as a great mustachioed bear of a man, arrogant, quarrelsome and quick-tempered, traits that would eventually cost him his friends, family and the track he helped start.

In 1873 the 27 year-old Clark returned from a trip to Europe with grand ideas about how to build a racetrack and eliminate the traditional bookmaker in favor of French pari-mutuel (literally “betting between the patrons”) machines. The idea behind pari-mutuel betting was ingenious. Rather than the track or the bookmaker accepting the full risk of a wager, the track would simply act as the “broker,” essentially creating a betting pool of wagers and distributing payoffs to the winners for a fixed fee per wager. In this way the patrons would decide the “odds” of each entrant and the track was completely removed from any financial interest in the outcome. Whether the favorite or the longest shot won the race, the track collected exactly the same amount of money. In theory, this gave them a powerful incentive to maintain the integrity of racing.

Unfortunately, despite Clark’s best efforts, the French machines never caught on. It would be decades before the mechanical version of the automated tote machine fully replaced the on-track auction pools and bookmakers. As was indicative of the time, living, breathing beings (like men and horses) were almost always trusted more than cold, heartless machines, even if those living beings were bookmakers—remember the famous tale of John Henry from the 1800s in which a legendary steel driver outperformed a steam-powered hammer?

With the backing and land donation of the Churchills, Lutie got the track built, and on May 17, 1875, the Louisville Jockey Club and Driving Park Association opened its doors to the public. During the spring and fall the facility was to be devoted to racing, while the rest of the year it was available for carriage riding, hence the Driving Park Association part of the name.

The Churchills happily allowed Lutie Clark to manage the racetrack and in the early years the track did reasonably well, although never turning a profit. Lutie flung himself into his racetrack endeavors to the point of obsession, but the irascible and overly opinionated Clark managed to alienate almost everyone he came in contact with, from the horsemen to the press to each member of his family, one by one. In one well-known incident, Clark refused the prominent breeder, T.G. Moore permission to race at the track, claiming Moore was behind on the payment of entry fees. Moore demanded an apology, Clark refused, and when Moore would not leave the premises, Clark drew a gun on him and ordered him off. Moore left but only to get a gun and shoot Clark through his office door, hitting Clark in the chest but not wounding him mortally. As the years went on there were more and more stories of Lutie Clark’s embarrassments, eventually using up all the patience left in John and Henry Churchill.

The story of how the track came to be known as Churchill Downs also lay in the contempt generated for Lutie. Many locals called the track “Churchill’s downs” as a way of reminding Lutie who was really in control of the track. It became known informally as Churchill Downs in 1883, when reporters picked up on the name. Within a few years, everyone referred to the track as Churchill Downs, but it wasn’t until 1937 that the facility was formally incorporated with that name.

Lutie Clark’s original plan was to hold three major races each year modeled after the Epsom Derby, the Oaks and the St. Ledger Stakes. The three races would be called the Kentucky Derby, the Kentucky Oaks, still run on the Friday before the Derby, and the eponymously named Clark Stakes, still run during the fall meet at Churchill. While the Kentucky Derby was one of four races carded for that first race day in May (although not the first Saturday), two other races probably provided more of a draw for the 12,000 in attendance: the Louisville Cup and the Gentleman’s Cup Race. Clark’s honored guests watched the races from the clubhouse, sipping mint juleps (a drink often reported as being invented by Lutie Clark) and listening to Strauss waltzes.

In 1875, top-flight 3-year-old racing was considered something of a novelty, and it would be years before the Kentucky Derby would attain status as America’s premier horse race. Still, when the fine racehorse Aristides beat fourteen other 3-year-olds to win the mile-and-a-half Derby in record time, the crowd was appropriately enthusiastic.

Despite a popular desire to assume that the impact of the Derby on American racing was large from its first running, it was not the early Derbys that certified Churchill Downs as one of the elite tracks in America. That would come three years later on July 4, 1878, when Ten Broeck, a horse that had finished fifth behind Aristides in the inaugural Derby, met Mollie McCarthy (sometimes spelled as McCarty) in one of the very last of the four-mile marathons.

TEN BROECK

Ten Broeck was a regally bred bay stallion by the British import sire Phaeton (who was by Baron de Rothschild’s well-known stallion King Tom) out of the mare Fanny Holton. A look at Fanny Holton’s pedigree reveals not only the prepotent sire Lexington, but also the eventually memorialized Henry, the loser of the “Great Match Race.” Fanny Holton is generally recognized as one of Lexington’s most influential daughters.

Ten Broeck was a useful horse at age three, having defeated Aristides in the Phoenix Stakes before faltering in the Derby. That year, he won five of nine races. By the time Ten Broeck turned four, he had become an eye-catching racehorse off the track and a superstar on the track. In 1876, Ten Broeck won seven of the eight races he entered and established a new record for the four-mile distance. Next year, at the age of five, he won nine of the ten events he entered, with his only defeat coming at the hands of Hall of Fame horse Parole (owned by tobacco king Pierre Lorillard) in the Baltimore Special at Pimlico. This race also featured one of Lexington’s last sons—Tom Ochiltree, the 1875 Preakness winner—and was somewhat artificially billed as a battle of East versus West, even though all three horses were Eastern-bred. In an action that would be unbelievable today, Congress actually adjourned to allow the Senators and Congressmen to attend the event.

After Ten Broeck’s 5-year-old season, his owner, Frank Harper, considered retiring him to stud duty. After all, he had no equal in the best two-of-three four-mile heats. Fortunately for racing, and especially Churchill Downs, Harper chose to give Ten Broeck two more races in 1878. One would be the famous match race against Mollie McCarthy.

 MOLLIE McCARTHY

The true history and pedigree of Mollie McCarthy is difficult to track due to the great number of fillies and mares of the same name around that time. Most accounts have her foaled in 1873, making her a year younger than Ten Broeck. While some sources suggest Mollie was bred in Tennessee, she was almost certainly born in California, the certain daughter of the top California broodmare Hennie Farrow and the likely daughter of the stallion Monday (a son of Colton that was a lesser son of Lexington). Mollie McCarthy’s breeder, Adolph Maillard, had brought Hennie Farrow, Monday, and a sire named Young Eclipse, originally purchased by Richard Ten Broeck, to California. In 1873, all of these horses were firmly entrenched in Marin County California.

Mollie quickly established herself as a top-flight racehorse. She won her only start as a 2-year-old and six consecutive races throughout her 3-year-old season. She continued defeating all comers during her 4-year-old season, winning five more races. When she defeated a horse named Jake at the start of her 5-year-old campaign, despite conceding fourteen pounds, it became clear that there were no horses left in California to beat. Mollie’s owner, Theodore Winters, sold her to Lucky Baldwin, who decided it was time for Mollie to head East to take on the horse considered the best in training—Ten Broeck.

LUCKY BALDWIN

Elias Jackson Baldwin left his mark all over California. He was swept to California in 1853, like thousands of others in search of gold. He survived losing his way and Indian attacks and finally arrived in San Francisco with little more than the rags on his back. Once he arrived he realized his fortune lay in selling food, supplies and accommodations, not panning Sutter’s Creek. Seven years later he entered the realm of the truly wealthy by playing the volatile silver market in Nevada.

Although Baldwin always seemed to live a charmed existence, by most accounts he earned the moniker “Lucky” a few years after cashing in on the Comstock lode. He left San Francisco to hunt elephants in India, instructing his broker to sell his stocks if they fell below a certain level. The stocks fell, but his broker did not have access to the certificates in his safe and they were never sold. Soon after, the stocks rebounded and Baldwin reaped a multi-million dollar windfall. Baldwin’s good fortune made him one of the richest men in California, and in 1875 he moved to Southern California, purchasing Rancho Santa Anita in the San Gabriel Valley for the extraordinary price of $200,000, and three years later the undefeated Mollie McCarthy.

For a while Baldwin’s luck continued and his wealth grew. Rancho Santa Anita became a showpiece featuring high quality thoroughbreds, eventually including three Kentucky Derby winners. Over time he subdivided the property, creating the communities of Arcadia (where Santa Anita Race Track is located), Sierra Madre, and Monrovia.

THE HYPE

Despite its early success, Churchill Downs had not yet achieved the status of some of the more famous tracks in New York and Maryland, and Lutie Clark was looking for an opportunity to add Churchill to the short list of elite racing places.

Frank Harper apparently could not bear the thought of retiring Ten Broeck to stud so soon and had already raced him earlier in the year. Lutie Clark knew that Ten Broeck was still the biggest draw in racing and approached Harper about one more race with an undefeated mare from California. Since Ten Broeck had no real competition left in the east, Harper jumped at the chance. Lucky Baldwin had already committed to move Mollie McCarthy eastward, and Lutie Clark quickly convinced Baldwin that by meeting Ten Broeck he would be part of the “race of the century.” Each side agreed to put up $5,000, an amount that would be worth about $125,000 today. On April 3, 1878, The New York Times published a small piece on the upcoming race:

“Col. M. Lewis Clark, Jr., President of the Louisville Jockey Club, has perfected arrangements by which Ten Broeck and Mollie McCarthy are to run four-mile heats at Louisville, July 4 next, for the sum of $10,000. Two or three other races will be given at the same time. The owner of Mollie McCarthy thinks she can beat any horse in the country. The mare will be brought from California to Louisville in Budd Doble’s car, which has been chartered for the round trip, and will probably arrive here about the first of May to prepare for the contest. Ten Broeck was never in better condition than at present.”

On that same train were a thousand Californians with their life savings in their pockets, determined to match every dollar the Kentuckians wished to put up on their champion.

Despite a tendency then, just as now, to overhype major sporting events, the Ten Broeck/Mollie McCarthy race had every right to be considered one of the two or three “races of the century.” It was the marquee event of the biggest sport in the country, and had all of the elements of drama a major event demands: the veteran Eastern horse, a champion in every respect, versus an undefeated mare with a larger-than-life owner from upstart California. Long before the Seabiscuit/War Admiral race was hyped as racing royalty against the common horse, Ten Broeck and Mollie McCarthy represented that scenario. And while it may not have been clear to everyone at the time, this match race turned out to be the last of the great four-mile events. It was the end of an era.

THE RACE

The event was as eagerly anticipated as any contest of the time could have been. Lutie Clark and the Churchills managed to arrange the event that would turn the track into the home of the greatest racehorse of the day, or at least that day.

On July 4, the weather was typically Southern, sunny, hot and humid. However, rain the day before had turned the track heavy and sticky. The writer L.S. Hardin described the track this way.

“It rained torrents for hours the night before the race. When I reached the track the next morning, about 9 o’clock, the course looked as though it had been prepared for aquatic sports. As the track sloped to the rail, it was at that point, of course, deeper in water than farther out, where it was higher. The sun was so hot that horses standing idle in the field were wet with perspiration. This heat dried the track rapidly, but still left it about impossible for a horse to run, on an average, closer than six feet from the rail.”

People started arriving at the track early in the morning, and the heavy stream of patrons did not abate until well after the first race of the day. The New York Times described the streets as “well-nigh impassable.” Still, that many people for a sporting event in 1878 was phenomenal and clearly pointed to the importance of the race. It was among the largest crowds ever to attend a single sporting event up to that date.

Train travel in the 1800s was generally arduous, especially along the transcontinental line that had been completed only a short nine years earlier. Despite Mollie’s fine accommodations, the trip was sure to take something out of her.

When it was time for the first heat, Mollie, the challenger, made the first appearance, still covered in her white sheet. L.S. Hardin described her as “in perfect flesh for a long run,” although other accounts more precisely suggested she was carrying some excess flesh. Her connections dismissed that as a concern, indicating she ran better with some weight to spare. Hardin also mentioned Mollie was moving “awkwardly” with her hind legs, hinting at some lack of racing condition, a natural suspicion after such a lengthy train trip. With the help of the Californians in attendance, she was given a “fair round of applause.”

Ten Broeck emerged on the opposite side of the track from Mollie and was given thunderous recognition. Ten Broeck stripped his covering first and immediately provided an animated display of readiness. A much later account of the race suggested that Ten Broeck was sweaty and glassy-eyed, evidence that he had been drugged. However, by most accounts he was described as fit and well-conditioned. Hardin proclaimed him in “perfect condition for a long race.”

Ten Broeck’s regular rider was an ex-slave named William Walker. In the 1800s, most of the best jockeys were African-American, and Walker was among the best of them all. He rode Baden Baden to victory in the 1877 Derby and was five times the leading rider at Churchill Downs. He was, by all accounts, a gentleman in every respect and a perfect match for Ten Broeck.

Although the race was scheduled as a best two-out-of-three, most newspaper reports only describe one heat. Newspaper accounts of the time were a combination of the facts along with the embellishments of the turf writers who could turn a walkover into a race of riveting excitement. The accounts of the heat reflected this style in their descriptions, but not in the outcome. Some accounts had Ten Broeck leading the entire heat over the overmatched Molly; others noted Molly ran easily for the first two miles, keeping at least a head in front of the tightly restrained Ten Broeck. L.S. Hardin said that for the first two and a half miles the race was “as rapid and hotly contested as man ever witnessed,” and the fractional times bear him out, with the first mile run a tick under 1:50 and the second mile run a tick over 1:55. This was of no concern to Frank Harper who believed his horse had limitless bottom. He had instructed jockey Walker to not only beat the upstart filly, but to do so decisively.

On a track that was deep and sticky and on a day that was like nothing Mollie had ever seen in Northern California, the first two miles were killing. But two miles was as much as Molly had left in her. By the time they entered the third mile, jockey Walker began to let Ten Broeck roll, opening somewhere between five and ten lengths by the time the third mile was completed. Whether or not Molly was defeated psychologically by the powerful run of Ten Broeck can never be known, but she was clearly defeated physically. The question was not whether Ten Broeck would win, but by how much.

Lutie Clark sent a letter to the editor of the Herald, describing the race this way.

“The day was intensely hot and close and the track very heavy. The mare set a pace to kill the big horse, both running about thirty or forty feet from the pole. After going two and a half miles the mare began to weaken, and when passing the stand the third time she was very much distressed.”

As the horses began the fourth and final mile, one of the attendees, the famed detective Yankee Bligh, the man who relentlessly pursued the James gang, was purported to shout, “One thousand Mollie does not pass under the wire again.” One patriotic Californian took him up on the bet, but at the quarter-pole, the magnificent Mollie threw up her tail, gave up the race, and with that, the money of her backers. Ten Broeck galloped leisurely to the wire in the very slow time of 8:19 3/4. Mollie McCarthy, the great hope of her sex and western racing, was taken to the stable area, exhausted and in physical distress. Only the fine work of her veterinarians kept the day from proving an even greater disaster for Lucky Baldwin and his horse.

Accounts of Ten Broeck’s condition after the race varied. While he seemed to be blowing hard as would be expected, there were comments on the lack of sweat on Ten Broeck, lending small credibility to the rumor he had been drugged or even poisoned. However that was countered by reports that stated that an hour after the race Ten Broeck looked fine in his stall, like he could have run another heat.

Even after the race was over, some of Mollie’s supporters refused to acknowledge the superiority of Ten Broeck. Whether it was true or not, later writings about Mollie McCarthy would opine that she detested the muddy going and the unfamiliar, extreme combination of heat and humidity, although a killing pace on a deep track on a hellish day would have challenged any horse.

THE AFTERMATH

The Kentucky crowd was ecstatic at the success of the local hero. Ten Broeck was retired after the race to stud duty, where he achieved moderate, but not outstanding, success. A little more than a hundred years later, Ten Broeck was inducted into the racing Hall of Fame. Mollie McCarthy lost her next start in the Minneapolis Cup, but in 1879, her last year of racing, she won the prestigious Garden City Cup in Chicago and a purse race in San Francisco. She retired and became a broodmare. Like Ten Broeck, her foals enjoyed only moderate success on the track, although her female progeny did very well when they were retired to breed. The era of the four-milers ended with one of the greatest racing spectacles of the nineteenth century, and resulted in the emergence of Churchill Downs as one of the cathedrals of American racing.

While Lutie Clark was strongly opposed to track officials (and newspapermen) gambling on the races, he had no problem gambling on the stock market. In 1893 when the economy crashed and the New York Stock Exchange closed for ten days, Clark lost almost his entire fortune. His wife had left him to move to Paris with their son John Henry Churchill Clark. The Churchill brothers had become fed up with his antics, and by 1891 relieved him of almost all his duties at the track. For a while he worked as a presiding judge at racetracks around the country, but in April 1899, all but broke, fearful of growing senile and depressed at his isolation from his family he committed suicide in Memphis, Tennessee.

During the 1890’s the fortunes of Lucky Baldwin evaporated. He was an incurable philanderer, fighting off numerous lawsuits from an unending string of mistresses and lovers, and even surviving two shootings. Having lost most of his fortune, Baldwin headed to Alaska to try to cash in on yet another gold rush, but returned to Santa Anita empty handed. He maintained some involvement with horse racing but died in March 1909, still working on amassing another fortune. However, even in death his luck held for his heirs when a worthless piece of property he owned produced the Montebello Oil Fields, one of the biggest finds in the West.

Billy Walker, Ten Broeck’s jockey, had a very successful career after he stopped riding. He worked as a consultant and trainer and was considered the country’s foremost expert on lineage and breeding. He spent his final years as a workout clocker at his beloved Churchill Downs, dying in 1933 at the age of 72.

Churchill Downs succeeded in ways not even Lutie Clark could have imagined. In the early 1890’s the track was still struggling financially and William F. Schulte took over as president. Schulte oversaw the construction of a new grandstand with a set of twin spires on the roof. Those twin spires gave the track, and the Kentucky Derby, the most iconic architectural symbol in racing.

Still the track failed to turn a profit and in 1902 a group headed by Louisville mayor Charles Grainger, Charlie Price and Matt J. Winn agreed to overtake the operation. It was under the leadership of this group that the track began to prosper and the Kentucky Derby began to emerge as the preeminent three year-old race in America. In 1937 the track finally incorporated under the name Churchill Downs and today remains one of the most successful and recognizable operations in the country.

As was common during that period, the match race between Mollie McCarthy and Ten Broeck was memorialized in song. While the actual songwriter is the subject of some dispute, there is no dispute that it was made a bluegrass standard by the legendary Bill Monroe. In 1947, Monroe used “Molly and Tenbrooks” to make the first known recording of a bluegrass song. Even today it is a standard at bluegrass festivals across the country, and recordings are easily found on the Internet.

The song sums up the story of the match race of the century.

Out in California, where Molly done as she pleased

Come back to old Kentucky, got beat with all ease

Beat with all ease, O Lord, beat with all ease

Beat with all ease by the last of the great four-milers.

“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?”

I think it is a matter of time before the geneticists control the universe. I was watching a show on HBO where doctors were injecting some modified form of the HIV virus into brain tumors and curing people of cancer. Not simply upping their survival time. Flat out giving them a new start on life. And to think Europe is holding fast against the proliferation of genetically modified crops and the anti-vaxxers are still paranoid about measles protection.

It seems like a  matter of time before someone constructs a genetically perfect thoroughbred, capable of winning anything from five furlongs on the turf to a mile and a half on the dirt, and reproduces that runner ad infinitum, doesn’t it?

Of course until scientists figure out how to breed a crop of Secretariats, we’re stuck with the old fashioned way, breed the best to the best and hope for the best.

There was a time I thought lack of diversity in the breed was responsible for the lack of improvement in racing times over the years. There are two things I’ve come to see: the breed is more diverse than we might think, and if you really want a better horse, the answer may actually be less diversity.

Because in most western civilizations incest is criminal, most of us have developed a revulsion to the idea. The main argument against inbreeding is that it is easy to pass on bad recessive traits, but there is a solution to that – only breed genetically clean lines. Of course the most compelling argument for a genetically diverse breed is that it protects the breed from extinction in the case of a catastrophic disease. Sameness makes all vulnerable, while diversity may protect some of the species.

It is an interesting conundrum for modern breeders. Find the strongest genetic line and reproduce it over and over, or create broad diversity in the hope of finding a new, better genetic combination?

It is a myth that inbreeding (even with humans) is destined to produce seriously defective progeny. It is equally a myth that outcrossing produces animals with no genetic defects or stronger animals. The fact is that IT IS JUST AS LIKELY TO SEE A GENETIC ISSUE WITH DISTANTLY RELATED ANIMALS AS WITH CLOSELY RELATED ONES. If you are wondering if that is true, humans have been outcrossing since a few begats past Genesis and we still haven’t eradicated heart disease, cancer, Alzheimers, and an endless list of genetic fallacies.

But be careful what you wish for. A genetically perfect human (or horse) may ultimately expose an unanticipated weakness.

Let’s first clarify what the different terms mean. INBREEDING refers to a close cross between a given pair of animals. This might mean mother to son, father to daughter or brother to sister. This is a bit of a scary proposition for most breeders, especially since there are so many factors to consider beyond raw ability. I’ll point out that if you have a purebred dog, it got to look like it did through careful inbreeding. I’ll also point out how many sons and daughters of past champions win their breed at Westminster. The mistake dog  inbreeders make is breeding for only a small number of characteristics generally related to outward appearance. In doing so they have created animals with serious flaws, for example, the bulldog with his pushed in face making breathing a great chore. Having a horse that can run all day isn’t as much an advantage if the horse is psychotic and won’t go into a starting gate.

LINEBREEDING refers to mating two animals that are closely related to the same ancestor(s). For example, two horses with the same grandsire.

OUTCROSSING is the breeding of two animals that are not related within the first four or five generations. For years, outcrossing has been the preferred way of selecting breeding pairs, mainly because of the thinking that diversity was the right way to strengthen the breed.

Inbreeding and Linebreeding can bring rapid improvement to a breed, although it can also bring out genetic problems that were previously hidden for generations. Inbreeding, and to a certain extent linebreeding, provides some certainty of outcome. The mating of two horses from the same close ancestors has a strong probability of producing superior offspring. It is certainly an attractive bargain for breeders to consider.

On the other hand, a 4X5 outcross may produce anything from a champion to a horse that never makes it to the track. At the least it is difficult to predict what kind of runner you’ll wind up with.

To a degree breeders have embraced the idea of limiting the number of stallions that constitute the breeding stock. Whereas not that long ago stallions were limited to covering 35-40 mares, now the best stallions cover upwards of 200 in a season. In reality there may be only 600-800 stallions that define a crop in any respective year. Of course, it would still require 20,000 different mares to produce 20,000 foals, and that may limit the amount of inbreeding or linebreeding that can take place.

Thoroughbreds have always been required to “live cover,” meaning the stallion and mare must physically couple to produce a foal. Quarter horses (and other show breeds) have been allowed to use artificial insemination techniques for many years, and if you look at a quarter horse futurity field, it isn’t unusual to find multiple runners from the same sire.

Will thoroughbred breeding head in the same direction? It is certainly a possibility. Animal rights people often protest that breeding a stallion 300 times over three months (up to three times a day) is abusive to the animal. From that perspective, does it make sense to collect sperm all year and use artificial insemination? And if that becomes the practice, will it make sense to use even fewer stallions to produce the annual foal crop?

One of the arguments that has gained traction is to breed to produce horses that are not seriously afflicted with exercise induced pulmonary hemorrhage (EIPH), essentially obviating the need for raceday Lasix. In reality, only about 3-5% of all horses have EIPH so intensely that they would be unable to race without Lasix. It may be easy to say serious bleeders simply will not race (or subsequently breed) but if those horses are not allowed to race, their fate may often lie in a slaughterhouse. Which is the right thing to do?

As for other drugs (analgesics and anti-inflammatories) horses are athletes and injury is an inevitable part of the sport. Sure, some horses may be genetically predisposed to certain types of problems, but we will never create an animal impervious to injury. If breeding is the answer, it must only be to the question of how certain genetic conditions can be eliminated without some unintended consequence as we’ve seen with dog breeds.

In a world where breeding was tightly controlled from a central location and where the reproductive stock was tightly controlled, perhaps we could breed faster runners. Or perhaps 300 years of breeding horses from only three foundation sires (the Darley Arabian, Godolphin Barb, and Beyerley Turk) has caused the breed to reach its maximum physiological potential. Perhaps we can’t engineer a horse that can run any faster than Secretariat did in the Kentucky Derby.

Even if the advances in genetic testing and the concomitant ability to create more and more predictable runners may dominate future breeding efforts, I think perhaps we currently have found the best compromise between genetic sameness and genetic diversity, at least inasmuch as it can apply to a pure breed of blood horses. A small, but not miniscule, number of stallions being bred to a large population of mares.

I’ll leave you with this from a 2005 article in Popular Science.

Cavendish bananas consumed annually worldwide are perfect from a genetic standpoint, every single one a duplicate of every other. It doesn’t matter if it comes from Honduras or Thailand, Jamaica or the Canary Islands-each Cavendish is an identical twin to one first found in Southeast Asia, brought to a Caribbean botanic garden in the early part of the 20th century, and put into commercial production about 50 years ago. That sameness is the banana’s paradox. After 15,000 years of human cultivation, the banana is too perfect, lacking the genetic diversity that is key to species health. What can ail one banana can ail all. A fungus or bacterial disease that infects one plantation could march around the globe and destroy millions of bunches, leaving supermarket shelves empty.

Something to think about as we contemplate the future of the thoroughbred.

By now most racing fans have heard the short version of the A.C. Avila and Masochistic story. If there was any doubt about Avila’s guilt, it wasn’t coming through on social media.

But I was curious. I wanted all the details associated with his violation and suspension. I suspect most people don’t care about that as much as I do, so if you want the short version, Avila looks about as guilty as it gets. But if you want the whole story, keep reading.

Most of my irritation was with the reporting that was technically accurate but not really complete. I believe that if we’re going to nail a trainer’s hide to the wall we should have something incontrovertible.

In Avila’s case it appears that we do.

Let me take you through the details as described in the California Horse Racing Board decision.

Avila purchased the horse Masochistic in August (or September) 2013 for himself and Los Pollos Hermanos Racing Stable as equal partners. For those of you who think Los Pollos Hermanos sounds familiar, it was the name of a fictional restaurant on the TV series Breaking Bad, a series about the manufacture and distribution of “meth.”

After Avila started working the horse, he found that the horse was, in his opinion, moody. He’d work too fast or too slow. In his five and six furlong works, according to Avila he’d go fast early and then flatten out late. Avila recognized the horse had plenty of talent, and in his testimony to the CHRB he mentioned consulting with a veterinarian in Lexington (no name mentioned) who told him that based on something called the “LambertTest” Masochistic was going to be best as a late running sprinter.

I googled Lambert test and came back with nothing. However, there is a veterinarian named David Lambert who manages Equine Analysis Systems, Inc. in Lexington, a company that does genetic testing to identify likely classic distance winners. In the article I saw, he doesn’t identify any of his clients so we won’t know for sure if he tested Masochistic, but this is probably the Lambert test to which Avila was referring.

This reference to Masochistic being a late running sprinter becomes mildly important as we’ll see later in relation to Avila’s credibility.

Avila’s testimony was that he told his groom that he intended to enter Masochistic “for Saturday” and Avila suggested the groom misunderstood him and thought that he was going to enter the horse ON Saturday for a race the following Thursday. This explanation was supposed to give credence to the Avila’s explantation for the presence of acepromazine in the horse’s system – he was accidentally double dosed based on a miscommunication.

However, the confusion was apparently cleared up quickly because the groom  decided he needed to trim the horse’s mane on Wednesday so that he would look good on Saturday. Whatever Avila said, it became clear to the groom that the horse was racing on Saturday and that he knew that on Wednesday. So any confusion about the date becomes irrelevant with respect to the administration of acepromazine. Another place where Avila doesn’t really have an explanation that holds water.

Because Masochistic was, well sadistic, the groom decided it would be necessary to tranquilize him. This is a common practice (a lot more horses have behavioral issues than the public might realize) and in later testimony the veterinarians agreed that treating the horse with acepromazine was the right protocol. Avila testified that the groom gave the horse two separate doses of acepromazine, but it did not calm the horse down. Avila’s veterinarian, Dr. John Araujo was called, and according to Avila administered another dose of acepromazine.

Unfortunately, when Dr. Aruajo testified, he decided that since the acepromazine wasn’t doing the trick, he would administer a combination of Demosadan, a powerful sedative, and Torbugesic, a strong painkiller, not acepromazine. Another important point if we are looking at Avila’s credibility.

That definitely sounded like a lot of drugs just to snip the horse’s mane, but it is important to note this is not uncommon, nor is it a strange protocol. Many horses are notoriously skittish about being handled near their heads, and tranquilizing is the accepted way of dealing with it. So on Wednesday, nobody has done anything wrong or “nefarious.”

Acepromazine is a fairly mild tranquilizer, but it does have the effect of lowering blood pressure and expanding the horse’s lungs. It is one of the 26 medications allowed by the Racing Medication and Testing Consortium, and is used frequently not just for horses but other animals as well. Many trainers and veterinarians favor the drug because a small dose generally will calm the horse without negatively affecting his ability to train. Acepromazine is fast acting – usually the horse settles within 15 minutes of being dosed – and long lasting – up to six hours per dose. However, it is flushed out of the horse’s system within 48 hours of administration. For those reasons it is a good choice for race horses. On the other hand, a large dose close to race time would almost certainly affect the horse’s ability to run.

Masochistic did run on Saturday March 15, 2014 and finished 5th. The Santa Anita Stewards normally wouldn’t test other than the first two finishers, but they thought that jockey Omar Berrio held the horse back. When they interviewed Berrio, he stated that Avila had given him instructions to not push the horse early and let him roll at the end of the race.

I watched the race several times. As best as I could tell, the horse broke well and Berrio strangled him back quickly, giving an interesting interpretation to the idea of not pushing the horse early. It looked to me like the horse was fighting for his head but Berrio was doing his best to keep him behind the main pack, about mid-track down the backstretch. Around the turn Berrio moved him to the rail and as best I could tell was not riding him aggressively. He showed him the whip a few times, gave him one or two light taps on the rump and let him run on his own courage to the wire. He did not appear to be scrubbing the horse at any point in the race. I would never have noticed it during the race unless I had bet the horse or I was specifically following him, but once I did look at it closely, I would have thought Berrio did not ride aggressively, especially in the stretch. Considering where the horse was at the eighth pole, I’m not sure even an aggressive ride would have put Masochistic in the top three, but considering the horse was, at best, running on his own courage, he did well to finish fifth.

I wouldn’t have said the horse was lethargic at all. It wasn’t as if Berrio had to urge the horse to get into the race. Quite the opposite from my perspective – Berrio kept the horse toward the back early and never rode him hard at any point during the race.

Berrio’s explanation that he was following instructions with regard to the ride Avila wanted the horse to get was still a bit suspect. If Berrio really wanted to make a furious close with the horse, why did he stick him on the rail and why did he not ride the horse like a jockey would a closer?

Honestly I don’t think Berrio is at fault here. I think he followed Avila’s likely  instructions to the letter – pull the horse back early, let him run on his own courage in the stretch, and don’t worry about winning the race.. Do we know that for sure? No, but given he had been working the horse in the mornings, Berrio had to know how much horse he had. Not following Avila’s instructions would have certainly cost him the ride on the horse later, and it seemed like the horse was pointed at bigger and better things.

This is also the point to remember back to Avila’s testimony. The horse would go fast early and flatten out late. It looks like Avila was providing an explanation for Masochistic’s bad run on March 15. And Avila may have sold the notion of a moody, late running sprinter had it not been for the horse’s next race.

After the Santa Anita race, Avila and Los Pollos Hermanos decided to ship the horse to Churchill to run on Kentucky Derby Day. Avila contended that the Churchill maiden fields were weak, but it I wondered if it was more likely the owners wanted to have a horse running that day so they had badges that gave them access to the nicer, or less crowded parts of the track. Of course, I don’t even know if they were there. There was speculation that Avila took the horse to Churchill because the betting pools would be larger and the Masochistic connections could more easily pull off a betting coup. After all, there was a Cal bred maiden he could have run in with a purse only $3,000 less than the Churchill purse on the same day. Why go through the cost of shipping all the way east and back when you could make the same money at home?

If the owners and  Avila were in Kentucky, you could have convinced me everyone just wanted a trip to the Kentucky Derby and figured regardless of the cost the horse could earn enough money to pay for it. All that was needed was for someone to ask a few questions. That apparently didn’t happen, and so we’re left wondering if a betting coup occurred.

The proof of a betting coup is limited. Clearly, rating the horse off his last race could hardly have made him a 2-1 choice, but according to Avila, a known bettor, he only had $1,000 to win on the horse. The fact that the horse was only 2-1 was doubly suspicious because of the pool size on Derby Day. Masochistic was listed at 4-1 in the program, so it would have taken a fair amount of money to cut his odds in half.

What gave more credence to suspicions Masochistic was being darkened in his first race was that at Churchill Victor Espinoza shot the horse to the front on the rail and never looked back. There was a spill in the race, but the horses involved were all running at the back of the pack and had pretty much lost contact with the leading group. Anyone who tells you the accident helped Masochistic was looking at a different race than I was. If you’ve watched as many races as a lot of us have, there is at least an odor of something being fishy.

Remember, Avila said the “Lambert test” pointed his horse as being a closing sprinter, but after running a 44:3 half and drawing off by 14 lengths, Avila’s explanation that he gave Berrio instructions to give the horse the best chance of winning seemed a little leaky. Circumstantially, it seemed like Avila did not want the horse to win his first race, and Berrio was just doing what he was told.

California apparently didn’t question the Chicken Brothers, but you wouldn’t have to be much of a conspiracy theorist to wonder if they and some of their friends pumped some serious cash through the windows at Churchill. Still, CD investigated and found no evidence of unusual betting patterns. Nobody produced the smoking gun of betting coup evidence, although it doesn’t appear that anyone was digging particularly hard for it. As far as California was concerned Avila did something he regularly did – bet on his horse – and not in an amount that justified going cross country for a betting coup. All actually very legal. So take all that for whatever it is worth. If it figured in Avila’s penalty, it was indirect.

Despite the fact that race fixing is a serious offense, especially with the betting crowd, California was far more interested in the drug situation. They ordered testing on Masochistic after the March 15 race. Two weeks later a CHRB investigator made an unannounced inspection at Avila’s barn and found Avila kept his medications in an unlocked plastic container on a rolling cart. The investigator found Acepromazine, “Dantroline” (sic) – the drug is actually Dantrolene, a muscle relaxant – and what they referred to as “Bute” which is normally Butazoladin but is sometimes erroneously used to refer to phenylbutazone. The plastic bin also contained unlabelled medications – these were not identified in the CHRB report – and two months later a subsequent inspection revealed the bin was still unsecured and medications unlabelled. The report did make it sound as if it was chemistry run amok at the Avila barn, and apparently this gave weight to the final penalty. It was evidence that acepromazine was available in the Avila barn (which everyone agreed was available and used) and that Avila was sloppy when it came to the storage of drugs. It gave the CHRB ample reason to conclude Avila’s employees were applying medication without consultation with the trainer.

The California standard for residual acepromazine in a horse’s urine is 25 nanograms/milliliter, actually a little higher than the RMTC standard of 10 ng/ml. If a horse had been given a dose of acepromazine on Wednesday, by Saturday afternoon there should be almost nothing left in its urine. The sample taken from Masochistic showed 973 ng/ml an amount that frankly was impossible if the horse was last treated over 72 hours earlier. That amount would indicate the horse was dosed somewhere between four and ten hours prior to the race. Avila was dead in the water at that point.

Whether Masochistic was given acepromazine because Avila was simply hedging his bets (no pun intended) that Berrio could ensure the horse underperformed without it looking more obvious than it did, 973 ng/ml is damning evidence. There is no plausible reason the horse should have had a level that high, not based on Avila’s testimony or the testimony of his vet.

The one thing about the CHRB write up I would take issue with was the statement that Avila has “a long history of violations for prohibited drugs.” In the interest of accuracy, Avila’s long history of violations for prohibited drugs were mainly phenylbutazone and flunixin (Banamine) both of which are commonly used, legal drugs for race horses, but for which there are standards for  post race urine testing. More accurately, he has a history of medication positives related to legal, therapeutic medications.

The report also references 29 violations since 1990, although as best as I could research, some of the violations were not drug related. I found 14 violations since 2005, 10 of which were for the aforementioned phenylbutazone and flunixin. If there were prior acepromazine violations, as noted by the conclusions in the CHRB report, they occurred more than ten years ago.The other four since 2005 were administrative in nature. I’m not suggesting 10 is an ok number – at best it’s sloppy administration of therapeutics and at worst it’s looking to gain a chemical edge, but I mean, you already have the guy dead to rights, no need to hyperbolize. Just cite the medication violations and leave the parking tickets out of the penalty phase.

The report concluded that there “does not appear to be a clear intent by Mr. Avila to gain an unfair advantage over his competitors. In fact, it is really questionable whether or not Mr. Avila had actual knowledge that the horse was led over to run with vast quantities of acepromazine in its system.”

I’d respond a couple of things. No, he didn’t get an advantage in the maiden race because if anything the acepromazine would have dulled Masochistic’s performance. The point was apparently to lose in anticipation of a betting opportunity at some future date. Second, the sloppy storage of the drugs – really, a plastic bin? – the fact that some drugs were not labelled, and the fact that we never heard testimony that the acepromazine found in the plastic bin was specifically prescribed for Masochistic bothers me a lot. You have grooms throwing tranquilizers without medical guidance at horses so they can trim their manes? That sounds like a pretty serious problem. I’ll say flat out that prescription medications should be administered by a veterinarian AFTER he has examined a horse.

Perhaps CHRB has looked into that, but the seriousness of their efforts is belied by the fact that Avila was still storing drugs in unmarked bottles and in an unlocked plastic bin two months after getting nabbed. This sounds as much like a CHRB problem as an Avila problem.

Two final things. What should happen to the groom? You’d be hard pressed to convince me the groom was acting on his own. Even if he was acting totally on Avila’s orders, what he did was illegal. He needs to be given days too. If the CHRB wants to stop the administration of medications by barn personnel, make them culpable. I get it – you say no to the boss and you’re on the street – but the system needs to let everyone know if they are complicit, there are consequences. Second, it would be also hard to convince me Los Pollos Hermanos didn’t know what was going on. The fact the other owners weren’t questioned also seems to me to be sloppy investigating by CHRB. They could have done what all cops do – put the culprits in separate rooms and say the first one to talk gets the deal. The whole story would have come out and we could have had a punishment that satisfied the betting crowd too. The way it came out, it looks like Avila and the Chicken Brothers got us and the punishment after the fact is hardly satisfying. Masochistic is running next week and it looks like Avila will still be listed as the trainer.

Ok, I surrender. Avila by all the available evidence seems to be a bad guy in this case. Avila seems to have fudged the truth about a number of things, and there is no contention by anyone that the level of acepromazine found in Masochistic’s urine could have been something other than a race day administration of the drug.

I’ve defended trainers I thought were screwed by the system in the past and I will continue to fight for them, but I’ll be as clear as I can be. If you are using drugs to fix outcomes, you’ll get no quarter from me.