Justify Failed Drug Test Before Derby

[Rupert Pupkin]

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/11/s...cky-derby.html

[Dahoss]

I’m not sure I have the energy to try and explain this to my friends and family that are going to ask. The Santa Anita fiasco was taxing enough.

Bad look.

[Bfarris21]

Is this not found in feed and doesnt the story state others in the barn were being treated with the drug? How long does this stay in the system? Forgive for naivety but I am a fan of the sport and would like some insight on this.

[knickslions2]

This is some interesting stuff. The jimson weed argument is shady at best. The levels were pretty high to be food contamination. I think Buffett is a pretty straight guy so this is perplexing.

[Dahoss]

Originally Posted by knickslions2

I think Buffett is a pretty straight guy so this is perplexing.

You do? He had 7 horses drop dead out of nowhere.

He either has the worst luck ever or he’s really good at deceiving.

[Kasept]

Originally Posted by Bfarris21

Is this not found in feed and doesnt the story state others in the barn were being treated with the drug? How long does this stay in the system? Forgive for naivety but I am a fan of the sport and would like some insight on this.

Not so much in feed as in hay. It's not a medication/drug. Scopolamine (and with it atropine) are naturally occurring in jimsonweed which gets into hay bales as a matter of course. Horses generally will bypass it in when grazing fields, but will eat it as part of the hay flake they receive daily. It's toxicity is very volatile and unpredictable. Scopolamine positives date back 40 years, particularly in California, and are the kind of incident relegated to fine-generating contaminations.

[Kasept]

Originally Posted by knickslions2

This is some interesting stuff. The jimson weed argument is shady at best. The levels were pretty high to be food contamination.

Jimsonweed hardly shady. Mandella has dealt with one of these as well. I'd trust Dr. Arthur in California about the incident rather than disgruntled sky-is-falling resource Dr. Sams in Kentucky.

Funny that CA Equine Medical Director Arthur, a frequent contributor to Times pieces in the past, isn't utilized at all. Bill Finley talked to Arthur though: http://www.thoroughbreddailynews.com...tory-nonsense/

[knickslions2]

Originally Posted by Kasept

Jimsonweed hardly shady. Mandella has dealt with one of these as well. I'd trust Dr. Arthur in California about the incident rather than disgruntled sky-is-falling resource Dr. Sams in Kentucky.

Funny that CA Equine Medical Director Arthur, a frequent contributor to Times pieces in the past, isn't utilized at all. Bill Finley talked to Arthur though: http://www.thoroughbreddailynews.com...tory-nonsense/

300 ng/ml is pretty excessive to be caused by eating jimson weed mixed in feed. If I get some time later I’ll looked over the metabolism profile better.

[Kasept]

Matt Hegarty's piece with extensive commentary from Arthur: https://www.drf.com/news/california-...=top-headlines

[Dahoss]

Originally Posted by Kasept

Jimsonweed hardly shady. Mandella has dealt with one of these as well. I'd trust Dr. Arthur in California about the incident rather than disgruntled sky-is-falling resource Dr. Sams in Kentucky.

Funny that CA Equine Medical Director Arthur, a frequent contributor to Times pieces in the past, isn't utilized at all. Bill Finley talked to Arthur though: http://www.thoroughbreddailynews.com...tory-nonsense/

The overage isn’t the big issue here, although I find it hard to believe if the horse was trained by someone else and won a maiden claimer that he wouldn’t have been DQ’d. 4 times the legal limit is a lot. Just more bad luck for Baffert I guess.

The issue is the coverup. Let’s assume the overage is contaminated feed. Why was everything handled in the dark? Why did it take an article from Drape, who I don’t think many would defend, 15 months later for people to find out? When a regulatory board operates that way it should concern everyone. What else is being handled like that we don’t know about?

[degenerate5]

Even if Baffert and his connections are 100% innocent the CHRB and the connections were not transparent at the time of the positive test and now has the feel of a cover up

[Dahoss]

One other thing. In 1994, five trainers had horses test positive at the same time. I didn’t be need to be Columbo to deduce that was most likely contaminated feed.

How is it possible that just one horse, ironically a horse with a lot to gain, would be contaminated? Bad luck I guess.

[Kasept]

Originally Posted by Dahoss

How is it possible that just one horse, ironically a horse with a lot to gain, would be contaminated? Bad luck I guess.

Because there wasn't just one horse?

“I 100 percent stand by my recommendation to dismiss these cases,” Arthur said, referring to what he said were multiple findings of scopolamine in horses that were tested around the same time as the 2018 Santa Anita Derby.

[Dahoss]

Originally Posted by Kasept

Because there wasn't just one horse?

“I 100 percent stand by my recommendation to dismiss these cases,” Arthur said, referring to what he said were multiple findings of scopolamine in horses that were tested around the same time as the 2018 Santa Anita Derby.

I missed that part. My bad.

Were all of the others 4 times the legal limit? Oh that’s right, we don’t know because Arthur, et al covered it all up.

[cal828]

Originally Posted by Kasept

Not so much in feed as in hay. It's not a medication/drug. Scopolamine (and with it atropine) are naturally occurring in jimsonweed which gets into hay bales as a matter of course. Horses generally will bypass it in when grazing fields, but will eat it as part of the hay flake they receive daily. It's toxicity is very volatile and unpredictable. Scopolamine positives date back 40 years, particularly in California, and are the kind of incident relegated to fine-generating contaminations.

Is it banned because of its detrimental effects or because of its performance enhancing effects and if it does enhance performance, how?

[cal828]

Originally Posted by cal828

Is it banned because of its detrimental effects or because of its performance enhancing effects and if it does enhance performance, how?

Sorry, I see, bronchodilator, increases heart rate.

[Dahoss]

https://www.bloodhorse.com/horse-rac...opolamine-case

Hollendorfer had a horse test positive for scopolamine in 2007. Horse was DQ’d and a year later Hollendorfer was fined $1000.

[Kasept]

Winner: CHRB followed protocols in scopolamine positives for Justify, six others

Matt Hegarty
Sep 12, 2019

The California Horse Racing Board followed all of its procedures when adjudicating cases last year involving the eventual Triple Crown winner Justify and six other horses that tested positive for a regulated substance, the board’s chairman at the time, Chuck Winner, said in a statement released on Thursday afternoon.

Winner, who served five years as the CHRB chairman before ending his second term on July 26 of this year, said that the CHRB had followed its protocols when investigating test results after Justify’s win in the Santa Anita Derby that showed that the horse had an overage for the substance scopolamine in his post-race test. Winner also said that six other horses had tested positive for the substance in four other barns, and that all seven results were dismissed by the board without naming the individuals involved.

“All possible tests and procedures and investigations were followed by the CHRB Equine Medical Director and senior staff, which led to the overwhelming evidence that Justify, along with six other horses in four different barns at Santa Anita, ingested scopolamine from jimsonweed which was present in the hay that had been delivered to the barns,” the statement read.

The statement is a rebuke to several assertions contained in a story posted by the New York Times on Wednesday night that strongly suggested that the CHRB violated its own regulations in adjudicating the case in order to protect Justify and his trainer, Bob Baffert.

“The whole premise of the story is false,” Winner said.

Winner said that California law “mandates that test results must remain confidential unless and until a complaint is filed.” The statement said that “a complaint can only be filed at the end of an investigative process.”

On Wednesday night, the CHRB’s equine medical director, Dr. Rick Arthur, defended the board’s decision to throw the cases out, saying that the evidence in the case indicated that Justify and other horses had tested for overages of the substance due to environmental contamination. Scopolamine is a naturally occurring substance in jimsonweed, which can contaminate feed products.

“I 100 percent stand by my recommendation to dismiss these cases,” Arthur said. “I consider this a case of horse poisoning, not a horse drugging.”

The statement by Winner was one of several released on Thursday rebutting aspects of the story.

Earlier in the day, Craig Robertson, an attorney representing Baffert, called the CHRB’s decision to throw out the case “wise” and defended the CHRB’s handling of it. Robertson made the claims in a letter he sent to the reporter who wrote the New York Times article and which he provided to DRF after contacting the publication that morning.

“The CHRB made the wise decision and should be commended, instead of attacked, for doing so,” Robertson wrote. “The CHRB did right by all parties, including the industry, in this case.”

Baffert had declined to comment to DRF on Wednesday night, but released a statement early Thursday afternoon saying, “I unequivocally reject any implication that scopolamine was ever intentionally administered to Justify, or any of my horses.”

Baffert also said in the statement that “I had no input into, or influence on, the decisions made by the California Horse Racing Board.” The New York Times article strongly implied that Baffert’s connections with board members and CHRB staff influenced the board’s decision to dismiss the case. Winner has owned horses trained by Baffert.

Winner’s statement took particular issue with a contention in the New York Times story that the horse should have been disqualified from the Santa Anita Derby by the CHRB prior to the running of the Kentucky Derby, which would have made the horse ineligible to start in the race.

“The split sample that confirmed the presence of scopolamine did not come back from the independent lab until three days after the Kentucky Derby,” Winner said.

At that point, the CHRB began to investigate whether the test results could have been caused by environmental contamination, and, three months later, the cases were dismissed.

Cases involving potential environmental contaminants are difficult to litigate, and scopolamine positives have proven to be especially problematic in the past. While the substance is prohibited due to potential impacts on a horse’s performance, it is a Class 4 substance, the second-lowest classification among prohibited substances. The penalty for a positive test can be a disqualification and loss of purse for the horse and either a written warning or fine for the trainer, but regulators are allowed to use “mitigating circumstances” when adjudicating cases involving Class 4 substances.

Dr. Mary Scollay, the executive director of the Racing Medication and Testing Consortium and the former equine medical director for the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission, said on Thursday morning that it is not uncommon for jimson weed to contaminate hay, since the plant is known to grow wild in hay fields. She also said that the concentration of scopolamine in jimsonweed varies depending on the part of the plant and the stage of its growing cycle, and said that detecting contaminants in feed is difficult.

“The leaves are kind of fragile, so they can disintegrate and mix in with the hay, and then if there are seeds mixed in you are going to have a very hard time seeing those,” Scollay said. The concentration of scopolamine is highest in the seeds.

Scollay declined to comment on the particulars of the Justify case, but she noted that regulators have wide leeway in deciding to pursue cases involving environmental contaminants.

A racing chemist who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the case said that there is very little known about the effects of scopolamine on a horse but said that horsemen would have little reason to administer the substance deliberately because of its toxicity. The chemist also said that concentrations of the substance in post-race samples “tell you zero about what effect it had,” given the lack of research on its impact on horses.

Racing labs only notify racing commissions about the presence of scopolamine in a sample if the concentration is over a certain threshold. After that notification, racing commissions begin the adjudication process, which includes notifying the trainer about the test result and allowing the trainer to have a split sample be tested.

In his letter, Robertson, Baffert’s attorney, said that “there was never any intentional administration of scopolamine to Justify” and that such an administration “defies logic and common sense” due to the substance’s properties. Robertson also said that there “is no doubt” that Justify’s test result was the result of environmental contamination.

Robertson also said that he had told the CHRB when the test result was communicated to Baffert that the trainer would fight any adverse finding by the CHRB as a result of the case.

“I was confident that Mr. Baffert would ultimately prevail if the CHRB pursued the matter,” Robertson wrote. “This left the CHRB with two choices – either pursue a frivolous case that had no merit at great taxpayer expense – or exercise reason and common sense and decide to take no further action.”

Winner said in his statement that “it would have been a complete miscarriage of justice for the CHRB to have taken action against Justify or Baffert, knowing full well that the horse was poisoned by an environmental contaminate (sic) and not injected with a substance.”

[Dahoss]

Steve do you truthfully not see an issue with this whole thing coming out like it did? You don’t think the Santa Anita Derby winner (and eventual TC winner) testing over the allowed limit of anything is a story....whether it was contaminated feed or not?

Do you disagree there at least appears to be a coverup?

[Dahoss]

It also bears mentioning that Winner has had horses with Baffert in the past. No conflict of interest at all.