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Ten horses in Louisiana have tested positive over the past week for a highly potent opiate painkiller after a testing lab in the state put in place a method to detect the drug, the director of the laboratory, Dr. Steven Barker, said on Thursday.
The horses have all tested positive for dermorphin, an opioid that is produced naturally as a secretion by South American frogs but can also be produced synthetically, Barker said. The drug is believed to have 30 to 40 times more potency than morphine in similar concentrations, and the recommended penalty for a positive of the drug is a minimum one-year suspension, loss of purse, and $10,000 fine.
The positives for dermorphin were first reported by NOLA.com, a New Orleans news site. According to the report, the horses that have tested positive include a mix of Quarter Horses and Thoroughbreds, racing at Delta Downs, Evangeline Downs, and Louisiana Downs.
Barker said that he implemented a new method to detect dermorphin in the past two weeks at his own lab at Louisiana State University after a lab in Colorado shared the method with him so that his lab could verify the findings in 15 split samples that had previously tested positive for the drug. Barker said that all of the split samples came from Oklahoma.
Mary Ann Roberts, the staff attorney for the Oklahoma Horse Racing Commission, would not confirm or deny that the commission had been notified about 15 positives for dermorphin.
“We don’t comment on any pending cases, so there’s nothing I can verify for you right now,” Roberts said.
The report on NOLA.com said that the Louisiana Racing Commission has not yet released the names of the trainers who tested positive for the drug. Charles Gardiner, the commission’s executive director, had not returned a phone call by late afternoon.
Barker said that he believed that the drug was being manufactured synthetically due to the high doses that would be required to produce an effect in a racehorse.
“It’s hard to imagine someone is making this much by squeezing the backs of frogs,” Barker said. “It’d be a lot easier to synthesize it.”
Because the LSU lab immediately began finding positives after putting the test in place, it’s likely that trainers have been using the drug for some time.
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For those who decried the Kentucky Racing Board's plan to phase out Lasix, please take note. The horse racing industry is, sadly, infested by the lowest of the low -- vermin who will try literally anything to make their horses run faster or persevere longer. Banning Lasix is not the solution, but it's a good place to start, since it has long been used to mask the presence of painkillers and other performance enhancing drugs.
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Makes you think about what other compounds (equine growth hormone?) can be manufactured that there is no current testing method for. Look at the absurd, unprecedented success of some of the so-called "supertrainers" that Beyer and others have written about. If the Federal Govt was really serious about it, it shouldn't be that difficult to trace the manufacturers and distributors of performance enhancing substances in racing the way they did with steroids in baseball.
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Anytime you have any endeavor where money is the bottom line there will be those who cheat. It doesnt mean they all cheat, just the ones who have no ethics and are greedy, racing needs to step and and stop allowing the cheaters to continue to race. The trainer gets caught, switches he horse to an assistant and never misses a beat, all it will take is making an example of a name trainer and the others will think twice before cheating
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go froggy go,lets have frog races\
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and Doug O'Neill gets 45 days for giving his horse an Alka-Seltzer ?..
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The vets are the ones that have the biggest scam going on at the track. Talk about a license to steal.
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When is somebody going to find the drugs that Baffert uses?
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were any of the horses claimers?
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Darn cheaters!
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Thank you Matt Hegarty for continuing to shine light on these doper trainers who endanger animals and jockeys. I hope to see a list of states that will now adopt testing for dermorphin.
If this poison is widely used in LA and OK, then the question becomes what other states (Texas anyone?) are similarly afflicted?
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CLASSIC BRYCE went to the sidelines after tanking in the 2012 Canadian Triple Crown, and has worked solidly for a trainer who's begun the meet with a bang. The beautifully-bred son of Grand Slam is out of G2 turf stakes winner Classic Stamp, who's the dam of a grass winner. SEEKINGTHEDIAMOND ended a streak of seconditis when he romped in a recent maiden special around two turns on the grass at Churchill. The late bloomer possesses a fitness edge on most of these, and should be in the thick of the battle.
