Dutrow's appeal for reinstatement rejected

The New York Gaming Commission has rejected an appeal from supporters of the trainer Richard Dutrow to reconsider the 10-year ban he has been serving since the beginning of 2013, the commission’s chairman said at the end of a meeting on Monday.

Barry Sample, the chairman, said that commission members met prior to the Monday meeting to discuss the proposal and then voted 4-2 to reject it. No reason was given for the vote.

The rejection is a setback to Dutrow’s supporters, who have been imploring the commission to reconsider the penalty for more than two years. This year, the supporters, which included the attorney Karen Murphy and trainer Dale Romans, launched an internet petition calling for Dutrow to be allowed to return to training, and the petition has been signed by a number of Hall of Fame trainers and jockeys.

“I feel profoundly disappointed,” said Murphy, who attended the meeting with Dutrow and a handful of his supporters. “I feel terrible for Rick. This was a life that was kind of shattered all over again.”

Murphy said that she had asked the commission to grant Dutrow’s supporters the chance to speak, but that the commission denied the request. She also said that she would continue to press the commission to reconsider the penalty.

“This is a fight worth fighting, until we get the result we want,” she said.

Daily Racing Form reported last week that the commission was weighing the prospect of reopening the case, but officials for the commission would not comment then. Despite conducting the vote, the commission did not add the matter to its official agenda.

Dutrow had his license revoked by the commission in 2011 under a hearing officer’s recommendation that he be prohibited from applying for a license for 10 years because his continuing involvement in racing was “inconsistent with the best interests” of the sport. Dutrow did not officially begin serving the suspension until January, 2013, after he exhausted his appeals in state courts.

At the time of the initial ruling, one of Dutrow’s horses had tested positive for a powerful painkiller, butorphanol, and a subsequent barn search had turned up three syringes filled with a regulated painkiller and muscle relaxant. He also had a long list of violations for therapeutic medication overages, along with numerous violations of administrative rules.

Dutrow has struggled with financial issues since the ban. His supporters said they were seeking “clemency” for the trainer and asserted that the length of the penalty was due in part to greater scrutiny on the sport at the time it was handed down.

Also at the meeting, the commission adopted a set of rules that prohibits drugs listed on the World Anti-Doping Agency’s banned list, with exemptions for the set of medications that are allowed for therapeutic use under the racing industry’s regulated medication list. The rule is based on a model rule approved by the Association of Racing Commissioners International.

In addition, executive director Ronald Ochrym said in his opening comments that the commission continues to work on regulations that could allow four commercial casinos in the state to offer sports wagering under a law that was passed in 2013 allowing for the licensing of four additional casinos. However, Ochrym also said that some “thorny issues” remain in the process to allow for sports betting to start.

This year, the New York legislature did not take up an introduced bill that would have allowed for sports wagering at casinos statewide in the wake of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in May that threw out a federal bill prohibiting states from authorizing the practice.