HISA, HIWU adjust provisional suspension rules for some drug positives

Trainers whose horses test positive for certain banned substances under new rules being enforced by the Horseracing Integrity and Welfare Unit will no longer be suspended prior to a split sample from the horse confirming the positive, HIWU and its administrator, the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority, said Friday.

The modification of the policy, which will go into effect immediately and be applied to some trainers who have already received provisional suspensions, addresses a major source of controversy among horsemen and regulators since HIWU took over responsibility for drug-testing and enforcement in most U.S. racing jurisdictions as of May 22. Under that policy, trainers were automatically suspended once a positive test for a banned substance was returned from a single lab, a significant change to a policy that had been in place in U.S. racing for decades under the industry’s state-by-state approach to regulation.

Under the modification, HIWU will not issue provisional suspensions for a number of banned substances unless and until the presence of the substances are confirmed by a second drug-testing laboratory, HIWU and HISA said. If the second sample confirms the initial result, the trainer will be suspended at that time.

Liza Lazarus, chief executive officer of HISA, said on a conference call to discuss the change that the provisional suspension policy had been the source of “a lot of feedback” over the past several months, and she said that the decision by HISA’s Anti-Doping and Medication Control Committee to amend the policy was made in the “best interests” of horsemen and the racing industry.

“Policy decisions are based on what is best for the industry, what’s best for the greater good, what protects the trainers who are following the rules,” Lazarus said.

Eric Hamelback, chief executive officer of the National Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Association, which has been highly critical of nearly all aspects of HISA’s launch and execution, said in a prepared statement released late Friday that the modifications to the policy were “undoubtedly good for horsemen and women.” However, he also said that the need for the modifications demonstrated HISA’s “fundamental flaws.”

“The HISA rule-making process excludes consensus, full transparency, and industry involvement, leading to bad policies that often must be reversed and do nothing but sow chaos and confusion,” Hamelback said. He added that the National HBPA, which is a party to a lawsuit seeking to invalidate HISA, would “continue to fight the process that makes such mistakes over and over.”

A joint statement issued by the National Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association, the Thoroughbred Owners of California, and the Kentucky Thoroughbred Association called the modification “a huge step forward” that will create a “more trusted system.”

Unlike the National HBPA, the three organizations that issued the statement have supported HISA in the past, despite pockets of strident opposition within their memberships, especially at the National THA, which is a trainer-heavy organization representing horsemen based along the eastern seaboard. The statement said that the decision by HISA to modify the policy demonstrated that the organizations’ decisions to work with HISA, rather than in opposition to the authority, was “reaffirmed.”

“For the last 18 months, we have engaged in a strategy of engagement with HISA,” the statement said. “This may not satisfy everyone, progress is often incremental and may go unrecognized, but we maintain it is the best course to create a better safety and medication-control program for our sport.”

The joint statement also noted that the modification would give trainers additional time to collect “exculpatory evidence” into the origin of the initial positive test while awaiting the split sample results. That evidence could be presented to HIWU for “consideration and further investigation,” the statement said.

While HIWU did not provide a specific list of the substances that would be subject to the exception, the organization did distribute a lengthy list of categories of banned substances that would continue to lead to provisional suspensions after only an initial positive test. Those categories include relatively powerful performance-enhancing substances such as amphetamines and blood-doping drugs, as well as prohibited substances such as venoms and toxins, which can be used to deaden nerves.

Since the May 22 implementation of the rules, HIWU has issued provisional suspensions to approximately two dozen trainers for violations of the banned-substance policies. Lazarus said on the conference call that HISA expects that “maybe five” trainers will have those suspensions lifted because of the modification while they await the results of split-sample tests.

Provisional suspensions also will continue to be issued to trainers who have multiple violations for the same substance “within a six-month period,” HISA said. A number of trainers who have so far been issued provisional suspensions were cited for two violations of the same substance, so those suspensions will remain in place, Lazarus said.

The provisional suspension policy had been sharply critiqued by horsemen in the lead-up to the implementation of the new rules on May 22, and that criticism only intensified after a trainer based at Canterbury Park, McLean Robertson, had his case thrown out three weeks after being suspended when the split sample failed to confirm a positive for altrenogest, an estrus suppressant that is banned in male horses and spayed females.

Although trainers had publicly criticized the policy in the past, Lazarus said that she reviewed the hundreds of pages of written feedback that HISA received from horsemen’s groups prior to the rules being approved by the authority’s federal overseer last year and did not find a single critique of the provisional suspension policy.

HISA and HIWU also clarified that horsemen who are issued provisional suspensions are allowed to “engage in caring for or exercising” their horses but cannot “breeze or race” horses under their care. Several horsemen who have been suspended in the past several weeks have said that they were advised by state racing commissions or attorneys that they could continue to manage their horses while suspended but could not enter them to race under their own names.

Lazarus said that it was always HISA’s intention to allow trainers to oversee the care of their horses while under provisional suspensions. The rules also do not require horsemen to “disband their stables” while under provisional suspension, Lazarus said.

For decades prior to the HIWU takeover, trainers were not issued suspensions until a split sample confirmed the positive and the trainer had appeared before the stewards for a hearing. While that has protected horsemen from serving suspensions on the basis of false positives – which are rare – it also has led horsemen to seek delays in adjudicating cases, not only in the initial stages, but also on appeal, which has had the effect of stretching some cases out for years.

HISA’s imposition of the provisional suspension policy was intended to derail that process and speed up adjudications, in large part because of intense criticism from groups opposed to racing that contend the adjudication process was being gamed to allow violators to avoid punishment. In an announcement of the policy changes Friday, HISA continued to maintain that similar policies “have been instrumental in protecting the integrity of other sports and were introduced into horse racing for that reason.”

Lazarus continued to defend the policy in the conference call on Friday, but she said that the modification is “basically giving three extra weeks” to avoid the risk of having the split sample come back negative.

“It’s just another check in this whole assessment that the violation is very likely to be sustained and is a legitimate violation,” Lazarus said.

Lazarus also said that HISA’s decision to modify its rules demonstrated the organization’s commitment to work with the industry.

“We’re incredibly new,” Lazarus said. “Everyone looks at us as if we are big, adult organization, but we started from a blank piece of paper a year ago. I’m quite proud of the progress we’ve made in that year’s time, but there are going to be changes we make along the way. I don’t shy from the changes, and to the extent to where people ask whether that is okay or appropriate, my answer is, we will change as many times as we have to to get it right and to have the best program in place for the best of the industry.”

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