HISA modifies penalties for injections before workouts

The Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority has modified the penalties for horses that workout within prohibited time periods after receiving an intra-articular injection to treat swelling and lameness in joints, sharply reducing the suspensions that would have applied to trainers.

The modifications, which were approved by HISA’s Anti-Doping and Medication Control Committee last week, were made approximately three weeks after HISA had suspended the penalties for trainers who had worked horses within seven days of receiving an intra-articular injection. At the time of the suspension of the penalties, HISA officials had said that the rule was not “well understood” by the training community after the regulation went into effect on May 22 and that approximately 15-20 horses had worked out in violation of the rule.

The previous penalty for a violation of the rule, which also prohibits a horse from racing within 14 days of an intra-articular injection, was a 60-day suspension for the trainer and a 30-day ineligibility period for the horse.

Under the new penalties, a trainer whose horse works within seven days of the injection will receive a $3,000 fine for a first offense. Those penalties increase to a 10-day suspension and $6,000 fine for a second offense in a 365-day period, and then to 30 days and a $10,000 fine for a third offense; a 60-day suspension and $20,000 fine for a fourth offense; and a 120-day suspension and $25,000 fine for a fifth offense.

In addition, horses that work out or race in violation of the rule will not be declared ineligible for 30 days unless the horse was in violation of the rule twice within a 365-day period, HISA said.

The new penalty phase began to be enforced on Sunday, according to HISA.

One week prior to announcing the modifications, HISA released a list of 34 horses that had worked out in violation of the rule during a period running from May 22 to June 12. All of the horses were prohibited from running for 30 days after the violation, though the trainers faced no sanctions.

The modification is the first major adjustment of a rule since the HISA anti-doping and medication control program went into effect. Since that time, HISA has cited multiple trainers for violations of its banned substances policies, with those trainers facing bans of up to two years after being provisionally suspended while awaiting hearings.

Over the weekend, HISA said that a trainer based in Southern California, Lorenzo Ruiz, had been provisionally suspended after two of his horses tested positive for diisopropylamine, a banned substance which is thought to act as a vasodilator in horses. Ruiz was the third Southern California trainer to receive a provisional suspension for a positive of the substance in the last week. The other trainers were Milton Pineda, who had five positives for the substance, and Reed Saldana, who had one positive.

Positives for diisopropylamine, which had been studied as far back as 1988 for its potential effects on horses, were extremely rare prior to HISA taking over drug testing for racing.

HISA officials have routinely conducted barn searches of trainers who have positives for banned substances and seized any substances in the barn that could be administered to horses. Those substances are usually sent to labs for testing for banned ingredients.

In the lead-up to the implementation of the new rules, HISA issued warnings to trainers to cease administering supplements to horses without a full understanding of the ingredients. HISA officials have said that if testing of the supplements reveals ingredients that are not listed on the labels, then penalties for positives of the substances may be reduced significantly.

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