Indiana commission terminates contract with Truesdail Laboratory

The Indiana Horse Racing Commission has abruptly terminated a months-old drug-testing contract with Truesdail Laboratory in California after the lab failed to report finding illegal concentrations of drugs in three samples, the IHRC announced on Wednesday.

As a result of the termination, the primary drug testing for the commission will be performed by Industrial Labs in Colorado, effective immediately, according to the IHRC. The state’s new referee lab will be LGC Sciences in Lexington, Ky., the facility that was replaced by Truesdail as Indiana’s primary laboratory earlier this year.

Truesdail failed to report finding two commonly used corticosteroids, isoflupredone and betamethasone, in the post-race samples of three Standardbreds who raced at Hoosier Park this year, according to Joe Gorajec, the commission’s executive director. As part of testing protocols in Indiana, Industrial Labs was sent separate blood samples from the same horses, and that lab reported finding concentrations of the drugs in excess of Indiana’s threshold levels for the two regulated medications, Gorajec said.

Separate samples were then sent to LGC in Lexington to confirm the presence of the drugs, Gorajec said. LGC reported findings that were similar to what Industrial reported, according to Gorajec.

All three laboratories have been accredited by the Racing Medication and Testing Consortium.

Last year, the Indiana commission terminated its contract with LGC after the lab ran up lengthy delays in testing samples from the state, with Industrial taking over the work. This past March, several weeks before either of the state’s two tracks began their live racing meets, the commission announced that it had reached a contract with Truesdail for its primary testing.

Truesdail officials did not immediately respond to phone messages.