INGLEWOOD, Calif. – Trainer Jeff Mullins has been ordered to serve a 70-day suspension for a medication violation in 2006, the California Horse Racing Board ruled. The board made the ruling in an executive session on April 28, but did not release it until over the weekend.
Two congressmen who have previously supported federal efforts to regulate racing introduced legislation on Wednesday that would prohibit the use of raceday drugs and permanently ban trainers whose horses test positive for performance-enhancing drugs three times.
Handle on U.S. horse races tracked a 7.5 percent decline in race days by falling 7.6 percent in April when compared with the same month last year, according to figures released on Wednesday by Equibase, extending a long string of month-to-month declines that has shown no indication of abating.
Rep. Gary Pretlow, the chairman of the New York Assembly’s Racing and Wagering Committee, has introduced a bill that would give Catskill Off-Track Betting Corporation the right to operate off-track betting parlors in the five boroughs of New York City.
Indiana lawmakers have passed a two-year budget that will reduce the amount of casino subsidies going to the Thoroughbred and Standardbred racing industries by approximately $3 million, or 5 percent lower than the amount distributed in 2010.
The U.S. racing industry is once again facing the prospect of federal regulation, this time in a bill that would prohibit the raceday use of the diuretic furosemide (Lasix) and require lifetime bans for trainers whose horses have tested positive for illegal drugs three times.
Officials of the National Horsemen’s Benevolent Protective Association and the British-based exchange-wagering company Betfair met on Wednesday in Lexington in what a horsemen’s representative called an “ongoing dialogue” on the company’s future plans in the United States.
The newly formed California Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association, an organization of owners and trainers, filed paperwork with the California Horse Racing Board earlier this month in an effort to unseat the Thoroughbred Owners of California as the state’s official representatives of Thoroughbred horsemen in the state.
The board of directors of the Association of Racing Commissioners International has formally adopted a resolution calling for the “re-examination” of policies linked to the raceday use of the diuretic furosemide to treat bleeding in the lungs, the association said on Thursday.
A study paid for by the exchange-betting pioneer Betfair has largely confirmed what the company has said in support of its efforts to launch betting exchanges in the United States.
