Kentucky Commission approves Asmussen 30-day suspension for acepromazine
The Kentucky Horse Racing Commission on Monday approved a hearing officer’s recommendation to let stand a 30-day suspension issued to leading trainer Steve Asmussen for two positives for a regulated medication in horses that raced in 2018.
The commission adopted the recommendation for a 30-day suspension based on a report prepared by Eden Davis Stephens, who issued the report after a different hearing officer held an appeals hearing in late August. The report was issued in October.
In its adopted order, the commission noted that its action to approve the 30-day suspension could be appealed in civil court. The order did not contain a date for the suspension to start.
Asmussen’s attorney, Clark Brewster, did not return a phone call by early afternoon.
Asmussen has annually appeared near the top of the trainers’ charts by wins and purse earnings for more than a decade, and he is one of the most high-profile trainers in the sport.
A suspension issued in one jurisdiction is honored in all other U.S. racing jurisdictions under a system known as reciprocity. Under Kentucky rules, a suspension of 30 days requires a trainer to transfer horses “to persons deemed acceptable to the stewards” for the horses to enter or start in races.
Kentucky stewards issued two 30-day suspensions to Asmussen late in 2019 after two horses who won in July and October of the previous year tested positive for acepromazine, a sedative that is frequently administered to horses during medical procedures. The stewards’ ruling allowed Asmussen to serve the two 30-day suspensions concurrently, citing the mitigating circumstance of “number of violations in relation to overall record.”
The horses involved were Thousand Percent, who won the second race at Churchill Downs on June 28, 2018, and Boldor, who won the sixth race at Keeneland on October 25, 2018. Both horses were disqualified.
Asmussen appealed the ruling, and it has taken more than three years for the commission to rule on the appeal. The appeal hearing was held on two dates, Aug. 24 and Aug. 30, last year, according to the commission order.
The order indicates that Brewster attempted to argue that the acepromazine was administered to the two horses well before their races. However, the report says, “the commission determines that it is irrelevant at what time Mr. Asmussen administered acepromazine to Thousand Percent and Boldor, because Mr. Asmussen did not otherwise follow the commission’s guidelines on [intravenous] administration.”
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The commission’s final order also states that the commission “has met its burden of proving the propriety of the penalties imposed on Mr. Asmussen by a preponderance of the evidence standard.”
The 30-day suspension would be the longest served by Asmussen since he was handed a six-month suspension in Louisiana in 2006 for a finding of mepivacaine, a prohibited painkiller.
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