Kentucky furosemide rule found 'deficient'

An adjunct to the Kentucky Legislature voted on Tuesday to find “deficient” a rule allowing racetracks to card races open only to horses that have not received a raceday administration of the anti-bleeding medication furosemide, placing the implementation of the rule in jeopardy.

The Administrative Regulation Review Subcommittee of the Legislative Research Commission voted 6 to 2 to reject the rule late Tuesday after representatives of the Kentucky Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Association provided the committee members with their objections to the rule. The rule was adopted by the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission earlier this year, at the request of Keeneland, the Lexington racetrack.

According to the KHBPA, the subcommittee had earlier in the meeting asked representatives of the KHRC to defer implementing the rule until the Kentucky attorney general could rule on its constitutionality. The KHRC would not agree to defer the rule, the KHBPA said, leading to the vote to find the rule deficient.

Dick Brown, a spokesman for the commission, said after the ruling that “at this time, the KHRC is examining its options.”

In a release, the KHBPA said it supports petitioning the attorney general’s office to issue an opinion on the rule.

The attorney general in Kentucky is Jack Conway, who is running for governor in an election this year. Conway’s father, Tom Conway, is on the board of the KHBPA and is a member of the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission. He voted against implementing the rule when it was adopted in March.

Andrew Beshear, the son of Kentucky governor Steve Beshear, is running for attorney general, also in an election later this year. The elder Beshear recently gave an address at the Jockey Club Round Table calling for reforms supported by the Jockey Club, which has been supportive of efforts to roll back the use of furosemide on raceday.

Representatives of the KHBPA had told the KHRC while they were deliberating over the rule that they believed the regulation was illegal, contending that existing regulations give horsemen the right to decide whether furosemide can be administered on raceday and that the rule was unconstitutional because it delegated the authority of the law to private companies, in this case, racetracks.

Keeneland representatives had said that they expected to write two races for 2-year-olds during its spring meet in 2016 that would prohibit raceday administration of furosemide, with two to four races run under similar conditions in the fall meet.

The issue of race-day furosemide is highly controversial in U.S. racing. Most horsemen’s groups support the use of the drug on raceday to mitigate bleeding in the lungs, and the drug is legal to administer on raceday in every U.S. racing jurisdiction. Unlike many other states, Kentucky restricts raceday administrations to state veterinarians.

Earlier this year, Gulfstream Park in South Florida wrote two races for 2-year-olds in which raceday furosemide was banned. Each of the races was split after they attracted an overflow number of entries.