Motion appeals five-day suspension, fine

Trainer Graham Motion has been suspended five days and fined $500 by the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission after one of his horses who won a stakes races last April at Keeneland tested positive for a prohibited level of a regulated muscle relaxant, according to a commission ruing posted on Saturday.

In a statement, Motion said he plans to appeal the ruling, citing his belief that the medication was administered properly and his concern over the threshold level that Kentucky has established for the drug. The drug, methocarbamol, is a therapeutic medication most commonly administered to relieve muscle soreness, and in Kentucky and most other states, it is prohibited from being administered to a horse within two days of a race.

“While it would be easier to accept the suspension and pay the fine, I believe it’s important to follow through with the appeal process,” Motion said in the statement. He said the filly who tested positive, Kitten’s Point, had been administered methocarbamol seven days prior to the race.

Barbara Bowden, the chief state steward in Kentucky, said on Wednesday that Motion had filed his appeal. As a result, his suspension, which was scheduled to start Tuesday, will be stayed until the appeal is heard. Kitten’s Point was disqualified from the race, which awarded $90,000 in purse money to the winner.

Motion, who said he has not had one medication violation in 23 years of training, has one of the cleanest reputations in racing, and he has trained for owners who are known for their outspoken opinions about medication and drug abuse. Kitten’s Point is owned by George Strawbridge, a founding member of the Water Hay Oats Alliance, an organization that supports a ban on the race-day use of the anti-bleeding medication furosemide and is lobbying for federal legislation that would give a private company the authority to enforce a national set of medication rules in all racing states.

Kitten’s Point tested positive for the overage after winning the Bewitch Stakes on April 24 at Keeneland, a track where Motion is enormously popular. According to the stewards’ ruling, the filly’s post-race sample had a concentration of 2.9 nanograms of methocarbamol per milliliter of blood. The threshold level in Kentucky is 1.0 ng/mL.

Several veterinarians have complained in the past two years over the 1.0 ng/mL threshold level, contending that they distrust the scientific studies used by the Racing Medication and Testing Consortium, an industry-funded group, to determine the level. The complaints have been lobbed at the same time that many states have adopted new threshold levels and withdrawal guidelines for a variety of therapeutic medications, in an effort to align U.S. racing states under one set of rules. Those changes have created difficulties for many trainers and veterinarians as they adjust to the new regulations.