New York horsemen to buy drug-testing equipment for lab

The New York Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association will buy drug-testing equipment worth $450,000 for the state’s drug-testing laboratory at Morrisville State College, the association announced on Tuesday, one day after New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed a bill extending an 8-year-old law that provides the association with 2 percent of the purse money generated by the New York Racing Association.

The purchases will include equipment that can screen and test for drugs that are alleged to be in use in horseracing, including synthetic versions of drugs and peptides, NYTHA said. Peptides are an emerging class of drugs of abuse in sports which includes painkilling substances derived from toxins and venoms, as well as designer molecules like ITPP, or myoinositol trispyrophosphate, which is thought to enhance oxygen delivery to muscles.

The outlay by NYTHA is related in part to the extension of the law providing the group with 2 percent of purse funds generated by NYRA. The original bill, which was passed in 2007, doubled NYTHA’s funding from purses by directing an additional 1 percent of the money distributed by NYRA in purses to the horsemen’s group as a way to cover legal bills NYTHA had begun accruing as a creditor in NYRA’s bankruptcy.

Later versions of the legislation, including the bill signed by Cuomo on Monday, require the association to spend the additional funds on equine research, among other items. Prior to 2007, NYTHA had received 1 percent of purse money for its budget.

When the bill was passed in 2007, a casino that provides massive subsidies to horseracing purses at NYRA tracks had not yet opened adjacent to Aqueduct. The bill signed Monday will provide a $3.2 million budget for NYTHA in the next fiscal year, according to NYRA’s financial statements, which estimate purses to be $160 million annually.