Pletcher attorney requested Forte hearing be delayed until after Triple Crown
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The attorney for Todd Pletcher asked the New York State Gaming Commission to delay a hearing into a positive test for the horse Forte until after the Triple Crown races had been run, according to records released by the commission on Monday.
The records, which were released by the commission in reaction to statements made by Pletcher and his attorney, Karen Murphy, during a conference call with a select group of reporters last Thursday, included excerpts from a letter sent to the commission on May 9 in which Murphy requests the delay until after the Belmont Stakes on June 10, citing adverse publicity surrounding the racing industry because of a spate of horse deaths at Churchill Downs.
“The misfortune of the tragedies at Churchill Downs will only be wrongfully amplified should the board of stewards proceed at this time,” Murphy wrote. “As such, we respectfully renew our request that tomorrow’s steward’s hearing be adjourned until after the Triple Crown – an action that is certainly in the best interests of our entire racing community.”
At the time that Murphy made the request, the positive test by Forte for the regulated painkiller meloxicam after the Sept. 5 Hopeful Stakes at Saratoga Racecourse had not been made public. That night, the New York Times reported the existence of the test and a stewards’ hearing scheduled for May 10 to discuss the positive, triggering confusion and criticism from racing fans, the general public, and media over the eight-month delay between the race and the hearing.
Forte ran four times after the Hopeful Stakes and won all four of his starts. He was the morning-line favorite for the Kentucky Derby but was scratched the morning of the race by the Kentucky state veterinarian due to a foot bruise.
Murphy did not immediately return a phone call on Monday.
Last Thursday, one day after the hearing, the stewards suspended Pletcher for 10 days for the positive test. Pletcher has appealed, and in the conference call, he attributed the positive to “accidental contamination” and said that the horse had never been “administered or prescribed” the drug.
A “timeline of events” distributed by the gaming commission on Monday said that Forte’s positive test was reported to the New York stewards on Sept. 23 and communicated to Murphy on Sept. 29. The timeline then outlines a series of communications over the next two months as the two sides negotiate over a laboratory to test Forte’s split sample.
According to the commission, the split sample was received by a diagnostic lab at Texas A&M on Dec. 21. That lab confirmed the finding of meloxicam in the sample on Jan. 28, the commission said. Meloxicam is not allowed to appear in a horse at any level in New York during a race.
The timeline then says that the commission offered March 2 for a stewards’ hearing to discuss the case. Murphy declined to accept the hearing date, and the commission countered with hearing dates on March 22, 23, or 29, the commission said.
Over the next four weeks, according to the commission’s timeline, the two sides traded communications on the opportunity for a “conference in advance” of the hearing and a list of 17 witnesses that Murphy wanted to present during the hearing. On March 23, they agreed on the May 10 date, but Murphy then wrote to the board on May 8, the Monday after the Derby, that Pletcher could not appear at the hearing on that date because “unforeseen circumstances” required the trainer to remain in Kentucky.
“Accordingly, he respectfully requests an adjournment without date at this time,” Murphy wrote.
In response, the commission told Murphy that the commission had already decided that if Pletcher did not appear for the May 10 hearing, the trainer “will be deemed to have declined the opportunity” for a hearing and the stewards would issue a ruling in the case without hearing his testimony.
The following day, Murphy again asked for a delay, to the unspecified date after the Triple Crown, but the request was denied.
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