Sharp suspended 30 days for medication violation, but attorney vows to appeal

Trainer Joe Sharp has been suspended by Kentucky’s stewards for 30 days after five horses he trained tested positive for the deworming medication levamisole in late 2019, according to stewards’ rulings posted on the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission website, but his attorney has called the suspension a “farce” and has vowed to appeal.

Sharp was handed the suspension in orders dated Jan. 21, signed one month after he appeared before Kentucky’s stewards for a hearing. The suspension, which was scheduled for Feb. 12-March 13, will likely be stayed pending his appeal. The horses that tested positive all raced within a 16-day period at Churchill Downs in November 2019, and all of the horses were disqualified from their races.

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Clark Brewster, Sharp’s attorney, said on Wednesday that he was preparing Sharp’s appeals material and expected to file the paperwork by the end of the week. Brewster represented Sharp at the Dec. 21 hearing.

The rulings state that levamisole is a Class B drug in Kentucky, but Brewster sharply disputed that classification, pointing to a classification schedule posted on the KHRC website that does not list levamisole as a classified drug. Brewster also produced minutes from a meeting in 2015 in which the commission agreed to delist levamisole from the classification schedule.

“Any penalties arising from these positives have no regulatory basis,” Brewster said.

Sharp has said that for a brief period in November 2019 all of the horses in his barn received doses of levamisole because he was having difficulty combating an outbreak of worms in his barn. Although the drug has legitimate therapeutic uses as a deworming agent, it can also metabolize into aminorex, a stimulant. Aminorex is listed in Kentucky as a Class A drug, but the Kentucky tests did not detect aminorex.

Because of the large-scale dosing in his barns, 10 other horses trained by Sharp that raced in Louisiana also tested positive for levamisole. In that state, levamisole is classified as a regulated substance, as it is in most states. The horses were disqualified, and Sharp was issued fines for the positives.

Racing regulators and trainers’ groups have urged horsemen not to use deworming agents that contain levamisole due to its potential to trigger a positive. There are a number of FDA-approved deworming agents on the market that do not contain the drug.

The Kentucky stewards’ rulings noted that Sharp had not been notified that any of his horses tested positive for levamisole after the first positive test on Nov. 14 and then through the last positive test on Nov. 30. The rulings said that Sharp waived his right to split samples.

Sharp began training in 2014 and quickly established himself as a high-percentage trainer, with a 19 percent and 23 percent strike rate in 2017 and 2018, respectively, according to Equibase records. In mid-2020, he had a brain tumor surgically removed and took some time off to recover.