LEXINGTON, Ky. – The Association of Racing Commissioners International has claimed in a report released Thursday that, in 2010, fewer than half of 1 percent of U.S. equine drug tests came back positive for a substance not allowed on race day.

According to the RCI report, racing regulatory agencies sent 324,215 biological samples to testing laboratories, and more than 99.5 percent were found to contain no foreign or prohibited substance.

Thirty-two U.S. jurisdictions responded to the RCI’s survey for this report.

An inspection of the embattled Florida Thoroughbred Breeders’ and Owners’ Association’s finances and internal records for 2009 and 2010 has revealed significant problems, according to the inspector’s report made public this week. But the organization’s president, Fred Brei, said Thursday that the report’s findings are old and that most of its recommendations were already under way in 2011.

Previously an executive at racetracks in New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Maryland, as well as with the National Steeplechase Association, he is now president of the Thoroughbred Owners of California. He was interviewed last weekend at Del Mar.

Birthdate: February 18, 1950, in Neptune, N.J.

Family: wife, Fran; daughters Joanna, Regina; son, Louis

The seven venues that make up the fair racing circuit in California:

Stockton (San Joaquin Fair)
2011 dates: June 16-19
Inaugural year: 1934
Length of track: 1 mile
Average daily purse: $62,400
Idaho Gem, the first cloned mule, won a race on June 21, 2006

In the early 1980s, when Martin Pedroza was not long removed from the well-regarded jockeys’ school in his native Panama, he saw the bullring at the racetrack in Pomona, Calif., for the first time. Pomona, 20 miles east of Santa Anita, hadn’t been renamed Fairplex Park yet − longwindedly, it was called the Los Angeles County Fair at Pomona − and was only four furlongs, from pillar to post. The turns looked like the end of a paperclip. The length of the stretch was 660 feet, 330 feet shorter than the one at Santa Anita.

“Geez,” Pedroza said. “What’s this?”

The fast but fragile Sean Avery is sidelined again with a bowed tendon in his right foreleg that will not only end his year, but puts his racing future in doubt, his connections said Thursday.

The injury was detected about a week after his nose victory over Trappe Shot in the Grade 1 Alfred G. Vanderbilt on Aug. 7 at Saratoga. Sean Avery, trained by Allen Iwinski, will be sent to Lynn Boutte’s farm in Ocala, Fla., where he will simply be given time off before being re-examined on April 1 to see if he can resume training.

MIAMI - Trainer David Fawkes reported that sprint champion Big Drama came out of his victory in Sunday’s Whippleton Handicap in good order and remains a go for the Grade 1 Vosburgh on Oct. 8 at Belmont Park.

Customers of Kentucky Downs in Franklin, Ky., have bet a total of $594,000 through the track’s new gambling machines in the first five days the devices have been in operation, according to data provided by the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission on Wednesday.

Hall of Fame jockey Julie Krone was a winner Wednesday in a rare return to the saddle at Doncaster in England, pulling clear to win the Clipper Logistics Leger Legends Classified Stakes, a one-mile turf race for ex-jockeys that was staged for charity.

Krone, riding Invincible Hero, was making her first mount since October 2008 in an ex-riders’ race at Santa Anita, months after which she broke a leg in a pleasure-riding accident.

Jockey Jacky Martin, who was paralyzed from the neck down in a spill Friday, was scheduled to undergo a tracheotomy at University Medical Center in El Paso, Texas, on Tuesday, his wife, Tracey Martin, said. She also said Tuesday that she is in the process of making arrangements to transfer her husband to a rehabilitation facility near Denver.

“Social services has started getting things in motion,” she said.