Page 72 - October 2015

HEADLINE
Subhead
by Stacy Pigott
THE HOUSE RULES
The Downs at Albuquerque institutes strict regulations for stakes qualifiers
There is nothing like personal experience to make reality hit home. The owner and CEO of The Downs At Albuquerque speaks from experience.
“One of the problems that I have seen in the racing industry is that a horse that has a bad
test in the trials (of a futurity or derby) gets to run in the finals because the tests haven’t come back yet,” said Paul Blanchard, 65, speaking on the afternoon of the September 11 trials to the $250,000-estimated Downs At Albuquerque Futurity. “So, everyone is affected negatively: the betting public first; the owner of the horse who had the 11th- or 12th-fastest time and was cut out of the finals; the jockey who loses his mount and his percentage; and the owner who loses his percentage. And beyond that, it just looks bad. It’s not good for racing – it doesn’t look good.”
Blanchard’s most recent personal experi- ence has not been good. Four horses from the Mike Joiner barn tested positive for clen- buterol after racing in the May 29 trials for
the $337,186 Mountain Top Futurity-RG3 at Ruidoso Downs. Those horses included even- tual Mountain Top winner Lilly Is First, who Blanchard owns in partnership with Ruidoso Downs owner R.D. Hubbard and New Mexico breeder Mike Abraham. That experience has led to Blanchard instituting strict new rules for test- ing of horses that run in trials for stakes races.
“What we have done is put in house rules that require we draw our own samples from each of the top-12 qualifiers, send the samples out and have the tests expedited, so that a horse that has a positive test in the trials would not
– under our house rules – be allowed to enter in the final,” said Blanchard, who in 1999 took out the long-term lease on the New Mexico track. “We would not take that horse’s entry.”
The testing laboratory at the University of California-Davis agreed to expedite the tests for any races (such as futurities and derbies) that had trials, and The Downs at Albuquerque would pay for those expedited tests. Contingent on the Downs sending in the samples by the Monday after the trials, the UC-Davis lab would have the results – either positive or nega- tive – by that Friday. The Kenneth L. Maddy Equine Analytical Chemistry Laboratory at UC-Davis is the approved laboratory for the New Mexico Racing Commission.
“If there were any positives, the Downs itself will pay an additional fee for the lab to work the test again that weekend,” Blanchard said. “That way, they could tell us exactly what the positive was. Was it opiates? Was it clenbuterol? Whatever it was, they could tell us exactly what it was and what amount it was in. I said, okay, great, if you get a positive, I’ll
pay the additional cost for you to run (the tests) again on the weekend. That way, we would have the results back prior to the entry cutoff.”
The New Mexico Racing Commission approved the change to allow the Downs to have an also-eligible list in the case of medical disqualifications.
“I thought that was very cooperative of the Commission,” Blanchard said. “We will test the fastest 12 horses, so that we will have an also-eligi- ble list for possible eventual disqualifications. The 11th and 12th horses would be eligible if there were any bad tests. So basically, through a cooperative effort of the Racing Commission, the University
of California and ourselves, we got all the parties that be to agree that this would be a positive step to help reduce some of the issues that come from positive tests in trials. The net result will be that if in fact there is a positive test in the trials, then the 11th-place or 12th-place horse would be able to
get in and compete in a final of a stakes race that
is clean, so the betting public is assured that the horses coming in are all clean horses.”
The horses racing in the finals will be tested as usual by the New Mexico Racing Commission.
“After the finals, those are racing commission tests,” he said. “What we’re doing is through a coop- eration where we’ve figured out how to expedite the tests from the trials. On the finals, it will just be the
70 SPEEDHORSE, October 2015