Page 131 - February 2017

New Mexico Gets To Work
As industry calls for uniformity in drug policies and stricter rules to ensure a more level playing field in racing, New Mexico gets to work. by Jennifer K. Hancock
As 2016 ended, industry stakeholders gathered at the University of Arizona Race Track Industry Program’s Global Racing and Gaming Symposium in Tucson, Arizona. The American Quarter Horse Association met with racing jurisdictions to discuss – and perhaps finally light the spark that catches fire for change – for the implantation of uniformity in rules across jurisdiction. (See Jan. 2017 issue page 10 for additional information on the meeting.)
Ismael “Izzy” Trejo, the executive director
of the New Mexico Racing Commission attended the meeting and has reached out to other jurisdictions, including California and Oklahoma, to compare current rules and ideas to help create equality on the track.
“It is paramount for the Quarter Horse industry that all jurisdictions, or whether it’s just the Southwest – Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona, California - get on the same page so these guys are either pushed out to either play
the game at an honest level or get out of the business,” said Trejo.
Last year, New Mexico introduced enhanced out of competition testing. When announced
at the April commission meeting, NMRC Chairman Ray Willis said, “This project will
be an aggressive procedure to let the public know that New Mexico racing is going in the right direction and we will start the testing immediately.”
The New Mexico Administrative code allows for the NMRC to conduct, without advanced notice, out of competition testing on horses that are on the grounds of a racetrack or training center under the jurisdiction of the commission; under the care or control of a trainer or owner licensed by the commission; or any horse whose papers are filed in the racing office or has been nominated to a stakes race. Horses to be tested may be selected at random, with probable cause or as determined by the commission or an agent of the commission.
Now New Mexico officials are working with racehorse breeders and owners in the state to draft new rules to help further level the playing field
by possibly requiring owners to provide a clean hair test before horses are allowed to stable at racetracks and enter races in the state.
While Trejo emphasized that there are “a lot more questions than answers” at this stage of the process, he is enthusiastic about the state’s move in an innovative direction.
At the end of January, Trejo planned
to meet with Dr. Scot Waterman, former executive director of the Racing Medication and Testing Consortium and a veterinary consultant for NMRC.
Trejo described the meeting as a time to “look at this from every angle that there is and play devil’s advocate on all those angles and see if we can come up with some solid solutions.”
He calls this the idea phase of development. “It was an idea that was conjured up at a meeting amongst industry stakeholders,” Trejo said. “This idea came up with the understanding that the commission made it clear that we need to look at this from all angles to see what kind of avenue or game plan we can come up with that would be reasonable and obtainable.
“People have already accused us of not being for this idea only because we have questions,”
he continued. “If we’re going to be involved, we want to be involved in a program that is going to work. This is the unknown. No jurisdiction has ever attempted, that I know, to try to implement this type of task. This will take a lot of logistical work in order to come up with the end result. The premise behind the idea – and that may
or may not change – is that owners will have to prove to the racetracks that their horses are clean by providing a negative hair sample result. That’s
128 SPEEDHORSE, February 2017