Published: August 17, 2012
A horse that recently tested positive for a supercharged painkiller drawn from a type of South American frog broke down and was euthanized Thursday at a New Mexico racetrack after winning a trial heat for the coming All American Futurity, one of the world’s richest horse races.
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The horse, Jess A Zoomin, was one of eight New Mexico quarter horses that tested positive for the painkiller dermorphin on the same day in late May. All were running in an earlier round of trial heats to earn the right to advance to the Futurity, which has a purse of more than $2 million.
The dead horse’s trainer, Jeffrey Heath Reed, is accused of doping five of those horses. But he has been allowed to continue training — and vying to win the Futurity on Labor Day — after exercising his right to verify the state’s positive tests at a second laboratory.
A second horse that Reed trained, which had not tested positive for dermorphin, also broke down and was euthanized Thursday during another trial heat for the Futurity. Reed declined to comment.
Vince Mares, executive director of the New Mexico Racing Commission, expressed frustration at the length of time the lab is taking to report its dermorphin findings. “We do not have the authority to tell other labs to hurry up,” Mares said.
To date, 35 horses in four states — New Mexico, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Nebraska — have tested positive for dermorphin, the frog secretion that is said to be 40 times more powerful than morphine. Those results have strengthened the hand of racing industry figures who are pushing to lessen the influence of drugs, both legal and illegal, in racing. The dermorphin cases became the focus of a recent congressional hearing on drugs in racing at which all the witnesses called for lifetime bans for anyone found to have knowingly given horses performance-enhancing drugs.
New Mexico recently reformed how it regulates horse racing, including expanded drug testing, in response to an investigation by The New York Times, published in March, that found the state had the country’s most dangerous racetracks. On Labor Day weekend last year, one of the quarter horse industry’s most celebrated jockeys, Jacky Martin, broke his neck at the finish line when his mount collapsed with a broken leg. Martin remains paralyzed.
The Times also reported that the improper use of drugs was rampant at the state’s racetracks, as state racing authorities now acknowledge. Some trainers there were giving horses large overdoses of painkillers, often without fear of penalty.
The quarter horse industry has also been rocked this year by charges that a small group of horsemen had been laundering money through racehorses for two Mexican drug cartels.
Separately, in Kentucky, the state’s racing commission announced Wednesday that it had instituted safety measures aimed at identifying injured or at-risk horses after a rash of fatal breakdowns in May at the country’s most famous racetrack, Churchill Downs.
John Ward, the commission’s executive director, said racing officials have added an extra veterinarian to watch horses for any sign of injury as they walk off the track after racing.
Once horses are entered in a race, officials will examine their past performance charts in search of telltale signs of injury, such as pulling up or being transported off the track. They will also watch video replays of certain races and watch horses in training. Suspect horses would then be observed more closely.
“We are trying to get real-time knowledge of the condition of our equine athletes,” Ward said, adding that the new precautions seemed to be working because the number of fatal breakdowns at Churchill Downs dropped from eight in May to two in June.
As part of its investigation, The Times built its own database using similar telltale signs of injury to identify problem tracks, trainers and breeds. The paper also found that 24 horses die each week at America’s racetracks and that in one recent three-year period more than 3,800 horses had positive drug tests, mostly for illegally high levels of prescription drugs.
Prominent veterinarians say the overuse of pain medicine can mask injury, putting both horse and rider at risk.
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