Dope claims hit horse racing
Maximum Security trainer among 27 charged with using illicit drugs to make horses faster
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Maximum Security winning last year's Kentucky Derby but was later disqualified for blocking. It has won eight of its 10 starts.
PHOTO: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
NEW YORK • More than two dozen racehorse trainers, veterinarians and drug distributors were charged in a wide-ranging scheme to secretly dope horses and cheat punters, according to United States federal prosecutors on Monday night.
Among the 27 people charged was Jason Servis, the trainer of Maximum Security, one of the best racehorses with nearly US$12 million (S$16.7 million) won in purses.
The thoroughbred, which has bagged eight of its 10 starts, including the world's richest race - last month's US$10 million Saudi Cup in Riyadh - benefited from a doping regimen, according to a charge.
Servis covertly administered performance-enhancing drugs "to virtually all of the racehorses under his control".
The defendants sought to improve race performance and obtain prize money from racing tracks throughout the US as well as the United Arab Emirates "to the detriment and risk of the health and well-being of the racehorses".
To avoid detection of their scheme, they routinely defrauded, and misled federal and state regulators "and the betting public".
At a news conference, Geoffrey S. Berman, the US attorney in Manhattan, said that the case was the most far-reaching prosecution of racehorse doping in the history of the Department of Justice and that the investigation was continuing.
"These defendants engaged in this conduct not for the love of the sport, and certainly not out of concern for the horses, but for money," he said. "And it was the racehorses that paid the price for the defendants' unbridled greed."
The horses were "injected and force-fed all manner of illegal and experimental drugs, drugs that allowed the horses to run unnaturally fast and to mask pain".
William F. Sweeney Jr, head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's New York office, added: "What happened to the horses amounted to nothing less than abuse."
Horse racing has a long history of trainers' repurposing drugs in pursuit of a performance edge.
Frog and cobra venom, Viagra, cocaine, heart medicines and steroids have all been detected in drug tests.
This reliance on performance-enhancing drugs combined with lax state regulations has made US racetracks among the deadliest in the world. Nearly 10 horses a week on average died on American racetracks in 2018, according to the Jockey Club's Equine Injury Database. That figure is anywhere from 21/2 to five times greater than the fatality rate in Europe and Asia, where rules against performance-enhancing drugs are enforced more stringently.
The charges come amid increased scrutiny of the US$100 billion global horse-racing industry, including calls for racing to be halted in the wake of dozens of horses dying at Santa Anita Park in California, one of the country's premier thoroughbred tracks.
Lawyers for Jorge Navarro, another renowned trainer, and Servis, said their clients would plead not guilty.
BLOOMBERG, NYTIMES
