‘Absolutely,’ Tony said. ‘The operation we were discussing today will be executed at Churchill Downs this coming weekend. I’ll ensure you are included on the flight.’
‘Carefully,’ I said. ‘You don’t know me, remember.’
‘I’ll have a quiet word with Norman Gibson.’
‘He’s not in the loop,’ I said. ‘I’d prefer it to remain that way.’
‘Don’t you trust Norman?’
‘I trust nobody to keep a secret that my life might depend on.’ Not even you, I thought, but I decided not to say so.
The package from Tony arrived at nine o’clock as I was again studying the FACSA personnel files.
Out of curiosity, I had looked up Tony Andretti’s own record.
He was 64 years old, having been born on Staten Island, New York, in the 1950s. He was not named Anthony, as I had assumed, but Antonio after his Italian father, and he was married with three grown-up sons. He and his wife Harriet now lived in Fairfax, Virginia, a few miles away from his office.
He had joined FACSA as a special agent direct from the NYPD when the agency had been first established. He had worked his way up through section chief to assistant director in charge of administration, and then finally to Deputy Director three years previously.
He had reached the pinnacle of his career. Simple research on the Internet showed that the Director was a political appointee, determined by the US President and, as with the FBI, the position was invariably awarded to someone outside the organisation.
Tony would not get to be Director.
I opened the package. It contained details of an operation to raid a trainer’s barn at Churchill Downs to check for the improper use of medications in horses.
Unlike in the United Kingdom, where horses were trained ‘at home’ and then only taken to a racecourse by horsebox on the day of their race, racehorses in the US were trained at the track, living in barns on what was known as the backside or backstretch. Each individual trainer had a barn and there were accommodation blocks for the grooms.
The main reason for the difference lay in the way races were scheduled and that, in turn, was largely due to the differing surfaces on which the horses competed.
In the UK, the vast majority of races were run on turf rather than on dirt whereas in the States it was the reverse. Dirt tracks could take far more use than turf as they didn’t cut up and were simply harrowed back into pristine condition after each race.
Consider Santa Anita Park, one of the major tracks in California. During the first six months of each year, there were eight, nine or even ten races a day on four days of every week. That was nearly nine hundred races in only half a year.
Compare that to Newbury racecourse, one of the busiest tracks in the UK, where twenty-nine days’ racing were spread evenly across all twelve months. With seven races each time, at Newbury there were far less than a quarter of the races of Santa Anita over twice the time.
But the real difference was that the Santa Anita backside barns were also home to some two thousand racehorses that were also exercised on the dirt track every day. No turf racecourse could stand up to such punishment.
I read through the paperwork for the proposed raid and the details were surprising to say the least — horrifying might be a better word.
6
I was familiar with the British regulatory structure that had a simple but all-embracing rule in relation to drugs being present in a horse during a race — they aren’t allowed and, if detected, severe penalties would follow.
In addition, certain substances were not permitted to be introduced into a horse’s system at any time. They included all anabolic steroids, hormones, and any metabolic moderators such as insulin.
Reading one of the background briefing papers for the Churchill Downs raid, it became very clear to me that the situation in the United States was very different.
Anyone connected with racing worldwide was well aware of the widespread use in America of the drug furosemide, sold under the trade names Lasix or Salix. It is a potent diuretic and is used in horses to prevent bleeding in the lungs under extreme exertion, a condition known as EIPH, exercise-induced pulmonary haemorrhage. Whether they actually need it or not, almost every horse that races in North America has 500mg of the drug injected intravenously four hours before they race.
The diuretic effect is dramatic, with the horse producing ten to fifteen litres of urine in the first hour after administration of the drug. This in itself has a two-fold effect. First, it makes the horse ten to fifteen kilogrammes lighter, and second, it tends to flush out of the animal’s system any other drugs, which then become impossible to detect in a post-race dope test.
And, boy, according to what I was reading, there were plenty of other drugs.
American racing was seemingly rife with them, and most were allowed by the various state rules, even though there were attempts to reduce the dependence.
In some states, the administration of any legal medication was permitted up to twenty-four hours before a race, while in others the period could vary from a few days to a few weeks before racing.
A particularly worrying aspect of drugs in American racing was the widespread use of anti-inflammatory and painkilling medication such as phenylbutazone, known as ‘Bute’, which was often administered intravenously, allowing a horse to race when otherwise it would be unable to do so.
In the UK, the racing authority warned trainers that such painkillers should be discontinued a minimum of eight days prior to a race. In practice, most trainers stopped any course of treatment at least two weeks beforehand so that no trace remained. Otherwise they would be liable to large fines and lengthy suspensions. However, in the US, use of such drugs right up to race day was common, and a ‘positive’ post-race test for Bute was not against the rules.
According to the briefing paper, the disturbing effect of this was that the drugs allowed horses to compete when really unfit to do so, masking injuries such as sprains and even slight cracks. This could result in catastrophic collapse, an all-too-frequent occurrence on American tracks, where the rate of horses fatally injured in flat races was twice that of the UK.
However, the purpose of the proposed raid at Churchill Downs was not to look for Lasix or Bute. Finding those would be expected. It was to test recent runners for anabolic steroids, in particular stanozolol, a drug that promotes growth of muscle and hence improves performance.
I knew all about that drug.
Back in 2013, the BHA had expelled trainer Mahmood Al Zarooni from all racing for eight years for giving it to horses in his care. And the discovery of stanozolol in his urine had been the reason Ben Johnson was stripped of the hundred-metre Olympic gold medal in Seoul, bringing disgrace on him and his sport.
In UK racing the rule was crystal clear. Anabolic steroids were banned in horses at any time. But in the United States things were not so straightforward. Their use had not been regulated at all until 2010 and, even since then, several anabolic steroids were permitted for therapeutic treatment up to thirty days before racing.
But, it seems, some old trainers found it difficult to learn new tricks.
FACSA had received intelligence that one such trainer, Hayden Ryder, based at Churchill Downs, was still using the methods of the past and injecting his horses much closer to race time than was permitted, relying on a hefty dose of Lasix on race day to wash traces of the illegals out of their system.
And who could really blame him. The potential gains were huge and typical penalties for getting caught very modest — a fifteen-day ban and a maximum fine of one thousand dollars.