Towards better drug rules

Rick Dutrow, trainer of the best three year-old in America, has been notified that he’ll be suspended for 15 days by the Kentucky Horse Racing Authority for a drug offense.

Again.

Dutrow has a rap sheet that includes more than 30 pages of violations (not all of which are drug violations, to be fair). You can access the list at the Paulick Report.

Steve Asmussen, trainer of the best dirt horse in the world, has been notified of a drug overage in one of his horses.

Again.

Asmussen has had his share of run-ins with the authorities, too, and served a six month suspension bridging 2006 and 2007.

On the other end of the spectrum, trainer Larry Jones has been notified of an overage in one of his horses. It’s reportedly the first drug violation of his 25-year training career.

There’s a lot of talk now in the racing world about the importance of revising and strengthening drug rules. At the moment, much of that energy is directed towards banning steroids, a rule that will make Congress happy and move the ball forward but will not solve racing’s drug issue.

Racing has a long history of doing nothing at all until it suddenly rushes precipitously forward. But it’s worth asking — now — what exactly we want to accomplish with revised drug rules. Assuming that the goal is to ensure the safety and well-being of horses while at the same time preserving the integrity of the athletic competition, how best can we accomplish that?

A few thoughts:

First, rules need to be uniform from state to state. I’ve blogged elsewhere (including here) about how to get all of the racing states to the same place, but regardless of how it’s done, every state must have uniform rules regarding medications; penalties; and evidence, hearing, and appeal procedures.

When uniform rules in place, we can increase state-to-state reciprocity; a violation in one state must be treated as a violation in all states. These days, states generally honor suspensions handed out by other states. But states which have progressive penalties for repeat offenses often don’t count violations in other states towards the total. (Given variations in state rules, it would be virtually impossible to do so).

Along with greater uniformity and state-to-state reciprocity, we must implement progressive penalties in order to punish repeat offenders more harshly than first-timers or infrequent violators. Ray Paulick wondered (here) why Dutrow — a habitual recidivist — is being treated as “a first-time offender” in Kentucky; and while there are probably fair answers, given the nonsensical system currently in place, any new system must eliminate this sort of loophole.

We will also need to address the issue of how to penalize violators. It is clear (to me, at any rate) that the goal of the rules should be to get the bad guys: the habitual cheats, the trainers who drown their horses in painkillers, the ones we see and hear about over and over. The current system, which depends largely on suspensions, doesn’t work; in most cases, trainers simply turn their horses over to their assistants. Even in places where the “interim trainer” must be financially separate from the suspended trainer, it’s easy enough to make the transition seamless.

Suspensions ought to be reserved for serious violations and repeat offenders, and when they are enforced, they ought to be for months (or years), not for days. This change would make the suspension a big stick with real impact, not the joke it currently is.

Instead of short-term suspensions, a system of more serious fines could have a better impact. For example, in the recent Dutrow example, when the horse was disqualified from purse money, Dutrow probably took a $2,000 hit (his share of the purse), while the owner took a $20,000 hit (the second-place share). While racing makes the trainer “responsible,” in a case like this, it’s the owner who actually pays; why not fine the trainer an amount equal to the purse that his negligence (or deliberate actions) cost his owner? Taking a $20,000 hit, instead of a $2,000 hit, might serve as a pretty dramatic disincentive to those who would cheat.

Of course, there’s another issue here, too: the cheaters are all too often winners, and owners gravitate to them, willing to take risks to get to the winners’ circle. To my mind, as a small owner, the threat of purse money redistribution is a strong enough disincentive to cheat. Evidently, however, that’s not the case for everyone. Owners, too, could be subject to additional fines, escalating as the frequency of violations goes up — with the ultimate threat of being ruled off altogether.

Our approach should also be smart enough to have some flexibility. The truth of the matter is that mistakes do happen; sometimes a horse ends up with an overage because of an administrative error in the barn or an undetected cut on a leg that allows topical meds to enter the blood stream. The goal of the rules should be to catch and punish the cheats — not to bankrupt decent people who make a mistake.

That doesn’t mean that we should wink at violations committed by decent people. But we ought to avoid the sort of draconian nonsense that characterizes our national drug policies (to no particular effect).

We need to consider the integrity of the sport and the health of the horses, as well. In circumstances where horses are found to have used illegal performance-enhancing drugs, the horses should be prohibited from racing for a long enough period of time that the benefits would be presumed to have worn off. (For example, with steroids, the benefit is not so much on race day as on every day of training). Similarly, when horses have overages of pain-killing medication, they should get an enforced vacation until it’s reasonable to assume they’re feeling better. These changes would level the playing field and help protect unsound horses.

Finally, we’ll need transparency.  Violations, penalties, test results — all should be readily accessible by owners, other trainers, and the public at large.  A centralized, online database detailing this information would allow the public to make up its own mind about trainers and would assist owners who are so inclined to avoid those trainers with unsavory records.

As long as there has been competition, there have been people trying to get an unfair advantage. No drug rules will change that, and we shouldn’t expect that they will. It’s human nature to seek an edge, and some people will always cross the line. But racing is getting — or perhaps simply burnishing — an image as an organized swindle where cheaters always prosper and the only folks playing by the rules are suckers. It’s time to change that.