Masochistic / Ron Ellis DQ'd for anabolic steriod - BC Sprint 2nd place

[Laurierace]

It is true that some horses don’t metabolize as you would expect. There was a horse in my barn at Penn that got back to back positives for banamine. They gave it even earlier the second time but to no avail.

I have only had to resort to winstrol once, it was with my then late teens horse who had recovered from a very severe URI but had not gotten his appetite back. It did the trick thankfully after a couple of doses and I never had to use it again. He did not “bulk” or get any behavior changes like with equipoise, he just ate his food again.

[Palm_Beach]

Right, they are guidelines, not guarantees.

[Where_sMyWhite]

Thanks for clarifying PB. In this case, it would have been risky to even backdate (say administering 60 days out or less). Only 8 days leeway between documented administration and rule limited administration pre-race.

I can believe that some horses metabolize faster and some slower. What, in my eyes, kept Ellis from the “cheating” is he never tried to, at least according to Bloodhorse article, hide that he administered the drug. He tested for it a few times within the 60 day window. He even wanted to test just before the BC but couldn’t find a lab that could do that level of testing in such a short period of time before the race. He knew going in it was a risk. He certainly never denied giving the drug nor acted like he had no clue how it happened.

This behavior appears to me to be fairly different than some of the other ‘what, who me’ type of trainers who plead innocent.

[Palm_Beach]

I get it, WMW but that’s what most of them say - the medication was administered as directed and according to the guidelines. I know straight from the horse’s mouth that medications get administered right on the guideline day, and sometimes the trainers push the envelope a bit and try to give it closer to the race because they have been doing it closer to the race and no one’s come up with a positive “yet.” THAT I will guarantee.

[Palm_Beach]

Update from the RMTC:

The use of anabolic steroids in training is banned. The only time that any of the four permitted anabolic steroids can be administered is if they are:
prescribed by a veterinarian – which requires the filing of a treatment plan prior to administration, and
the horse is placed on the state veterinarian’s list for a minimum of six months after the final administration;
Strict reporting requirements for other substances, such as clenbuterol, that act as anabolic agents; and
A broadly expanded prohibited substance list based upon the World Anti-Doping Agency’s Prohibited Substance list

[Palm_Beach]

http://www.paulickreport.com/news/ray-s-paddock/questions-remain-steroids-likely-breeders-cup-dq-masochistic/

Question One: Why did Ellis run the horse, when, by his own admission, there was a 10 percent chance the stanozolol would trigger a positive test?

Question Two: Why did Ellis have Masochistic put on the CHRB’s veterinarian’s list for medication for 60 days twice since May 2016 when the horse was neither sick nor injured?

Question Three: Why is a positive test measured in picograms (one trillionth of a gram) considered a violation?

Question Four: Why were Breeders’ Cup officials not told by the California Horse Racing Board that out-of-competition testing indicated Masochistic had stanozolol in his system just over a week before his race?

Question Five: Why are anabolic steroids still permitted to be used for training Thoroughbreds in the United States? Wasn’t this problem resolved in 2008 after a number of prominent owners, trainers and racing officials were brought before Congress to testify at a House subcommittee hearing entitled “Breeding, Drugs and Breakdowns: The State of Thoroughbred Horseracing and the Welfare of the Thoroughbred Racehorse”?

Airdrie

Answer to the first question is easy. Ellis, in search of his first Breeders’ Cup victory, rolled the dice, hoping the drug would completely clear out of Masochistic’s system by the Nov. 5 Sprint. Samantha Siegel, who co-owns Masochistic with Los Pollos Hermanos Racing, said this on Twitter about the decision whether or not to run: “I left it up to Ron which was sadly a mistake. Personally I was shocked that we weren’t automatically scratched.”
Question Two: Why did Ellis have a veterinarian give an anabolic steroid to a horse that wasn’t sick, injured or coming off surgery? That’s an easy one, too: because he could. “It was done therapeutically, because he’s a small horse and we’ve had trouble keeping weight on him,” Ellis told Daily Racing Form’s Jay Privman.

This might be a good place to remind readers that anabolic steroids are considered a performance-enhancing drug in virtually all human sports and in most horse racing jurisdictions around the world.

The regulation California has had in place for the last three years allows trainers to routinely administer steroids, put the horse on the vet’s list for 60 days and train up to a race (prior to that it could be given 30 days out, as was the case when the Breeders’ Cup was run at Santa Anita Park in 2013). It is a system rife for abuse and Ellis is far from being the only trainer to take advantage of the California Horse Racing Board’s flaccid rule.

Question Three: Why is a horse disqualified and a trainer eligible for a fine and suspension when the positive test is measured in picograms? This one’s a little more complicated. The California Horse Racing Board does not authorize any level of stanozolol in a horse on race day. Its authorization was suspended in California Dec. 26, 2013. When CHRB adopted the National Uniform Medication Program the following year, stanozolol was not among the approved therapeutic drugs for which a testing threshold was established. Any detection level of the drug is a violation.

Unlike stanozolol, other anabolic steroids – boldenone, nandrolone and testosterone – can be naturally occurring and are regulated with accompanying threshold levels for testing.

Finally, Question Five, why does California (among other states) permit anabolic steroids to be given to healthy horses?

This is a tough one. It’s true, there was a California Horse Racing Board press release dated July 19, 2008, saying “BOARD ACTS TO BAN STEROIDS IN RACING,” but it was kind of a wink-wink, nudge-nudge ban. In truth, California and most other states have simply regulated the use of anabolic steroids, not banned them.

The press release from California came just a month after several racing industry leaders were chastised by members of Congress during a hearing on Capitol Hill to get the sport’s house in order on medication. This came in the wake of an ugly 2008 Triple Crown when the filly Eight Belles broke both front legs and died just past the finish line of the Kentucky Derby. Rick Dutrow, trainer of Derby and Preakness winner Big Brown, candidly admitted giving Winstrol (stanozolol) to all of his horses on a routine basis. The combination of those two events – though unrelated – shined a bright light on horse racing and drugs.

The American public had just endured baseball’s steroids era, when some of the game’s most treasured records were broken by cheaters pumped up on drugs. The Olympics Games were becoming a farce because of performance enhancing substances like stanozolol and blood-doping agents that mostly went undetected in testing.

You might have thought horse racing regulators had seen the light and the damage done to the credibility of those sports. They didn’t.

The California Horse Racing Board, in particular, has been dominated by horse owners or individuals who listen to trainers on medication issues. Yes, the inmates have a hand in running the asylum. The board had several opportunities to toughen anabolic steroids regulations and failed to do so.

[Palm_Beach]

BTW, the owner of Masochistic, Samantha Siegel, had horses with Dutrow until he got suspended for 10 years.

[gotpaints]

[QUOTE=Palm Beach;8983725]
Update from the RMTC:

The use of anabolic steroids in training is banned. The only time that any of the four permitted anabolic steroids can be administered is if they are:
prescribed by a veterinarian – which requires the filing of a treatment plan prior to administration, and
the horse is placed on the state veterinarian’s list for a minimum of six months after the final administration;
Strict reporting requirements for other substances, such as clenbuterol, that act as anabolic agents; and
A broadly expanded prohibited substance list based upon the World Anti-Doping Agency’s Prohibited Substance list[/QUOTE]
According to multiple stories, steroids are allowed in California (they just have to be used in certain times).

[Palm_Beach]

As I quoted in post #26.

[Shammy_Davis]

Interesting history on this horse.

http://cs.bloodhorse.com/blogs/keeping-pace/archive/2016/12/27/one-horse-two-scandals.aspx

[findeight]

That poor horse needs better connections…Ace???

[Shammy_Davis]

Findeight: Very true and it appears this gelding might be in the barn for awhile. I am somewhat surprised that Jay Em Ess is connected to this.

http://www.bloodhorse.com/horse-racing/articles/218651/masochistic-denied-entry-at-santa-anita

[Shammy_Davis]

Bill Shanklin picked up on this by writing this thought provoking article.

http://www.horseracingbusiness.com/the-betting-public-be-damned-15164.htm

[Palm_Beach]

Good point Shammy. So would knowing the horse was treated with an anabolic steriod change your handicapping strategy?

[Pronzini]

There is a lot to be said about this situation and I have been staying away from it for a variety of reasons but I really don’t get the outrage from the gamblers. The horse had been training superbly up to the race and Lord Nelson scratched. He went off as the favorite as I recall but there was some concern about his abbreviated 2016 campaign and the fact he had been injured and had run last in the same race a year ago. He figured to run in the money and the odds reflected it. He ran second and the gamblers were paid for it even though he will now be placed last. The result was completely logical until the post race test results were revealed and the conspiracy minded (in my eyes) went to town.

Now if he went off at 20-1 and won, I’d get it. This is a little more nuanced I believe.

[Where_sMyWhite]

So an NFL player voluntarily released information that he’d been asked to submit to a drug test by finding a note taped to his locker requesting he report ASAP. Why doesn’t the NFL just show up and ask without warning? (Or do they and this wasn’t the case).

Me personally, I don’t get the outrage over the picogram test results from Masochistic. Yeah, yeah, vets can falsify when drugs are administered, I get that. The amount of steroid left in Masochistic’s system was very small. IMO, if anything, maybe steroids should be treated more like Lasix and just report that the horse has had steroids in their system on the race day program. Yes, have some type of minimum time (60 days or whatever) in which it can’t be administered but get it out in front of the betting public.

Makes me wonder when RunHappy (Claiborne) reports that he’d run drug free, no Lasix, for his entire career. Since steroid testing isn’t public info, did drug free include 'roids or not?

[Texarkana]

This is what abusing withdrawal times truly looks like:

http://www.bloodhorse.com/horse-racing/articles/218653/preciado-to-accept-license-revocation-in-pennsylvania

Better training through chemistry at its finest.

Working with guys like Preciado in my past is why I don’t even blink over the Masochistic situation. They are apples and oranges.

[jennywho]

This is hard for me as I have dealt with horses like him (usually fillies) that really do benefit from steroids. Not in the performance enhancing way that people assume, but those that absolutely won’t eat and are dull and listless without them.

I’m guessing that most will still see them as “bad” even in that case, but that’s just my added experience.

[Palm_Beach]

IMHO, a horse that won’t eat and is dull and listless needs better horsemanship, not drugs.

[Shammy_Davis]

I agree with PB. Enhancing appetite seems like a very poor excuse to administer anabolic steroids. As one vet says (paraphrased) in this link, anabolic steroids help in the care of horses with gastric ulcers by enhancing appetite but wouldn’t it be better to just rid the horse of the ulcers. As we all know an extremely high percentage of racehorse suffer with ulcers.

http://veterinarynews.dvm360.com/anabolic-steroids-uses-and-abuses