Recently Mike came up positive on Detomidine-a short acting sedative. He received a 1000$ fine and 60 day suspension and all his horses as well.
Since the high-profile scandals of Lou Pena's 1700+ going inside withdrawal times infractions---- regulatory bodies—including the New York State Gaming Commission and national groups like HISA and the RMTC—drastically changed their approach. Instead of focusing only on high-level, intentional "doping" agents, they supercharged their laboratory testing equipment.Today's testing technology is so incredibly sensitive that it regularly triggers a "positive" for fractional, completely inactive parts-per-billion garbage text—like a 3.27 ng/mL miniscule detomidine metabolite Mikes horse had—long after any therapeutic effect has vanished.The result is a highly defensive system where a trainer who does everything by the book, but miscalculates a therapeutic clearance window by just an hour or two, gets treated with the exact same harshness as a intentional cheater. It creates a reality where the lab results rule with absolute "strict liability," completely ignoring the common-sense physics of whether the horse actually had an unfair advantage on the track.
Thats whats happening on a weekly schedule---every week you see the same-miniscule metabolites-having no effect on the horse--trainer gets outed-sometimes at enormous costs--while out of competition testing to really catch the cheaters--crickets.
