By John Scheinman
Special to The Washington Post
Friday, June 8, 2007

ELMONT, N.Y., June 7 -- Lately, trainer Jenine Sahadi has begun putting tape across the bottom of her barn door on nights before she runs a horse in a race at Hollywood Park, worried someone will come in and sabotage her animal with drugs.

"I want to make sure no one breaks the seal if I run one," Sahadi said Thursday at the California track. "Maybe it's me being paranoid, but enough people are upset with me and vocalized it to me."

Sahadi, 44, who became the first woman to train a Breeders' Cup race winner when she sent out Lit de Justice to take the Sprint in 1996, has grown fearful because she is one of the most outspoken opponents of the abuse of drugs in racing.

She has appeared regularly before the California Horse Racing Board, urging it to toughen penalties for violators, and recently appeared in a segment of the HBO's "Real Sports" that indicted the sport for being awash in drugs.

"I'm not so ignorant as to think I can change anything, but I have an opinion," Sahadi said. "The bulk of owners around this country are more than happy with the results they're getting from their trainers, whether there are multiple [drug] positives or not. There is a way of thinking out there, and that is win at all costs."

One of the principle targets of the HBO report was trainer Steve Asmussen, who will send out Preakness Stakes winner Curlin on Saturday as the 6-5 favorite to win the 139th Belmont Stakes.

After leading all trainers in victories in 2004 and 2005, Asmussen, 41, was suspended last year from racing for six months by two separate jurisdictions for positive drug tests in his horses.

Asmussen had a horse test positive at a track in New Mexico for acepromazine, a powerful sedative, and then another, a claming horse named No End in Sight, for a local anesthetic called mepivacaine following a race at Evangeline Downs in Louisiana.

Asmussen wound up serving the suspensions concurrently, from last July 10 through Jan. 7. The mepivacaine, an illegal nerve-blocking agent, turned up in a concentration 750 times higher in No End in Sight than a comparable test revealed in a horse Todd Pletcher ran in 2004 that led to a 45-day suspension, according to a report in the Daily Racing Form. No End in Sight pulled up in the race and failed to finish. It was the 22nd time Asmussen had been cited for a drug violation in his career.

Asked if there is any circumstance under which a horse might race after being administered mepivacaine, David Zipf, chief veterinarian for the Maryland Racing Commission said: "Heavens no. You can imagine what would happen. It's used in diagnostic nerve blocks. If a horse is lame in the foot, he won't feel it."

Asmussen declined to speak about his violations. He has said that a veterinarian mistakenly administered the mepivacaine four hours before the race. He also argues there would be fewer positive tests if state racing commissions developed a uniform policy.

"I'm in good standing in all states and have nothing pending, nothing under appeal and I'm simply looking forward and not looking back," Asmussen said.

Sahadi, however, believes trainers such as Asmussen get off too easily. She has seen a number of California trainers in recent years fined and penalized when their horses test positive for heightened levels of bicarbonate -- the result of an illegal procedure called "milkshaking" -- and said state rules for drug withdrawal times are a poor excuse for positive tests.

"We put these people on the pedestal. They're the super trainers," Sahadi said. "Well, the greatest trainer in the world was Charlie Wittingham -- not one positive.

"Where I come from, if you are not playing by the rules, you're ostracized. These guys are good trainers, good horsemen. They work hard. I'm not taking that away. But when you win that many races, people are drawn to you. But doesn't anybody walk up to a guy with multiple positives and say, 'I'm not going to give you horses?' No, they want to win."

Sahadi would like to see the use of almost all drugs banned, but Scot Waterman, executive director of the Kentucky-based Racing Medication and Testing Consortium, is busy just trying to create regulations for the ones in use.

"Certainly a result of uniformity will lead to a decrease in positive tests that could be attributed to a lack of knowledge and mistakes," Waterman said. "If we get uniformity, we can spend a lot more time trying to catch the cheaters."

When Asmussen was suspended, his assistant, Scott Blasi, took over the entire outfit and no horses missed a race. "It's been a smooth transition," Blasi told the National Thoroughbred Racing Association. "It's business as usual, absolutely."

Slowly, however, racing jurisdictions are moving to prevent the easy transition of horses from a suspended trainer. In March, Delaware joined Indiana in prohibiting a horse from running out of a suspended trainer's stable under the name of an assistant or family member. In April, California adopted a similar rule and toughened up others for drug violations.

Although horses in Triple Crown races are subject to heightened surveillance, monitoring is generally cost-prohibitive for day-to-day track operations across the country.

"Racing used to be a really big deal," Sahadi said. "The only time it's a big deal now is the Kentucky Derby and the Belmont if someone's going for the Triple Crown. People have to trust what they're watching and betting on is real. Everyone in racing is suffering at the hands of the few."