12-05-2025
Keeping Pace: A Lesson In Crime And Punishment
Here's a question for the folks at the New Jersey Board of Veterinary Medical Examiners: What exactly does a racehorse vet have to do to earn a lifetime suspension? I ask the question because we learned last week that the New Jersey Board suspended Louis Grasso's vet license for 10 years, retroactive to last October, in advance of Grasso's scheduled release from federal prison later this year. He is serving a 50-month sentence following a guilty plea he entered in 2022 that was part of the sprawling pre-COVID horse doping and abuse scandal that rocked both Thoroughbred and Standardbred racing in the late winter of not the first time Grasso has been in trouble with regulators. In 1992, he was suspended for five years after he pleaded guilty to illegally possessing and distributing anabolic steroids. And in 2005, Grasso somehow escaped major regulatory (or criminal) punishment after pleading guilty to a misdemeanor charge of resisting arrest. What happened? Reportedly caught with prohibited drugs in his car, he reportedly took police on a high-speed chase. So, again, I ask the Board of Veterinary Medical Examiners: What does a vet have to do, or not do, to earn a lifetime suspension? How bad does the conduct, or its consistency, have to be?
Here's how federal prosecutors described Grasso's role in the scheme in May 2022 when they announced that Grasso and Standardbred trainer Richard Banca had pleaded guilty: 'Grasso and Banca represent the corruption and greed of those in the racehorse industry looking to win at any cost. In peddling illegal drugs and selling prescriptions to corrupt trainers, Louis Grasso abdicated his responsibilities as a medical professional to ensure the safety and health of the racehorses he 'treated.' By injecting horses with unnecessary and, at times, unknown drugs, Grasso risked the lives and welfare of the animals under his care, all in service of helping corrupt racehorse trainers like Banca line their pockets through fraud.'And here's how federal prosecutors described Grasso's crimes as they pressed for prison time later that year. 'By evading PED prohibitions and deceiving regulators and horse racing officials, participants in these schemes sought to improve race performance and obtain prize money from racetracks throughout the United States, all to the detriment and risk of the health and well-being of the racehorses. Grasso, a veterinarian, not only accepted payment in exchange for prescriptions for powerful and medically unnecessary PEDs, but he also created, distributed, and administered custom-made PEDs that were all misbranded and adulterated substances designed solely to improve racehorse performance.'
The timing of Grasso's suspension, the fact that we are talking again for a brief moment about that particular doping scandal, is good news for Katie Bo Lillis, the author of a new book, 'Death of a Racehorse.' The book offers context and perspective on a doping scandal that reached from overnight harness races to the very pinnacle of Thoroughbred racing, the Kentucky Derby. What it does not tell us is how Grasso is supposed to pay the $47 million in restitution he owes to the victims of what the government calls 'ill-gotten purse winnings.' That's okay. No one expects Grasso to pay back the horse people he and others allegedly cheated. But is it too much to ask that the state ensure that he is never again licensed to be near a racehorse?While we are on the topic of maddening moments in New Jersey racing, please make sure you read this piece by Stephen Edelson posted last week at the Asbury Park Press. The story is generally about a conflict between horsemen and horsewomen who want more racing dates at Monmouth Park, or at least to keep the 50 days they already have, and legislators and racing executives who are pushing for the concept of reducing Monmouth's racing dates to 25 as part of an interstate deal with Delaware and Maryland. The idea (and it's a good one) is to create a sort of Mid-Atlantic super circuit covering more than 100 racing dates in a year.'Unfortunately,' Edelson writes in deadpan, 'the plan would require cooperation between state racing organizations, something that's been seriously lacking over the years, with meets and big races run on top of each other, creating a challenging situation at a time when the number of horses is decreasing.' This is precisely the sort of scenario that critics of racing have in mind when they talk about how state racing fiefdoms undermine the industry and jeopardize the livelihood of horse people. That's especially true in New Jersey, where pols for years have helped subsidize racing as penance for not allowing a full casino at The Meadowlands.
Whipping and the Kentucky DerbyIt took the mainstream media a few days to catch up to reports that Junior Alvarado, the jockey on Kentucky Derby-winning Sovereignty, has been suspended for two days and fined $62,000 for using his riding crop two times too many on the horse. It was Alvarado's second such violation within 180 days, which helps account for both the length of the suspension and the amount of the fine. The jockey was unrepentant. 'I didn't abuse the horse,' he said. 'Nobody can tell me, even if they can prove that I hit the horse two extra times, it was in an abusing way, it's just ridiculous. The punishment doesn't fit the crime and I don't think there was any crime.'There is clearly no consensus within the industry about Alvarado's punishment, a sad fact that helps explain why reforms come so slowly to a sport desperately in need of systemic change. There are some who believe that the real scandal here is not what Alvarado did but what the new federal whipping rules say he could not do. There are some who believe that it is embarrassing for Thoroughbred racing for a jockey to have been caught doing this in the sport's most famous race. There are those who are clearly more upset with the regulation than they are with the person punished for violating that regulation. (article continues below)
There is no need to complicate things here. Stewards say Alvarado broke a rule and punished him for it. Alvarado has the right to appeal. It shouldn't matter that this all unfolded in the sport's biggest race. Racing stewards and judges must enforce the law equally in all races. What exactly did you want them to do once they determined, rightly or wrongly, that Alvarado violated the rule? Look the other way because it was the Derby? Look the other way because he's Alvarado? Ignore the violation until someone, weeks from now, counted those hits on that horse and then wrote a story about how stewards tried to hide a whipping case because they didn't want to bring embarrassment to the Kentucky Derby? Now, that would have been a scandal. There should never be any embarrassment within horse racing about enforcing a rule intended to protect horses from abuse. There should never be a call to apologize for being zealous in enforcing whipping rules. We should never endorse a system where horses in big races have less protection from whipping than do horses in cheaper races. Sure, some media outlets are spinning the Alvarado story as yet 'another Derby scandal' but that's just lazy reporting. I think it's a great thing that the world has another reminder that Thoroughbred racing is willing and able to punish one of its best jockeys for allegedly violating a rule in its biggest race.
Due process starts at homeSend Paulick Report editor Natalie Voss to an equine law conference in Lexington and what do you get? You get a really informative article summarizing some of the main topics at the University of Kentucky's 39th annual National Conference on Equine Law. Take the time to read Voss' piece last week at Paulick Report. I want to briefly focus here on what Voss reported about the way in which federal regulators, and especially the folks in the Horseracing Integrity & Welfare Unit, use private arbitration to resolve the cases that arise when 'covered persons' get in trouble under the new federal racing integrity reports that a defense attorney told conference attendees there is no formal discovery process in private arbitration. 'Defense attorneys can ask HIWU to produce certain evidence, but the arbitrator decides whether that evidence is relevant and whether HIWU has to turn it over. If a third party has evidence, such as surveillance footage taken by a track that belongs neither to the trainer nor to HIWU, the arbitrator could order the third party to turn that evidence over on the day of the hearing, but doesn't give the attorneys time to review the evidence. Case law is mixed on whether an arbitrator could issue a subpoena to a third-party witness, but the general consensus is that they don't have that legal power.'
I asked the folks at HISA and HIWU to respond. They did. They told me: 'Arbitrators under the ADMC Program (members of the Internal Adjudication Panel and Arbitral Body) can issue subpoenas for both documents and testimony from Covered Persons. Since the implementation of the ADMC Program, document subpoenas have been issued upon motion, i.e., before the hearing, in both Controlled Medication and Anti-Doping cases. Additionally, HIWU routinely voluntarily produces relevant evidence to Responsible Persons in advance of hearings. Both parties are also required to produce the evidence that they seek to rely upon at a hearing on a date before the hearing that is set by either the arbitrator or the rules themselves.' You will not be surprised to hear from me that the more 'due process' that 'covered persons' receive under the new federal racing rules the more support and respect federal regulators will earn from the industry they are trying to regulate. Not every case can turn into a mini-trial, of course, but there is never an excuse for not giving attorneys enough time to review the evidence that is being used against them (or evidence that might help them). One of the quickest ways for HISA and HIWU to increase industry buy-in is to establish, in every hearing, that the federal process is quicker and fairer than was the state adjudication system it replaced.
NOTESHelp wanted. The Association of Racing Commissioners International met in Louisville last week. Byron King at BloodHorse reports that state regulators 'expressed continued challenges related to staffing positions for veterinarians and stewards… Jamie Eads, president/CEO of the Kentucky Horse Racing and Gaming Corporation, said the work/life balance of these professions has created a difficult hiring environment, noting the need for travel within the state, and work on weekends, holidays, and sometimes at night. 'It's just a hard sell,' she told the audience during the panel, an executive director roundtable.'The rest of the piece offered interesting examples of how regulators are trying to make that sell. New Mexico has gone so far as to waive background checks in its effort to hire stewards. The Texas Racing Commission is in favor of forgiving student loans for aspiring veterinarians to consider careers in the regulatory world. Indeed, it's hard to imagine a more stable job in racing than as an honest, earnest vet or vet tech working for a state racing commission. And I know more than a few honest, earnest horsemen and horsewomen who would be outstanding stewards and judges. I wish there were a national database-type job listing for these positions.
The Allen Bonnell story. The veterinarian at the center of the medication scandal at Penn National Race Course has been kicked out of horse racing in HISA jurisdictions across the U.S. Hopefully, Canadian regulators will soon follow suit. There is no room in racing for trainers or other 'covered persons' who think that their own beliefs or judgments or experiences with horses supersedes their obligation to follow the rules. This is especially true of veterinarians like Bonnell, who serve as an essential link in the industry between owners and trainers and the horses in their care. Vets are supposed to be the ones who tell trainers, 'No,' when asked to circumvent medication standards or other drug-related Angst's BloodHorse write-up about the lifetime suspension offers important context about the Bonnell case. A detailed regulatory report, Angst wrote, 'suggests Bonnell knew the rules but ignored them as trainers looking to circumvent [HiSA standards] called upon his services. That report says that in an Oct. 24, 2024, interview with PSHRC investigators, Bonnell said trainers would request his services for intra-articular injections because they knew he would not report the injections as required, allowing the trainers to run their horses during the time the horses should have been placed on the veterinarians' list.' It's not supposed to work that way in America. People generally don't get to decide which laws you'll obey and which you will flout.
