I’ll Have Another will attempt to wrap up the Triple Crown at Belmont on Saturday against a clamor of alleged rampant drug use in horse racing, centered around the horse’s controversial trainer, Doug O’Neill.
The furious public debate raises the question: If it’s that bad, how can the Belmont be on the square?
It’s a bum rap.
O’Neill has a series of drug violations in his record, but there is not a scintilla of evidence that I’ll Have Another ever has been tampered with. He has had seven races in four states over 11 months, his urine and blood have been tested, up and down, by technicians in all the country’s major labs, and not a spec of contamination has been found. Nothing.
It’s reasonable to conclude the horse is true blue, that he won the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness fair and square. But now, on the eve of maybe winning the Triple Crown, he faces the prospect that the integrity of his performance will be suspect, his reputation tainted, not by scientific proof, but by that age-old ruse — guilt by association. He’s O’Neill’s horse, ergo, he’s on the juice.
The New York State Racing and Wagering Board fanned that suspicion into a blaze with an eleventh-hour order last week that all Belmont Stakes horses be “quarantined” for four days before the race. The directive was aimed specifically at O’Neill.
They have put a target on him — conveniently overlooking the reality that half a dozen other trainers in the Belmont have, at some time, been fined for drug violations.
True, O’Neill’s record is worse than most. In California they call him Drug O’Neill. But the statistics are not as persuasive as the rumors.
O’Neill has been training for 23 years. He has saddled more than 9,900 starters. Four have returned drug positives. Four is four too many, but in this day and age, some would say that’s a modest rap sheet.
In his last two episodes, Stephen’s Got Hope in the 2010 Illinois Derby, and Argenta, in a 2010 race at Del Mar, were found to have elevated levels of carbon dioxide in their systems. They both finished so far up the track you would need a platoon of Navy Seals to find them. If O’Neill’s a cheater, he’s a helluva bungler.
The penalties imposed on him are incomprehensible. He did not contest the Illinois Derby finding. He was fined $1,000 and suspended 15 days, a wrist slap. They should have dropped the hammer on him right there.
In the Del Mar case, the California Horse Racing Board totally absolved O’Neill of any improper behavior. In effect, they exonerated him, found him not guilty, but then slapped him with a $15,000 fine and a 45-day suspension. How would you like to be a defendant in that court? If O’Neill doesn’t appeal the verdict, he’s crazier than the Racing Board.
O’Neill’s lifetime winning percentage is not out of line. He comes in at 16 percent. Compare that with some of the biggest names ever: Charlie Whittingham 18 percent, Woody Stephens 16 percent, Laz Barrera 17 percent, Allen Jerkens 18 percent, Bobby Frankel 20 percent.
If O’Neill’s the mad doper they portray, it’s not reflected in the winner’s circle.
Compare his figures with some current big names: Todd Pletcher 22 percent, Bob Baffert 22 percent, Steve Asmussen 21 percent, Rick Dutrow Jr. 25 percent, Jamie Ness 26 percent.
O’Neill is not a choir boy, but the campaign to depict him as the poster boy for racing’s drug epidemic and hang him in the public square at the moment of his greatest triumph reeks of overkill.
He’s not an ogre. And neither is the racing game.
In 2010, the industry spent more than $35 million in the hunt to nab unscrupulous horsemen, a sum no other sport can come close to matching. It tested more than 334,000 biological samples and found 99.5 percent free of any foreign or prohibited substance. Can any enterprise get much cleaner than that?
Of the remaining 0.5 percent, most were associated with a legal substance administered by licensed veterinarians. It found just 47 cases of “doping.” Reading the headlines today, you never would believe that. Forty seven still is 47 too many, but there are crooks in every sphere of life.
No, the real drug problem in racing today is the massive, legal, over-medication of nearly every racehorse in North America, a blight found nowhere else in the world.
Just don’t pin the blame for that travesty on I’ll Have Another.