Moss Defending Asmussen

[Michael D.]

Moss defending Asmussen on lidocaine charge

Here\'s an expanded version from what you\'ll read in Friday\'s Courier-Journal, with comments from the head of LSU\'s equine testing laboratory:

An attorney for leading trainer Steve Asmussen vowed Thursday to fight the Texas Racing Commission\'s charge that a 2-year-old filly in his care tested positive for a metabolite of the local anesthetic lidocaine after winning a maiden race at Lone Star Park on May 10.

Lawyer and horse owner Maggi Moss said she feels so strongly that she\'s making it her first legal case in 1 1/2 years. Moss â€" who led the nation in victories in 2006 and won her first Churchill Downs title last spring â€" was a high-profile defense attorney in Des Moines, Iowa, before taking an indefinite leave to devote full time to her racing stable. Her trainers include Asmussen, who leads the country in victories and purse earnings with a massive stable that includes Horse of the Year Curlin. Moss said she hired Karen Murphy, a well-known New York
equine attorney, as co-counsel.

\"The biggest problem here is just hitting a brick wall with anyone who wants to find out the truth,\" Moss said in a phone interview. \"... I stepped away from the law; I\'m not interested in doing this. But I\'m coming back to represent Steve. I hired Karen, and the two of us are prepared to fight this to the end.\"

Lidocaine, which is present in some hand lotions and over-the-counter topical ointments such as triple antibiotic salve, isn\'t allowed in a horse\'s system while racing. It is classified by the Association of Racing Commissioners International as a Class 2 drug, which means it has therapeutic use but also a high potential to enhance performance.

Moss said Asmussen was served by the Texas Racing Commission Thursday morning with a charge that Gainesway Stable\'s 2-year-old filly Timber Trick tested positive for a metabolite of lidocaine after winning a May 10 maiden race at Lone Star Park in Grand Prairie. A metabolite is what is produced after the drug goes through the body.

Thursday evening the Texas commission confirmed the charge for a hydrolidocaine finding. In a release, the commission said Texas has zero tolerance for any substances banned for racing, except the anti-bleeder medication furosemide and the
anti-inflammatory known as bute.


If the Lone Star stewards determine there\'s been a violation, the penalty under
Texas law is a fine ranging from $1,500 to $2,500, a suspension of six months to a
year and loss of the race purse. Moss said she will ask for a continuance of the July 18 hearing date before the stewards.

She charged that the commission denied Asmussen\'s requests to have the blood sample also tested, to quantify the amount of the substance and to let half of
both the blood and urine samples go to Louisiana State University’s lab for
confirmation testing.

Both blood and urine samples are taken from a horse who is subjected to post-race testing. Though substances stay longer in urine, they are detected and quantified more accurately in blood, racing chemists say. Horsemen and many racing chemists say quantifying is critical because it indicates how long a substance was in a horse â€" and hence if it had any pharmacologist effect on the horse at race time â€" and if it likely was deliberately administered, the result of a previous veterinary administration or a trace amount triggered by contamination.


Most states let a trainer select which lab to send the referee sample to, though usually it must be from an approved list. LSU is one of the country\'s most popular labs for so-called \"split sample\" testing, but it was not among the three the Texas commission would allow, she said. Moss said the urine split only was sent to Industrial Laboratories in Denver, Colo. And that Texas would not let Colorado quantify it.

\"We wanted it to go to the top scientist in the country to prove it one way or an
other,\" she said. \"They said no. Every single request we made to get to the truth â€"
we didn\'t want any favors, we wanted the truth, \'Let\'s find out what happened\'â€"
they said no to everything.\"

Moss said one of the key experts in Asmussen\'s defense will be Dr. Steve Barker, who heads the LSU lab and is the man whose testimony against Asmussen for a 2006 mepivacaine positive in Louisiana helped result in a six-month suspension for the trainer.

In a phone interview, Barker said he has issues with the methodology that Texas A&M used in its original analysis and is concerned that no one is providing information about how much of the drug was present. He said model testing rules developed by the Association of Racing Commissioners International emphasize blood thresholds for substances and call for testing in both blood and urine. He said it is highly unusual today for a jurisdiction not to do the blood testing.

\"I\'ve looked at the scientific evidence, and there are questions I have that I think need to be addressed,\" said Barker, who said it appears to be a small amount of lidocaine in the Asmussen case from the documentation he’s seen. \"... If nothing else, there needs to be a referee sample where the blood can be tested to develop exculpatory evidence or at least better define what really happened. If you\'ve got the drug in blood and the drug and metabolites in urine, then all the questions go away. You have levels where you can start to make reasonable scientific conclusions about, instead of just saying, \'We found it. You\'re guilty.\'The claims of \'well, we\'re a zero-tolerance state,\' in this day and age are just totally unacceptable and antiquated.

\"Lidocaine is a fairly common substance in our environment. There are products out there that contain lidocaine that people can mistakenly use and come in contact with a horse and lead to trace level contamination and a positive report. \"Now is that the same as somebody administering lidocaine to potentially perform a nerve block on a horse that\'s racing? It\'s not.\"

Lidocaine sanctions vary greatly from state to state. Churchill Downs stewards
said that under Kentucky rules, a lidocaine violation requires the loss of purse and a suspension, usually of the trainer, for up to 60 days, with the
first offense typically being a 15-day suspension. Those are the same penalties as a Clenbuterol infraction.

The Asmussen allegation comes on the heels of Kentucky Derby-winning trainer Rick Dutrow being handed a 15-day suspension Wednesday by the Kentucky stewards after a horse that ran on Oaks Day tested over the legal limit for the bronchodilator Clenbuterol.