Receiving Barns: `Let's Clean Up the Sport, And The Stalls'

On Nov. 9 last year, veteran trainer Steve Klesaris shipped his mare She's Awesome from Delaware Park to Aqueduct to compete in the second race. When she arrived, the receiving barns were full, and so, She's Awesome (Flatter) was sent instead to the track's auxiliary stabling, used as an overflow.

The auxiliary barn is adjacent to staff bathrooms, with a lot of foot traffic through it, said Klesaris. It's also used to stable ponies, he added.

She's Awesome won that day. But a post-race test came up positive for the anti-seizure drug also used to relieve pain in the nervous system called gabapentin, for which Klesaris was recently issued a 15-day suspension and $1,000 fine.

Klesaris maintains his innocence. He said he strongly suspects the positive was the result of gabapentin-using backstretch workers urinating in the stall. “Anybody can walk in, urinate on the floor, urinate on the walls, nobody knows. There's no padlocks on the doors. They're wide open,” he said.

“This is the way we've always done things,” Klesaris said, of receiving barn hygiene and safety protocols in general. But that status-quo needs to change, he said. And fast. “Whatever we do, we need to have a much better plan to have cleaner stalls,” he added.

Klesaris isn't alone.

With no strict, uniform set of enforceable receiving barn standards to which all track operators must adhere, they're left, in many ways, to police themselves–a scenario that appears to leave much to be desired.

Trainers across the country frequently complain of horses shipping into stalls containing dirty bedding, or feed from the previous occupant, or muck and urine on the walls. Poor track security measures can leave some stakeholders wondering who had access to the stall before they got there. Some tracks use their ship-in stalls to stable horses that work in the mornings, and for horses going through the sales, again leading to questions over just what drug residues are potentially left behind as a result.

Then there's the condition of the stalls themselves. Even if the boxes were cleaned to the highest standard each time a horse leaves, dirt floors make it difficult to disinfect them fully, while porous materials mean that pressure-washing and disinfecting might not ever rid the stall walls of trace drug residues.

This issue has become something of a clarion call among trainers since the advent of the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act (HISA), where the ultimate insurer rule places the burden of responsibility squarely on the shoulders of the trainers. In turn, they say it's high time track operators carried some of this responsibility as well.

It should also be noted that while the HISA Authority has opened a confidential tip-line for stakeholders to submit formal complaints about a track's receiving barn, the federal agency says it has to-date received no such reports.

At the end of the day, however, a well-run and properly enforced system of receiving barn hygiene and security measures would help all parties. Regulators could mount a much stronger prosecutorial case, while trainers striving to do the right thing would have far greater certainty that the stalls they're shipping into won't inadvertently trip a post-race test. Indeed, HISA's in the process off drafting such rules.

“This shouldn't even be a topic of conversation,” said trainer Ron Moquett, who sits on HISA's horsemen's advisory committee. “As long as we're cleaning up the sport, let's clean up the stalls.”

Survey of the Tracks

The National Horsemen's Benevolent and Protective Association (HBPA) recently surveyed its affiliates about the physical condition of receiving barns, and the standards of cleanliness that occur between horses leaving and arriving. The answers illustrate something of a crapshoot.

Jon Moss, executive director of the Iowa HBPA, described Prairie Meadows's receiving barns as “a B to C level of upkeep,” with kicked wooden walls and some rusting brackets that need to be replaced.

Moss said that track management routinely strips the stalls between each horse arriving. The floors are also matted, which he takes as a plus. However, while the stalls are not power-washed or disinfected, the daily logistics of the receiving barn area would make such practices difficult, said Moss (more on this in a bit).

One responder from the Mid-Atlantic region said that the stalls are cleaned by the racetrack operator, “but they do not do a great job or disinfect them and may have leftovers from a previous horse.” This responder asked the TDN not to name the specific track for fear of retaliation to the trainers.

Another responder–who again asked the TDN for anonymity–described a separate Mid-Atlantic track as “deplorable,” with fresh straw “thrown over top of manure and urine.”

Leroy Gessmann, executive director of the Arizona HBPA, described the Turf Paradise receiving barn as being in a “terrible condition,” with stalls that remain uncleaned “unless the people leaving muck them out” and no use of disinfectant.

According to Turf Paradise general manager Vince Francia, the receiving barn is primarily used to stable Quarter Horses, over which HISA has no jurisdiction, while Thoroughbred ship-ins (about 1%, he said) stable at the receiving barn, with the vast majority stabled in the main barn area. He also argued that a full-time attendant cleaned and disinfected the stalls thoroughly after use.

Ron Moquett | Coady

According to Moquett, while some tracks are better than others at maintaining their receiving barns, none give him high confidence that one of his ship-in horses is entering a fully clean, uncontaminated area.

“I think Churchill Downs try hard and I think Oaklawn tries hard,” said Moquett, commending them for painting over the porous walls to help with cleaning.

But at many tracks, especially those with dirt floor stalls, even the strictest hygiene protocols would be an exercise in futility, said Moquett, who recently faced a post-race mepivacaine positive.

The case was ultimately resolved with no sanctions after Moquett successfully argued the positive was likely the result of environmental contamination–this, after the stall had been cleaned prior to occupancy.

“Racetracks need to understand the importance and the liability that it places on people who may be coming into contact with something, and they have no knowledge of exposure or risk,” said Moquett.

Indeed, as several studies have shown, receiving barns can be a hot-spot for a variety of substances that routinely show-up in post-race tests.

Studies

In 2015, Charles Town racecourse switched laboratories and adopted the Racing Medication and Testing Consortium's (RMTC) drug testing schedule. After that, there were a series of low-level positives at the track for naproxen, a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID).

In response, West Virginia Racing Commission personnel swabbed 21 ship-in stalls at Charles Town. A total of 28 different substances were detected, including human recreational drugs, along with human and equine therapeutic substances. The most common was cocaine and two of its metabolites, found in 10 separate stalls.

Of the therapeutic substances, two of the stalls swabbed positive for metformin, the diabetes drug garnering a lot of attention in HISA's drug enforcement efforts. Naproxen (four stalls), acepromazine and the anticholinergic glycopyrrolate (three stalls) were the three most commonly-detected equine medications.

Only four stalls reportedly came back with no positive findings.

Though the authors explained that they did not know precisely how the areas were swabbed or sampled-the data was obtained via a public records request-other published papers appear to support their findings.

This 2008 paper documented tests conducted on dirt samples taken from the receiving barn stall floors at a Louisiana racetrack. Phenylbutazone, flunixin, naproxen, caffeine and furosemide were all readily identified in the dirt, though not at levels reportedly high enough to trigger a positive test.

This 2020 study determined the amount of time horses fed hay soaked in dexamethasone-containing urine tested above a certain level for the drug after consumption.

And this French study published in 2011 found that horses given flunixin were less likely to experience “rebound” flunixin levels if removed and placed into a clean box 24 hours after administration, as opposed to those that remained in the same dirty box. In other words, horses who eat bedding soaked in their own flunixin-containing urine appear to recycle the drug back into their systems.

In October of 2020, the Steve Asmussen-trained Saffa's Day (Carpe Diem) tested positive for dexamethasone after winning at Keeneland on his debut. As part of the trainer's defense, the stall that Saffa's Day was stabled in–in the trainer's regular barn, not the ship-in stalls-was broken into 12 quadrants for swabbing, and dexamethasone was detected in each of these quadrants, said Asmussen's attorney, Clark Brewster.

Dr. Stuart Brown | Keeneland

One of the swabs had enough dexamethasone to trigger a positive test, said Brewster. The case was resolved with a DQ and a $500 fine. Because of the proximity of the Keeneland September sales the month prior, Brewster speculated whether the two were linked.

According to Dr. Stuart Brown, Keeneland's vice president of equine safety, the track's receiving barn is used to house the sales horses. Brown outlined, however, a series of receiving barn hygiene and security measures Keeneland instituted in 2023 that appear to be among the most stringent in the country.

This includes an inspection of the entire receiving barn area at the end of the raceday, the cleaning and disinfecting of vacated stalls, which are subsequently locked with a tamper proof zip-tie, along with new, easier-to-clean matted flooring.

“The barns are inspected every morning at 5:15. Every stall in that barn is gone over individually for any potential debris or material left in there,” said Brown. All the while, “the barn remains under 24-hour surveillance on our video cameras,” he added.

Data on Ship-ins

The TDN recently asked HISA for the number of methamphetamine and metformin positives from ship-ins.

Of the 13 methamphetamine positives identified up to that point, seven were ship-ins. (Note: The five methamphetamine positives trainer Dick Clark accrued between June 19 and July 22 last year are classed as one event).

Horse stall | Horsephotos

Of the 11 metformin positives identified, six were ship-ins.

The connections of five of these 13 ship-in positives, including two of the metformin positives, said in media reports that the findings were probably the result of contamination from staff hygiene lapses.

If those five cases were removed from the ship-in list, that leaves seven tracks where the horses had shipped in, and where connections claim they had no explanation for how the positive findings occurred.

Another key detail: What percentage of overall runners do ship-in horses comprise at each of these tracks?

Though this number is always a moving target, HISA estimates–using data supplied by the tracks–that ship-ins make up about 45% of the overall runners at Belterra Park (where two positives occurred), 38% at Delaware Park, 40% at Horseshoe Indianapolis, 30% at Laurel Park, 25% at Monmouth Park, 20% at Penn National, and 15% at Tampa Bay.

When asked for his thoughts on these numbers, Robert Holland, an expert in respiratory and infectious diseases, said he believed “any contaminated stall could be an issue when a horse that had been treated was in it before your horse,” due to the sensitivity of modern testing.

Holland applauded HISA's recent attempts to educate the industry on good stable hygiene, including a set of new posters. “I really do like them because it helps with discussions between the trainers and their staff,” he said.

Rules and Regulations

HISA's receiving barn regulations are a loosely-worded set of guidelines that allow for much wiggle-room.

When asked about the layers of scrutiny that HISA places on receiving barns, HISA assistant general counsel Sam Reinhardt wrote in an email that all racetracks undergo accreditation visits that include “cleanliness and protocol reviews.” Track's safety officers oversee them daily. HIWU investigators also monitor common areas like the receiving barns, “for cleanliness and other appropriate security measures,” he wrote.

“In fact, they visit receiving barns unannounced to verify the conditions and cleanliness,” wrote Reinhardt.

Which leads to the next question: How do other leading global jurisdiction manage the issue?

The British Horseracing Authority (BHA) has four pages of “racecourse stabling” hygiene, cleaning and use requirements to which all tracks must adhere, or face sanctions like possible fines.

After a horse vacates its box, for example, tracks are required to remove everything except the clean bedding. This includes soiled bedding, droppings and food. Fresh high-quality bedding, neither dusty nor moldy, is added, and the whole area is sprayed with a chemical disinfectant.

Additionally, racecourse stables must be thoroughly stripped, steam-cleaned or pressure-hosed before being chemically disinfected at least every three months. The BHA sends “Course Inspectors” to each track about three to four times a year to inspect the track including the stable area.

BHA Integrity Team | Jim Miller

On race-days, BHA “Equine Welfare and Integrity Officers” and veterinary officers inspect the stable area a few hours before the first race, though they won't be able to check inside the boxes, which are sealed with tape. When the trainer or their representatives arrive at the racecourse the day of the race, the onus is on them to ensure the boxes are indeed fit for habitation.

“They break the seal, open the door, and we tell them, 'do not put the horse in until you are satisfied with that stable,'” said Cathy O'Meara, BHA head of raceday officials.

If the trainer or representative finds something amiss, they must first alert the BHA's Equine Welfare and Integrity Officer, who will then initiate a steward's inquiry. That inquiry would most likely include the clerk of the course, the track's stable manager, the trainer or their representative, and another BHA official.

“The trainer always would have the ability to withdraw their horse under no penalty if they felt it was compromised in any way,” said O'Meara. “And they have the ability to request testing, though under certain circumstances.”

No sanctions are issued on race-day–rather, the inquiry is a fact-finding mission to gather together as much contemporaneous evidence as possible, like pictures and testimony. This information is put into a report, which is then forwarded to the BHA's disciplinary office, which ultimately determines whether disciplinary actions are warranted.

If the horse enters the box before a problem is discovered, however, the horse's connections must tell the stewards if they still wish to race, knowing they will be responsible for any sample findings.

“It's key that this isn't just us as a regulator–it's equally the trainer's responsibility to confirm that they are happy with this stall as well. You can't come to us after you have a positive test and say, 'there was feed in my stable.'”

The BHA lists 18 reported stable hygiene incidents since the beginning of 2019. At least six of them resulted in fines of £3,500 each for problems like feed found in the stable, and of the presence of blood-stained cotton wool. One track was fined £1,500 after a cutlery knife was found in the box.

What Should Be Done?

There's a whole ocean between the way racing is conducted in Britain–where all runners ship into racetrack stables mostly for just one day of racing–and the U.S., where one track can conduct a meet often for many months at a time.

It's these differences that Moss sees as a major impediment to adopting a similar policy where each stall is pressure washed and disinfected between occupancy.

“I don't know when they can get it done because if you've got horses in one stall that's next to another empty stall, you don't want to be a bringing power washer in there,” said Moss, calling it a safety issue. “Trying to do it on a continuous basis, I don't know if it's frankly practical.”

At the post | Prairie Meadows

For one, Prairie Meadows is often full to capacity, and so, there are no overflow barns that ship-in horses could be temporarily relocated, said Moss. Another concern, he added, is the manpower hours such a task would require. “That's a lot of excessive work for them to do.”

Those interviewed for this story, however, largely suggested improvements in three main areas. A common refrain was that, where tracks have the staff and the ability to thoroughly clean and disinfect stalls between horses, they should.

The second deals with the stalls themselves. All pushed for the elimination of dirt floors, to be replaced with concrete floors or mats. According to Moquett, the walls should be smooth-surfaced and paintable, to make them non-porous.

The third component concerns security. Among the ideas floated were tightly restricted access to receiving barns, well-secured stalls after they've been cleaned, and 24-hour CCTV camera coverage.

“Put cameras in every stall so you'll know what's going on,” said Klesaris.

“Periodically, there ought to be a test done on those stalls before anybody moves in,” said Moquett. “And if any of those stalls were to test poorly, then they should be sanctioned just like the horseman would.”

According to Reinhardt, HISA will soon be circulating for industry comment a proposed draft rule “containing specific guidelines for receiving barns,” compliance failures for which could result in sanctions for the track.

Though still in their draft form, the rules currently require tracks to “thoroughly disinfect each stall after occupancy, secure the stall door with a tamper resistant security tag, ensure security personnel are present to prevent unauthorized access to Covered Horses and the receiving barn, and install high-resolution security cameras to monitor the activities in and around the receiving barn,” wrote Reinhardt.

“At the end of the day,” said Moquett about these ongoing negotiations, “I want both sides to come together in an effort to try to get it right.”