TJC Reiterates Need for Uniformity

By Michele MacDonald 
The current system of drug testing and penalty enforcement in American horse racing lags woefully behind some international jurisdictions and is so fragmented and underfunded that it fails the sport, officers of The Jockey Club said in a meeting with members of the media Tuesday. 

“We are a long way from the uniformity and good regulation that the sport needs and deserves,” declared James Gagliano, Jockey Club president and chief operating officer, while in Lexington. “I think the facts are clear … and the status quo is unacceptable.” 

Gagliano presided over a video conference meeting that involved officials in Lexington and New York City, where representatives of McKinsey & Co. delivered information gathered in an extensive study of current practices in the United States. This data was shared with media members in order to shine a light on current affairs regarding drug testing, which Gagliano said were worse than expected in terms of the lack of uniformity and tremendous variability among the states conducting racing. 

Despite years of work involving various organizations, including the Racing Medication and Testing Consortium, Gagliano observed that “We're only at the surface of seeing uniformity.” 

The Jockey Club thus will seek support for a new paradigm and could attempt to enact change via amendments to the Interstate Horseracing Act, which regulates wagering on simulcasts between state jurisdictions. 

“We will absolutely engage with federal authorities and work to build the broadest coalition we can,” Gagliano said. 
The McKinsey report presented during the meeting focused on the importance of increasing out-of-competition (OOC) drug testing and included seven key recommendations to raise industry standards for overall medication testing and enforcement: 
– Development of a centralized tracking system for horses that could be updated as they are moved to different locations and assist in easing OOC drug testing; 
-Implementation of reciprocity agreements to enable OOC testing across state lines; 
-Establishment of uniform performance levels for drug and medication testing to ensure that labs use best practice testing methods; 
-Adoption of a uniform RFP (request for proposal) to ensure state commissions gain maximum value from laboratory testing contracts; 
-Achievement of true double blind proficiency testing to improve lab accreditation and auditing processes; 
-Adoption of uniform medication threshold levels and penalties for violations in the state jurisdictions, and 
-Investment in research to develop effective testing methods for substances such as peptide compounds and proteomics.

Dan Singer, McKinsey senior partner, presented most of the report, noting prior to going through the details that there is far less OOC testing than in other sports as well as in racing in other parts of the world, and that there is also a high degree of variance in practices and spending regarding drug testing. 

Overall, despite rising concern about integrity of racing and about sports in general, the investment in drug testing has remained virtually the same in racing since 1991. The approximately $60 spent in testing per start actually is about 3% less than in 1991 despite a 50% decline in starts, Singer said. 

The racing industry spends about $44 million on drug testing, with $23 million associated with Thoroughbred racing. 
However, there is such wide variance in the testing conducted from jurisdiction to jurisdiction that there is not a consistent standard for the sport. 

Singer showed one chart that indicated the amount spent in testing paired samples of blood and urine could vary from $55 to $230 at 11 U.S. testing labs (none identified specifically), and thus could be dramatically different in scope and, consequentially, in results. In comparison, the amount spent by two unnamed international entities ranged from $330 to $340. 

Out-of-competition testing–which overall in American horse racing represents only about 1% of all tests conducted–can be critical as such tests can detect drugs being used that can affect performance, but can be out of the system by the time of post-race testing, Singer said. 

U.S. racing should aim to have 10% of drug testing be done on horses when they are not racing, he added, which would bring the American sport more in line with international jurisdictions such as Hong Kong, in which the rate is 11%; France, 10%, and Racing Victoria in Australia, 21%. 

Other sports involving human athletes have a much higher rate of OOC drug testing than racing, with swimming at 59% of all tests; cycling, 63%, and baseball, 25%, Singer noted. 

Increased OOC testing also can act as a deterrent as trainers know their horses could be checked at any time. Testing should involve more substances, however; currently, most states' OOC testing involves only blood-doping agents, he said. 

The report listed eight requirements for a “robust” OOC testing program, including updated regulations listing OOC prohibited drugs and allowing for a wide variety of testing; the centralized tracking system for horses; updated regulations that would compel an owner or trainer to bring a horse to a track or training center for OOC testing; reciprocity agreements that would ease the sampling of horses in varying states; an increased number of test collectors equaling about 2,000 person-days; expansion of testing to urine and hair in addition to blood, and additional research funding to develop effective testing methods to identify gene-doping agents or protein-based substances in blood. 
Singer also focused on the varying requirements of state commissions for their drug testing labs and how lab accreditation and auditing could be improved. 

“The quality of results depends greatly on procedures,” he noted, adding that internationally accepted best practice standards, involving proficiency test samples that are not identified to the labs by packaging, currently are not being followed. 

He also cited the fact that most racing states still have not adopted suggested national uniform standards for medication regulations and, even among those that have, threshold levels can vary significantly under current regulations, thus affecting the number of positive tests in the jurisdictions. 

Medication rulings following positive tests vary tremendously across America, from only one to 74 per 10,000 starts in 19 states surveyed for the report in the year 2013, indicating differing procedures as well as the possibility that there could be more offenders in some locales than others. 

“It is just an astonishing amount of variance,” Singer said, indicating that it would be unlikely to have so much diversity if U.S. racing was conducted under uniform standards. 

Penalties also varied greatly from state to state, with, for example, fines for clenbuterol positives ranging from $500 to over $4,000. 

As Gagliano noted, medication testing and enforcement in the U.S. is “a real mixed bag.” 

Officials did not criticize testing labs, but rather pointed out that some states contracted with labs based mostly on low-cost bids and thus were certainly going to get more budget-friendly–but perhaps not as thorough–drug testing as a result. 

“The overarching point is that the testing process is dramatically underfunded,” Gagliano said. 
In looking to the future, Jockey Club officials have met with representatives of the U. S. Anti-Doping Ageny (USADA) on multiple occasions and “they are willing to assist the racing industry in applying their expertise to our regulation,” Gagliano said. 

Working toward a better system to regulate racing and thus ensure the sport's integrity will “define our activities in the next year,” he added, noting that The Jockey Club “will need partners in this.” 
However, he conceded that some groups, including those representing horsemen that have battled against any changes in the use of Lasix, could be slow to see the need for reform. 

Click here to view the report commissioned by The Jockey Club and presented by officials from McKinsey & Co.