Court Rules Rise N High Can Race : Horse Will Start at Los Alamitos Despite Being Banned

Rise N High, a 4-year-old quarter horse gelding, will be running Saturday night in the $200,000 Champion of Champions race at Los Alamitos, even though his trainer has been suspended and the California Horse Racing Board had banned the horse for two months because of a drugging incident at the Orange County track.

Rise N High, who has earned more than $500,000 in a 26-race career, finished first in the Inaugural Handicap at Los Alamitos Nov. 5. A routine postrace test for illegal medications was negative, but a second test of the sample showed that the horse had the drug sanorex in his system. Sanorex is a stimulant that is on the state’s list of prohibited medications.

Stewards at Los Alamitos disqualified Rise N High and took the purse money of $18,575 away from his owners, Charles B. Albre and George S. Boskovich Jr. of Newhall.

Later, the stewards suspended Larry Kleve, Rise N High’s trainer and once one of Los Alamitos’ leading conditioners. Last Saturday, they ruled that the horse wouldn’t be able to compete for 60 days. Kleve also was fined $5,000.

Albre and Boskovich obtained a stay of the banning of the horse in Santa Ana Superior Court, however, and Rise N High will be saddled Saturday night by his new trainer, Bruce Bell.

The Champion of Champions frequently determines the quarter horse world champion (Horse of the Year), and Dashs Dream, a 4-year-old mare who had a 12-race winning streak snapped in her last start, could clinch the 1985 title with a win.

Before Dashs Dream was upset, finishing fourth in the Griffin Directors Handicap at Los Alamitos Nov. 30, the only slip on her ’85 record was a dead heat for first with Rise N High in the Horsemen’s Quarter Horse Racing Assn. Championship at Los Alamitos last January.

After four straight nonwinning starts this summer, Rise N High has finished first in his last four races.

Merlin Volzke, a steward at Los Alamitos, said that a second laboratory test was run on Rise N High after this year’s Inaugural Handicap because another of Kleve’s horses had tested positive for sanorex.

“Rise N High’s first test didn’t include a test for sanorex,” Volzke said.

“It’s a substance that’s been around but has never turned up here. When one of the trainer’s horses showed up with it, we re-tested some others, including Rise N High. In all, Kleve had six horses that were positive.”

An inspection of Kleve’s barn found the trainer to be in possession of “contraband,” and in a subsequent ruling the stewards have asked the racing board to revoke his license.

Asked what investigators found at Kleve’s barn, Volzke said: “All I can say is that it was paraphernalia. I can’t say any more because we’re expecting an appeal of the ruling.”

Joseph Kleve, a groom and nephew of Larry Kleve, also was found to be in possession of “contraband” and was suspended for the rest of the season, which will end Jan. 14. Volzke identified the substance found with Joseph Kleve as marijuana.

Marlon Stapleton Jr., a Tustin attorney representing Albre and Boskovich, said that Rise N High’s owners dismissed Larry Kleve soon after the horse’s second test proved positive.

Kleve was the leading trainer at Los Alamitos during two meetings in 1969-70, has won more than 250 races at the track and ranks in the top 10 in the career stakes standings with 22 wins. Some of Kleve’s stakes winners have been Royal Moon 2, Miss Three Wars, Kaweah Bar and Ladergo.

Albre, Boskovich and Kleve could not be reached for comment.

Stapleton said that Albre and Boskovich took the banning of Rise N High to court because of the time lapse between the horse’s two drug tests.

“The horse’s first test was clean, then 25 days later, he was positive,” Stapleton said. “We question what might have happened to the sample between the first and second tests. In racing, there might be a motive for somebody to tamper with a sample. The timing of the ruling banning the horse didn’t give us enough time before the Champion of Champions race to have the horse independently tested.”

Stapleton questions how long the state has to test horses after a race. “There has to be a cutoff time somewhere, and what is it?” Stapleton asked. “It probably ought to be 72 hours, because that’s the amount of time an owner or a trainer has to protest a race.”

Recently, the California Horse Racing Board ordered a re-test of a urine sample from Lashkari a year after he won the $2-million Breeders’ Cup Turf Stakes at Hollywood Park.

The test was taken because Lashkari had tested positive for an illegal drug in this year’s Breeders’ Cup at Aqueduct, costing the Aga Khan, his owner, fourth-place money of $140,000. The second test for the Hollywood Park race, which was taken from a frozen sample, proved negative.

Asked why Rise N High had been banned by the stewards from racing, Volzke said: “The new drug was the reason. Because there’s been little research on this drug, we don’t know what the residual effects would be on the horse and we didn’t want to take any chances.”