Cocaine Found in Laz Barrera’s, Lukas’ Horses : Del Mar Winners Tested Positive for Drug, Say Racing Board Officials

The state’s crackdown on running horses with cocaine touched two of the most famous trainers in racing Friday when it was announced that horses saddled by Wayne Lukas and Laz Barrera have tested positive for the drug.

Two California Horse Racing Board officials--executive secretary Len Foote and supervisor of investigators John Schillin--said that winning horses trained by Lukas and Barrera last summer at Del Mar had signs of cocaine in their urine, according to the state’s testing laboratory.

The news of Barrera’s positive came only days after his son, Albert, was told by racing investigators that a horse he had saddled last week at Santa Anita had tested positive for cocaine.

Last October, a horse trained by Roger Stein tested positive after a race at Santa Anita. Stein was fined $2,000 and suspended for six months by the track stewards, but he has obtained a court injunction and is appealing to the racing board.

Schillin said Friday that another trainer, Bryan Webb, had a horse test positive for a race run in September at the California State Fair in Sacramento.

Laz Barrera, 64, has won the Kentucky Derby twice and is in racing Halls of Fame in three countries--his native Cuba, Mexico and the United States. Lukas, 53, won the Kentucky Derby last year, won a record three Breeders’ Cup races in the same day last November and has led the nation in purses for the past six years. His horses have earned close to $70 million during that period.

When reached Friday night, Barrera and Lukas denied any wrongdoing and questioned the validity of the testing.

“The stewards (at Santa Anita) called me in today (Friday),” Barrera said. “I thought it was about Albert, and when they told me it was me, I thought they were joking.”

According to the lab, cocaine was found in the urine of Endow, Barrera’s 2-year-old colt who won in his first start on Aug. 31. Endow is owned by Patrice and Louis Wolfson, who raced Affirmed when Barrera swept the Triple Crown with him in 1978.

At Del Mar two days earlier, Lukas won an allowance race with Crown Collection, a well-bred colt whose urine also showed cocaine. Crown Collection, a son of Alydar who cost $575,000 as a yearling, is owned by Gene Klein and is one of Lukas’ prospects for this year’s Kentucky Derby. The colt is training in Florida and is scheduled to run in the Fountain of Youth Stakes at Gulfstream Park a week from today.

“This is bizarre,” Lukas said. “I don’t even know what the stuff (cocaine) looks like. When they announced that they were going to go back and re-test some frozen samples, I told somebody that they could have a hundred of mine, because I know my horses are clean.”

Cocaine hadn’t been found in a horse in California in several years until Stein’s horse tested positive. Foote said that since then, the state’s testing lab has found a more sophisticated screening process to detect cocaine and has been testing hundreds of urine samples a day.

“We test about 35,000 horses a year in the state, counting all breeds,” Foote said. “We have an inventory of about 16,000 frozen samples from the last three years, and we hope to re-test 10,000 of them.”

Foote said that Laz Barrera and Lukas would be interviewed by the stewards at Santa Anita before rulings could be issued against them. Albert Barrera has already seen the stewards, and Laz Barrera said he has an appointment with them this morning.

The stewards said that all of Albert Barrera’s horses are banned from racing until his investigation is complete. He trains only three horses, but Laz Barrera and Lukas have large stables, and if the ban is extended to their barns, it would have a significant effect on the current stakes program at Santa Anita.

Foote had indicated earlier in the week that the next ruling against a trainer using cocaine on a horse might be more severe.

“It’s up to the stewards’ discretion,” Foote said. “But the racing board’s medication committee has much concern about this, and they expect the stewards to share that concern.”

On Thursday, in discussing his son’s horse’s positive test for cocaine, Barrera had said: “Anybody would have to be very stupid to use cocaine, because you know that if you use it, they’re going to pick it up.”

On Friday, Barrera said: “This is an insult, both to my intelligence and my career in racing. I have trained all over the world for 48 years, and I’ve never even had so much as a fine. Something is wrong somewhere.”

Barrera said investigators also want to interview his barn crew.

“This is five months ago,” Barrera said. “I can’t even remember who the groom was for this horse.”

Barrera said that although he missed a large part of the Del Mar meeting because of medical problems, he attended the races the day Endow won. The colt, who had been training well, went off as the second choice in the betting after being listed as the favorite in the Daily Racing Form’s consensus picks, and it paid $6.80 to win.

“I have never been a strong medication man,” Barrera said. “I probably run more than half of my horses without Lasix.”

Lasix is a legal anti-bleeding medication that is given to most of the horses that run in California.

Crown Collection, who had won his previous race in his first career start, was favored on Aug. 29 and paid $5.80.

Lukas said he hasn’t been suspended since his quarter-horse days, which ended when he switched to thoroughbreds in 1978.

“I got 45 days once when I had quarter horses,” Lukas said. “I can’t even remember what the drug was. It was a veterinary thing, but they nailed me under the trainer-responsibility rule.

“Could this be sabotage? I wouldn’t think so, but all this is so ridiculous that I shouldn’t even be wasting my time speculating about it.”

There is a difference of opinion about the effect of cocaine on horses, mainly because little research has been done. A state veterinarian, Don Dooley, said recently that he didn’t think cocaine would help a horse win a race, but Rick Arthur, a veterinarian who treats horses at Santa Anita, had a difference opinion.

“A long time ago, they’d mix cocaine with heroin, and that would give horses the old speedball,” Arthur said. “Now perhaps they’re mixing cocaine with something else just as powerful in order to get the desired effect.”