Are the Right Subjects Being Tested? : Horse racing: Owner and breeder Jim Ryan says that more attention needs to be paid to drug and alcohol abuse at the track.

When Jim Ryan gets up to speak, it’s usually as much a performance as a speech.

At a meeting of turf reporters a few days before this year’s Kentucky Derby, the highly charged Ryan began talking about racing’s ills with tears in his eyes. The venue was an outdoor picnic at Churchill Downs, and the crowd was inattentive and restless. Ryan put two fingers to his mouth and whistled the audience to attention.

Ryan, a breeder and owner of horses whose Ryehill Farm is located in Mt. Airy, Md., reflected on that appearance the other day.

“They gave me an award (the Joe Palmer Award for meritorious service to racing), and if I had to do it over, I would just take the award, say thank you and get off,” Ryan said. “I thought it would be a good time to make an appeal, but I was wrong. The Derby is a time for levity, and I picked the wrong time for something as serious as what I was talking about.”

Ryan, 57, has long been interested in improving the welfare of those in racing, and as he prepares to sell the last of his horses and leave the game, the former home builder is making a farewell gesture: Whatever his 19 horses bring during an auction at Keeneland in Lexington, Ky., on Nov. 12, he will contribute half of that amount toward drug- and alcohol-rehabilitation programs and backstretch-related organizations, providing that the industry matches those funds.

Two of the horses in the Ryan consignment, Cefis and Ring Dancer, are stakes winners and offspring of Caveat, the colt who won the Belmont Stakes for Ryan and his partners in 1983. Ryan estimates that the consignment will net more than $2 million. Assuming that projection is realized, and if Ryan’s challenge is met by race tracks and other organizations, it will be the second time the Maryland horseman has contributed a seven-figure amount to the sport.

In January 1989, Ryan offered $1 million for rehabilitation programs if 50 tracks--about half of the national total--would contribute $20,000 apiece.

There was no stampede. After a month, 15 tracks had joined the effort, but by the end of April the total was stalled at 18 tracks. A professional counselor was hired to visit tracks and pitch the program, and finally, by the end of November, the matching $1 million had been raised.

Ryan has given racing a deadline of May 4, Kentucky Derby day, to match half the money that his horses bring at Keeneland.

Despite his altruism, Ryan is not unanimously hailed in racing circles. Sounding like an evangelist--he studied pastoral counseling in college--he spoke at a conference of industry leaders late last year and told them that available statistics from tracks indicated that substance abuse in racing is three times as frequent as it is among the overall population. Some racing officials grumbled that Ryan made it sound as though everybody in racing had an addiction.

Last year, Ryan quit the Jockey Club, the New York group that is heavy on bluebloods and one of the most prestigious organizations in racing. Ryan said the Jockey Club’s foundation for helping backstretch employees has about $7 million, and during a heated meeting at Saratoga Springs, N.Y., he was denied a request to use some of the money.

“I was told that they were saving the money for a rainy day,” Ryan said. “I told them that it was pouring out there. After they told me that I should get off the committee if I didn’t want to participate, I voted with my feet and resigned.”

Mike Steele, president of the Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Assn., which represents owners and trainers nationally, said 25% of uncashed betting tickets could be used to finance drug and alcohol programs.

Millions of dollars in tickets go uncashed annually, with the money, depending on local laws, going to states, the tracks and the horsemen. Steele’s suggestion would result in about $5 million a year for programs that he and Ryan support.

“Of the tracks that keep track of substance abuse, 35% to 40% of the licensed workers are in trouble,” Ryan said. “The (overall) national average is about 10%.”

The problems of some well known jockeys--Pat Day, Julie Krone, Chris Antley and Pat Valenzuela--have been documented through the years, but besides jockeys, Ryan said industry studies show that exercise riders, who ride horses during morning workouts, and assistant starters, who have the dangerous job of loading horses into the gate before a race, also have high rates of substance abuse.

“There’s a pattern to all of those jobs,” Ryan said. “They are all jobs where there is an ongoing sense of fear. Of the name jockeys, Pat Day, whose problems have been behind him for a long time, has been very vocal about how you can lick drugs. Chris Antley and Pat Valenzuela have been less vocal, because they are still dealing with putting the pieces (of their lives and careers) back together.”

A recent study by the Assn. of Racing Commissioners International showed that $27.5 million was spent on animal drug testing--horses and greyhounds--last year.

“We should be testing the humans more than we test the horses,” said Ryan, who recalled an incident that occurred as he left a winner’s circle at a Maryland track last year.

A woman approached him and said: “My husband is riding stoned. He’s going to get killed. Can you help us?”

The Jockeys’ Guild, which represents most of the approximately 2,000 jockeys in the United States, is aware of the problem but won’t support random testing of its riders.

“This is a dangerous sport, and we certainly don’t want to see anybody get away with riding and using drugs,” said John Giovanni, a former jockey and managing director of the guild. (But) riders have rights, too. There is always the chance of a mistake with the testing, and we don’t want to see a rider branded as a junkie because of a mistake. Random testing is supposed to be a deterrent, but it didn’t work that way for Antley.”

Antley, 24, one of New York’s top jockeys, has said his cocaine problems began in 1985, when he was riding in New Jersey, a state that tests riders randomly.

Ryan has been in racing for almost 20 years, and besides his association with Caveat, he has won Eclipse Awards with Smart Angle and Heavenly Cause. He said he has made money in racing but wants to spend more time with his family and friends. He would like to be remembered as someone who left racing with at least a seed program for drug and alcohol abusers.

“One of the reasons there’s more of a problem in racing than elsewhere is because more than 50% of the horse business involves money that’s paid in cash,” Ryan said. “Cash is the foundation for a (drug-pushing) business that’s also built on sin.”