SANTA ANITA : Minor Horses Cause a Major Flap

Horses called Stick It to Me, Persian Amber and I’m Early are not likely to be familiar to the casual racing fan, but their names have been crossing desks at the California Horse Racing Board offices in Sacramento all year, in a complicated dispute that involves board members, track stewards and investigators, chemists, owners, trainers and state and private veterinarians.

The undistinguished careers of Stick It to Me and Persian Amber are over, their combined earnings amounting to $575, but the status of their owner, Skip Chernov, and his former trainer, Steven Rothblum, is unclear.

Santa Anita stewards say that Rothblum is appealing a six-month suspension for testing positive for cocaine on the day he testified at a hearing regarding I’m Early. Henry Chavez, chairman of the racing board, said Chernov will receive a hearing before an administrative law judge, after Chernov appealed a stewards’ ruling that suspended his owner’s license for not paying Rothblum’s bills.

Chernov and Rothblum had a falling out at Santa Anita last winter when Chernov accused Rothblum of directing veterinarians to nerve-block the legs of Stick It to Me and I’m Early. Racing board investigators concluded that there was no evidence to support the charges.

In the I’m Early investigation, Gerald Frey, a veterinarian who treated the 6-year-old mare, was fined $200 by the stewards and put on probation for more than three months. It is illegal to treat horses with most medications less than 48 hours before they are scheduled to run, and Frey could not produce records that showed his injection of a joint-lubricating fluid was outside that time frame. The lubrication is sometimes given to sore-legged horses but is not supposed to be injected less than two days before they race.

All of the horses involved are bottom-of-the-line claimers. Stick It to Me and Persian Amber, who suffered career-ending injuries in the same race at Santa Anita last March, were retired as 4-year-old maidens; I’m Early has won only one race.

Nevertheless, Chernov’s repeated protests have aroused Chavez’s sympathies. “I didn’t like the way he was handled,” the racing board chairman said. “He got a runaround, and that is unfortunate. Very few owners cooperate in our investigations, but he was one who did. The ruling against him came from the Del Mar stewards, and there is some question whether this case could even be within their jurisdiction, since two of the three stewards there were not involved in the original case.”

The morning after Stick It to Me broke down, Chernov said he asked the Santa Anita stewards to test the filly to see if she might have run with a local anesthetic that is used illegally to block the nerve endings in a horse’s leg. A racing board investigator said the horse was tested the day after that, and the result was negative.

“The stewards were more concerned about whether I was going to pay my bill rather than what happened to the horse,” Chernov said. “They tested the horse 45 hours after she raced, and a full day after I asked them to. Then they only tested for one drug, and there wasn’t enough sample left to do any further testing.”

Ed Stetson, supervising special investigator for the racing board, said the postrace test couldn’t have been used as evidence, anyway, because there was no surveillance of the horse between the time she ran and the time the urine sample was taken.

Chernov, 52, has been in racing since 1975, owning horses for the last three years in California. He was a rock concert promoter in Providence, R.I., in the 1960s and ‘70s and in 1971 owned the New England closed-circuit television rights to the first fight between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier.

That fight grossed more than $1 million, but six years later Chernov was broke and trying to break a drug habit. He suffered a heart attack in 1976 while watching morning workouts at the old Narragansett track in Rhode Island and twice has had open-heart surgery.

During his short time owning horses in California, Chernov has been physically and verbally active. He said he once got into a fistfight with one of his trainers. Before this year, he went before the stewards with charges that his trainer cashed a bet on a horse that was running against their horse--a violation of racing rules--and there was also a squabble about a trainer refusing to turn over a horse’s registration papers after Chernov fired him.

“Chernov has had eight trainers out here,” said Pete Pedersen, a Santa Anita steward. “An owner is entitled to change trainers as often as he wants, but having that many in just a few years is unusual.

“Maybe he’s been right about some of the things he’s brought up, but we’ve investigated everything and we’re not satisfied that any of his charges are legitimate. He can’t say that we haven’t listened to him, because he’s had many a day in court. I think he was so hopeful about the horses he had, and when they didn’t work out, he was bitterly disappointed.

“There are more downs than ups in this game. It seems to me that he’s picked many of his trainers because they worked for less. In racing, it’s the same as anything else, you get what you pay for.”

When Stick It to Me cracked her knee and Persian Amber chipped a bone in her ankle, Chernov put them on a van to Oregon, where they were scheduled to be bred.

Chernov choked over the words as he related what happened to the two fillies. “The farm manager told me they were so packed with steroids that they were infertile,” Chernov said. “I’ve found a home for them. I gave them away. I didn’t get one dime for them.”

Horse Racing Notes

Summer Squall, one of the country’s top 3-year-olds, will make his first start against older horses tonight. The Preakness winner is a 2-1 favorite in the $500,000 Meadowlands Cup at 1 1/8 miles. Also in the 11-horse field are Beau Genius, who has won six straight races, and Mi Selecto, who won the stake last year.

Seven horses, including the Charlie Whittingham-trained pair of Ruhlmann and Lively One, are entered in Saturday’s $200,000 Goodwood Handicap at 1 1/8 miles at Santa Anita’s Oak Tree meeting. Ruhlmann has been assigned top weight of 123 pounds. Others running are Festin, Triteamtri, Edipo Rey, Asia and Miserden.

Home at Last, winner of the 1 1/4-mile Super Derby, will be shortened up to six furlongs for the Breeders’ Cup Sprint at Belmont Park on Oct. 27. Home at Last beat his stablemate, Kentucky Derby winner Unbridled, in the Super Derby, and Carl Nafzger, who trains both colts, is planning to run Unbridled in the Breeders’ Cup Classic. . . . Also expected to go in the Sprint are Corwyn Bay, who won Wednesday’s Ancient Title Breeders’ Cup Handicap at Santa Anita, and Prospectors Gamble, who finished fourth.