HOLLYWOOD PARK : Racing Board Softens Drug Ruling; Angry Trainers Plan Own Probe

About 100 angry trainers gathered on the backstretch Friday morning at Hollywood Park to discuss the latest round of state accusations resulting from 12 horses testing positive for cocaine.

They met for almost an hour in the front of the racing secretary’s office, where there are no chairs. The setting coincided with the trainers’ attitude toward the California Horse Racing Board: They’re not going to take these charges sitting down.

“The American Civil Liberties people would have a ball with this,” said trainer Gary Jones, referring to an order on Thursday by Dennis Hutcheson, executive secretary of the racing board. Hutcheson told stewards at Hollywood Park that the five thoroughbred trainers under investigation at the Inglewood track would not be allowed to run horses when Santa Anita opens next Wednesday.

“We’ve been condemned before we’ve been tried,” said John Russell, who ran a horse last April at Santa Anita that tested positive for a cocaine metabolite.

Other thoroughbred trainers linked to positive postrace tests are Blake Heap, Greg Martin, Tommy Richardson, Bill Stepp and Deanna Cook, who is based in Northern California.

Also under investigation are three harness trainers and three from the quarter horse ranks, among them Blane Schvaneveldt, one of the most successful trainers in the history of the sport.

Looking at a possible entry boycott from many trainers, which would have crippled racing locally, and perhaps because of criticism from racing board members, Hutcheson softened his decision on Friday. Now the implicated trainers will be able to enter horses pending individual hearings, either before stewards or an administrative-law judge.

“We’ve modified the guidelines,” Hutcheson said from his office in Sacramento. “We don’t want to do anything that would disrupt the administrative proceedings.”

Rosemary Ferraro, a board member and chairman of the medication committee, remained critical of the action Hutcheson took Thursday.

“I didn’t know what was going to happen,” Ferraro said. “The thing was handled very badly. The horsemen were entitled to due notice, ample notice, of what was being done to them.”

When five board members recommended Hutcheson for the $74,500-a-year job last summer, Ferraro and another board member, Phoebe Cook, voted against him. Hutcheson, who had been promoted after working as assistant secretary for two years, beat out more than 40 other candidates for the job.

One of Ferraro’s objections to Hutcheson was that he had worked under Len Foote, the departing secretary who was severely criticized for his handling of the 1988-89 horse-drugging scandal that involved cocaine. In that one, charges were eventually dropped against Wayne Lukas, Laz Barrera and three other trainers because the state ultimately decided that its evidence was flimsy.

Hutcheson’s new ruling on Friday did not mollify Russell or the other trainers under investigation.

“We still have a cloud over our heads until this is all over with,” Russell said. “The damage done is extraordinary. My kids didn’t want to go to school (Friday), because they were afraid that the other kids would say that their father is a crook. We’ve been tried in public with no hearing.”

When state investigators raided Russell’s barn at Del Mar on Sept. 1 and found no evidence of illegal drugs, he wrote the racing board a few days later, asking for a hearing. Russell said that he had received no response until 10 minutes before entries were to be taken Thursday, when he was told by the stewards that he couldn’t enter horses.

“I did not give my horses cocaine, and I’ll take a polygraph (lie-detector) test if they want me to,” Russell said.

The trainers met Friday have decided to conduct their own investigation into the charges.

“We’re going to hire our own investigators to get to the bottom of this,” Russell said. “The racing board’s investigators are not doing the job. We’re going to clean our own house, if indeed it even needs cleaning.”

Craig Lewis was one of the trainers who suggested that a boycott at the entry box might get the racing board’s attention.

“We should pull up our belts and not enter our horses,” Lewis said. “I’m willing to do it. The way it’s gone, (the state) have kicked our butts, and we’ve let them do it.”

Horse Racing Notes

The Hollywood Park stewards met with jockey Pat Valenzuela and his attorney for 90 minutes Friday and said that they would issue a ruling today. Valenzuela, who has had drug problems, has been on an indefinite suspension for almost two months because the stewards say he refused to take a drug test after he took off his mounts on Nov. 3. . . . The stewards have given Kent Desormeaux a five-day suspension that starts Sunday. Desormeaux rode King Of Bazaar to victory Wednesday but was disqualified for causing interference in the stretch.

The stewards also have issued a ruling that says, in effect, that Jeff Siegel and Aaron Hesz must either relinquish their owners’ licenses or discontinue their professional handicapping by Jan. 1. Conflict of interest is at issue. Siegel, who may appeal the ruling, said that no matter what happens, his involvement with the Clover Racing Stable will not be affected.

The sweater vests that Hollywood Park is offering fans in the pavilion Sunday are left over from the Breeders’ Cup fiasco in 1987. Hollywood Park ran 5,000 vests short, then over-ordered while accommodating people who were given rain checks. The difference in admission between the grandstand and the pavilion is $4.

A spokesman for Hollywood Park Realty said that its annual meeting will be held Jan. 28, as originally scheduled, even though the Hollywood Park Operating Co.’s annual shareholders meeting has been moved to Feb. 18. Meeting in February would appear to break a Delaware state law, which says that a company incorporated there must hold its annual meeting within 13 months after the end of the calendar year, which in this case is 1989. “Delaware law does say 13 months,” said Bob Forgnone, a Hollywood Park attorney. “But what can anybody do about it?”

The Hollywood Park season ends Monday. . . . Santa Anita’s 88-day season opens Wednesday.. . . Jockey Craig Perret, who has tied Jorge Velasquez’s 1985 record of 57 stakes wins, tries for two more victories at Aqueduct today and Sunday.