Valenzuela’s Case Is Dismissed

Charges against jockey Pat Valenzuela, who was accused of robbing a cab driver at gunpoint near Santa Anita for $150, were dismissed Friday in Los Angeles County Superior Court, according to Valenzuela’s attorney, Donald Calabria.

“This was a bad filing,” Calabria said. “There was no evidence. Pat couldn’t be identified in court and there were a lot of other things that showed he was innocent.”

Valenzuela, who won the 1989 Kentucky Derby with Sunday Silence, won six Breeders’ Cup races and was near 3,000 wins when his troubled career stopped in the fall of 1997, spent 22 days in custody after his Feb. 26 arrest. His family posted $40,000 bail and he was released March 19.

“Pat’s had a lot of problems over the years, but this wasn’t part of that pattern,” Calabria said. “This was an out-and-out case of mistaken identity.”

Valenzuela, 36, was suspended for 60 days after testing positive for cocaine in the fall of 1989. Chris McCarron replaced him as Sunday Silence won the Breeders’ Cup Classic and clinched horse-of-the-year honors. Since then, Valenzuela has had numerous suspensions and brushes with the law.

Valenzuela’s plans are uncertain. Calabria said that he is undergoing rehabilitation for a knee injury.

“If he tries to make a comeback, I doubt that he’ll be able to do it at a track like Santa Anita,” said trainer Wayne Lukas, who won the Santa Anita Derby when Valenzuela, then 17, rode Codex in 1980. “He’d probably have to start out at someplace like Remington Park.”

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The California Horse Racing Board has suspended veteran trainer Ted West for 90 days and fined him $12,000 in a settlement that was reached after eight of West’s horses tested positive for clenbuterol, a prohibited bronchodilator.

West’s penalty is the stiffest issued so far after several California trainers came up with clenbuterol positives last year, but falls far below the standards elsewhere. In New Jersey, 45-day suspensions have been issued for only one clenbuterol positive, and in New York the standard penalty for one positive is 45 days, which is reduced to 30 days if the trainer doesn’t appeal. The Assn. of Racing Commissioners International recommends a penalty of 60 days to six months and a $1,500 fine for each positive.

“We didn’t take a dive on this,” said Dana Cartozian, a deputy attorney general who represented the California racing board in the West case. “The facts for every case are different. We won’t accept a settlement offer if it’s disproportionately weak. Perhaps this penalty is not as much as what it ought to be in an ideal world, but it’s enough for a settlement, which, after all, means a compromise. It comes to a point where you ask yourself: ‘Is the possibility of getting a four-month suspension, instead of three, worth going to litigation for?’ ”

Last month, three trainers--Vladimir Cerin, Peter Eurton and Declan Jackson--accepted fines of $1,500 each after their horses tested positive for clenbuterol in one race apiece. Clenbuterol was approved for use by the Food and Drug Administration in May 1998, but it is only legal for training purposes in the U.S. Trainers have said that the withdrawal time for the drug from a horse’s system can vary greatly. Clenbuterol is a therapeutic medication that’s extremely effective in treating horses with lung infections, bleeding problems and other conditions.

The owners of West’s horses will forfeit the purse money from the eight clenbuterol races. In May and June last year, the horses won three of the races, with three seconds and two thirds. The races were run at Hollywood Park and Golden Gate Fields.

Total purse money for the West horses was $133,360. The richest of the races was the $100,000 Super Diamond Handicap, which West’s Budroyale won at Hollywood Park. The $60,000 winner’s share will go to owners Ed and Natalie Friendly, whose Ready Eddie finished second.

The racing board said Friday that purse money won by the horses trained by Cerin, Eurton and Jackson also was being redistributed. Two of those horses won their races and the other horse finished second. The purses they earned totaled $53,160.

Four other trainers with clenbuterol positives have not settled their cases and are scheduled for hearings before an administrative law judge.