Proof Positive Something Was Amiss in Valenzuela Incident

The Pat Valenzuela hearing on Feb. 9, the meeting conducted by the Santa Anita stewards that led to another lengthy suspension for the troubled jockey, lasted only half an hour.

There was little to discuss, and the first 29 minutes produced no surprises. Bob Peters, a state racing investigator, testified that Valenzuela had tested positive for amphetamines. Valenzuela admitted that he had used drugs. A few people, including trainer Bob Baffert, asked the stewards for leniency.

Then, in the 30th minute, Pete Pedersen, one of the stewards, asked Peters, the investigator, if Valenzuela had been tested before the positive test Feb. 5, during the more than four months he had been riding since returning from a two-year absence.

Many in the room were unprepared for the answer. “The state hasn’t tested him,” Peters said. To a Pedersen follow-up, Peters said: “Because his performance didn’t call for it.”

No matter how laudable Valenzuela’s impeccable attendance record and riding record were, it is inconceivable that he could have gone four months without a drug test. Valenzuela has sporadically tested positive for cocaine since his first drug violation in 1989. He admitted doing drugs in 1998, one of the years he was away from racing. Years ago, when asked for a urine sample in Florida, he turned in a bottle that contained a substance that wasn’t from a human.

Yet the state didn’t test him when he came back this time, and not until he missed a day of riding Feb. 4 did the red flag force investigators to ask for a urine sample when he reported to the track the next day. If Valenzuela, who admitted using amphetamines the night before, had shown up to ride Feb. 4, he could still be waiting for his first drug test.

A wide range of people connected with racing deserved better. For openers, how about the racing public? It’s the betting money that churns the game, and it should be guaranteed that the jockeys who ride their investments are drug-free and in good shape.

The owners and trainers who hired Valenzuela to ride deserved better. They should be protected from using a jockey who, because of a long and checkered history, might be unfit to ride.

The other jockeys deserved better. Since 1940, 141 jockeys have been killed in spills, and currently 50 former riders are permanently disabled because of accidents on the track. Even under optimum conditions, race-riding is like taking a barrel trip over Niagara Falls.

The stewards deserved better. Their watchdog responsibilities include integrity and jockey safety, and drug testing is one of the tools the state uses to support them.

Lastly, even Pat Valenzuela deserved better. Drug testing may or may not be a deterrent, depending on individual cases, but after four months Valenzuela was probably wondering if he would ever be tested again. State investigators did Valenzuela a disservice by allowing him to go that long without a drug test. Donald Calabria, Valenzuela’s attorney, thought his client was harshly penalized--a stewards’ ruling that will probably keep him out of racing for at least a year--because, Calabria said, Valenzuela had been clean for a year before his Feb. 3 relapse. But we really don’t know, do we? With no testing of Valenzuela for four months, there’s no proof one way or the other.

The California Horse Racing Board had the authority to test Valenzuela as often as it wanted. Usually, random testing of jockeys is done only after “cause” is given, but in Valenzuela’s case that proviso didn’t apply. When Valenzuela signed the terms for his one-year conditional license last September, he agreed to unlimited random drug testing.

Yet 31 racing days went by at Santa Anita last fall without Valenzuela being asked to take a test. Then 31 more racing days went by at Hollywood Park, and there was still no testing of Valenzuela. Finally, Valenzuela rode 29 days at Santa Anita this winter without a test. Only when Valenzuela, not long before post time for the first race Feb. 4, became a no-show, did his drug testing become an imperative.

During those 91 days of racing, Valenzuela rode 54 winners, a commendable record in that he didn’t muster widespread support from trainers until the Hollywood Park meet was well under way.

“I worked my butt off to get where I was,” Valenzuela said at the hearing. “I did more than what was asked of me.”

One of the reasons for the conditional license was to make sure Valenzuela would stay clean while he still rode. It was a probation as much as anything else. Anyone aligned with racing integrity and riding safety should be outraged at the non-testing over all those months. It was a breach that shouldn’t happen again.

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Real Quiet, winner of the 1998 Kentucky Derby and Preakness before Victory Gallop beat him by a nose in the Belmont Stakes, has been retired and will go to stud at The Vinery near Lexington, Ky. . . . Michigan racing authorities have approved the sale of Great Lakes Downs to the Frank Stronach-led MI Racing group, which besides Santa Anita also owns Gulfstream Park, Thistledown, Remington Park and Golden Gate Fields.