It’s Taking Time, Money to Clear Free House’s Name

While Free House lolls at the Vessels Stallion Farm in Bonsall, Calif., awaiting the February start of his first season as a breeding stallion, his owners’ lawyer fences in a downtown Los Angeles hearing room, in a prolonged dispute about whether the good-looking gray won a race on the up-and-up at Hollywood Park 18 months ago.

The book on Free House’s racing career won’t be closed until the California Horse Racing Board’s case is settled against John Toffan and Trudy McCaffery, the horse’s breeders and owners, and their trainer, Paco Gonzalez. One of Free House’s eight stakes wins, the 1998 Bel Air Handicap, was marred because of a positive postrace test for clenbuterol, a controversial breathing aid that is not allowed in California racing.

“These people hadn’t had [a positive] before, and they haven’t had a positive since,” said Neil Papiano, a lawyer with a list of celebrity clients who also frequently accepts racetrack cases.

There was a rash of clenbuterol positives in the summer of 1998, and some horsemen accepted modest fines from the racing board and went back to work. Toffan and McCaffery would prefer that history put their stewardship on the same page as the proverbial driven snow.

Two other trainers with clenbuterol positives, Darrell Vienna and Bruce Headley, are also fighting the charges, and their hearings will start at the end of the month.

“This horse was 4-5 and won by seven lengths,” said Papiano, reciting the bottom line to the $106,100 race, which because of Free House drew only four other starters. “What are we talking about here? Then they found so little of the stuff in him that it was like a single blade of grass on an entire football field.”

But as Ralph Dash, the administrative law judge who is officiating at the hearing, said for the record, there is a zero-tolerance policy on banned drugs in California racing. A nanogram of some funny stuff can make a horseman as guilty as a bucketful.

The hearing recessed Friday and will run through most of next week. Then Dash delivers a non-binding opinion to the racing board.

Papiano is trying to show that the racing board erred in sending one of Free House’s two tests to a Denver laboratory that, he says, wasn’t on the state’s approved list for clenbuterol testing.

Dana Cartozian, who represents the racing board, says the Denver lab is approved for clenbuterol testing now and might have been back then. Apparently racing board folk don’t walk around with updated lists of approved testing facilities in their pockets.

What’s a hearing officer to do? Early Friday, Dash threw up his hands, so to speak.

“I don’t have enough information,” he told Cartozian and Papiano. “I need to try this case from beginning to end.”

Then he instructed the two of them to show up next week with some witnesses that might unlock the conundrum.

No matter the outcome, it’s unfortunate Free House, a horse that came from the wrong side of the pedigree tracks, is going out with a messy footnote on his racing record. He was a tryer every step of every race on every track, and in each of his four racing years he won important races, piling up victories in the Santa Anita Derby, the Pacific Classic and the Santa Anita Handicap. He earned more than $3 million while campaigning with two albatrosses: his ineligibility to run in the Breeders’ Cup, and Silver Charm.

Free House was able to beat Silver Charm in California--in the Santa Anita Derby and the Big ‘Cap--but out of town it was the other gray that prevailed. Silver Charm won the Kentucky Derby while Free House ran third.

Two weeks later, in one of the most scintillating Preaknesses, the crowd at Pimlico watched Silver Charm, Free House and Captain Bodgit finish 1-2-3, separated by only a couple of heads. Free House couldn’t outrun Silver Charm in the Belmont, either, with neither horse a match for the late-running Touch Gold.

A son of Smokester, a sire Toffan and McCaffery couldn’t market for anything, Free House wasn’t nominated for the Breeders’ Cup before his first birthday. Then the supplementary fees were prohibitive, depriving him of the chance to run in the high-profile year-end races.

Even without Breeders’ Cup opportunities, Free House won a couple of regular-season million-dollar races, and he goes to stud for a $15,000 breeding fee, a princely sum for a stallion standing in California. Toffan says Free House’s book is full, with an emphasis on quality mares to breed to.

Meanwhile, the battle goes on downtown over a purse worth $63,600. When they say it’s not about the money, it usually is about the money, but this time the money really doesn’t count. With the meter running furiously, the owners of Free House probably have spent more on this fight than the value of the Bel Air purse.

The paperwork alone is daunting.

“The file is 2 1/2 miles thick,” said Dash, talking like a racetracker.

Shoot, the farthest Free House ever ran was a mile and a half.

Horse Racing Notes

Cat Thief, third in the Malibu in his first start since winning the Breeders’ Cup Classic, is the 9-5 morning-line favorite in today’s San Fernando Breeders’ Cup Stakes. Also in the field are Straight Man, who was second behind Love That Red in the Malibu, and General Challenge, the 5-2 second choice. General Challenge won the Native Diver Handicap at Hollywood Park after running 10th in the Breeders’ Cup. . . . Budroyale, second in the Breeders’ Cup at 26-1, will carry high weight of 122 pounds, two more than Puerto Madero, in Sunday’s $200,000 San Pasqual Handicap. The field, according to the post-position draw: Six Below, Smile Again, Moore’s Flat, Dixie Dot Com, Budroyale and Puerto Madero.

Gary Stevens, who retired from riding on Dec. 26 because of arthritic knees, will do some TV work for ESPN, starting with the Hutcheson Stakes telecast from Florida’s Gulfstream Park on Jan. 29. Stevens, who has gained 10 pounds since retiring, said that he’s still under contract to the Thoroughbred Corp., the outfit he rode for, and that he would decide on his long-range plans by the end of the month.

Greenwood Lake, one of the finalists, along with Anees and Captain Steve, for best 2-year-old male, will make his 3-year-old debut today in the $100,000 Holy Bull Stakes at Gulfstream. Captain Steve is scheduled to run in the Santa Catalina Stakes at Santa Anita on Jan. 30, with Jerry Bailey replacing Robby Albarado as the rider. . . . Soaring Softly, expected to be named best female on turf at the horse-of-the-year dinner Monday night at the Beverly Hilton, has been retired and will be bred to Storm Cat.