Frankel Horses Test Positive for Morphine

During the summer Del Mar meet, Bob Baffert asked fellow trainer Bobby Frankel if he’d be a witness when Baffert defended himself against a morphine positive.

Frankel agreed to testify, but about a week later he backed out.

“I don’t think I’m your guy,” Frankel told Baffert. “I’m hearing that they might be getting me for the same thing.”

The backstretch rumor about Frankel simmered for weeks, and Saturday the California Horse Racing Board took Frankel’s fears beyond the scuttlebutt stage when the Hall of Fame trainer was notified that two of his horses had tested positive for morphine after races on successive days at Hollywood Park.

The horses implicated were Mojave Moon, who earned $30,000 for finishing third, behind Big Ten and Early Pioneer, in the $250,000 Californian on June 11; and Starmaniac, who earned $24,000 the day before for winning while running for a $45,000 claiming price.

“I’m disgusted,” said Frankel, whose barn has earned $8.1 million this year while running second--behind Baffert--in the national trainer standings. “The levels [of morphine] are very low for both of these horses. It costs to defend yourself against these things, but that’s not the point. I’m having a great year, and a lot of people are going to say that this is why. They forget that you also won about 70 other races.”

Morphine is an illegal drug that has seldom been detected in California racing, but in 1996 Frankel had a horse test positive for the same thing. He argued successfully that the horse could have been contaminated from poppy-seed bagels around the barn, and the charge was dropped.

Baffert and Frankel will probably both have hearings before the Santa Anita stewards during the Oak Tree Racing Assn. meeting that opens on Oct. 4.

“There are a few things out of whack here,” said Neil Papiano, an attorney representing both Frankel and Baffert. “First, the findings are very low, and suddenly, after no morphine positives for years, you have a rash of them. I hear there may be some others besides these. It makes you think that something else is involved [to have the positives]. Then you’ve got everybody saying that at this level, there’s no way the drug is going to have any effect on the horse.”