Losing by a Nose

Spiderette, a chestnut filly, looked like the horse to beat in a $37,440 race at Santa Anita on Oct. 10. She had won a stakes race at Fairplex in her previous outing and was meeting lesser competition this time.

As the morning-line favorite, she figured to attract strong mutuel support from the betting public. However, the opportunity for profit, albeit illegal, might have loomed over that Oct. 10 race. If there were a guaranteed way to rein in Spiderette, for example, a gambler could confidently pick three other horses to deliver a larger payoff in a trifecta bet. Discrete wagers placed far and wide could easily return thousands of dollars.

That is one scenario behind a series of incidents that rattled Southern California horse racing last month, when someone forced fist-sized sponges up the nostrils of Spiderette, who was scratched from the race, and three other thoroughbreds.

It’s not yet known how the incidents of so-called sponging--a cruel and illegal practice that restricts a horse’s breathing, because horses breathe only through the nose, thereby impairing racing ability--might have affected race outcomes, and investigators are examining betting patterns and other clues.

But the incidents have revived long-standing concerns about lax racetrack security along Southern California’s backstretches.

“We’re looking for similarities,” said Mike Marten, a spokesman for the California Horse Racing Board, which is investigating the incidents.

“Common employees, common veterinarians, common horseshoers, that sort of thing. That’s the status of the investigation.”

Trainer Bob Baffert, whose Point Given won two legs of this year’s Triple Crown, is among those taking steps to increase security.

He said he was shocked to learn of the incidents.

“If somebody can get into your barn and put a sponge in your horse’s nose, what else could they do?” he asked.

“It scares you. They could sprinkle something in your water or feed.”

Jockeys and trainers also voiced fears that sponging puts them and others at risk around the powerful, high-strung animals who may act unpredictably if they are struggling to breathe.

“It’s very cruel to an animal, but the worst thing is that whoever did this, they could have caused a very serious accident,” said Santa Anita-based trainer and former jockey Frank Olivares, whose filly, My Sweet Lucy, was one of the four horses sponged. “If horses can’t breathe properly and they’re running and they’re trying, they could collapse, and now you have riders’ lives in danger.”

The four incidents happened in early October:

* Yukon Charley, a 3-year-old gelding trained by Hollywood Park-based trainer Pico Perdomo, finished third--as expected--in a race Oct. 4 at Santa Anita. Afterward, a sponge was discovered in his nostril.

* Tonietta, a 5-year-old mare trained by Bay Meadows-based trainer Ed Moger Jr., expelled a sponge after a workout Oct. 9 at Santa Anita and was subsequently scratched from a Santa Anita race she was scheduled to run the next day.

* Spiderette, also trained by Moger, was discovered to have been “sponged” during mass checks after the sponge was found in Tonietta. The 3-year-old was subsequently scratched from her race Oct. 10.

* My Sweet Lucy, a 3-year-old filly, was pulled from the same Oct. 10 race as Spiderette, but for health reasons. During an examination, however, a sponge was discovered lodged in her nostril.

None of the horses suffered permanent injuries. Spiderette ran fourth as the 2-1 second choice in a race at Golden Gate Fields on Nov. 14, and Tonietta ran second at Santa Anita on Oct. 26 and was fourth Saturday at Hollywood Park. My Sweet Lucy has not run since.

Moger said Tonietta and Spiderette had two sponges forced up their noses. An endoscopic examination revealed the first sponges. They were removed and the horses were put back in training. Two days later, the second sponges were found.

“They went back to the track and they still weren’t right,” Moger said.

“So I scoped them again because I thought maybe they had some infection and there were sponges in both of them.”

Asked if he thought he had been intentionally targeted, Moger said no.

“I think it’s just bad luck,” he added. “I don’t think they were trying to hurt me; I think they were trying to help themselves.”

Some say the incidents were done in a sloppy manner, pointing to an amateur, rather than someone seriously trying to rig races.

Olivares said one of his grooms discovered a carelessly discarded piece of sponge--the kind typically used to wash horses down--in front of My Sweet Lucy’s stall on the day she was to have raced. Thinking nothing of it, the groom threw it away.

Only later when pieces of sponge were discovered in Spiderette’s and My Sweet Lucy’s nasal passages did he recall the find, and CHRB investigators retrieved it as evidence. And one of the targeted horses--Yukon Charley--is considered so middle-of-the pack that targeting him doesn’t appear to make much sense.

“Some amateur was more than likely doing it,” said hall of fame trainer Ron McAnally.

Laffitt Pincay Jr., winner of more races than any other jockey in history, said he believed a misguided gambler is to blame: “It’s a person who’s trying to make a bet. He thinks he’s going to fix the outcome of the race.”

Some suggested that a prankster may be at work.

The culprit or culprits may be aware of a series of high-profile sponging incidents that plagued Kentucky racing in 1996 and ’97. Or they might have read the current best-selling book on Seabiscuit, who was the target of an attempted sponging before the 1938 Santa Anita Handicap.

“I have no doubt that this was a copycat,” said veterinarian Rick Arthur, a member of the board of directors of the Oak Tree Racing Assn., whose season ended earlier this month at Santa Anita.

More plausible, others said, is that the incidents were inside jobs.

“Knowing where the [particular] horses are, it had to be someone who had knowledge,” Santa Anita trainer Vladimir Cerin said.

Horsemen believe the culprit or culprits had enough familiarity with racetracks and horses that they could blend in easily along the backstretch, which is bustling by day and eerily quiet at night. One person acting alone might have found it difficult to control the horse, shove the sponge 10 inches or so up a nostril, and keep a lookout, they said.

“Someone had enough time to do this effectively,” trainer Jenine Sahadi said. “Horses don’t like things to be shoved up in their nose. You can scope a horse sometimes and you’ll need a twitch and a lip chain.”

Sherwood C. Chillingworth, Oak Tree’s executive vice president, said the investigation is progressing.

“My understanding--and I’m not privy to everything they do--is that they are continuing [the investigation] and they have some leads and they are pursuing those and they hope to find the person who did this,” he said.

The CHRB has had a couple of its approximately 20 statewide investigators working on the case for the last month, primarily conducting interviews. Depending on what the CHRB investigation uncovers, the matter could be pursued in the criminal courts.

“If we could determine who did this, it would undoubtedly be pursued both criminally and administratively,” Martin, the CHRB spokesman, said.

Martin said that to his knowledge, no link has been uncovered to the Kentucky scandal, during which a man named William Michael McCandless was indicted by a federal grand jury on six horse-sponging counts at Churchill Downs. McCandless, who is considered armed and dangerous by the FBI, disappeared before he could be brought to trial and has not surfaced.

Since the most recent sponging incidents, CHRB officials routinely check racehorses’ breathing as part of the soundness check they do on horses entered in each day’s races. Mandatory endoscopic examinations would eliminate sponging altogether, and were required for a year during the Kentucky scandal. But trainers don’t like it because of the cost involved and the added stress it puts on the animals.

That the sponging highlighted poor backstretch security might be the one plus emerging from the affair, many in the racing community said.

“There are millions and millions and millions of dollars worth of horseflesh sitting back here, and for the most part any Tom, Dick or Harry can walk on in here,” Sahadi said. “We need to make sure that our security is what it should be and really police who’s allowed to enter the barn area and who’s not. There’s just an inordinate number of people who walk around the barn area on a daily basis. You’ve got ex-employees who are allowed to walk through the barn area. They’re not supposed to, but it happens all the time. It’s no good.”

Added Baffert: “Anybody can go around any barn. Back here, it’s not like a penitentiary or anything like that.”

Racetracks have stepped up security. The gates leading to backstretches were typically guarded, but the actual barn areas were not under close scrutiny 24 hours a day. That has changed.

“Now when you come to the barn, they inspect your ID,” Moger said. “They weren’t doing that before.”

Chillingworth said Santa Anita is also working with the CHRB to improve security by training workers in what to look for.

“Our position is, you have to have trained people who know a syringe from an eye-dropper,” he said. “To just have some kind of facade that looks like security, and they’re not knowledgeable, doesn’t do you much good.... We feel very strongly about that, and this incident has given us a little leverage to accelerate that program.”

Such efforts are welcome, many say, but ultimately it is up to exercise riders and jockeys to safeguard their horses.

“Horses will give it everything they have,” Cerin said. “If you ask a horse to run, they will run to the best of their ability and beyond because that’s what they’re good at, running. If a horse has an injury, he’ll keep running until he breaks his leg off.”

Now, Cerin avoids posting signs that identify horses by name, nor do they wear bridles with nameplates. And he recently illustrated a new morning ritual. Before his horses leave their stalls, he takes each by the halter and uses his free hand to squeeze shut one of the horse’s nostrils, then the other.

“Horses don’t breathe through their mouths,” Cerin said as he studied a filly’s exhalations, which were strong and warm. “So if I cover up this side, she has to breathe through that side. That’s all we do. It’s very simple. All I do is check in the morning.

“Just to make sure.”

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Times staff writers Bill Christine and Bob Mieszerski contributed to this report.