Santa Anita Is Not the Place for a Milkshake

No matter how fast the horses, how big the crowd or how lusty the betting, Santa Anita executives won’t be toasting today’s opener with a milkshake.

In the days of Doc Strub, the San Francisco dentist who started the place 70 years ago, a milkshake was a soda-fountain staple, and now, at the remaining few soda fountains in the universe, maybe it still is. But milkshakes at the racetrack, the kind found on the backstretch, are a dirty word, concoctions that may slow a horse’s tiring process and create an unfair advantage. Tracks around the country are handing out stiff penalties to trainers who milkshake their horses, and now Santa Anita, moving quicker than Sacramento in trying to discourage the practice, has promised horsemen swift action if they’re caught.

Other California tracks, including Hollywood Park and Del Mar, have been testing randomly for milkshakes -- sodium bicarbonate mixtures that are believed to delay the flow of lactic acid in a horse’s muscles, thereby reducing fatigue -- and starting today Santa Anita will test every horse before every race. The Oak Tree Racing Assn. tested all horses during its meet this fall at Santa Anita.

“Nothing is more important than maintaining the highest standards of integrity,” said Jack McDaniel, president of Santa Anita. “The new testing program will bolster our commitment to providing a level playing field.”

Because trainers with drug positives are entitled to a second test from a lab of their choice, and because the milkshake solution quickly dissolves as it passes through a horse’s system, a California Horse Racing Board testing rule must be legislatively tweaked. Assemblyman Jerome E. Horton (D-Inglewood) has introduced a bill that Rick Baedeker, president of Hollywood Park, says “should sail through” the Legislature early in 2005. In the meantime, California tracks have invoked house rules. At Santa Anita, trainers applying for stall space for the meet were required to agree to bicarbonate testing.

Should the test of a horse exceed a certain carbon dioxide level, the horses of that trainer and owner are subject to a surveillance period -- including possible video observation -- of 45 days. For 30 days, the track can also demand that these horses, when entered, spend at least 24 hours in a detention barn, starting the day before the race.

A second violation will result in trainers being prohibited from running any of their horses for 15 days. After a third offense, Santa Anita will ban a trainer from its grounds for a year, and prohibit him or her from running horses during that time.

Trainer Bruce Headley, who has won 296 races at Santa Anita, said that he gladly signed a stall application which, when approved, entitled him to keep 32 horses at Santa Anita. Traditionally, tracks have not charged trainers rent for stalls.

“This is the right thing to do, a positive thing, and I applaud Santa Anita for putting in this policy,” Headley said. “This is a step toward making the winning of races fair for everybody.”

Other trainers support the milkshake enforcement, but can also see a downside.

“By and large, it’s a good thing,” said Wally Dollase, who has won 25 stakes at Santa Anita, one less than Headley. “But it could result in another bad image for racing. When something like this comes out, the public may think that we’re all out here fixing races.”

Baedeker said that Hollywood Park spent $70,000 to test horses randomly at the recently completed meet. About 1% of the tested horses exceeded the bicarbonate threshold, but Baedeker declined to say what the actual number was. Citing legal issues, Baedeker would not identify the trainers of horses that had been flagged. The trainers were privately notified.

At Del Mar’s summer meet, random testing produced a violation rate of 10%. That rate dropped to less than 1% at the next major meet, Oak Tree at Santa Anita, and Sherwood Chillingworth, Oak Tree’s executive vice president, said that there were no violations the final week of the meet.

The state racing board can be expected to mete out suspensions, fines, or both for milkshaking once Horton’s bill becomes law. This year, New York racing authorities suspended veteran trainer Gary Sciacca for four months after a Belmont Park investigator allegedly witnessed a Sciacca assistant and a veterinarian giving a horse a milkshake -- through a tube that leads from the nose to the stomach -- on the morning of a race. The assistant and Sciacca’s barn foreman were suspended and the veterinarian was suspended for six months and fined $1,000. Sciacca, who was out of town at the time, was held responsible under the trainer-insurer rule. He said that the veterinarian had made a mistake, that he was supposed to be treating another horse, who was not running.

Trainer Bobby Frankel, who stables horses in New York, California and Florida, sees problems in the testing procedures.

“I’ve heard that they’ve found [violations] by trainers who said they didn’t do anything, and these are guys I can believe. [Milkshaking] may be a problem, but I don’t really know. What it’s going to do is open a can of worms. I think they’re going to have some false positives, like they did with morphine and scopolamine several years ago. The only way you’ll really stop something is to put guards at all the barns.”

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National Leaders

Jockeys and trainers who have earned the most money this season (through Dec. 25):

*--* RIDERS EARNINGS John Velazquez $22,212,686 Edgar Prado $18,311,516 Victor Espinoza $15,883,757 Jerry Bailey $15,700,844 Stewart Elliott $14,468,057 Javier Castellano $12,973,631 Corey Nakatani $12,466,557 Rafael Bejarano $12,022,002 Alex Solis $11,554,851 Ramon Dominguez $11,506,889 Cornelio Velasquez $10,911,084 Pat Day $10,882,222 Todd Kabel $10,637,082 Robby Albarado $10,234,517 Tyler Baze $9,994,837 Kent Desormeaux $8,540,558 David Flores $8,286,504 Rene Douglas $8,150,459 Joe Bravo $8,136,635 Richard Migliore $7,986,564 Eibar Coa $7,640,913 Jose Santos $7,540,848 Mike Smith $7,531,722 Patrick Husbands $7,432,199 Pablo Fragoso $7,135,189

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*--* TRAINERS EARNINGS Todd Pletcher $17,475,212 Bobby Frankel $16,779,681 Steven Asmussen $13,874,956 John Servis $8,921,146 Richard Dutrow $7,547,166 Bob Baffert $7,510,183 Scott Lake $7,378,828 Dale Romans $7,072,988 Nick Zito $6,943,782 Jeff Mullins $6,861,104 Doug O’Neill $6,678,227 Richard Mandella $6,496,702 Jerry Hollendorfer $5,944,139 Bill Mott $5,670,582 Wayne Lukas $5,507,319 Kiaran McLaughlin $5,442,256 Mark Frostad $4,912,015 Allen Jerkens $4,418,317 Graham Motion $4,333,174 Claude McGaughey III $4,184,712 Mark Shuman $4,179,546 Mark Hennig $3,948,058 Robert Tiller $3,939,642 Sid Attard $3,844,401 Mike Mitchell $3,811,720

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Off to the Races

* Dates: 85 days, Sunday through April 18

* Location: Santa Anita Park, 285 W. Huntington Drive, Arcadia

* Race days: Wednesday through Sunday, plus Dec. 27, Jan. 17, Feb. 21, April 18.

* First post: Sunday, noon; Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, 1 p.m., except April 8 and 15, 3 p.m.; Saturday, Sunday, Monday, 12:30 p.m., except today, Jan. 29, Feb. 5 and 21, March 5 and April 9, noon; and Feb. 6, 11 a.m.

* Grade I races: Sunday, $250,000 Malibu; Monday, $250,000 La Brea; Jan. 30, $250,000 Santa Monica Handicap; Feb. 12, $250,000 Las Virgenes; Feb. 13, $250,000 Santa Maria Handicap; March 5, $1-million Santa Anita Handicap; March 12, $300,000 Santa Margarita Handicap; March 13, $300,000 Santa Anita Oaks; April 9, $750,000 Santa Anita Derby.

* Sunshine Millions day: Jan. 29, $500,000 Turf, $500,000 Distaff, $300,000 Sprint, $250,000 Oaks.

* Other races: Jan. 15, $150,000 San Rafael; Feb. 5, $300,000 Strub; March 5, $300,000 Jimmy Kilroe Mile; March 19, $250,000 San Felipe; April 16, $250,000 San Juan Capistrano Handicap.

* Last season’s leaders: Trainer, Jeff Mullins, 45 wins; jockey, Victor Espinoza, 89 wins.