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Originally posted on 10/02/2022:

Start with this one Kid.

I wrote this 11 years ago.

I was approached by an elderly man and asked to train his 2 horses. He seemed very nice and I gladly obliged. His son , along with the sons family took great interest in the game. I ran the first of the 2 horses and had some success. We won a race or 2 with the horse. Just a claimer. No big deal. They were having a lot of fun. The other horse was an unraced horse that had been purchased at a 2 year old in training auction by someone else. They named the horse and in doing so, there was a big attachment to that horse compared to the other horse they had claimed. Anyway, I am working to get this horse ready to run. No small feat. The horse has conformation issues and as a result, problems are popping up. Nothing major, but problems that will likely stay with the horse to some degree as long as he races. As a result of these problems, I am in need of vet assistance several times. Trying to make sure that I am doing the right thing for the horse as well as the owner, I xray his ankle and knee and start slowing down the training process so as to keep him at his level of fitness, but make sure he does not hurt himself along the way. So a month later, the owner and his son are getting excited and antsy as to when he will run. The delay in forward movement, along with the vet bill that detailed an xray , ultra sound for his suspensory and tendon, and some , but not much, legal, therapeutic, medication for the horse, started to bother the father and son. I explained the what, why and how of everything as I did it. They did not like having to pay the vet bill in excess of 200.00 . I told them that typically, it costs ( back in the day) about 50.00 to run a horse each race over and above the roughly 60-100 monthly vet bill that will normally appear.
As the horse started improving physically after a few more weeks, we were back on track. But , before the horse can run his 1st race, the old owner has a heart attack and sadly, within a couple of days , passes away. Very sad.
So the son takes over as the owner and about a month later the horse runs and wins his 2nd or 3rd start. Horse is worth about 15K and goes on to win a couple of races and eventually get claimed. The son decides to stay in the game and claim another horse. All is well as we claim a few horses and do fine. No great shakes, but he did not lose any money, actually showed a profit on most of his claims.
There was a new young trainer who was winning at a phenomenal clip who people were talking about. His dad had trained without much success but the new kid was doing well in the claiming game. Having had a ton of success at an early age myself , I had no problem with that. But as time went on, he started getting positives . Not for a bute overage or mistake drugs that can happen when a foreman screws up and does not oversee the orders to take the horse off of whatever because he is going to run in a week or whatever, but drugs that other horseman know have NO PLACE in the barn area.( there is definitely a difference from drug to drug) They are in no way therapeutic, they are simply drugs that would only be used to gain an edge.This kid proceeds to get 5 positives in less than a year. With the legal process he keeps on running and winning and quite frankly , cheating.
Meanwhile this son as become friends with another owner of mine who had recently come to me. New guy had a couple of horses that had come from a barn that never won. We did O.K., winning a few and losing a few . Hell, he won more races with me in 3 months than he did with the bad trainer in 3 years. This new guy has a horse in on the 4th of July at Pimlico. Having 3 kids of my own from about 6-10 years old, missing the 4th of July parade and things like that were tough but a sacrifice that had to be made because I had to work. So we win the race and new guy decides he wants everyone back at his house for fireworks and a party by the pool . I respectfully decline because I want to spend an hour with MY KIDS doing the firework thing, not with his family. That pissed him off and about a month later, after tasting the winners circle more than ever before, he fired me and went to the young kid with the 5 positives.
The son of the other owner stayed with me and we kept doing fine but he went in partners with his friend who had fired me, on a claim with Mr. positive. 3-4 months later, he claims a horse with Mr. positive on his own, so now he has 2 trainers in Md.
So you can fully appreciate who this son is, he was and still is a high power lawyer with political ties throughout Md. He loves the racing game at this point and becomes a board member of the horseman's board and a few years after this story, a state racing commissioner. He calls me one day and asks me why my vet bills are so LOW. Having never been asked that question before( it was always why are they so high), I asked him to clarify what he means. He said that my vet bills were about 150-200 a month if the horse ran once and his other trainers were about 1000.00 a month. He concluded from that , that the other guy was taking better care of his horses than I was . I told him that I don't know what Mr. positive is doing but I do whatever is legal and necessary to have my horses in peak condition. That was it for that conversation. About a month later, his horse wins, and gets claimed from me. He informs me the next day that he will not be claiming any more with me. As far as I know, he still has horses with Mr. positive.
Here is a guy that went from wondering why his vet bill was as high as 150.00 a month one year to asking why his vet bill is ONLY 150-200 a month the next year.
Mr. positive was able to reach a settlement with all his positives and serve them out concurrently, roughly 60 days. He got a few more in the next year or two. Since then, they I think they have slowed way down and his percentage has come down from the 35-40% range to 18-20%.Have paid no attention though , the last 10 years. Now, I am not saying that this trainer does not know what he is doing. What I am saying is that he cheated more times than anyone should ever be able to get away with.
Being a trainer is very much like being a coach. The day you get hired starts the period of time before you will be fired. Certainly not with all owners, but most assuredly with plenty of them. I was never bitter about being fired by the owner that wanted me for a show pony for his friends to salivate over on the 4th of July. I was very bitter about being fired by the future racing commissioner. Was not the money or the horses that mattered , it was the principles involved that bothered me. In hindsight, that was the very beginning of a lot of negative feelings towards drugs that would eventually be one on a short list of reasons I left the game.
I could write a book on drugs as they relate to horse racing and what goes on . Unfortunately, due to the nature of the business, drugs are understandably way over played by those that do not really understand it . And while testing has caught up to many of these problems in the last 15 years where they could not in the 80s and much of the 90s, things could and should be better. Bettors need to know that people are trying to solve these problems and stay in front of future problems.Many are . However, do not be fooled by organizations like the N.Y.R.A. They have a political agenda a mile long, very little of which has to do with doing the right thing in my opinion. What they have done for decades is to give players the perception that they are interested in right and wrong. I do not feel that fairness has anything to do with what is announced by them publicly.
99.999% of races are not fixed. 99.999% of jockeys try there hardest on every mount. But until the game can be cleaned up by people that understand it instead of politicians or appointed racing delegates , drugs along with several other key elements in racing will continue to hover over the game like the black cloud it is.