Dutrow on Kentucky positive: D'oh

Rick Dutrow trains 25 horses for Michael Dubb and his various partners as well as all the horses owned by IEAH Stable. Dubb plays the claiming game. IEAH owns Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner Big Brown, Benny the Bull, currently the nation’s leading sprinter, Kip Deville, the leading American turf miler, and others.

Salute the Comet, a horse trained by Dutrow determined to have run at Churchill Downs on the eve of the Kentucky Derby with twice the permitted level of clenbuterol in his system, is owned in part by Dubb. The news of Dutrow’s suspension in Kentucky followed closely an announcement by IEAH president Michael Iavarone that after October, the stable’s horses would compete without medication, a deft public relations move in light of the current attention being paid to the sport’s drug culture – much of it resulting from Dutrow’s endorsement of the widely used anabolic steroid, Winstrol, an integral part of Big Brown’s regimen. Dubb, who must return the $20,000 earned by Salute the Comet at Churchill, is not upset with the fact that his horse raced on twice the legal trace level of clenbuterol. Listening to Dubb, you might think that he was talking about a mystic horse whisperer. Iavarone was upset and told the New York Post that the group is rethinking its relationship with Dutrow.

The damage control spin began on Friday morning at Aqueduct, where Dutrow called a press conference. Dubb said that the clenbuterol violation in Kentucky was, “honest mistake,” resulting from the chaotic Derby-weekend atmosphere surrounding Big Brown and the trainer’s questionable administrative skills.

“My responsibility, not my fault,” said Dutrow, who will appeal the suspension in order to delay its imposition in the near term because he has horses entered in important races. “I really wish this [the attendant media coverage of the positive test] would stop,” Dutrow said. “I don’t remember the last time I had a clenbuterol overage – eight, nine years ago. It’s not as big a deal as people are making it out to be. It was a mistake at the barn and it happened at a bad time.”

Dubb, extolling Dutrow’s horsemanship, said that the scrutiny brought upon his trainer is misdirected. “We’ve got people out there blocking horses’ feet and doing other things,” he said.

Blocking effectively interrupts pain and is a dangerous, inhumane and illegal practice.

Dutrow said that Iavarone was no longer upset. “I should have told him that this was coming up,” he said. “I talked to Michael last night and again this morning. Everything is beautiful. All my owners are a thousand percent behind me.”

The damage-control spin on Friday was not exclusive to Aqueduct. Jess Jackson, majority owner of defending Horse of the Year Curlin, issued a statement in support of trainer Steve Asmussen, who faces a medication-related suspension in Texas, and another high-profile owner, Maggi Moss, an attorney, has signed on as legal counsel. Nor was all the drug-related news limited to Dutrow and Asmussen. On Tuesday, authorities in New Jersey took blood samples from 41 horses trained by Bruce Levine, the leading trainer at Monmouth Park and fourth in the Belmont standings, for the purpose of testing for erythropoietin, more commonly known as EPO – a performance-enhancing blood-doping agent that is illegal and undetectable in post-race urine tests. Results will take a week, but the general feeling is that authorities would not stage such a large-scale raid without knowing something.

Dutrow gained bluster as he went along, chaffing at this reputation (“Everyone looks at me like I’m a drug kinda guy.”) in comparison to notorious figures from the past, beginning with Oscar Barrera, who was virtually unbeatable for a period of the early to mid 1980s, and progressing through Gasper Moschera (“How do you go from laying carpet to winning races?”), Juan Serey, Peter Ferriola and finally, pointing down the row of concrete block barns, “look at this jerk-off down here, [Gary] Contessa. How does he do it?”

Dutrow is currently tied, at 18 wins, with Barclay Tagg for leadership of the Belmont trainer standings. Contessa is third. -- PM

Brown back to work

Big Brown, meanwhile, is scheduled to resume galloping on Saturday morning and Dutrow said he would like to see the horse run in the $1 million Travers presented by Shadwell Farm at Saratoga.

“In a perfect world I would want to see him win the Haskell and win the Travers – in a perfect world,” said Dutrow, whose world of late is taken a sharp turn away from perfect. “I think I’m going to start galloping him tomorrow. I think we’re going to put the shoes back on Monday. We’ll gallop him for few days until Monday and maybe Tuesday start breezing him, I’m not sure. But he’s ready. He’s put his belly back on, he’s as happy as he could be. Now I can train him the way we want to. Now he got his little break, jogging every day, so, he’s ready to roll.”