The three major American auction houses announced new medication restrictions last week — but our editor writes the enforcement of those new rules is in question

Natalie Voss // Updated:Apr 3, 2024

Last week, America’s three sale companies issued a rare joint announcement heralding the imminent arrival of new, universal policies governing medication use at public auction. Beginning July 1, non-steroidal anti-inflammatories will not be permitted within 48 hours of a breeze show or after 6 p.m. the night before the horse sells. Corticosteroids may not be given closer than 48 hours prior to a breeze show or 24 hours prior to sale It also prohibits stacking, or the use of more than one NSAID, which is also prohibited at the racetrack.

The Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority (HISA) praised the update – probably in no small part because they’ve been asked frequently why they can’t/when they will start regulating public auctions, particularly 2-year-old sales. Based on their current understanding of the federal law creating the Authority, HISA officials believe they aren’t given jurisdiction over horses until they’ve published their first recorded work or are entered in their first race, and currently, workouts at breeze shows aren’t considered official, recorded works per Equibase. No doubt HISA officials are tired of being asked the question.

What was conspicuously absent from the joint release was any detail about enforcement of these new medication policies, particularly from Fasig-Tipton and Ocala Breeders’ Sales, who host the lion’s share of American 2-year-olds in training sales.

Both companies have always offered buyers the opportunity to request testing for previously-prohibited drugs like bisphosphonates or anabolic steroids, but the tests are expensive – existing conditions of sale documents reveal the cost to the buyer is $500 – and it’s unclear how many buyers avail themselves of that opportunity. OBS president Tom Ventura estimated 10% of horses are tested by buyers, while Fasig-Tipton president/CEO Boyd Browning told the Paulick Report that company’s figures varied by sale, by hammer price, and by year. Keeneland also offers buyers the opportunity to test horses for violations of medication policies, though the cost is not listed in its current conditions of sale.

Fasig-Tipton and OBS also test some number of horses after their breeze shows. Browning said he wasn’t sure how many Fasig-Tipton sampled, while Ventura guessed about 15% of horses at OBS were sampled after their under-tack show. Conditions of sale also allow either company to sample a horse at their discretion once it has been entered in an auction, but Browning said that at least for Fasig-Tipton, that provision is commonly-recognized to kick in only once the horse arrives at the sale grounds. Sales officials (though they may visit farms and training centers for physical inspections of sale entrants) have not heretofore felt they could legally drop by a private property and test a horse being prepped for sale.

When asked whether there could be a world in which medication policy at the 2-year-old sales aligns with the withdrawal guidelines at the racetrack, Browning stressed that medication policy in the modern era is an ever-shifting target.

“[The new policy] was discussed amongst the sales companies and, to some extent, our customers,” he said. “And looking at what was industry standard at the racetrack.

“I think the reality is we’re all seeing changes in behavior, changes in philosophy in our industry. This is indicative of us, as sales companies, trying to be responsive to the changing landscape. We’re going to always continue to look to see what we can do, what we can improve.”

At the racetrack, NSAIDs have a detection time of 48 hours pre-race, according to the Horseracing Integrity and Welfare Unit. Many corticosteroids do not have an assigned detection time in HIWU’s public education materials, but a common one like dexamethasone is listed as 72 hours for oral or intravenous use. Intra-articular corticosteroid injections are prohibited within 14 days pre-race and seven days pre-work. (Before HIWU took over drug policy enforcement, their withdrawal time was even longer in one state – it used to be 30 days prior to a race and 10 days before a work in California.)

Ventura pointed out that the sale companies led the way on clenbuterol restrictions, backing out withdrawal time pre-sale farther than racing commissions did pre-race at one point. He said OBS hasn’t decided whether it will increase the number of horses it tests in tandem with the new medication rules. Since the new policy doesn’t go into effect until July, the company has a while to figure out if they will test more 2-year-olds than they do currently. Eventually, testing large numbers of horses could result in a volume issue for a lab, and since a failed drug test could void a sale, that’s a challenge for a buyer who had to take possession of the horse while results were pending.

“Obviously, it’s different than the racetrack – unless a horse is claimed, there’s no change in ownership,” said Ventura, who estimates samples pulled during the work week come back in four to five days.

Not long after the announcement, I spoke to an industry figure who buys frequently at public auction. He recounted to me his horror and surprise when he pinhooked a group of horses from the yearling sales to the 2-year-old auctions for the first time. He had divided the horses across three consignors who he did not identify to me. According to the bills he got later, all of them gave the yearlings anabolic steroids and clenbuterol once a month from October, when they were declared for a 2-year-old auction in March, until the end of December. A week before the horses left for the sales grounds, all of them had all joints – fetlocks, knees, hocks, stifles and even shoulders – injected with Depo-Medrol, the trade name for methylprednisolone acetate. It was clear to the pinhooker this wasn’t a targeted response to swelling or injury, but an attempt to ensure the horses would look as sound as possible in their upcoming breezes.

I’ve written about Depo-Medrol before. It has largely fallen out of use on the racetrack because it’s much more powerful than other corticosteroids and longer-acting, and therefore carries higher risk of inadvertent joint damage and also poses problems in drug tests.

I don’t know many people – either inside horse racing or outside of it – who would condone the administration of anabolic steroids to yearlings for the purpose of eventual performance enhancement intended to correlate to their sale price. Monthly administration of clenbuterol, which is a cough syrup that’s also a beta agonist, suggests it was given for its tendency to behave as an anabolic agent with repeated administrations and not for an active respiratory infection.

The thing is, none of those consignors’ medication programs would be in violation of the auction companies’ new rules. And there’s nothing to stop a seller from propping a bodysore horse up with NSAIDs the day after their breeze, and every day until the day before their sale, which can sometimes be a four- or five-day interval. Sure, the horse will feel more comfortable and would ultimately recover fine, but if the goal is to give buyers an honest look at what they’ll be getting, the policy doesn’t accomplish that. There’s also nothing preventing a consignor from masking joint discomfort that could change the way the horse moves in their under-tack show.

“It’s better than nothing,” the person told me. “But it doesn’t go nearly far enough.”

Ventura correctly pointed out to me that not all horses at the racetrack get tested each time they run either. But violations for these classes of drugs at the racetrack are statistically rare, and that’s likely because trainers know there’s always a healthy chance that they could be tested. The rule enforcement system in this country isn’t perfect, but it does seem to work (most of the time) to discourage people from openly using things they know can easily be detected post-race.

It’s obvious from the case of Jeffrey Englehart that despite a ban on clenbuterol, there may be consignors willing to risk a positive – and that one may have skated by the existing regulations without apparently being tested. Englehart had a clenbuterol case against him dropped by HIWU after segmented hair testing demonstrated the horse in question was exposed to clenbuterol around the time he was sold at a 2-year-old sale at OBS. A second Englehart horse from the same sale and same consignment was also revealed to have had clenbuterol exposure on a similar timeframe.

On the heels of the Englehart case, it’s almost surprising the auction houses thought this was something to toot their horns about. Four years out from a federal doping case that aptly demonstrated there are plenty of questionable drugs that can’t even be tested for, it raises the question: How much longer should the sport allow self-policing in its public marketplace?

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect that California’s policy on intra-articular corticosteroids was the only one more strict than HIWU’s prior to implementation of national rules on medication. An earlier version suggested more than one state had a stricter policy than HIWU.