Not sure if people have been keeping up with the news from US racing, but this summary from the TDN on the latest saga is pretty good: Bill Finley Op/Ed: Insanity, Stupidity, Cowardice, Call it What You Want, CHRB's O'Neill Ruling a Farce Doug O'Neill and his lawyers played the California Horse Racing Board. Either that, or the members of the Board took a few weeks off and clowns Krusty, Ronald and Bozo sat in in their absence. Either way, what transpired over the last couple of days with O'Neill's various drug and suspension problems and how they were resolved will make your head spin, your hair hurt and erode whatever tiny ray of hope you might have been holding on to that this sport can effectively deal with its many drug issues. This is such a muddled mess that trying to explain is almost beyond my literary capabilities, but here goes: In 2012, O'Neill got a 180-day suspension for a TCO2 violation, with 135 of the days stayed. It was ruled that if O'Neill had any other Class 1, 2 or 3 drug violations within an 18-month period, he would have to serve the additional days. Lo and behold, before the 18 months was over, O'Neill got nailed again, this time by New York Gaming Commission officials who recorded a positive for a benzodiazepine drug in a June 2, 2013 race at Belmont. The CHRB classifies the drug as a Class 2 violation. So...O'Neill would have to serve the additional 135 days? Oh, don't be silly. While the race in question at Belmont occurred before his 18-month probationary period was up, the New York regulators didn't get around to filing the proper paperwork until after the 18 months. The CHRB somehow decided that the date of the offense was not what was relevant, but when the New York bureaucrats got around to addressing the matter. For that reason, they didn't stick him with the additional 90 days. (So, if you rob a bank on a Thursday, but don't get arrested until the following Tuesday, did you really rob the bank? Maybe the CHRB wants to weigh in on this perplexing question). But it gets even weirder. Even though the CHRB decided that the New York drug offense happened outside the 18-month window they still gave him another 45 days for his New York transgressions. So the New York drug positive matters, but doesn't really matter that much. The timing of the New York ruling is a big deal, but not a big deal. Or something like that. Not content with the mockery they had already created, the CHRB found another area where they could make a really dumb decision. Hey, they were on a roll. There was still that pesky 45-day suspension O'Neill was handed by New York authorities for the benzodiazepine drug. That meant that O'Neill would have to serve two concurrent suspensions, the 45 days from California and then 45 days from New York? Not so fast. In what very well could be a horse racing first, the CHRB ruled that O'Neill could serve both at once. That way, one of the penalties is not a penalty at all. They might have been better off telling him to write on a chalkboard 1,000 times "I promise I will be a good boy." Then again, what does it matter? While he is serving his penalty the O'Neill stable will be run by his assistant Leandro Mora, who happened to win a couple of races yesterday at Santa Anita. The only thing that has changed is the name on the program. Mora is O'Neill. O'Neill is Mora. And as for the owners who employ Mora/O'Neill, their horses will never miss a beat. O'Neill can't attend the races while he is under suspension, but there's nothing to stop him from heading off to Tahiti, cell phone by his side and calling all the shots for Mr. Mora. Isn't that way it's always done? There was a brief time when it looked like O'Neill was actually in hot water. The Breeders' Cup announced that he had violated its regulations regarding drug positives and would not be able to pre-enter horses in the Breeders' Cup. On the face of things that would be a big blow for him and his owners. But they're not going to stop Mora from running the horses in his name, and that makes the O'Neill Breeders' Cup suspension as worthless as a $2 win ticket on Ricks Natural Star. If the Breeders' Cup really wants to get serious about cracking down on cheaters, then the rule has to be that any horse in the barn of a rule-breaker will not be allowed to run. It's easy to figure out what happened here. The CHRB is calling the O'Neill ruling a "stipulated agreement," essentially a plea bargain. No doubt O'Neill hired some very good lawyers who went into the CHRB and said that if they didn't reduce O'Neill's penalties they were going to make life a living hell for them. And instead of doing the right thing, they rolled over. Bureaucrats who may or may not be qualified for the job, they didn't have the stomach for a fight. Not that any of this should come as a surprise. The O'Neill verdict was a matter of business as usual, albeit a high-profile one, for a sport that just doesn't have the guts to do the right thing when it comes to people who refuse to play by the rules.
