Tustin Lab Faces Tough Challenge : In Wake of Recent Results, Horsemen Criticize Findings

About six months ago, concerned horsemen in California began sending horses’ urine samples that had already been tested by their state laboratory to New Mexico for a second opinion.

These samples came from most of the winners of thoroughbred races at Del Mar, Hollywood Park, Santa Anita, Bay Meadows and Golden Gate Fields, plus winners of quarter-horse races at Los Alamitos. It is costing $5 a sample for the second tests, with the California division of the Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Assn., a national group of trainers and owners, sharing in the expense with the California Thoroughbred Breeders Assn. and the Pacific Coast Quarter Horse Racing Assn.

These groups’ actions indicate there is a widespread lack of confidence in the testing being done in California. Truesdail Laboratories of Tustin, which has been in business since 1932, has done most of the testing for the California Horse Racing Board for about 40 years.

Truesdail has been under fire before, and now the laboratory that specializes in testing is facing a test itself. Truesdail’s credibility is being questioned because its chemists have seemingly done their job--caught six thoroughbred trainers running horses with cocaine in their system.

But among the six are Wayne Lukas and Laz Barrera, two of the most famous trainers in racing. Lukas and Barrera have combined to win seven Eclipse Awards, and Gene Klein and Louis and Patrice Wolfson, the owners of the two horses found with cocaine, have won six Eclipses for owning and breeding horses.

“That Laz and Wayne should be involved in this is totally implausible,” trainer Eddie Gregson said.

Gregson won the Kentucky Derby in 1982 with Gato Del Sol, a few years after Barrera had won it twice with Bold Forbes and Affirmed, and six years before Lukas won the 1988 Derby with Winning Colors. The Wolfsons owned Affirmed and Klein owns Winning Colors.

“If this had happened in a book by Dick Francis, you would have closed it and said that it couldn’t happen,” Gregson said.

Francis, who used to ride steeplechase horses for the Queen of England, is now a successful author of mystery fiction with racing themes.

If they are going to challenge Truesdail’s findings, Lukas and Barrera will have to take a number, because the laboratory’s methods are already being questioned by attorneys for Roger Stein, who last October ran a horse at Santa Anita that tested positive for cocaine.

In a hearing before an administrative law judge last month, a Truesdail chemist testified that the laboratory lost much of the testing data on Stein’s horse through a computer foul-up.

Stein’s hearing is scheduled to resume today in Los Angeles.

Rick Arthur, a veterinarian who treats horses at Santa Anita and who is a member of the racing board’s medication committee, discussed Truesdail’s operation in a recent interview.

“They are the most economical lab to be found, but they do not have research capabilities,” Arthur said. “They are several years behind the current technology. We have to convince them that they have to catch up. They shouldn’t assume they have this contract without working for it.”

The second tests on the urine samples that have already cleared Truesdail are being sent to International Diagnostics Systems in Las Cruces, N.M.

International Diagnostics lost out to Truesdail in bidding last year for California’s $1.3-million annual contract to test horses.

Early last year, when there were backstretch rumors that buprenorphine, an illegal drug 30 times as strong as morphine, was being used to race sore horses at Santa Anita, more than 80 urine samples were sent to International Diagnostics’ facility in St. Joseph, Mich.

What happened after that depends on which lab is doing the talking. International Diagnostics said that there were positives for both buprenorphine and cocaine, but when the samples were returned to Truesdail and then sent to a third lab, in Denver, no traces of the illegal drugs could be found.

Truesdail concluded that there were no positives in that batch, and Len Foote, executive secretary of the California Horse Racing Board and one of Truesdail’s staunchest defenders, threatened to have International Diagnostics censured by Racing Commissioners International, the body of state racing commissions in Lexington, Ky. Foote complained that International Diagnostics wouldn’t release all the details of its tests until it was guaranteed the state testing contract in California.

Arthur said that one out of every 20 samples sent to International Diagnostics in the last six months has come back “suspicious.” But the number of confirmed positives--tests that would stand up in court--has been very small.

Chemists for Truesdail have declined to be interviewed in recent weeks.

The State of California’s corporate status unit said that the president of Truesdail is Philip J. Charley. Attempts to reach Charley were unsuccessful.

The six cocaine positives were discovered by Truesdail, which, according to Foote, has updated its testing methods recently. The positives were confirmed at a laboratory at Ohio State. The Ohio State facility is the central laboratory for a national quality-assurance program, of which California is a member.

“The jury is still out on that program,” Arthur said. “In the past, such programs have been a joke. California should institute its own quality-assurance program, to check the competence of the lab.”

Arthur said that more money is needed to fund California’s horse-testing program. David Hall, the senior racing chemist at Truesdail, said at the Stein hearing last month that Truesdail was understaffed.

Before the state started paying for horse testing last year, the tracks footed the bill. The budget for testing grew from $800,000 to $1.3 million with that change, and Foote says that Truesdail will exceed the budgeted figure in the first 12-month period.

“California is supposed to have the best racing, and it should have the best testing,” Arthur said. “One positive (test) here is one too many, and the reality of the sport is that you’re always going to have people out there taking their best shots. But if they have the audacity to attempt it, the state should come armed with the best deterrents. What we spend per test on horses in California is a joke compared to what each sample costs for the Olympics.”

Foote says that California tests 35,000 horses annually. No figures are available for 1988, but the racing board’s 1987 report shows that there were 22 instances of what are known as major positives. According to Racing Commissioners International, that ratio is comparable to positives found in other states.

Finding cocaine in a horse is unusual. A horse has never tested positive for cocaine in New York. In Maryland, there has been only one cocaine positive in 20 years. In that case, the trainer told investigators that a groom, who was supposed to tie a strap to the horse’s tongue just before the race, had put the strap in a coat pocket that contained cocaine. The trainer still received a suspension, because he alone is responsible for the condition of his horse.

Albert Barrera, Laz’s son and a trainer whose horse tested positive for cocaine at Santa Anita this month, has suggested something similar happening to his horse.

“You know there’s cocaine on the backstretch, and I’m surprised that something like this hasn’t happened before,” the younger Barrera said. “A groom could have it on his hands while he’s feeding a horse.”

Albert Barrera, who trained in New York until five years ago, has suggested pre-race testing in California, much like programs in New York, New Jersey and Illinois. Horses are tested a few hours before they race and are scratched if they show signs of illegal drugs.

Pre-race testing has been suggested in California, but the cost is high, because all of the horses are tested instead of just winners, beaten favorites and a few other selected horses after races. Since pre-race testing started in New York eight years ago, the state’s annual lab costs have doubled.

And even pre-race testing doesn’t guarantee uncontaminated horses. In New York, after horses are tested, they aren’t kept in holding barns, but are returned to their trainers’ barns, where the possibility of drugging still exists.

“The race tracks and the state are alike in this area,” Arthur said. “They try to get by as cheaply as possible.”

Arthur is critical of Truesdail for putting too much emphasis on testing for procaine. Several positives for procaine have been found at the current Santa Anita meeting.

“Procaine goes with penicillin and is very therapeutic and can be very effective,” Arthur said. “Too much effort is being put into finding drugs that are only a residue of legal medications.”

John MacDonald, former head chemist for the Illinois Racing Board who now works for International Diagnostics, has a suggestion regarding the Wayne Lukas case.

“They’ve got 10,000 samples frozen there?” MacDonald said. “What they should do is go back and test every horse trained by Wayne Lukas. If after that there’s just that one positive that they already have, then there’s something wrong. Because a guy like Lukas wouldn’t run all those horses and only fool around with just one.”