May 13, 2008
'There were no steroids'
Eight Belles' trainer orders tests to prove filly wasn't on performance-enhancing drugs
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The trainer of Eight Belles is certain the filly was never on steroids, and he has ordered tests to prove it.
Larry Jones said yesterday that he wanted to dispel any suggestion the Kentucky Derby runner-up was on performance-enhancing drugs. Eight Belles was euthanized after breaking both front ankles Saturday, a quarter-mile after the finish at Churchill Downs.
"I guarantee there were no steroids ever on the horse," Jones said at a news conference at Delaware Park in Stanton, the site of the filly's first win.
Eight Belles' owner, Rick Porter, said the preliminary necropsy result showed the death came as a result of the fracture of the filly's two front cannon bones.
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Jones was adamant that the necropsy will show no use of performance-enhancing drugs and hoped it would uncover any previously undiscovered "soundness issues."
Jones was still emotional about the loss of the horse three days after the Derby. He broke down three times during the 30-minute news conference while recalling the filly.
But the trainer's voice rose when he said he was responding to unspecified criticism he heard on radio programs while returning from Kentucky to Delaware that his horse must have been on steroids because she was so large.
"We're taking a lot of abuse out there. ... We're being accused of steroid abuse because she was so large," he said. "I can tell you that Mr. Porter goes to the sale to look for good horses, and that's one of the things you look for - a horse that's big enough, strong enough and fast enough to compete in big races."
In addition to defending his training methods, Jones again defended jockey Gabriel Saez's ride of the Derby runner-up.
"People have been on him," Jones said. "It's uncalled for."
Saez's agent, Ruben Munoz, said the jockey, 20, was shaken when he heard that People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals was calling for his suspension.
"I explained to him that it was coming from animal activists and that he had been exonerated by the Kentucky Horse Racing Authority," Munoz said.
PETA has said Saez should have known the horse was in trouble and that he went to the whip too often.
"I think that it is really and truly the most ridiculous thing I've heard of," Jones said.
About 20 animal-rights protesters waved signs outside the offices of Kentucky's horse racing regulators in Lexington yesterday in response to Eight Belles' death.
Nearly as many people showed up to defend the sport.
• Doping // Six harness horses tested positive for performance-enhancing substances under expanded testing in New Jersey. Laboratory tests confirmed that the six horses under the care of trainer Ernest Adam and owned by Stephen C. Slender had tested positive for Erythropoietin-Human, also known as EPO, New Jersey Racing Commission executive director Frank Zanzuccki said. The six are ineligible to compete in New Jersey, consistent with the commission's new out-of-competition testing initiative.
Copyright © 2008, The Baltimore Sun
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