Michael Maker suspended 40 days...

[Kash$]

Maker suspended for 40 days, plans to appeal | Daily ...
LEXINGTON, Ky. – Mike Maker, the trainer of the winner of Turfway Park’s major Kentucky Derby prep, has been handed a 40-day suspension by Kentucky stewards for a drug positive after a race at Turfway in January, a penalty that Maker said he plans to appeal.


I though he was legit :lol: :lol:

[PaceAdvantage]

Enough...let's all stop acting like positives and trainer suspensions are something new. They've been going on since I started in this game, which incredibly, is going on 30 years now...(WHAAAAAAAAAAT??? :eek: )

Not everyone who throws a positive is a habitual cheater. There are such things as accidental overages...accidental contamination...sabotage...and yes, deliberate and habitual cheating.

Trying to act cute all the time isn't a good look ("I thought he was legit") :rolleyes:

[davew]

can he still race while appealing? can he run Derby?

[Donttellmeshowme]

Anyone know what the drug was?

[VeryOldMan]

Anyone know what the drug was?

Here's an article with more detail - the drug was dextorphan and the suspension would be stayed pending his virtually certain appeal.

http://www.paulickreport.com/news/people/maker-handed-40-day-suspension-dextorphan-positive-will-appeal-ahead-derby/

[MonmouthParkJoe]

The appeal process drives me nuts. The focus is around due process and having to afford the licensee the chance to appeal. These penalties rarely have teeth to them since they can appeal and still race since the wheels of justice and lack of resources take forever to adjudicate. You see this with jockeys being handed suspensions and appeal them in order to run on big days and drop the appeal to serve the days once the bigger races are over. I think the only time you arent allowed to race during the appeal process is with a summary suspension due to a particularly egregious act that would harm the integrity of the game and the patrons, but the appeal idea seems to the norm these days.

[Mlnolan00]

As a participant in racing, this suspension makes me mad. As a KY taxpayer, this suspension makes me irate.

Pursuing instances like this one is the biggest waste of our tax money I can think of because it's totally unnecessary (and actually just shows how DEFICIENT/OUTDATED the current labs and testing protocol are!) and meanwhile the state is so broke, the Gov is going to withhold MILLIONS in funds from our PUBLIC COLLEGES in this state.

So we have the time and $$ to press on with this case THAT NOT ONLY WILL NOT WIN but IS A WASTE OF TIME TO BEGIN WITH but we don't have the money to make sure our KY kids and future workforce aren't morons. Yeah, that makes sense.

"Why?" you ask? Well the Rx "positive" is for a flipping drug that has NEVER (as far as DRF can tell) triggered a positive test prior to, but also is totally benign and is found in GASP! your friendly over the counter bottle of NyQuil as it is an EXPECTORANT with really no benefit or affect on equines.

The Rx is called dextrorphan and is literally found in any/every human cough medicine and the only shady thing about it is the little buzz a teenager might get by trying to get high on 'Tussin.

Literally, KHRC are proceeding with a case where Maker is going to be suspended on the record BECAUSE ONE OF HIS HORSES WAS DRINKING SIZZURP. Given that didnt happen, the only thing this case shows is how inept our racing bureaucracy are and don't care about "integrity" or "cheating", just creating work for themselves so they can justify thier paychecks.

While not quite as bad as the Kim Richards marriage license stuff, I'm so embarrassed for our state because we look like buffoons to anyone with half a sense of justice.

The article below talks about the problems surrounding the ridiculous positives drugs such as the one in Maker's situation cause for regulators and how onerous and outdated our testing tolerance is in racing.

This is not about "protecting cheaters" or other unhelpful rhetoric, it's about getting the damn processes right so as to not be wasteful and acheived what was intended.

http://www.thoroughbreddailynews.com/medication-regulation-was-hot-topic-at-nhbpa-convention/

[HalvOnHorseracing]

I'm happy to see that there is a change starting among horseplayers who are developing an understanding that the testing methodologies are resulting in positives based on environmental or cross-contamination. Unfortunately, what still seems to be common is a knee-jerk response that as soon as these labs find a positive the trainer is villified. While the goal of horses not having anything but allowable medications at regulatory levels in their system is laudable, picogram positives of legal (and sometimes illegal) substances coming from either stall contamination or human contamination that can have no possible impact on the performance of a horse do as much to give racing a bad name as trainers who actually look to gain a chemical edge. Complaining about the appeal process because occasionally it may be used to postpone punishment to allow a jockey or trainer to compete in a race ignores the fact that SOME of those people are only guilty under the archaic absolute insurers rule. Before they could measure picograms there was no real concern about enironmental contamination - the amounts were simply too small to show up. In other words, they were focused on levels that would indicate performance enhancement.

Racing rules with regard to urine and blood testing are archaic given the use of million dollar testing equipment that can detect substances that come from the holding areas or the dozens of humans who contact the horse. The problem is not always cheating trainers, but racing commissions that are ill-equipped to tell the difference between a real effort to gain a performance edge and an over the counter medicine taken by a groom who put the bit in the horse's mouth. Zero tolerance for substances that have no performance enhancing effect and will inevitably be shown as environmental contamination is not an enlightened policy. Punish the truly guilty and stop trying to prove cleanliness by punishing made up violations.

[Stillriledup]

I'm happy to see that there is a change starting among horseplayers who are developing an understanding that the testing methodologies are resulting in positives based on environmental or cross-contamination. Unfortunately, what still seems to be common is a knee-jerk response that as soon as these labs find a positive the trainer is villified. While the goal of horses not having anything but allowable medications at regulatory levels in their system is laudable, picogram positives of legal (and sometimes illegal) substances coming from either stall contamination or human contamination that can have no possible impact on the performance of a horse do as much to give racing a bad name as trainers who actually look to gain a chemical edge. Complaining about the appeal process because occasionally it may be used to postpone punishment to allow a jockey or trainer to compete in a race ignores the fact that SOME of those people are only guilty under the archaic absolute insurers rule. Before they could measure picograms there was no real concern about enironmental contamination - the amounts were simply too small to show up. In other words, they were focused on levels that would indicate performance enhancement.

Racing rules with regard to urine and blood testing are archaic given the use of million dollar testing equipment that can detect substances that come from the holding areas or the dozens of humans who contact the horse. The problem is not always cheating trainers, but racing commissions that are ill-equipped to tell the difference between a real effort to gain a performance edge and an over the counter medicine taken by a groom who put the bit in the horse's mouth. Zero tolerance for substances that have no performance enhancing effect and will inevitably be shown as environmental contamination is not an enlightened policy. Punish the truly guilty and stop trying to prove cleanliness by punishing made up violations.

But racing commissioners aren't ill equipped to tell the difference between a cheat and an accident, they just need to pay attention to "other factors" like massive and overnight form reversals on every horse jumping 20 and 40 Beyer points overnight, its just called 'paying attention' and not solely relying on some 'testing'. If its pretty obvious to us who the cheats are, how come its not obvious to them?

Or maybe it IS obvious and they just look the other way.

[rastajenk]

Would you like to be the one representing a commission in a hearing in front of an assistant attorney general armed with nothing more than Beyer points?

[Redboard]

PEDs almost destroyed the MLB, NFL, track and field, cycling, but apparently horse racing doesn’t have a problem. Every positive test is a damn mistake(has any trainer ever admitted guilt?) and a waste of taxpayers’ money. OK. Hhhmmmmm

[HalvOnHorseracing]

PEDs almost destroyed the MLB, NFL, track and field, cycling, but apparently horse racing doesn’t have a problem. Every positive test is a damn mistake(has any trainer ever admitted guilt?) and a waste of taxpayers’ money. OK. Hhhmmmmm
Check the standards for horseracing, the Olympics, and the professional sports and see which one is the most stringent. Horseracing by a country mile. There is a big difference between a mistake or false positive and a positive resulting from environmental contamination. In the case of the latter there would be zero trainer intent to gain an edge, and given the measured levels for an environmental contamination, there is no actual performance enhancement.

Plenty of trainers admit guilt. In the recent case involving Roy Sedlacek he pled guilty.

[rastajenk]

PEDs saved baseball.