By: Charles D. Brunt
A quarterhorse trainer’s penchant for overusing clenbuterol – a drug used to treat respiratory disease in horses but mimics muscle-building anabolic steroids in higher doses – has earned him the loss of his state racing license for the next four years.
Trainer Ramon M. Ochoa, 56, of La Union, had two first-place-finishing horses test positive for clenbuterol at Ruidoso Downs Racetrack earlier this year, according to rulings recently posted on the New Mexico Racing Commission website. Those offenses mark Ochoa’s fourth and fifth clenbuterol sanctions in the past year, according to the rulings.
In a post-race urine test on June 23 at Ruidoso Downs, an Ochoa-trained sorrel gelding named Cowboy Wave had 1,526 picograms per milliliter of clenbuterol in its system. That’s about 11 times higher than the permissible level of the drug allowed on race day.
Less than a month later at the same track, another of Ochoa’s horses, a bay gelding named Captain Strawfly, had 862 pg/ml of the drug in its system.
Under Racing Commission rules, a horse can have a maximum of 140 pg/ml of clenbuterol in its system on race day, or roughly 140 billionths of a gram in one-fifth of a teaspoon of urine.
For those violations, Ochoa’s state-issued license will be suspended until April 11, 2019, according to the rulings. He also was fined $5,000 for each of the two offenses.
The ruling also requires Cowboy’s Wave’s owner, Rigoberto Ochoa, to forfeit the $4,800 purse from the June race. And Vicente Contreras, owner of Captain Strawfly, must forfeit $10,200 in winnings from the July race.
In another Racing Commission sanction, trainer Brandon C. Muniz’s license has been suspended until Jan. 27, 2016, after a horse under his care was found to have more than 12 times the legal limit of clenbuterol in its system.
After finishing fourth in an Aug. 31 race at Ruidoso Down, the horse Quick Dynasty tested positive for 1,686 pg/ml of the drug.
Muniz, of El Paso, Texas, must also pay a $5,000 fine, according to the ruling. The August infraction is Muniz’s third in the past year.
Quick Dynasty’s owner, Martin G. Reynoza, is required to forfeit $7,593 in purse money earned in the race, which carried a total purse of $100,000.
All sanctioned horses must pass a commission-approved exam before racing again at a regulated New Mexico track.
New Mexico Racing Commission executive director Vince Mares said Thursday that Muniz had appealed his sanctions, but did so after the 10-day appeal deadline. Ochoa has not appealed, nor have the horse owners.
The five-member, governor-appointed Racing Commission contracts with the Kenneth L. Maddy Equine Analytical Chemistry Laboratory at the University of California-Davis for its equine drug testing.
Racing Commission rulings are available online at nmrc.state.nm.us.
