Three days after trainer Ramon Preciado filed a federal lawsuit to regain his “Constitutionally protected” rights to enter races while two equine drug penalty appeals and a separate hearing on a banishment from Parx play out, track management has apparently backed off on excluding Preciado's horses from the entry box.
On Apr. 26, Preciado, who has been at or near the top of the Parx training standings for the past seven years, sued both Sam Elliott, the Parx director of racing, and Walter Remmert, the executive secretary of the Pennsylvania Horse Racing Commission (PHRC) in United States District Court, Middle District of Pennsylvania. The trainer is seeking a temporary restraining order and a declarative judgment on his banishment, unspecified monetary damages for allegedly “destroying” his business, plus attorney fees, punitive damages, and “other relief as the court deems proper.”
Preciado's attorney, Alan Pincus, had written in the complaint that Parx's refusal to accept his entries despite the PHRC's granting of an appeal on his eviction from the grounds amounted to an illegal “constructive ejection” that superseded the trainer's rights to due process.
“As a result of having filed that suit, Parx has reassessed their position,” Pincus said in a Friday phone interview. “Rather than wait for the judge to order them to do so, they decided to allow him to enter his horses and try to allow him to retrieve whatever ones he could retrieve [from owners who had severed business relationships].”
Elliott did not return a voicemail message prior to deadline for this article seeking his side of the story on both the lawsuit and Preciado's status at the entry box.
Preciado did not enter any horses for the May 2 Parx card when races were drawn on Friday. Pincus said the trainer is “in the process of finding which [owners] want to return” after several owners had cumulatively transferred 43 of 57 horses out of Preciado's care upon learning of his eviction from Parx on Apr. 15.
Although his client has temporarily regained entry privileges at Parx, Pincus said he will “absolutely” continue to seek the damages outlined in the lawsuit.
“This mitigates [the damages],” Pincus said. “But there is still quite a bit of damage. We don't know how many owners will return, and he has not been able to race [since Apr. 12]. We won't be able to assess the full measure until we find out which owners are coming back.”
Over the past few months, Preciado has been fined and suspended by both the Delaware Racing Commission (21 days) and PHRC (270 days) for a series of clenbuterol positives that occurred in 2015. Clenbuterol is a bronchodilator that is known to have steroidal properties and is regulated as Class 3 drug by the Association of Racing Commissioners International.
Preciado's appeal of the Delaware suspensions did not result in the penalties being overturned; the overages that allegedly occurred at Parx are currently under appeal. Separate from the commission action, Parx barred him for three years for allegedly being an “undesirable person.”
Pincus shed some light on Preciado's contention that a disgruntled hotwalker acting with malicious intent was responsible for the most recent clenbuterol positives at Parx. He also speculated that additional clenbuterol overages could still be in the pipeline as the PHRC catches up on its testing of samples.
When asked if the hotwalker–who has since been dismissed—was responsible for the entire rash of clenbuterol positives for which Preciado has been penalized over the past 18 months, Pincus said, “I don't think so. I think the first few were [Preciado's] responsibility. But there came a point where he stopped using [clenbuterol] altogether. After that, the later ones that happened, they're the ones with the crushing penalty.”
Pincus did not want to speculate on a motive for the alleged saboteur's administration of the drug, citing an open investigation into the matter by the PHRC.
“It's every trainer's worst nightmare,” Pincus said. “No matter how many cameras you have and how many precautions you take, it's impossible to guard against your own employees. You're looking for intruders, you're not looking for your own employees who are allowed and expected to go into the stalls.”
The Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, the agency to which all PHRC media requests get funneled, did not reply before deadline to a TDN query asking whether an investigation into alleged sabotage was indeed active. –@thorntontd
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