Not all positives are created equal
As a former chemistry major who has been involved in several horse-medication violation cases as a lawyer, and now as chairman of the USTA’s Harness Racing Medication Collaborative (HRMC), I can say that I have learned a bit about what constitutes a positive test — and, conversely, what does not.
Generally, three factors contribute to a therapeutic medication positive: an increase in the concentration of a medication that was administered; the route of administration (intravenous or intramuscular); and the sequence of administration — that is, the period of time over which a substance has been repeatedly administered.
Aware of these variables, regulatory bodies have established guidelines for the use of permissible medications and, over the years, have set threshold levels to provide greater clarity.
Accordingly, a positive test is universally considered to occur when either a threshold has been exceeded or a guideline has been violated. In the latter case, for example, New York’s guidelines — like those in many jurisdictions — are divided into defined permissible time segments — 24, 48, 72 and 96 hours — before competition for the administration of specifically defined therapeutic medications. If a medication is not specifically listed in those guidelines, then any substance determined to have been administered within seven days of a race may be deemed a positive.
The other circumstance in which a positive may legitimately be called and defended in a quasi-judicial proceeding is when the allegation is that a published threshold has been exceeded.
In recent years, however, some entities and individuals in racing — though, notably, not the regulatory bodies — have declared that a “positive” exists even when neither the applicable guidelines nor the thresholds have been breached. Those making such claims have done so to the detriment of innocent horsepeople while portraying themselves as guardians of the sport’s integrity. With rights of exclusion, these parties have then barred horsepeople from their facilities based on such claims. Some may act out of ignorance; others, perhaps, out of malice.
Racing already suffers from enough negative publicity without giving credence to falsely labeled “positives” that further besmirch the sport.
How did this practice begin and spiral out of control?
As I recall, some time ago, a rural upstate New York racetrack began sending samples collected for analysis to a laboratory north of the border with a simple request: to determine, using the most sensitive analytical methods available, whether anything at all could be detected — without regard to the amount present, the time of administration, or even whether the substance had any relevance to performance on race day — and report the findings.
That instruction sought a finding that was fundamentally irrelevant as it had no relation to either of the elements that constitute a positive test: a violation of administrative guidelines or the exceeding of an established threshold. It may have found a minuscule residue of some form of the medication, its metabolite, or only a portion of the molecule.
The result was predictable. Horsepeople were publicly accused of “positive tests” based on extremely sensitive analyses capable of detecting the slightest residue of a medication or its metabolites — substances that may have been administered in accordance with published guidelines and that did not exceed any established thresholds, but whose residue could be identified over long periods of time. While such findings were “positive” in the purely analytical sense that a trace could be detected, they were not actionable by regulatory agencies because they violated no rules and had no pharmacological effect.
Nonetheless, that one rural track acted on those findings, excluding horsepeople and their horses from the facility and prohibiting their participation. In doing so, it harmed those horsepeople and unnecessarily tarnished the reputation of the sport. Eventually, the practice at that track was abandoned as both incorrect and unfair.
One might have expected that to be the end of it. Instead, the practice migrated south to a major venue. Horsepeople there were informed that they had “positive tests” based on samples sent to an even more distant laboratory, reportedly instructed to report the detection of any substance regardless of when it was administered or whether it exceeded any established threshold.
It is akin to asking a laboratory to determine whether a person took an aspirin a week ago —long after any possible effect on a headache had passed. Yet, that is precisely what such reports purported to show, without addressing whether any guideline or threshold violation had occurred. The result was that it would be announced that a trainer was barred from racing at the facility even though no state administrative rule had been violated.
Worse still, the track would refuse to share the details of these questionable findings with the accused horsepeople seeking to clear their names, leaving them in the dark and unable to defend themselves.
None of these overseas test results — until recently exposed — have ever constituted actionable rule violations. Yet, the abuse did not stop there. In some instances, the track forwarded these so-called “positive results” to the U.S. Department of Justice and to state regulatory agencies, asserting that they evidenced violations of medication rules and urging governmental action beyond the track’s own exclusion of the horsepeople.
The authorities correctly declined to act, recognizing that these findings did not constitute positive tests under any legal or regulatory standard. This raises an obvious question: Were these actions the product of ignorance or malice? Were referrals made uniformly and objectively, or selectively against those out of favor with the accuser? Whatever the explanation, the result has been to unfairly damage the reputations of individuals in the industry and cast an unwarranted shadow over the sport itself.
If the rules truly mandated nothing more than water, hay and oats — and prohibited any therapeutic medications whatsoever on race day — then such findings might have some theoretical relevance. But that is not the reality, nor should it be. Horses are athletes, and denying them appropriate therapeutic care would be both irresponsible and inhumane.
Admittedly, such highly sensitive testing might have relevance if it detected residues of a completely banned performance-enhancing substance capable of persisting in a horse’s system for extended periods — epogen, for example. But declaring a positive based on the trace residue of a legitimate therapeutic medication that is neither performance-enhancing nor present above any regulatory threshold is simply erroneous and wholly unjustified, regardless of the accuser’s motivation.
The conclusion is straightforward: The industry should not accept the fiction that a positive test has occurred when it has not. Racing already suffers from enough negative publicity without giving credence to falsely labeled “positives” that further besmirch the sport.
Regulatory bodies understood this and declined to pursue innocent horsepeople. The industry would do well to adopt that same rational approach.
Joe
This column appears in the April 2026 issue of Hoof Beats, the official magazine of the USTA. To learn more, or to become a subscriber to harness racing’s premier monthly publication, click here.