Trainer Jena Antonucci has appealed a 15-day suspension handed down to her on March 30 for a positive finding of the controlled substance lidocaine, arguing that her horse was accidentally contaminated with the drug by a worker in her stable.
The appeal was filed on Tuesday with the Federal Trade Commission, two days after an arbitrator for the Horseracing Integrity and Welfare Unit ruled that Antonucci was the “absolute insurer” of the horse that tested positive. The appeal requests a stay of the suspension.
In her ruling, the HIWU arbitrator, Anne G. Mitchell, dismissed Antonucci’s argument that the trace levels of lidocaine found in the horse’s post-race sample were due to transference from a human whose massage therapist had applied a salve containing lidocaine to the person’s legs.
Because the suspension was not scheduled to start until April 2, Antonucci was able to enter Moonstrocity in the April 3 Blue Grass Stakes at Keeneland on Saturday when entries were taken on Tuesday. Under current rules, a trainer is not required to scratch horses that have been entered prior to a suspension starting.
Antonucci did not immediately return a phone call on Friday.
According to filings on the FTC's website, the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority, which oversees HIWU, said that it supported a “temporary stay” of the 15-day suspension while the appeal is being heard.
The case involves Bee A Queen, who tested positive for a low level of lidocaine, a regulated substance that acts as a local painkiller, after winning a maiden race at Gulfstream Park in Florida on June 14. According to Mitchell’s ruling, Antonucci argued that a “racing support staff” member present in her stable days prior to Bee A Queen’s race had received applications of an over-the-counter lidocaine salve on those same days. The job of the unidentified person was not clear from the ruling.
Dr. Pascal Kintz, a pharmacology expert called by Antonucci during her March 17 hearing before the arbitrator, testified that lidocaine could be transferred from human to human, but Mitchell ultimately ruled that Kintz did not have expertise in equine pharmacology.
“Although Dr. Kintz cited many examples of accidental contamination in human athletes, he offered that he had no experience with Thoroughbred racehorses or lidocaine cream exposure from humans to horses,” Mitchell wrote. “His evidence with regard to this case was purely speculative.”
Antonucci also argued that trainers should not be expected to exert the same level of oversight over contract workers as employees of the stable, according to the ruling. However, Mitchell dismissed that argument in her ruling, writing that Antonucci “is the absolute insurer of the condition of all her horses” and that Antonucci had testified that “she had never questioned her racing support staff member concerning his massage therapist’s methods or drug usage.”
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