Thirteen trainers and one veterinarian based at Penn National Racecourse in Grantville, Pa., conspired to hide illegal injections of corticosteroids to more than 100 horses during an 18-month period in 2023 and 2024, the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority alleged on Friday.
HISA, in a release and subsequent conference call on Friday, said that it was pursuing cases against Dr. Allen Post Bonnell and the trainers as a result of an investigation involving HISA, the Horseracing Integrity and Welfare Unit, and the Pennsylvania State Horse Racing Commission, which began the probe. More than 100 hundred horses who raced at 10 different tracks in six different states – Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, and Virginia – will be disqualified from races due to the charges, HISA said.
In the release, HISA said that all of the injections occurred at Penn National during a period running from May 2023 through November 2024. The injected horses then raced or trained within the stand-down periods prescribed for intra-articular injections, which is 14 days before a workout and 30 days before a race when the injection is in a fetlock, and seven days before a workout and 14 days before a race if the injection is in a different joint, such as a knee.
According to Pennsylvania Horse Racing Commission records, Bonnell was summarily suspended on Nov. 7, 2024, for violations of rules on intra-articular injections. On Friday, HISA posted notices of violations for four trainers based at Penn National – Kimberly Graci, Bonnie Lucas, Javier Moran, and Marlin Joe Miller -- for similar charges. The other nine trainers are expected to be identified within the next week.
The charges arise out of what is the most prominent investigation conducted by HISA since its safety rules went into force in the summer of 2022. HIWU, a private company hired by HISA to enforce its medication and drug-testing rules, including its rules on intra-articular injections, began operating in May 2023. HISA re-took control over the intra-articular injections under revised safety guidelines put in place in July 2024.
Under HISA’s rules, all veterinary treatments are required to be submitted to a database maintained by the organization. The database generates flags for horses that have been administered intra-articular joint injections that are designed to prevent the horses from racing or training within the stand-down period.
In an investigative report prepared by the Pennsylvania commission made available on Friday, Bonnell was several times described as an “old man” who “frequently forgets things,” but records of his interviews also indicated that he was aware that he was injecting horses intra-articularly in violation of rules within Pennsylvania and those enforced by HISA and HIWU.
Bonnell admitted to injecting both hyaluronic acid and flumethasone into the joints of hundreds of horses, usually within four to five days of a race, and he said that he would commonly list the injections as “draining” the joint, rather than injecting it, to hide the activity from regulators.
As described by the report, Bonnell told investigators that he did not believe the injections were putting the horses at risk, a statement that Lazarus pushed back on during the conference call.
“It’s well accepted within the horse racing community that intra-articular injections too close to training activity or to a race are detrimental to a horse’s safety or welfare,” Lazarus said. “They mask the pain and they frequently do not allow the veterinarian to properly inspect whether a horse is race-ready.”
The investigation began when a PSHRC investigator witnessed Bonnell inject a joint on Oct. 23, 2024. Bonnell was later called in to the investigator’s office to discuss the injection when he failed to submit a treatment report within the required 24-hour deadline.
Over the next month, according to the investigative report, officials with the PSHRC and HIWU participated in multiple interviews of Bonnell and trainers to ascertain the breadth of the activity. The report is heavily redacted to shield the identity of some trainers or other interviewees.
According to HISA, 100 “unique” horses were administered the injections and raced or breezed within the stand-down periods, for a total of at least 200 documented injections in violation of the rules. Of those horses, 30 percent never raced again, HISA alleged, and 10 percent were observed as being lame post-race. Three of those horses were euthanized as a “direct result of injuries sustained in those races,” HISA said.
On the conference call, Lazarus said that the three horses who died did so within the “racing period,” meaning 72 hours within the race. Another four horses who received injections in violations of the rules died at a later time, Lazarus said.
Ben Mosier, the executive director of HIWU, said that one of the substances injected by Bonnell – flumethasone, a corticosteroid – was not detected in post-race or out-of-competition testing because the drug is “fast-acting” and was administered in relatively small doses.
The other substance, hyaluronic acid, is an endogenous substance, meaning it is difficult to separate natural concentrations from those elevated by injections of small amounts of the substance, Mosier said.
“It shows the importance of investigations and people coming forward with information,” Mosier said. “This program [the Anti-Doping and Medication Control Program] isn’t just about testing and post-race testing. Many violations can be found with information and investigations.”
Mosier also said that the relatively quick summary suspension issued by the Pennsylvania commission two weeks after first observing Bonnell inject a horse enabled regulators to “immediately eliminate the risk in the field.”
Lazarus said that three of the disqualifications will be issued for stakes races run at Penn National in 2024, but otherwise, none of the other races were stakes races. She later described the vast majority of the horses involved as being horses that were not racing at high levels of competition.
Adjudications of violations allow arbitrators to consider “mitigating” or “aggravating” circumstances to apply different penalties from those recommended in HISA’s rules. Lazarus said that given the “fact that it was so intentional and that there were so many violations,” Bonnell and the trainers would likely face harsh penalties.
“Ultimately the decisions are made by independent arbitrators, but I can imagine that this would be strong evidence of aggravating and serious conditions,” Lazarus said.
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