Arbitrator shortens trainer Mike Puype’s medication suspension

Although an arbitrator said federal enforcers were right to flag Mike Puype for illegal medication found in April in his barn, they were told a 17- to 24-month suspension of the longtime Southern California trainer was too harsh. Instead, a $1,000 fine and the 3 1/2 months he already served were said to be enough.

“Mr. Puype has committed two anti-doping rule violations,” arbitrator Barbara Reeves wrote in her final analysis dated last Thursday as posted on the Horseracing Integrity & Welfare Unit website. “The arbitrator agrees ... that Mr. Puype bears no significant fault or negligence for the violations, and the appropriate sanctions for the possession violations in this case are three- to four-month sanctions served concurrently or time served.”

Reeves’s decision was reported first Wednesday by Thoroughbred Daily News.

“I’m mad and angry,” Puype told TDN’s Dan Ross. “I’m going to absolutely need counseling to find out how to get rid of this anger in my body.”

Levothyroxine and isoxsuprine, two medications on the list of medications banned by the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority, were found by four investigators April 24 in Puype’s barn at Santa Anita. Puype, who was cited and provisionally suspended by HIWU on July 18, said the medications belonged to former assistant Ral Ayers and that he never would have used them on his horses.

HIWU contended that Puype nevertheless was responsible for the contents of his barn, but Reeves said his “level of awareness has been reduced by a careless but understandable mistake in that both substances were kept in isolated locations which he did not have regular access to and, in the case of (a) locked cabinet, did not know the combination.”

The suspension was lifted Nov. 4, and Reeves held a hearing via Zoom on Nov. 22. Reeves said Puype still was “responsible for an imperfect search and purge,” because he “instructed his assistant trainers Alfredo (García) and Pancho García to search through the medications in the barn and to discard any that were expired or questionable.”

Reeves, an attorney and professional arbitrator based in Southern California, ruled that “the appropriate sanction for the possession violations within the three- to four-month range is three months and 17 days, the time already served.”

Puype had been told he faced as much as a four-year suspension. HIWU also wanted him on the hook for the cost of the arbitration, but she said no.