Casse: Clenbuterol to blame for 'unimaginable form reversals'

Named a finalist Monday for racing's Hall of Fame, trainer Mark Casse used his platform as a trainer of multiple Eclipse Award winners and Triple Crown race heroes to speak out against the use of clenbuterol.

Calling it "the most abused drug in our industry," Casse penned an op/ed in The Thoroughbred Daily News detailing how rival trainers may be using a medication originally known for treating respiratory issues.

"But of course a few smart men and women discovered that when it was given in higher dosages, sometimes 10 to 20 times the described amount, it has similar effects of an anabolic steroid," Casse wrote in The TDN.

He pointed to withdrawal times as the culprit. At Woodbine, where Casse is the perennial leading trainer, horses can be treated with clenbuterol up until a week before they race. Casse said that "leads to unimaginable form reversals on a weekly basis."

"A claimed runner’s new trainer runs his bigger, stronger horse, and guess what?" Casse asked. "It runs a Beyer number that is 10, 15 maybe 20 points higher than it did for the previous trainer. The other big surprise is that he or she has not broken any rules because he or she has met the withdrawal times."

Clenbuterol, which is banned for use by athletes in other sports, including the Olympics, is also used to temporarily add bulk to horses at auction, Casse said. And horses medicated with it before their races appear to require more recovery time to build back up.

"You can see by the process being employed by the clenbuterol trainers," Casse wrote, "a horse can only run every six weeks to two months."

Casse is not the only big-name trainer calling for the end of clenbuterol in racing. At last December's Race Track Industry Symposium in Arizona, Bob Baffert said it's the drug he'd most like to see out of the sport. Chad Brown, in a post to his Twitter account Tuesday, said he's never given one of his horses clenbuterol.

"You don't need this harmful drug to do well," Brown tweeted. "It has no place in our sport."

Of course, this isn't a new issue, either. Going back to 1997, before the FDA approved clenbuterol's use for horses with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, Andy Beyer wrote in the Washington Post that trainers using the drug "performed apparent miracles" in improving their runners.

In response to Casse's op/ed, Jim Lawson, CEO of Woodbine Entertainment, tweeted: "We are supportive of Mark's views on the abuse of clenbuterol in the industry and we have been working to address and we are scheduled to meet with our regulators again this week."

Casse, in a radio appearance on Steve Byk's At the Races show, said he was partially motivated to write his piece because one of his veteran owners -- he declined to name him -- is considering leaving the sport due to alleged cheating.

"I feel like I've earned my stripes, and I've got a lot of knowledge," Casse told Byk. "I've been doing this a long time."