Trainer, 80, gets 2-year federal suspension for clenbuterol

The provisional suspension of 80-year-old trainer Don Buckner was extended to two years this week by the Horseracing Integrity & Welfare Unit after a hair-sample test he requested confirmed a positive result for clenbuterol.

Buckner also was fined $25,000 and ordered to pay another $10,000 of what it cost HIWU to bring in Minnesota law professor John Wendt to arbitrate this case.

The result of the case was posted on the HIWU website and reported first by Paulick Report.

“Mr. Buckner is found to have committed his first presence-based, anti-doping violation,” Wendt wrote in his ruling dated Tuesday. He ordered “disqualification of the results of In the Midst obtained on June 15, 2023, and subsequent to the date of sample collection, including forfeiture of all purses and other compensation, prizes, trophies, points, and rankings and repayment or surrender as applicable to the race organizer, (and) a period of ineligibility of 14 months for In the Midst, beginning on June 15, 2023.”

That date was when In the Midst, now 5, finished fifth as a 5-2 second choice and earned $716 from a $35,800 allowance race at Thistledown. The gelding owned then by Buckner failed a drug test applied to a urine sample that was taken after the race.

“Trainer Buckner was notified on July 21, 2023, that In the Midst’s A sample had returned an (adverse analytical finding) for clenbuterol,” Wendt wrote, adding “a provisional suspension was imposed on trainer Buckner effective July 21, 2023.”

After the A sample went through a lab run by the Ohio agriculture department, the B sample was tested at the University of Kentucky. It also came up positive for clenbuterol, and Buckner was charged Sept. 11 with an anti-doping rule violation.

HIWU then agreed to Buckner’s call for a hair sample to be tested. That was done in October by a lab at the University of California, Davis.

That sample, Wendt said, “was found to contain clenbuterol. ... Mr. Buckner (then) failed to submit his version of the facts as required by the scheduling orders and did not submit any documentation in response to or challenging HIWU’s version of the facts.”

Buckner told Paulick Report’s Chelsea Hackbarth he did not know how clenbuterol got into In the Midst, who he brought from Arizona to his Ohio farm after buying him from owner-trainer Justin Evans in May. He thought part of the problem might have been clenbuterol was legal in Arizona and Ohio before the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority’s medication rules took effect around the time of the sale.

“I don’t even have clenbuterol on the premises, so I knew I didn’t give it any,” Buckner told Paulick Report, adding, “I’ve never had a positive test, not even for bute. I’ve never had a horse break down or be vanned off, but they take none of that into consideration.”

With time already served, Buckner’s suspension will run through July 20, 2025. In the Midst, now owned by James Harder and trained by Robert Hoffman, is ineligible to race again until Aug. 15.

According to Equibase, Buckner has trained off and on since 1995 and has a record of 356: 54-55-41 with earnings of $608,974. He has had only 15 starts since 2022.