Attorney For Jeffrey Englehart Says Second Horse From Sale Showed Past Clenbuterol Administration

One week after the Horseracing Integrity and Welfare Unit (HIWU) announced it was dropping its clenbuterol case against trainer Jeffrey Englehart, his attorney revealed a second horse has tested positive for clenbuterol exposure that likely occurred prior to arriving at Englehart’s barn. 

In November 2023, an unnamed 2-year-old colt by Classic Empire out of Fast Heart suffered a fatal injury at Finger Lakes while in training with Englehart’s string. The horse was one of two he Englehart purchased from the same consignment at the OBS June Two-Year-Olds and Horses of Racing Age sale. After the colt’s death, HIWU took blood and hair samples from the horse and Englehart was subsequently notified initial testing on the hair sample came back positive for clenbuterol. The penalty for the presence of clenbuterol can be a suspension of up to two years because it’s a banned substance in Thoroughbreds.

(Clenbuterol is designed to be used as a bronchodilator that can help clear up respiratory illness, but it and other drugs in its class of beta-2 agonists can have the side effect of artificially building muscle mass if used repeatedly over time.)

Attorney Alan Pincus said Englehart exercised his right to a split sample test, with the knowledge that if the split came back positive he’d be provisionally suspended. They also learned the split sample would be a segmented hair test.

Segmented hair tests divide the hair into equal portions, with each piece tested, the theory being that if a hair is growing continuously, a drug circulating in the horse’s bloodstream will bind to the hair shaft and will show up in bands around the shaft as it grows out of the follicle. Theoretically, if you can measure where in the hair a band of drug shows up, you can estimate when the horse was exposed to the drug. Testing experts say this method isn’t foolproof, because hairs don’t all grow at the same rate or may stop growing before they fall out. It won’t give you a result that can nail down an administration within hours or even days, but it can give you some information about whether a substance may have been given a month ago or six months ago. Englehart told Thoroughbred Daily News in January that he immediately suspected the horse had been given clenbuterol at the sales, because he was confident he’d never given it to any horses in his barn.

“It's very well known that clenbuterol use is rampant at sales. Every trainer knows that. I think if they did a hair test on every horse 70 to 80 percent would be positive for clenbuterol,” Englehart told TDN.

Indeed, HIWU’s segmented hair test demonstrated the clenbuterol exposure had occurred before the horse had entered Englehart’s barn, which resulted in the organization dropping the charge against him.

Pincus said that’s just part of the story.

At the time he was notified of the 2021 Fast Heart colt’s initial positive, Englehart asked HIWU if they could do clearance testing on the other horse in his barn that came from the same sale and consignor. Both Fast Heart’s 2021 colt and She She’s Shadow (a 2021 filly by Bucchero out of Eluding) were bought by Englehart at OBS June, where they were consigned by All Dreams Equine. Prior to the implementation of the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act, some states offered trainers the option to request (at the trainer’s expense) testing to see whether a substance had cleared a horse’s system if they’d just returned from lay-off for an illness or injury when they may have gotten a highly regulated drug. It was a way for a trainer to be confident everything was clear before the horse entered a race to avoid an accidental positive. HIWU told Englehart and Pincus that was not possible, and also that they could not independently ask HIWU labs to do such testing.

“Current ADMC Program rules do not have provisions for testing prior to the transfer of ownership of Covered Horses or general ‘clearance testing’ for all substances,” said Alexa Ravit, director of communications and outreach for HIWU. “Clearance Testing as defined by the current rules can only be requested by a Covered Person to determine if a legally administered Controlled Medication has cleared the horse’s system. It cannot be requested to test for Banned Substances.

“Proposed updates to the ADMC Program rules currently pending before the Federal Trade Commission for approval include a provision for HIWU to oversee Transfer Testing. Transfer Testing would enable an owner or trainer to request blood testing of Covered Horses prior to or within 48 hours of a legal transfer (i.e., sale, lease, or change of trainer). Samples would only be analyzed for Prohibited Substances with an extended Detection Time, as determined by HIWU. Should the Federal Trade Commission approve the updated ADMC rules, Transfer Testing will be introduced later this year.”

On Jan. 23, Englehart pulled hair from She She’s Shadow and submitted it to the Texas A&M Veterinary Medical Diagnostic Laboratory for hair testing. Attorney Pincus said the results, provided to Englehart on Feb. 15, showed that a trace amount of clenbuterol was present in the hair sample between 14 and 16 centimeters down the length of hair, and the hair was positive for clenbuterol in four segments between 16 and 24 centimeters from the root. Hair growth is far from an exact science, but the same lab estimates horse hair grows about two centimeters per month. That would put clenbuterol leaving the horse’s system roughly seven to eight months earlier – between late June and late May, which means that like the 2021 Fast Heart colt, She She’s Shadow was exposed to clenbuterol very close to the dates of the OBS June sale and before. The sale took place June 13 through 15, with the under tack shows June 5 through June 10. 

According to OBS conditions of sale, all medication given to a horse within 72 hours of an under tack show must be reported to OBS, and no medication may be given within 24 hours of that breeze. Clenbuterol is prohibited in all test samples, which may be taken by the sales company as the horse leaves the track after their under tack show breeze. According to TDN, OBS randomly tests 10 to 15 percent of horses and OBS president Tom Ventura said positives for clenbuterol are rare. 

The conditions of sale also indicate buyers have the option to request a blood test for a horse they have purchased within 24 hours of sale at the cost of $500 per test. A positive that is later confirmed by split sample can be grounds to rescind the sale.

Attempts by TDN and Paulick Report to reach All Dreams Equine’s Juan Centeno were unsuccessful.

Horses at 2-year-old sales are not considered "Covered Horses" by HISA until their first workouts on a sanctioned racetrack or training facility, even though they are putting in a breeze and being timed at the under tack shows. Therefore, HISA is not involved in the testing or enforcement process for OBS' medication policies.

After the initial test for 2021 Fast Heart came back, Pincus said HIWU officials arrived at Englehart’s barn to take out-of-competition samples on his other horses – typical procedure after a positive test under the previous state commission regulatory system. Pincus said that HIWU representatives pulled hair from She She’s Shadow at that time.

Englehart has never received notification that She She’s Shadow had a positive finding for clenbuterol in hair, even though his independent testing suggests HIWU should have found it.

Ravit was unable to comment on the results of testing on She She’s Shadow, citing HIWU’s policy that it does not provide information on testing it may have conducted on specific Covered Horses.

Pincus said that although the charge against Englehart was dismissed after the results of the split sample test on 2021 Fast Heart (and the trainer avoided a similar charge for She She’s Shadow), the damage has been done.

“His owners see that that [possible provisional suspension] was coming, and they started leaving him in droves,” Pincus said of Englehart. “[HIWU] want to say, ‘No harm, no foul, the system worked because he didn’t get suspended.’ But the system didn’t work, because you’re not allowed to test your own horse, you lose all your owners, and they’ve done malpractice by not doing a segmented test the first time around.”

Pincus estimates Englehart lost half his horses as he awaited word on whether the split sample would result in a provisional suspension that may have turned into a two-year ban. He’s not sure how many will be back.

“It cost him years of his life,” said Pincus.

And he’s wondering – why isn’t segmented testing done at the beginning of the hair testing process, instead of at the end?

“From what I understand, they must not have done a segmented test originally because if they had they would’ve seen the timeframe,” said Pincus – an estimate confirmed by Ravit. “It’s brand new territory. Obviously blood or urine tests show recent activity, but hair tests, it could be a year old.”