With the recent articles in the Paulickreport.com about harness racing horses getting positive tests in Pennsylvania that ending up being lost and never acted on, the staff at Harnesslink just received this letter with very similar situations happening in Canada.
Dear Sirs,
I, Anne Shunock, Tammy Aspden and Linda Wellwood, read with great interest your article today “Pennsylvania Harness Regulators: Questions of Cover-Ups And Conflicts of Interest.”
You see, we are in a similar circumstance except that we have been ordered by Mr Jean Major, Registrar of The Alcohol And Gaming Commission of Ontario, to repay purse monies to a horse that tested positive for a class 2 drug. Our mare,Magic of Brussels, was second in a race at Georgian Downs June 2015 but in December 2015 we were placed first by the Ontario Racing Commission because Heathers Shadow who had won the race tested positive for Oxilofrine with CPMA.
In January 2017 we were notified by phone that Mr Major had reversed the judges decision even though CPMA maintained the positive certificate stayed the same.
When we raised questions a response came from the legal department from AGCO saying there was a testing error. When we asked for clarification we were told the Registrar has absolute discretion to make this decision. This escalated to the point that we were suspended because we had not repaid the purse money by a date set by AGCO counsel. We appealed and it was stayed.
It came to a point that we needed to retain a lawyer. We contacted Mr Dan McMahon who came to our rescue.
Fast forward to April 2018 when the case was heard by HRAP, Horse Racing Appeal Panel. Our witnesses included Mr Rod Seiling, former head Ontario Racing Commission,who stated he did not know of a case where a horse with a positive test retained its purse money.
AGCO presented no evidence against us or any witnesses.
We won our case but AGCO is not finished with us yet. They have now retained outside counsel and have filed a notice of application to divisional court for judicial review with the Ontario Superior Court of Justice.
We are concerned about cover-ups and the new attitude by AGCO applying their own opinion on positive test certificates rather than accepting the scientific evidence that these are positive tests by CPMA which was the normally accepted process with ORC (now AGCO since April,2016).
Interestingly, we were not the only race with this positive test. There were three others but we seem to be the only ones who question the decision.
We have contacted numerous news outlets and no one seems interested. Peter Gross of Down The Stretch was the only one to follow our story. I will forward those articles.
Needless to say, our ears perked up when reading your detailed article.
It seems so similar to our situation except we are at the other end having to repay money to a positive tested horse.
Thanking you for your time and exposing this problem.
We believe strongly in honesty, transparency and integrity in the horse racing industry.
Sincerely,
Anne Shunock
Tammy Aspden
Linda Wellwood
Below are the articles that were printed about these ladies situation.
http://downthestretchnewspaper.com/issues/10issue08/page25.html
http://www.downthestretchnewspaper.com/issues/11issue02/page25.html
http://downthestretchnewspaper.com/issues/11issue04/page18.html