A Seat in the Bleachers: As second jewel of Triple Crown approaches, racing shows its flaws

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Thoroughbred racehorse owner Mike Repole is a quote machine, a go-to source for reporters because he’ll fill your notebook with colorful, funny, insightful, expansive responses.

He spends a lot of money on a lot of great horses to run in the biggest races, so there’s always reason to seek him out. There’s always reason to stick around for the whole show.

If there’s more than a dash of hyperbole, so be it.

After his filly Nest won the Coaching Club American Oaks last summer, crushing Secret Oath in the process, Repole said, “I guess it’s a rivalry because it’s 1-1. But this one looked like a football game, and it was 49-nothing.”

Two days before the 2023 Kentucky Derby, I asked Repole if the Derby favorite he co-owns with St. Elias Stables, Forte, had been able to manage as close to a perfect campaign leading up to the May 6 Derby as anyone could imagine or hope for.

The question was based on the fact that, other than a fourth-place finish in the Sanford at Saratoga last July, Forte had been undefeated, won an Eclipse Award and was a no-brainer deserving favorite to win the Run for the Roses.

For once, Repole offered a gross understatement, even if we didn’t know it at the time. We would find out soon enough.

“There’s no perfect in this game.”

Two days later, Forte, of course, was scratched the morning of the Derby with a minor foot bruise, validating Repole’s statement, but that was just scratching the surface.

Since then, the Forte story has blown up in a way and at a time when the last thing this sport needs is a saga that includes a drug positive in a major race that took eight months to come to light and has become a grim sideshow to what should be one of racing’s finest moments, the lead-up to Saturday’s Preakness and Derby winner Mage’s pursuit of the Triple Crown.

The sideshow isn’t going to shut down anytime soon, no matter what happens in the three-ring circus.

In a weird way, Forte’s scratch, which followed a stumble during a routine gallop on the Churchill Downs main track, actually mitigated what has transpired since then.

Let’s say he wins the Derby. Three days later, the New York Times broke the news that Forte had failed a post-race drug test out of the Sept. 5 Hopeful at Saratoga, a key pivot point in his championship season that concluded with a victory in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile.

The fact that Forte at least missed the Derby removes what would have been a substantial element in the grand scheme of the post-Derby story. That’s some pretty thin, gray gruel, if you’re looking for any glimmer of a bright side.

So here’s most of the rest of it:

After the New York Times story dropped, trainer Todd Pletcher drew a 10-day suspension and was fined $1,000 for a small amount of a non-steroidal inflammatory, meloxicam, that was found in Forte’s post-Hopeful sample.

By then, a lawyer for Pletcher and Repole had been in communication with the New York State Gaming Commission since September, a back-and-forth that included finger-pointing over delays in the adjudication and split-sample testing process that came to a head at a May 10 stewards meeting, during which Forte was disqualified from his Hopeful win.

Forte had already been ruled out of Preakness participation because he was automatically placed on the 14-day veterinarians’ list by Kentucky racing officials for having been scratched from the Derby by a state vet who examined him the morning of the race.

Naturally, the Forte camp, which is claiming the drug positive was the result of environmental contamination, plans to appeal the penalties. Pletcher said the horse had never been prescribed or administered the drug in question while under his care. They also plan to run Forte in the June 10 Belmont Stakes, which would put Forte in position to thwart a potential Triple Crown bid, should Mage win the Preakness, as he’s favored to do.

The Forte story and the lack of transparency from an industry that desperately needs it would be dispiriting enough on its own, but it comes within the context of an awful week for horse deaths at Churchill. Those included one horse, Wild On Ice, who was preparing to run in the Derby and promised to be a feel-good story, since his connections included a little-known trainer from New Mexico and a jockey who would’ve been the oldest rider in the 149-year history of the race. Wild On Ice was injured while training the week before the Derby and was euthanized.

“There’s no perfect in this game,” Repole said, before Forte was scratched from the Derby, and before he was disqualified from the Hopeful, eight months after the fact. “As close to perfect? It really depends on … I can’t even define close to perfect in this game, because you can see what happens on the racetrack when horses gallop. You can see the horse that was in the Derby work, the New Mexico trainer, poor guy, and the jockey, how fast it can turn.

“You don’t feel that in your head. You can maybe view it better from the outside. I think there’s that internal side, or that inside view, where it’s almost like a hard knocks of horse racing, where Forte works at 5:30 and I’m up at 3:30, and he [Pletcher] doesn’t sleep the night before. And he does it with all the horses. But especially the great ones.

“You hold your breath a lot. You get to the race. If you’re lucky to win, you breathe again. For about 48 hours.”

Who knows how long the Forte fight will take to resolve.

We can’t draw any comfort from another saga, the Medina Spirit 2021 Kentucky Derby disqualification that is still in dispute in federal court and under appeal to the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission.

Repole has vowed to use all of his resources and determination to get the Forte rulings overturned.

So, don’t hold your breath.

Contact Mike MacAdam at [email protected]. Follow on Twitter @Mike_MacAdam.

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