The Dancer's Fall

Nobody is going to convince Dancer's Image that a dog's life is all that bad. Consider just one week in the life of a horse. First, Dancer's Image was disqualified from first place in the Kentucky Derby; then he was disqualified from third place in the Preakness.

It took the stewards at Louisville's Churchill Downs race track 43 hours of interrogation and deliberation to decide what to do about Peter Fuller's grey colt, who was found to have been drugged when he won the Derby. In the end, the stewards succeeded only in adding to the mystery that surrounds the case. They awarded first place (plus the $122,600 purse) to Calumet Farm's Forward Pass. They suspended the Dancer's trainer, Lou Cavalaris, and his assistant, Robert Barnard, for 30 days. They issued a tight-lipped statement that spoke of "certain matters" that were deserving of "further investigation and action." But they did not say what those "certain matters" were, and left the job of probing into them to the Kentucky state racing commission. Nor, for that matter, did the stewards directly answer a single one of the pressing questions in the case.

Did Dancer's Image receive a dose of the painkiller Butazolidin too few hours before the Derby? The colt suffers from chronically sore and swollen ankles, and Cavalaris admitted giving him the anti-inflammatory analgesic on Sunday, 144 hours before the race. The drug was actually administered by a veterinarian, Dr. Alex Harthill, who turns out to be something of a controversial figure. Although he is known as "the Derby Vet" for treating such former winners of the race as Carry Back, Northern Dancer and Lucky Debonair, Harthill has twice been implicated in drugging scandals. In 1954, he was suspended "indefinitely" (later reduced to 60 days) by stewards at Chicago's Washington Park for administering a stimulant to a horse that subsequently won a $25,000 stakes race. In 1956, he was acquitted by a New Orleans court of charges that he bribed a testing-laboratory official to destroy urine and saliva specimens taken from a horse at the Fair Grounds race track.

Harthill and Cavalaris both insist that neither of them gave Dancer's Image a second dose of Butazolidin, that the "Bute" discovered in his urine after the Derby must have been residue from the Sunday treatment--although horses normally retain Butazolidin in their systems for no more than 72 hours. There was speculation that because Dancer's Image stood in ice (to reduce the ankle swelling), also received steroid and B-complex-vitamin injections, the Butazolidin was "frozen" in his system for an abnormally long time.

The stewards apparently did not buy that notion. By suspending Cavalaris, and particularly Assistant Trainer Barnard, they suggested a belief that Dancer's Image had indeed received additional Butazolidin--probably sometime between Tuesday night and Thursday night preceding the Derby. During that period, Cavalaris was in Fort Erie, Ontario, tending to other horses in his string, and Barnard was in charge of Dancer's Image. However, by failing to penalize Harthill and giving only token suspensions to the trainers (they could have been barred for life), the stewards indicated they had no proof 1) that a second dose was administered, or 2) if one was, that Cavalaris or Barnard knew anything about it.

Could somebody unconnected with Fuller's stable have given Dancer's Image the drug--either purposely or mistakenly? Before last week's hearing, Owner Fuller complained of "gross negligence" in the security arrangements at Churchill Downs, and hinted: "Someone may have gotten to the horse." Although Fuller has received some hate mail lately--for donating $62,000 of Dancer's Image's winnings to Martin Luther King's widow--the idea that a stranger purposely drugged the horse is farfetched. Butazolidin is neither a stimulant nor a sedative; it cannot make a good race horse out of a bad one, or a bad horse out of a good one. Among the myriad rumors in Louisville last week was the story that someone gave Bute to Dancer's Image by accident at night, mistaking him for another horse --and the stewards gave it some credence by questioning other horsemen whose charges had been stabled near the Dancer's barn during Derby week. But Dancer's Image is a grey, an unusual color among thoroughbreds. He also is 1,050 Ibs. of fighting muscle; anybody blind enough to invade his stall by mistake would be taking his life in his hands--especially if he tried to force a pill down the horse's throat.

Could the post-Derby urinalysis have been in error? Could Dancer's Image's urine sample have been tampered with or mixed up with a specimen from some other horse? Kentucky's drug-testing methods came under severe attack at last week's hearing from Fuller and his attorney, Arthur Grafton. They questioned both the security in the laboratory and the accuracy of its analysis. When Owner Fuller demanded some of the specimen for an independent analysis, he was told, sorry, it had all been used in the original tests.

Calling the track stewards' decision "completely unsatisfactory," Fuller's attorney filed an appeal last week with the racing commission--a move that at least will assure publication of all the facts: unlike the stewards, the commission must hold an open hearing. And if that appeal fails, Fuller & Co. can then take their case to the courts (possibly all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court), where anything could happen. Dancer's Image could even win the Kentucky Derby after all. Last October, an appellate court in Ohio ruled that Butazolidin could not be regarded as an illegal drug--because it had not been proved to affect a horse's performance in a race.

Whatever the complications of the Derby scandal, there was no debate over the Dancer's disqualification in the Preakness at Pimlico. Fuller, who originally said that he would not run the horse if Cavalaris was suspended, changed his mind and entered Dancer's Image 16 minutes before the Preakness deadline. "He will vindicate himself, once and for all," insisted Cavalaris, who had to settle for watching the race on TV. But the vindicating was done by Forward Pass. In the stretch, Dancer's Image clipped one horse's heels, slammed broadside into another horse, and wound up trailing Forward Pass across the finish line by six lengths. The Pimlico stewards took only 15 minutes to disqualify the Dancer and make Forward Pass's victory official--thereby giving the Calumet Farm colt two legs on racing's Triple Crown.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.