Track record too good
He’s too good for his own good.
A harness-racing trainer who burst on the scene last year and is clobbering the field was shown the barn door last week by Yon kers Raceway, where he’s racked up an astounding 39 percent win ning record this year.
Horseman Lou Pena’s 242 victo ries — triple the 82 of the next- best trainer in the last seven months — have spurred scandal and suspicion at the prestige trotter track, where officials began a flurry of tests to see if he was doping his animals.
No evidence of him using banned substances has been found, prompt ing Pena, 42, to believe he was booted because of his dominance.
“Officials told me, ‘Slow down. Don’t win so much.’ I’m like, you’ve got to be kidding me,” said the trainer, a native of Mexico whose stable in Manalapan, NJ, handles about 100 horses, including Flirt Is cape, a 7-year-old mare who’s won about half of her 100 career races and earned some $500,000.
“I’m crushing the opposition — it’s totally technique training — and these people are crying; they’re not happy. I’ve become the most hated man on earth. If you’re good, you must be bad.”
On July 29, Pena said he was phoned by Yonkers Racing Secre tary Steve Starr, who told him, “For the best interests of the sport, you must leave.”
“I was shocked,” Pena recalled. “I thought it was a joke.”
It wasn’t. He’s out with more than four months left in the sea son at Yonkers, a private opera tion that reserves the right to bar anyone for any reason.
Officials refused to answer a reporter’s questions and instead issued a statement: “At this time, we do not feel it is in our best business interest to have Mr. Pena participate at Yonkers Raceway,” said track VP Bob Galterio.
Pena’s numbers are unprecedented. He’s been the top trainer the last two years at both Yonkers and the Meadowlands, having won more than $13 million in purses. His horses finished in the money 44 percent of the time.
And though he races at only a handful of tracks on the East Coast since moving here from California in 2009, he nearly leads the nation in wins — 439 first-place finishes out of 1,379 starts. He’s behind only Ronald Burke, who has 449 wins in 2,151 starts.
“Louie has been banned solely because of his success,” said a top racing official who asked not to be identified.
The suspicions about Pena, in a sport plagued for years by doping allegations, were fueled in part by Pena’s past.
His horses have had 12 positive tests since 1991, including one in 2000 in California for clenbuterol, a nonsteroid treatment to help clear lungs that the state was in the process of approving for use, but was officially not allowed at the time. He was suspended for two months. The drug soon after got the OK.
The others were for exceeding the limits on approved and commonly used medications.
“If Louie is caught cheating, they should suspend him from every track for life,” the official said. “But out of his 3,000 starts, you have two or three minor violations.
“The message here is, you can succeed, but don’t be too successful.”
