Coach Cody Axmaker said April 12 that he has filed appeals for two consecutive year-long suspensions and a $2,500 fine due to Monmouth Park managers involved one of his horses died of an apparent clenbuterol overdose last May.
The manager’s ruling posted on the New Jersey Racing Commission’s website said Carrol Stubbs’ Wishful died “on or about May 9,”, four or five days after she arrived in Monmouth for stabilization for meeting in 2021. According to Axmaker, she and the other horses he trained were inadvertently fed clenbuterol, a vessel that Axmaker believed had been mistakenly placed on Monmouth’s property.
Clenbuterol, usually given orally as a syrup, is a medication that can be used therapeutically to assist horses with breathing difficulties. However, critics say the drug has been abused due to its muscle-building properties, prompting many regulators and some racetracks to implement restrictive measures to limit its use. in addition to treating horses with lower airway disease.
Wishful, a daughter of Storm Wolf Axmaker, who was 6 years old last May, had abdominal pain but appeared to be cured before she was found dead in the barn days after exposure, Axmaker said. He said his other 14 horses recovered with adequate water intake and after being treated with acepromazine, a sedative.
He said he informed the Monmouth coroner of what happened the day after taking clenbuterol, and that his other horses were given time and tested to see if the drug worked. clean their system before racing or not.
Axmaker, 33, has trained in many states, including Florida and Arizona, where he was a top coach at Arizona DownS.
“Hopefully they let me stay and I can fight it. It was all an honest mistake,” Axmaker said of his appeal before the New Jersey Racing Commission. “We don’t intend to offer anything, any of them clenbuterol. It’s been in there from previous songs I’ve been there allowing it. I’m new at Monmouth. I didn’t think anything of it. I wasn’t planning on having it removed. It ended up not being lifted, and now I’m in a (troubled) world because of it.”
Stewards issued a one-year suspension and a fine for possession of a clenbuterol container in the area of his stabbing, and an equivalent suspension and fine for failing to fulfill “his obligations as a trainer to protect and guard unwanted horses against the use of prohibited substances.” If he fails to stay or successfully appeals, he must serve a suspended sentence from May 7, 2022 to May 6, 2024.
“I was going to Delaware,” he said. “I don’t know, these could put me out of work.”
Axmaker is currently training at Tampa Bay Downs.
The ruling said the jar of clenbuterol “may be labeled aloe vera” and that Axmaker “instructed its permanent staff to administer aloe vera.” Axmaker objected to that part of the ruling, saying that the bottle’s label was damaged by age, leaving no label. He said clenbuterol was given to him by a veterinarian in Arizona many years ago.
“I didn’t feel (clenbuterol) harmful,” says Axmaker. “I used it correctly before. It’s just to clear the lungs, their mucus. If you have a horse that is bleeding, it helps to clear their lungs and keep them in the cage.”
Although the ruling on the New Jersey Racing Commission’s website is due on February 16, following a hearing on December 7, Axmaker said he only received word of his sanction three days ago.
“I’m trying to feel the attraction and see what happens. I don’t know if I can win the match,” Axmaker said.
