The excuses for positive drug results by trainers and/or their lawyers are getting way out of hand. Surely, they must think that when they cover their eyes, we will not be able to see. “Inadvertent exposure to a medication from an unknown source” is as good as it gets. The trainer and his team are responsible for the amount of drug in the horse’s system.

No positive drug result is expressed as the amount of drug present. It is always expressed as “concentration” - amount of drug per unit volume of either urine or blood. For example, when a trainer barks that the horse only had 1.6 nanograms of drug present that could not be further from the truth. In fact, the real result was more like 1.6 ng/mL (1.6 nanograms of drug/mL of urine).

This is not an insignificant amount. Over a 24-hour period a horse probably passes more than 5 liters of urine. One liter is 1,000 mL.
If one assumes that the excretion of a drug is constant over a 24-hour period, this implies that the horse will pass 8,000 nanograms of the drug. That is not “a grain of salt in Lake Saratoga”.

Remember, we have no clue as to how much drug was originally given. Likewise, we do not know when it was given - how long before the drug test.

Todd Pletcher is a very good trainer with a talented organization and they are entrusted with talented horseflesh. When the crew attempts to administer a drug too close to race time in order to get the maximum performance for the race they are responsible for the mistake. The drug may be legal for training, but not for racing. The trainer is responsible.