Horse racing finally got what everyone said we needed: a national authority, uniform rules, one rulebook instead of fifty. On paper, HISA and HIWU were supposed to clean up the game, restore integrity, and make sure the next Jason Servis or Jorge Navarro didn’t slip through the cracks.
In reality? They stumbled out of the gate, hit the rail a few times, and now we’re all wondering if the stewards are even watching the same race we are.
The Law Is “In Effect” – But Still on Trial
Let’s start with the big picture.
HISA’s racetrack safety rules have been in place since July 1, 2022, and the Anti-Doping and Medication Control (ADMC) program since May 22, 2023. On the ground, that means horsemen are being tested, charged, suspended, and fined under this new national regime.
At the same time, the law itself is still running through the court system like a bad inquiry.
The Fifth Circuit originally said HISA was unconstitutional under the private non-delegation doctrine. Congress tweaked the statute, giving the FTC more oversight, and the Fifth Circuit came back and said, “Okay, parts of this still look unconstitutional,” especially on the enforcement side. Other circuits have upheld the law. So we’ve got a classic circuit split.
In October 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court granted a stay that kept HISA rules in force while it decided what to do with the various challenges. Then, in June 2025, the Court granted, vacated, and remanded several HISA cases back to the Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Circuits to re-evaluate in light of a new decision (FCC v. Consumers’ Research).
Translation in plain English:
HISA is still operating nationwide, horsemen are still being disciplined under it, but the very structure of the law is still under constitutional fire. The Authority is in charge on paper, but it’s still arguing in court over whether it’s allowed to be.
That’s shaky ground to build a “new era of integrity” on.
Uniform Rules, Uneven Outcomes
HISA loves the word “uniform.” Uniform national rules. Uniform testing. Uniform enforcement.
On the backside, a lot of us see something very different: uniform language, non-uniform outcomes.
You can line up rulings that involve the same substance and see:
- Different penalties,
- Different timelines,
- Different treatment of contamination,
- Different approach to context.
Metformin is the poster child for that.
The Metformin Mess: Contamination, Lab Issues, and a Moving Goalpost
Metformin is a human diabetes drug. It’s also used in horses for metabolic issues. It is not some secret rocket fuel PED. It’s in the barn environment any time a groom, hotwalker, or exercise rider is diabetic and using it. That’s not theory; that’s just a fact.
Under HISA, metformin was labeled a Banned Substance, full stop. No threshold. No distinction between contamination and intentional administration. If they could find it, you were dead in the water.
Then the cracks started to show:
- HIWU did an internal review and discovered their own accredited labs weren’t using the same limit of detection for metformin in blood. A positive in one lab might not have even been reported by another. Ouch.
- As a result, they lifted provisional suspensions and withdrew charges against at least two trainers (Guadalupe Munoz Elizondo and Javier Morzan) because, under the updated limit of detection, those “positives” wouldn’t have been positives at all. Eeeeek.
Then you have Jonathan Wong.
Wong’s filly Heaven and Earth tested positive for metformin after a win at Horseshoe Indianapolis on June 1, 2023. HIWU provisionally suspended him and charged him under the Banned Substance rule. He fought it. He went to arbitration. When the dust settled, Wong got:
- Two-year suspension
- $25,000 fine
- ~$8,000 in arbitration costs
Owners say they’ve spent hundreds of thousands fighting the case. He moved his operation to Louisiana, where HISA doesn’t apply, and then a Louisiana federal judge dismissed his lawsuit against HISA and the FTC on jurisdiction grounds.
Now, here’s the kicker:
In October 2023, HIWU standardized metformin’s limit of detection across labs to prevent exactly this kind of inconsistency. In 2024, scientific work for the USTA and others laid out clearly how easily metformin can transfer environmentally. And just this week, HISA’s ADMC Committee proposed a minimum reporting level of 4.0 ng/mL in blood for metformin – explicitly to distinguish real administration from incidental exposure.
In other words, they’re finally admitting what horsemen have been screaming: trace metformin at vanishingly small levels often means nothing.
But the people who got hammered under the old line? Suspensions, ruined reputations, six-figure legal bills? They’re just collateral damage in the “evolution” of the system.
Bob Baffert, Medina Spirit, and the Irony Nobody Wants to Talk About
You can’t talk about HISA, HIWU, and uneven enforcement without talking about Bob Baffert and Medina Spirit.
Medina Spirit crossed the line first in the 2021 Kentucky Derby, then tested positive for 21 picograms of betamethasone, a legal corticosteroid that was prohibited at any level on race day in Kentucky at the time.Courier Journal+1
It was later confirmed the drug came from Otomax ointment, a topical used to treat a skin condition, not from an injection.khrc.ky.gov+2Let’s Go Racing Parx+2
Result:
- Medina Spirit disqualified from the Derby
- Baffert got a 90-day Kentucky suspension and was fined
- Churchill Downs hammered him with a two-year house ban, later extended through 2024 before finally being lifted ahead of the 2025 Kentucky Derby.
He was dragged through the mud nationally. “Face of everything wrong with racing.” “Integrity crisis.” You know the drill. Fortunately for Bob, cream always rises to the top and he was able to overcome the bloody aftermath. Not everyone can. He won the Preakness when allowed to return to the classics and has not stopped winning on the biggest stages since. Just like before.
Now look at where we are:
HISA treats betamethasone as a controlled medication, not a banned black-and-white death sentence. It’s regulated with screening limits and permitted in certain contexts, including routine timed workouts, so long as you’re under specific blood thresholds.assets.hiwu.org+1
So the same basic class of drug that got a Derby winner taken down and a Hall of Fame trainer tarred and feathered is now folded into a “properly regulated” regime, with thresholds and timing guidance instead of zero-tolerance absolutism.
You can call that progress. You can also call it irony and hypocrisy, depending on how much money and reputation you lost in the process.
Trace Levels, Whip Strikes, and the Illusion of Control
The other thing HISA and HIWU lean on hard is “optics” enforcement – things that are easy to see, easy to count, and easy to sell as “getting tough,” even if they don’t do a thing to catch real cheaters.
Trace-level positives are one piece of that.
Whip counts are another.
Under HISA’s crop rule, jockeys are allowed six strikes. Go over that, and the penalty chart lights up. We’ve already seen:
- Junior Alvarado, winning the 2025 Kentucky Derby on Sovereignty, fined $62,000 (20% of his Derby purse) and suspended two days for using the whip eight times – two over the limit, and his second violation in 180 days.
- Umberto Rispoli, winning the 2025 Haskell on Journalism, fined $6,000 and suspended one day for eight strikes, again just two over the limit.
Are there riders who abuse the crop? Absolutely.
Do you want guardrails? Of course. Personally I can’t mention anything about the current crop and strike count rules without pointing out they’re little more than optics. The Stewards have always had the authority to call in and penalize any rider for misusing the whip or crop including excessive use or improper use. They just need to do their jobs.
But when we’re counting two extra taps in a Grade 1 that decides careers, and the punishment is a gigantic fine and a suspension, you have to ask: is this about horse welfare, or about showing the world we’re “doing something”?
Same with picogram and nanogram positives for drugs that:
- Have no proven performance effect at those trace levels,
- Have clear pathways for environmental transfer,
- Are being actively re-classified or given thresholds as the science catches up.
Meanwhile, the real cheaters?
The Servis and Navarro crowd weren’t caught because a lab picked up a microscopic contamination level. They were taken down by the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office after a multi-year investigation into widespread, systematic doping and misbranding of illegal performance-enhancing drugs like SGF-1000 and clenbuterol. A deeper look reveals Five Stones Investigations hired at the time by the Jockey Club built the case and handed it off to the Feds as a slam dunk. I don’t know the Feds would have bothered with it otherwise, and now it at least appears as if their attitude is it is HISA’s problem.
Wiretaps. Undercover work. Federal charges. Prison time.
That’s what it took to catch the “super trainers.” Not an over-the-limit whip strike and a $62,000 fine.
If you think counting hits and nuking guys on metformin trace findings is going to find the next Servis or Navarro, you’re kidding yourself. If you think a sport involving this kind of money can be policed let alone regulated by people with no guns and handcuffs walking into the barn areas you’re a fool. That can’t happen. That won’t happen. It doesn’t matter what the budget is, when you get into the real cheaters, “the juicers” without a real threat of imminent criminal prosecution you won’t phase them. Criminals don’t like fines but they don’t fear them either.
Economic Sorting: Who Really Gets “Due Process”?
On paper, everyone charged under HISA’s ADMC rules has the right to a hearing and an appeal.
In practice, that right comes with a cover charge:
- Lawyers
- Scientific experts
- Lab consultants
- Arbitration fees
- Months (or years) of uncertainty
Trainers with deep-pocket owners can fight. They can appeal, challenge lab methods, push for reductions, and sometimes get meaningful relief.
Trainers without that backing? They get what the book says, or worse — because they can’t afford to test the edges of the system. This is not limited to HISA and horse racing, this is our judicial system, and it is better than most while far from perfect. You can beat the case but the case always beats you too.
We’ve already seen owners publicly admit spending over $600,000 defending a trainer in a metformin case. That might be “the cost of doing business” to someone flying private jets to Saratoga; it’s ruinous to the guy hustling in $10,000 claimers.
Justice that depends on your legal budget isn’t justice. That’s economic sorting dressed up as regulation.
The Part Everyone’s Afraid to Say Out Loud
Here’s the ugly truth nobody in a press release will spell out:
HISA and HIWU are big, expensive machines.
- Staff, lawyers, labs, administrators, communications people, consultants – it all costs real money.
- They need to show “results” to justify that spend: more positives, more rulings, more numbers in annual reports, more bullet points about “protecting integrity.”
That incentive structure naturally leans toward:
- Easier cases (trace positives, technical violations, whip counts),
- Trainers who can’t fight back as hard,
- Substances that are easier to detect than to contextualize.
I’m not saying they wake up in the morning plotting to nail small barns. I am saying the system is built in a way that makes it a lot easier to nail them than to crack a sophisticated doping ring.
And racing, as usual, is letting the little guys absorb most of the pain while pretending that equals “integrity.”
What This Was Supposed to Be – And What It Still Could Be
When we talked about a national authority, this is what a lot of us hoped for:
- Go after the real cheaters using real PEDs like SGF-1000 and designer drugs
- Use modern investigative tools, not just tests and thresholds
- Harmonize the rules with real science
- Give horsemen clear, workable guidance
- Build trust with bettors so they feel they’re betting into a clean game
Instead, we got:
- A law still being fought in federal court over who really has the power
- Metformin and other “environmental” problems turning into career-defining suspensions
- Retroactive acknowledgments that labs weren’t even using the same detection limits
- Whip rules that look more like a PR strategy than a serious integrity tool
- Punishments that feel wildly out of sync with both the science and common sense
The Servis and Navarro case showed us what real corruption looks like. HISA didn’t catch them. The FBI did. Albeit with some Five Stones help.
If HISA and HIWU want to be more than a very expensive optics machine, they have to stop treating every trace reading like a felony and start focusing their firepower on the kind of systematic doping that actually endangers horses, riders, and the game itself.
My Bottom Line
I’m not anti-regulation. I’m anti bad regulation. I was extremely pro HISA at first and I still am. I felt our shot at self regulating had left the building. I thought the government oversight wouldn’t be as complicated as many feared and warned.
I don’t want a sport where trainers can do whatever they want. I want a sport where the rules make sense, the science is respected, the penalties are proportionate, and the people enforcing the rules understand the difference between a diabetic groom’s pill dust and a lab-engineered performance enhancer.
Right now, HISA and HIWU are somewhere between good intentions and bad execution. They’ve got uniform rules, but not uniform justice. They’re swinging hard at optics and easy targets while the real legacy of Servis and Navarro—sophisticated, organized, financially motivated cheating—still looms over the game.
Racing needed a strong, smart, credible national integrity body.
What we got, so far, is one that stumbled out of the gate and hasn’t quite found its stride.
They can still fix it.
They can embrace real science on substances like metformin, continue to refine thresholds, bring true transparency to rulings, and put their investigative muscle where it belongs: on the people genuinely trying to beat the system, not the ones caught in its blind spots.
But if they don’t?
The people who’ve carried this sport – the horsemen, the owners, the grooms, and yes, the bettors – are going to keep walking. And once they leave, no amount of legalese, lab reports, or whip-count spreadsheets is going to bring them back.
