Originally published in The Snitch on April 23, 2003. 

By Billy Reed
Snitch Contributing Writer
April 23, 2003

I must confess up front that my relationship with Dr. Alex Harthill didn’t exactly begin on a happy note. It was on the backstretch at Churchill Downs on May, 9, 1968. The winner of that year’s Kentucky Derby, Dancer’s Image, had been disqualified because a then-illegal medication had been detected in his post-race urine test. Harthill, his attending veterinarian, immediately became Suspect No. 1 because of his long history of scrapes with racing authorities in Kentucky, Illinois, Louisiana, Ohio and New York.

At the time, Harthill had an office and a laboratory in Barn 24 at Churchill, the only vet allowed such privileges. My editors at The Courier-Journal wanted to know more about what the barn looked like, where his office was in relation to the stall of Dancer’s Image, what any of the other occupants might have to say. So, armed with notebook, pen and camera, I headed out to Churchill to see what I could find.

I walked around the barn and snapped photos from various angles. I interviewed some of the grooms and hotwalkers, but got nothing. With my mission accomplished, I was heading back to my car when I heard an angry voice yell, "Hey!" Turning, I saw at figure moving rapidly toward me. I knew from his photos that it was Harthill, but I decided to play it cool.

I moved toward him and smilingly extended my hand.

"I’m Billy Reed from The Courier-Journal," I said. "You must be Dr. Harthill."

The next thing I knew, I was flat on my back. Harthill had grabbed my right hand and coldcocked me with his left. My glasses had been knocked off. I had dropped my camera. And through the fog, I was aware of Harthill standing above me, screaming something about how he knew that I had gone to Mexico to investigate some sort of gambling coup. (He was wrong, but I appreciated him giving me something to think about.)

Harthill is a hot-tempered, violent man whom University of Louisville basketball coach Peck Hickman once accused of attacking him with a blackjack in an argument over a parking space. (The case was eventually settled out of court.) I was a four-eyed newspaper reporter who hadn’t been in a fight since elementary school. As he continued screaming at me, I slowly got up, located my glasses and camera, and headed for my car.

When I got back to the office and reported what had happened, I was told to type up a report. The managing editor told me the paper would file charges if I wanted. I said it was up to the paper, which curiously declined to file charges or even report the incident in its news columns.

A couple of months later, when I went to work for Sports Illustrated in New York City, the magazine did a publisher’s memo about me and reported the story for the first time. And I’ll never forget what Jerry Tax, a senior editor, told me on my first official working day.

"If something like that ever happens to you while you’re working for us," he said, "you let me know and we’ll have the New York attorney general on the S.O.B’s doorstep in an hour."

The quest

So it was then that I became Ahab, chasing the great white whale, or Sherlock Holmes, pursuing the elusive Dr. Moriarity. It has mostly been an exercise in futility. I don’t have a vendetta against the good doctor, although I’m sure he would disagree. What I do have is a reporter’s burning desire to know the truth.

Harthill, arguably, is one of the most significant characters in the history of American sport. In no other major professional sport does an owner, manager, coach, trainer or doctor have the ability, through working with several entrants in the same event, to directly affect the outcome. The only analogy is a referee accepting a bribe to make a couple of calls, or non-calls, to rig the outcome of a Super Bowl or NCAA tournament championship game, two mega-events that attract as many gambling dollars - or more - than even the Derby.

If Harthill has been meddling with the Derby for more than 50 years, as the evidence strongly suggests, his best protection is the outrageous boldness and audacity of the possibility. To most racing people, it’s incomprehensible that Harthill, or anybody, would do something to make sure a certain horse did - or didn’t - win the world’s most popular and heavily-bet-upon race. (Last year more than $100 million was bet worldwide).

Yet, it would be laughably easy. All you need is, say, a crooked veterinarian who’s willing to administer a stimulant or a depressant to a heavy favorite. Maybe he could enlist the help of a couple of jockeys who value their tax-free take from a gambling coup more than the prestige of winning the Kentucky Derby.

"Can you imagine," said trainer Jimmy Croll in a 1997 interview with the Los Angeles Times, "how much money is to be made if you knew - if you knew for sure - that the favorite was going to run off the board in the Kentucky Derby?"

Croll trained Holy Bull, the 6-to-5 favorite in the 1994 Derby who ran the worst race of his career, finishing a dull 12th to Go for Gin. He went on to become that year’s Horse of the Year.

"They got to my horse," Croll said. "I know more than ever that Holy Bull was drugged."

Croll wouldn’t say who "they" were, but he found it curious that the stewards at Churchill Downs didn’t order a urine test on his horse after the Derby, which is standard operating procedure when a solid favorite runs so horribly. He also mentioned that an individual who wasn’t on his payroll was involved in a drug investigation in Kentucky about a year and a half after the ‘94 Derby. One of the drugs in question was Halcion, a strong sedative that sometimes is given to heart patients.

"I’ve had heart problems and I know Halcion," Croll said. "They give it to you to put you to sleep. This guy in Kentucky was called in because he had 4,000 Halcion pills without a prescription. They let him go, but he was someone in a position to get to my horse."

And who might that someone have been?

Well, in January of 1996, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration filed suit against Dr. Alex Harthill and his wife, Mary Alice, in U.S. District Court, Western District of Kentucky, on 102 charges of ordering unusual quantities of controlled drugs that are not usually prescribed for horses, such as sleeping pills, painkillers and amphetamines. The suit sought $2.5 million in penalties and an order that Harthill be required to keep accurate records of controlled drugs.

The case was settled out of court.

Asked about Croll’s comments, Bernie Hettel, chief state steward and executive chairman of the State Racing Commission, said that not testing Holy Bull "probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do," but added, "That whole Derby is a non-issue now."

So continued the conspiracy of silence that has long existed among horsemen, track officials and the industry media when it comes to Harthill and the Derby. Even those who fear and loathe Harthill don’t want to say or do anything that might damage the romantic history of the world’s most renowned horse race.

But Harthill, known as "The Godfather" on the backstretch for all the favors he’s done for horseman at little or no charge, has his admirers, too.

Charlie Whittingham, who won the Derby with Ferdinand in 1986 and Sunday Silence in ‘89, is one, as is Lynn Whiting, trainer of 1992 Derby winner Lil E. Tee.

"It helps to have Dr. Harthill on your team," Whiting said. "He’s the best there is. And if a problem develops that he can’t solve, he knows somebody who can fix it."

Whenever I see Harthill on the backstretch, he smiles and waves. I can’t escape the feeling that he’s laughing at me, secure in the knowledge that he has secrets I’ll never know.

All I know for sure is that today, at 77, Harthill is still treating Derby horses, and I’m still adding to my bulging file of facts, rumors, theories, coincidences, and circumstantial evidence.

The phantom of the opera

My interest in Harthill, never dormant, was ignited again in 2001 by a remarkable interview that he gave Jay Hovdey of the Daily Racing Form. Harthill teased those of us who have been interested in his career by admitting that, before the 1964 Derby, he gave Northern Dancer a then-illegal, anti-bleeding medication known as Lasix (now used by an estimated 95 percent of the horses in training).

"Security was following me, though," Harthill told Hovdey, "so I got a vet I know from out of town to come along with me. I told him I was going to turn to the right, and he would go that way and take this little syringe down to Barn 24, stall 23, and give this to that horse. There would be a guy there named Will. He’d be waiting. So he did it, while the gendarmes followed me. They were following the mystique."

And the mystique helped Northern Dancer hold off Hill Rise’s challenge by a nose in one of the most exciting stretch runs in Derby history.

Harthill’s story about Northern Dancer brought all the old questions bubbling back to the surface. Are we expected to believe this was the first and only time he ever pulled such a stunt? Puh-leeze. We’re talking about a man who treated virtually every Derby winner, and several of the leading contenders, from 1948 through ‘68. But then came the Dancer’s Image case, which finally flushed Harthill out of the Derby’s shadows and exposed him to the glare of public scrutiny.

He did not come off well.

Dancer’s Image is the only Derby winner to ever be disqualified. A then-illegal anti-inflammatory drug known as Butazolidin (which became legal in Kentucky and most racing jurisdictions soon after the scandal) was detected in his post-race urine and blood tests.

To this day, Peter Fuller, the Boston millionaire who owned Dancer’s Image, believes that Harthill was involved in a plot to steal the race from his horse and ensure that Calumet Farm’s Forward Pass, the runner-up, was officially declared the winner. The legal stink dragged on for 4-1/2 years, costing Fuller far more than the ‘68 Derby winner’s purse of $165,100, and in the end, he and Dancer’s Image lost again.

But could have there been a precedent?

Well, in Louisiana in 1954, Harthill was accused of bribing a state official, the chemist at the Fair Grounds track, to throw away a positive test from a horse that he had treated. Although the chemist was working as an undercover agent for the state police, a jury eventually acquitted Harthill, who nevertheless lost his Louisiana veterinarian’s license for a year or so.

On Derby night, 1968, maybe somebody employed by the state chemist was supposed to toss the tests of Dancer’s Image. Or perhaps one of Harthill’s employees, who accompanied the colt to the detention barn and stayed with him while he had trouble urinating, did something to the sample. Or perhaps there was an error in the testing procedure. Who knows? But when chief state steward Lewis Finley phoned Harthill on the Sunday after the Derby - highly unethical conduct, by the way - to tell him about the positive test, the vet’s reaction was to concoct a bizarre scheme that would have made Lou Cavalaris, the trainer of Dancer’s Image, the fall guy. Harthill’s houseguest that weekend was, by the way, Milo Valenzuela, the jockey who rode Forward Pass.

On the Monday night after the Derby, before news of the disqualification, Harthill and one of his cronies, trainer Doug Davis, went to Barn 24, where Dancer’s Image was still stabled, and "salted" his feed with a powdered white substance. When they were caught in the act, they claimed they were trying to test Cavalaris’ honesty.

Even if that lame alibi were true, Cavalaris passed the test. He immediately reported the incident to racing authorities, who had no choice but to call Harthill and Davis on the carpet. After a perfunctory hearing, the State Racing Commission fined them each $500. Chump change. Of course, Harthill was not fined, or even chastised, for slugging a reporter from the state’s largest newspaper.

Reflecting on those, shall we say, "Halcion" days in his interview with Hovdey, Harthill said, intriguingly, "Everything (drugs) went through a transition period of being detected. The thing everyone wanted to find out was what didn’t show at the time. It was just part of the game, ever since I can remember. Everybody was looking for an edge. I don’t care who it was. A trainer would say, ‘Don’t get me caught, but keep me worried.’"