by Natalie Voss • Copyright © 2025 Blenheim Publishing LLC/PaulickReport.com. Reprinted with permission.
Keeton is one of several Quarter Horse trainers facing potentially substantial suspensions and fines after getting positives for carmoterol in multiple states.
Toby Keeton, trainer of last year’s Quarter Horse Triple Crown winner Hezgothelook Z, has brought a civil lawsuit in Bernalillo County Court against the New Mexico Racing Commission and NMRC records custodian Richard Bustamante. Keeton makes multiple allegations against the NMRC and Bustamante, including claims that the regulator has withheld information subject to a public records act request, that it is forcing him to use an inappropriate split sample lab, and raising questions about the commission’s post-race drug testing.
Keeton is one of four Quarter Horse trainers facing potentially lengthy suspensions and hefty fines after he had runners in Texas and New Mexico test positive for carmoterol, including last year’s Grade 1 All-American Futurity winner. The victory last Labor Day by Hezgothelook Z made the horse the first Quarter Horse Triple Crown winner since the 1980s. Keeton is also facing carmoterol positives in Texas from last year’s Lone Star Park Quarter Horse meet. He has been summarily suspended in both New Mexico and Texas.
Carmoterol is a beta agonist which was experimentally tested as a bronchodilator but ultimately not approved for human use in the United States. Beta agonists are known to produce anabolic-like effects on muscle growth when administered to horses repeatedly. Other beta agonists that have been a focus for regulators include albuterol, clenbuterol, and zilpaterol. There is no approved equine version of carmoterol. As such, the substance is a Class 1 substance with an A penalty – the most severe.
According to his lawsuit, Keeton plans to allege that because the chemical formula for carmoterol is the same as the chemical formula for the allergy medication cetrizine (commonly sold as Zyrtec), the testing methods used could have misidentified the substance detected, and instead may have just found Zyrtec that was an environmental contaminant. The two substances do have the same chemical formulas, (like many drugs) but their components are arranged differently. According to a drug testing professional contacted by the Paulick Report, a chemical formula determines the mass of one molecule of a substance, which is part of what post-race testing methods examine – they compare the mass of an identified molecule to a catalogue of known masses and look for a match. LC/MS and MS screening, which is what was used on Keeton’s samples, also examines a molecule’s retention time as it passes through a liquid chromatography column. That retention time varies depending on the structure, not just the chemical formula, of each molecule. Differences in chemical structure account for the different effects carmoterol and Zyrtec would have on a horse or human body.
Keeton also alleges that his attorneys submitted requests for information to the NMRC under the state’s public information law, called the Inspect Public Records Act. In his complaint, he says the commission exceeded the time permitted by law to respond, after giving itself extensions of time without explaining why they were needed. Then, Keeton’s legal team claims, the documents they received back seemed to be scant and missing correspondence they’d anticipated based on the terms of NMRC’s contract with Industrial Labs.
Some email correspondence that was turned over to Keeton appeared to be forwarded from NMRC executive director Izzy Trejo to Bustamante to fulfill the request, but was missing the original sender and recipients’ names and email addresses.
One email that was provided in response to Keeton’s public information request was a note dated Feb. 18, 2025, whose sender and recipient were unclear and which read “Tobby [sic] Keeton had a horse with the 4th fastest time today it was haul off in bad shape and has now been euthanized Dr. Lowe is getting samples. He another false broke into the gate and lost an enormous amount of blood and was blind also euthanized earlier this evening.”
Email exchanges also revealed that New Mexico officials reached out to testing experts in Hong Kong in November 2024 about “post-race blood/and or urine supplemental testing” though it remains unclear what, if any role, a Hong Kong lab may have had in detecting carmoterol.
Finally, Keeton’s lawyers assert that NMRC is forcing the trainer to use UC-Davis as his split sample testing lab. UC-Davis did the testing for the Texas Racing Commission that resulted in Keeton’s carmoterol positives in that state. According to Keeton’s narrative, UC-Davis and Industrial both engineered new tests to look for carmoterol, and Keeton is challenging the testing validity of UC-Davis’ test in his ongoing appeal in Texas. (He lost an appeal of his summary suspension after a preliminary hearing in Texas.) He had given the NMRC a list of preferred labs to do split sample testing for his carmoterol positives in New Mexico, but was told those labs refused to take the sample and the only option for him would be to send the New Mexico split samples to UC-Davis, the Texas-contracted lab.
Laboratories have the authority to decline to do split sample analyses if they believe they don’t have the personnel, or if they believe they don’t have the necessary testing technology to adequately detect the suspected substance in a sample.
Keeton’s suit says that “UC-Davis therefore failed to satisfy the requirements of neutrality and impartiality and could not function as a split laboratory in this matter” and that “the split-laboratory process risks using the entire remainder of the post-race samples taken from the horses at issue, at which point the possibility of additional testing to verify that UC-Davis and Industrial are (or are not) distinguishing carmoterol from similar compounds will be irrevocably lost.”
Keeton is seeking a temporary injunction directing the NMRC to obtain laboratory data packets, preventing the NMRC from sending the splits to UC-Davis, and directing the NMRC to release the splits to him for additional testing. He is also seeking an injunction directing the production of documents, statutory penalties of $100 per day from Feb. 18, 2025, until “full compliance” with his records request, and compensatory damages as well as costs and attorney fees.
Keetin is being represented by attorneys Billy R. Blackburn, Clark Brewster, and Joseph De Angelis. Civil complaints represent only one side of a dispute. The NMRC has yet to file its response, and none of Keeton’s filings have been ruled on by a judge as of this writing.
