Horse Racing’s Rossi Family Busted By French Cops on Suspicion of Doping

French authorities on Tuesday arrested trine members of I of France’s frontmost racehorse-training families on suspicion of doping and fraud, Le Parisien reports.

Cédric Rossi, on with his uncle, Fréderic, and brother, Charley, were taken into custody at their grooming centre of attention inward Calas, near Marseilles.

Meanwhile, inward a co-ordinated raid in Paris, police force detained Charley Rossi’s partner, teetotum Italian jockey Jessica Marcialis. Eleven others were arrested in the Paris swoop, among them vets, trainers, and jockeys.

The raids were carried out by agents of the Service Central des Courses et Jeux (SCCJ), a arm of the subject law that investigates gambling crimes.

Win or Die Trying

The Rossi family hold been major players inwards French people Equus caballus racing for 3 generations, and has lately been real successful. Its stalls star, Sealiway, won the Group 1 Champion Stakes at Ascot cobbler's last October, earning the sept £714,500 (US$943,000).

Last year, Marcialis became the 1st female person jockey to win a Group 1 race, the highest level off of thoroughbred racing. She rode Tiger Tanaka to victory at the Prix Marcel Boussac at Longchamp. The Equus caballus was trained by her partner, Charley Rossi.

But Le Parisien suggested the family’s success has raised suspicion inward racing circles, coupled with recent deaths of their horses on the raceway and during training.

Following a ten-month investigation involving electronic and human surveillance, the SCCJ suspects the Rossis of orchestrating “an organized system of rules of Equus caballus doping,” according to Le Parisien.

France Galop, the organic structure that oversees racing in France, said inward a statement that the fight against doping was an “absolute priority” for the racing industry, which pumps €10 billion (US$11.3 million) a twelvemonth into preventative measures.

These include administering 30,000 doping tests per yr on racehorses, which are carried come out before races, in training, and at rivet farms. Many are unannounced, said Jacques Anatole Francois Thibault Galop.

Medina Spirit

The arrests came simply a twenty-four hour period after the death of Medina Spirit, the gymnastic horse at the snapper of the doping arguing at this year’s Kentucky Derby. The colt is believed to have got suffered a pump round spell training at Santa Anita inward CA on Monday.

Medina Spirit failed a doping run shortly after winning the derby inward May. Trainer Bob Baffert denies doping, blaming the psychometric test ensue on an unguent he had used to treat a efflorescence on the horse.

Meanwhile, inwards September, trainer Jorge Navarro pleaded hangdog to administering public presentation enhancing drugs to horses under his care. He has agreed to make up $25.9 jillion inward restitution, representing the amount he won from races where he admitted his horses were doped. He is currently awaiting tutelar sentence.

Navarro was I of dozens arrested endure year for complicity inward a long-running doping scheme. Also among them was Jason Servis, the trainer of Maximum Security, who appeared to win the 2019 Bluegrass State Derby before beingness disqualified for interference.

Servis denies the charges and is awaiting trial.