Pimentals Glad To Be Back On Track, But Dealing With the Aftershocks Of a 15-Month HIWU Suspension

[Wandering Eyes]

Without much notice or attention–the way he prefers it–lifelong racetracker John Pimental is easing back into a sense of shedrow normalcy as spring morphs into summer at Monmouth Park.

“It feels good to be back to working–making a living again,” Pimental told TDN one recent afternoon before feeding time.

The 70-year-old trainer has five Thoroughbreds bedded down in the same barn his former outfit of eight occupied on the morning of July 28, 2023, when agents for the Horseracing Integrity and Welfare Unit (HIWU) descended upon the modest racing stable he had run for five decades with his wife, Diana.

John, a second-generation horseman who had never incurred any medication run-ins with any state racing commission authorities, was shocked to be served with a federal violation alleging that a gelding he owned had tested positive for 193 picograms per milliliter of methamphetamine, a human drug of abuse classified as a “banned” substance.

The couple's troubles grew exponentially worse when a HIWU search of their vehicle turned up Levothyroxine, another banned substance.

Faced with being ruled off for three years and a $25,000 fine (18 months and $12,500 per violation), John was one of the first trainers in the summer of 2023 to attempt to navigate the unfamiliar framework of the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority (HISA)'s new Anti-Doping and Medication Control Program (ADMC).

HIWU had just started implementing the ADMC one week before Golovkin–sixth and last in a $5,000 claiming sprint–tested positive for meth on May 29, 2023.

Nothing in John's five decades of owning, training, working as an outrider and ponying starters at tracks up and down the East Coast had prepared him for trying to defend himself against charges he feared might end the only livelihood he had ever known.

The Pimentals believed, but could not prove, that Golovkin's meth positive was a case of inadvertent contamination from contact with something or someone who had handled the gelding between the post parade and the test barn.

And while they freely admitted they should not have had any Thyro-L on track property, they tried to explain it was an instance of not realizing a repackaged, three-year-old container of prescription medicine for their 17-year-old pony, Richard, was buried amid the clutter of their truck.

Despite their pleas for leniency because of the circumstances and John's clean record, by the time TDN first profiled the Pimentals' plight almost two years ago, in October 2023, John had already given in to what he described as stress and pressure.

Under the terms of a “case resolution without hearing” that John told TDN he signed under duress because he didn't have the money to hire a lawyer, John accepted HIWU's three-year ban and $25,000 fine, knowing it might equate to never being able to restart his career.

“John's a tough man, but he was crushed during this thing,” said Diana, 67, who has spent her entire life on the backstretch, helping John run the stable while at times working as a jockey agent and in various racing offices.

“He was innocent, but they made him guilty,” Diana said. “John was forced off the racetrack. Forced to get rid of the only way he knew how to make a living. We were broke. I mean absolutely broke. We had to start all over again.”

Against long odds, the Pimentals have managed to make a fresh start.

After his trouble with HIWU became more widely known, John and Diana said they were “blown away” by the support and offers of assistance they received.

HISA and HIWU even took notice, and proactively made changes to the ways some drug positives got adjudicated.

Those modifications allowed John to get connected to an attorney after his case prompted HISA to initiate a program to provide free legal help for trainers who fall under certain income thresholds.

That assistance eventually led to the October 2023 withdrawal of the admission he had signed, then a February 2024 renegotiation of the Thyro-L charges, which reduced his penalties to a 15-month suspension and $10,000 fine.

Meanwhile, John's meth charge is currently stayed pending approval of proposed rules that HISA submitted to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in November 2023 regarding lesser penalties for human substances of abuse if HIWU determines the positive was likely a result of an inadvertent transfer.

With credit for the time he was provisionally suspended, John returned to training Dec. 4, 2024, at Tampa Bay Downs.

After going 2-for-20 during the winter/spring meet there, this spring the Pimentals decided to venture north to Monmouth, retracing the Florida-to-New Jersey path they had followed since relocating a decade ago from their now-closed home circuit in New England.

Speaking to John and Diana about their return yields a mix of emotions.

They are at once elated to be back in action, with Diana's effusive laugh and John's wry wisecracks punctuating the conversation in an easygoing manner.

They also recognize that some of the changes John's case brought about have been beneficial to other horsemen and women.

But they say they are still distrustful of HISA and HIWU.

On one level, John and Diana have a desire to let the whole thing go and get on with their lives.

Yet on another, they remain stung by what the ordeal has cost them, both in terms of money and their well-being.

“Yes, we care about other people now being able to get some help,” Diana said. “But it's too bad that we had to be the examples, and I will never be able to get over the money that we lost–ever, ever.”

The Pimentals' financial difficulties extended beyond just the $10,000 fine and the $2,000 they spent on split-sample testing. Diana is also factoring in the 15 months of lost income from the racing stable that vanished overnight.

“I mean, we worked so hard. And it wasn't like we had put a lot of money away. But we were trying to save so that someday we could retire. Now we've started all over again,” Diana said.

“Mentally, John aged,” Diana continued.

“And I'm not insulting you, babe!” she added as a playful aside to John before continuing in a quieter tone. “But mentally, he really did. I was really worried about him. He lost a lot of weight. Couldn't sleep. Couldn't get work.

“I think if it wasn't for the help of our friends and family, plus our dog, Rosie, things would have been a lot different,” Diana said.

HISA's Point of View

Lisa Lazarus has been the chief executive officer of HISA since early 2022, taking charge five months before HISA's first racetrack safety regulations went into effect on July 1, 2022, and nearly a year and a half before its ADMC program got rolled out on May 22, 2023.

When John's case became widely publicized in October 2023, Lazarus had to mitigate the first serious public relations challenge to ADMC enforcement.

Five days after the Pimentals' story initially ran, Lazarus penned a letter published in TDN emphasizing the “tremendous empathy” she felt for John and Diana. But she also stated that the article “implied that HISA and HIWU are devoid of concern for regular horsemen, are looking to wipe out smaller training operations, and are ignorant to endemic drug use on the backstretch of many racetracks.

“None of those are true,” Lazarus emphasized nearly two years ago.

Now, in mid-2025, Lazarus said she can understand why the Pimentals might still hold a grudge against HISA and HIWU.

But she also wanted to underscore the steps she has taken to fulfill the mandate she was first tasked with–guiding the sport through a dramatic period of change.

“To start with, I would just say that all of our experiences, since HISA is so new, are important and inform future rulemaking,” Lazarus said in a recent phone interview. “You know, people can criticize HISA any way that they want, but I think one way that people would mostly agree is that we listen and try to be responsive if we think there's something that's not quite working.

“Generally speaking, I think the one thing I'll say is I'm very sympathetic to the Pimentals, and I obviously can understand if they still have misgivings,” Lazarus said.

“But the one misconception that I always try to clear up is that the anti-doping program isn't just in place to prevent cheating. It's also in place to protect horses for horse welfare reasons,” Lazarus said.

“And the reason that Thyro-L is on the prohibited list is because of concerns that the experts have about its use in horses from a horse welfare standpoint. That's the rationale. The rationale is not necessarily that anybody thinks they were cheating,” Lazarus said.

“If something is in a horse and it shouldn't be there, or if you possess something that you shouldn't be using on horses, [there are] consequences. And obviously, it was difficult for folks who were some of the first cases that arose,” Lazarus said.

Even before John signed the resolution that he later withdrew, HISA and HIWU, in September 2023, had appointed an ombudsman so that trainers would have an impartial and unbiased resource to help explain the daunting new rules and provide guidance at no cost.

The person who took on that role was the well-respected Alan Foreman, a Maryland-based attorney specializing in racing law who is also the chairman and chief executive officer of the Thoroughbred Horsemen's Association.

It surprised no one who knows Foreman that he pledged to donate all compensation paid to him in connection with his ombudsman duties to the Thoroughbred Aftercare Alliance.

In the early stages of that role, Foreman was swamped with inquiries. The Pimentals were among them, although they did not initially know that the services of an ombudsman were available to them.

The creation of the HISA/HIWU ombudsman, plus the very public plight of the Pimentals, was the “catalyst” for the implementation of HISA's pro bono legal program, Lazarus said.

“What really became clear to me from their situation, and one of the things that really resonated with me, was that no trainer should be in a position where cost is the barrier to full due process,” Lazarus said. “Since then, I think we've probably have granted 15 or 20–maybe even more–lawyers to trainers who can demonstrate that their income is not sufficient.

“And we're pretty generous with what those [income thresholds] are,” Lazarus added. “[The Pimentals] had an exceptional lawyer, Howard Jacobs, who has a national reputation for athlete representation, both human and equine. He represented them, and they didn't pay for it.

“We also agreed to, if they meet the same income requirements, to pay for [testing of the split] B sample” of an alleged positive, Lazarus said.

“And in situations where there's an anti-doping case where the consequences are serious, we've even allowed for [paying for the defense team to hire] expert witnesses and that kind of thing. So we've really tried to address that issue,” Lazarus said.

“We've also changed the provisional suspension rules. That is not only because of the Pimentals, but certainly that was one case that shed light on those consequences,” Lazarus said.

“The authority to provisionally suspend still rests with HIWU,” Lazarus explained. “They don't have to for every case. We directed them to stop applying it, except for cases where you have multiple violations with the same trainer or a barn search turns up the same substance that was found in the horse. But [provisional suspensions] are now much more rare because of that.”

While John isn't provisionally suspended for the alleged meth positive in the gelding he trained two years ago, those charges haven't gone away, either.

In response to a TDN email query, Alexa Ravit, HIWU's communications director, detailed where John's case stands:

“Mr. Pimental's pending Presence case for methamphetamine is currently stayed pending approval of proposed rules that are before the FTC. The proposed rule change would cap the period of Ineligibility related to human substances of abuse to 60 days if HIWU determines that it has a reasonable basis to conclude that the finding was likely the result of inadvertent human transfer. Until the FTC acts on the proposed rules and his case is resolved, Mr. Pimental is able to race and train uninterrupted,” Ravit wrote.

TDN asked Lazarus if it was fair for John (and other trainers facing similar charges) to be kept in limbo for so long while the FTC decides whether or not to approve the rule change.

“They're not really 'in limbo' because the provisional suspension is just an interim measure,” Lazarus said. “So their cases are still proceeding. They just are not suspended during the pendency of their case.”

But the rule change has been before the FTC for nearly two years, since October 2023. What's taking so long?

“Obviously, we're waiting on the FTC,” Lazarus explained. “And the anti-doping rules are specialized. You need a certain amount of expertise. And, as I'm sure you've noticed, there's been a reduction of [federal] government staff, et cetera. So I think all of those factors play into it.”

The FTC “doesn't tell us why they're taking a long time,” Lazarus added.

“Obviously, we would prefer [quicker passage]. We propose the rules because we want them to be approved. So we sort of sit on the same side as the horsemen on this. But the one thing that we have done is that where the change in the rules would be of benefit to the horsemen, we give them that benefit, notwithstanding the fact that the [FTC rule change] is still pending,” Lazarus said.

“We recognize that these are real people with real lives, and we don't take these decisions lightly,” Lazarus said. “But I do think [the Pimentals'] case, amongst others, led to some positive steps forward, and obviously [their difficulties were] a consequence of being one of the first cases.”

Riding Out the Winter

After the initial publicity of their situation subsided, the Pimentals faced some difficult decisions beyond how John's case would turn out.

They first had to help several longtime clients find new trainers for the horses they owned. They also had to give away Richard, who was John's longtime equine partner in his gate-ponying gig.

The HIWU ruling also meant they had to take back Golovkin, who had been claimed for $5,000 on the day he tested positive for meth. The gelding had raced twice for different connections, finishing last both times, but that claim got voided by the ruling against John.

Given three straight last-place finishes and the fact that Golovkin had to sit out a mandated 60-day period of inactivity, they were having trouble finding anyone at Monmouth who wanted to buy or adopt him. But the Pimentals were flooded with offers after TDN wrote about the gelding, and they eventually found a group of horsewomen in Kentucky willing to retire and rehome the dark bay with the handsome, half-blazed face.

The Pimentals with Golovkin and Richard the pony at Monmouth in 2023 | Sarah Andrew

John and Diana decided to follow through with going to Tampa Bay Downs for the winter of 2023-24 even though they understood that John would not be allowed to enter the racetrack property or work with racehorses at any nearby farm. Diana still had a job with the racing office there, taking entries in the mornings and working in the photo-finish stand during the races.

But their drive south was delayed because Diana had to await clearance from her doctor to travel. She needed to make sure new medication was working to control the high blood pressure that Diana said had spiked during the initial months of their ordeal.

When they finally made it to Florida and settled in, John applied for jobs but found it difficult to land interviews. He speculated that being in his late 60s and lacking a traditional resume didn't help.

“I know horses,” John said. “What else do I know?”

So how did John spend his days?

“My dog, Rosie, she kept me busy,” John said of the terrier mutt the couple took in around the time the HIWU troubles first hit. According to Diana, the energetic pup doesn't leave John's side.

“And we have a mobile home, so I was painting rooms, doing all kinds of things around here,” John explained.

Diana added with a laugh: “Things he's never done before–he even did the laundry! We've been married 51 years, and he'd never done laundry!”

Diana's attempt at humor couldn't completely cover how difficult some of their days were.

After their story first appeared in TDN, a number of people offered fundraising efforts to help the Pimentals. But the couple respectfully declined any organized offers of financial assistance.

“We thanked them and said we don't need any of that,” John recalled.

“We couldn't take any money from anybody through GoFundMe. We just had to work through it,” Diana said.

Yet having said that, Diana also admitted there were several close friends who pressed checks upon them that the friends refused to take back.

“It wasn't a whole bunch, but it was something to get us groceries,” Diana said.

“And all three of our daughters really helped us out. If it wasn't for them…”

Diana let that last thought go unfinished.

In the spring of 2024, John and Diana decided not to return to Monmouth, even though that's where their close circle of friends would be heading for the summer.

The couple decided to pare expenses by not traveling and hunkering down until the next Tampa racing season started in November. The two started drawing on their Social Security, and Diana took a job working in a Publix supermarket.

John's Suspension Ends

Despite tight times financially, Diana doesn't want to dwell on that void without racing, the first summer in both of their adult lifetimes that the Pimentals weren't working on a backstretch somewhere.

“We had three miracles happen while all of this was going on,” Diana said, beaming. “We now have three great-grandsons. They're two years old, 10 months, and three months. It's been awesome.”

The Pimentals also weathered two hurricanes during John's suspension. Despite widespread devastation in their Florida neighborhood, their mobile home remained relatively unscathed, except for an air conditioner getting blown out.

“We were so lucky. All around us homes were wrecked,” Diana said. “We got blessed. God was on our side. I think he said, 'These people have been through enough.'”

Diana Pimental | Sarah Andrew

Still, as his suspension neared its end in late 2024, John wasn't sure if he wanted to go back to training.

But at the urging of a longtime client, Margaret Palomino of Pine Branch Stables, he came around.

“I think when one of our owners decided to ask John to train for them again, at first he was like, 'Nah…'” Diana explained. “But deep down inside, I knew his attitude was 'Yes!'”

Palomino, a small-scale, Tampa-based breeder and owner, had been in involved in the sport for decades with her recently deceased husband, Juan, a former jockey.

“I had some horses on my farm and I had some horses at a training center, and they were ready for the track,” Palomino told TDN. “John's suspension was about to be up, and I kept asking him, 'When are you going to be ready to go back?' and he kept saying, 'I don't know if I want to.' I said, 'Hey, c'mon, this is what you do, and I need some help here!'

“John and Diana are really very nice people, and as far as I'm concerned, they didn't do anything wrong,” Palomino said. “That shouldn't have happened to them at all.”

Palomino continued: “And it did affect me, because at one time I had maybe a dozen horses with them. I had to all of a sudden scramble around and find another trainer in, what, two weeks, to get my horses off that track according to all these new rules. It was really hard for me, but I managed to do it by finding a trainer at Delaware Park and got things done.

“At the time my husband was getting sicker and sicker [from Parkinson's disease]. He passed away this past September, but Juan believed in John and Diana too, and he didn't want to have anybody else training our horses,” Palomino said.

“So it was just waiting it out and hoping that John would be able to get back to the track,” Palomino said.

Around the same time last fall, Diana said, another longstanding client, Robert Knych, got wind that John was considering a comeback, and he asked if the Pimentals would start scouting for horses to claim on his behalf.

“I saw a spark at that point, and he totally became John again,” Diana said.

Palomino was asked by TDN what she thought of HISA and HIWU, beyond how the agencies handled John's case.

“I think they had the cart before the horse,” Palomino said after a long pause to give the question some thought.

“The concept with the medications, everything being on the same equal playing field nationally is a good thing, and I think that's right,” Palomino said.

“The ideology was good,” Palomino summed up. “But the methodology, the way things were put into operation, was a little bit heavy-handed.”

Overcoming the Aftershocks

One day when Diana was working in the Tampa photo-finish stand, she went out to a common area near the stewards' booth to get coffee. Although she couldn't come up with the person's name, she recognized someone affiliated with HIWU who was visiting the stewards and whose face she remembered from the Zoom meetings related to John's charges.

Diana said that person recognized her, and came up to offer a polite introduction. Perhaps wanting to defuse an awkward situation, the person said, “I hope you're not going to throw that coffee pot at me.”

Diana didn't want to engage in small talk with anyone from HISA or HIWU. But she didn't want to be completely rude, either.

“I said, 'Nah, I'm not that kind of person. But you got it wrong. You really got it wrong,'” Diana recalled.

“And that was all I said. I wasn't going to go any further or make conversation. I just wanted that person to know that they got it wrong,” Diana said.

It took John 11 starts at the 2024-25 Tampa meet to get back in the winner's circle. Then he won right back with the very next horse he saddled.

John was glad to be back, but said the experience was unsettling in some ways, because he found himself acting differently around the shedrow.

Pimental saddling Victory Girl | Sarah Andrew

“You've got to tiptoe around. You've got to make sure nobody goes in your stalls. You've got to be careful with supplements. You have to be careful who you hire to walk a horse up for a race. I tie all my tongue-ties myself. I don't trust anybody else putting their hand's near a horse's mouth. I sit in front of a horse's stall all day now when he's running,” John said.

“Allllll day,” added Diana in exaggerated fashion, trying to make light of a trying topic.

Then she added more seriously: “But that's the truth. As much as we love the business, you get scared. When the horses were in at Tampa last winter, John was a wreck. You get scared every time you run a horse now.”

John said that HIWU officials made themselves subtly known to him early in his comeback.

“In Tampa they came by,” John said. “The guy looked at me and said, 'Do you know who I am?' And I said, 'Yeah, I sure do.' And that was about it.”

It wasn't until late this spring that John and Diana decided that they'd be able to make a go of it at Monmouth, returning to the familiarity of their circuit.

A personal decision they had to make first, though, involved Richard the pony, now nearing age 20. Trainer Don Hunt had been caring for him at Tampa Bay Downs with the open invitation for the Pimentals to take him back any time they wanted to.

John missed ponying horses to the gate prior to races, but also recognized that Richard was getting up there in age.

When the Pimentals learned from Hunt that “a young man, about 18 years old” had taken an interest in Richard and wanted to give the pony an off-track home, they let him go.

“He's just an old man, retired now on a farm in Ocala,” Diana said wistfully.

John has hit the board with three of seven starters at Monmouth and Parx since he shipped north this spring. The Pimentals said they have been welcomed by people on the backstretch at the Jersey shore. But there are times they wonder if their reputation has taken a hit.

“Like John says, even if you're innocent, you know people are out there thinking, 'What if they really did it?'” Diana explained.

The Pimentals said they now routinely follow news involving HISA and HIWU, and are particularly interested in the federal lawsuit involving trainer Phil Serpe, who currently races in New Jersey and New York and is suing HISA over allegations of a wrongful denial of Seventh Amendment rights to a jury trial in a case that involves “banned substance” sanctions from an alleged clenbuterol positive.

“When we see some of these trainers that are going through hell, like Phil Serpe, I wish I could donate him money,” Diana said. “But we're just catching up now ourselves, so I can't. I would love to be able to give to his GoFundMe to help all the trainers, like he's trying to do. Because it is wrong. The fines are just outrageous. They ruin you, they really do.

“Everybody on the backside has to stick together and be careful,” Diana said. “We love this business, and that's why we do it.”

Sarah Andrew photo

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