Sport

GRANTVILLE, Pa (AP):

A Pennsylvania horse trainer was charged Wednesday with trying to rig races at Penn National Race Course by injecting horses with performance-enhancing drugs.

State police charged Darryl Delahoussaye, 47, of Harrisburg, with rigging a publicly exhibited contest, administering drugs to race horses, tampering with evidence and theft. Court records also spell his first name Darrel.

A Dauphin County grand jury investigation concluded that Delahoussaye gave horses banned items - including snake venom and an anti-inflammatory substance - before they raced at the track outside Harrisburg.

He also was charged with reselling three injured horses after promising they would be retired to a petting zoo, but at least one of those horses subsequently raced three times in Massachusetts, according to the grand jury report issued yesterday.

Removed evidence

State police said Delahoussaye had two employees remove evidence from a barn at Penn National in an attempt to foil investigators.

Delahoussaye was released on $20,000 bond. A district court official said he did not have a lawyer on file, and a listed phone number for him could not be located.

A horseowner Delahoussaye had been working for, Michael Gill of Derry, New Hampshire, was barred from Penn National in February after a series of horse breakdowns and a boycott by jockeys fearful for their safety.

Gill, who won 370 races last year and earned $6.7 million, is out of the horse-racing business. Gill said Wednesday that, if the accusations against Delahoussaye are true, none of it was done at his request. Gill, who has not been charged, said he is not under investigation and has done nothing illegal.