Yasmine Medina Suspended Six Months Over Inhumane Treatment of Oppenheimer

Yasmine Medina will serve six months of an agreed one-year suspension, pay a $10,000 fine, and begin a six-month probationary period after a Texas Racing Commission Board of Stewards settlement on January 8, 2026 tied to the death of a 2-year-old Quarter Horse gelding named Oppenheimer at Retama Park in Selma, Texas. Medina waived her right to appeal; any violation of Rule 311.207 during the six-month probation will trigger the balance of the one-year suspension.

The TRC ruling lays out the April 3, 2025 timeline in detail: Medina sent Oppenheimer to the track with a groom for an official workout; the horse dislodged his rider in the stable area, ran into a cement manure bin, ran through two wire fences, and ran onto the racetrack without a rider before outriders caught him and returned him to his groom with noticeable scratches on the hind legs. The ruling states Oppenheimer was then sent back to the track and breezed under a different rider, recorded at 13.90 seconds for 220 yards and ranked 57th of 59 works at that distance that day. After the workout the ruling says the horse “collapsed after the workout and was diagnosed with heat exhaustion. After an hour, approximately, the horse was able to walk back to the receiving barn. The horse did not receive further veterinary care after leaving the track while under the care of Ms. Medina. The horse died the next morning on April 4, 2025.”

The Commission cited Texas Racing Commission Rule 311.207 in reaching the settlement. The rule’s language is quoted in the record: “A person on association grounds or a licensee may not subject a race animal to cruel or inhumane treatment or, through act or neglect, subject a race animal to unnecessary suffering.” The board applied that standard in the agreed penalty that combines a monetary fine with a suspended term and probation.

The Equibase chart for Retama Park on April 3, 2025 shows the 13.90-second workout at 220 yards that the ruling references; the ranking 57th of 59 works at the distance underscores how the timed breeze compared to other morning drills. The ruling’s account that no further veterinary care was provided while Oppenheimer was under Medina’s care after leaving the track figures centrally in the stewards’ finding of mistreatment under Rule 311.207.

The Medina settlement lands amid a string of high-profile Quarter Horse disciplinary matters in recent years that regulators point to as part of a broader welfare conversation. Separate cases cited in recent regulatory actions include a trainer summarily suspended after video showed alleged repeated striking of a downed horse and another trainer facing positive tests for the bronchodilator carmoterol in Texas and New Mexico, including a top-level horse that won a Grade 1 All-American Futurity. As one racing security official put it in an earlier case: “A lot of these guys use something like that when horses are on the walker and stop... If they go down, I've heard the same thing, that they'll just start wailing on them. It's not OK.”

The TRC ruling does not publish a necropsy report or a fuller veterinary sequence beyond the collapse-and-heat-exhaustion diagnosis included in the settlement conference record, and the agreed order does not specify the effective start date for the active suspension. Retama Park steward notes, veterinary logs, steward transcripts, and any necropsy remain key documents that the Commission has not included in the settlement summary; those records will determine whether regulators pursue further policy or transparency changes in Quarter Horse training and race-day care.