Trainer Sanchez-Pinero Handed Four-Year Ban, $50,000 Fine for Doping Violations

Angel Sanchez-Pinero's doping ledger just got heavier. The Horseracing Integrity and Welfare Unit handed the trainer a combined four-year period of ineligibility and a $50,000 fine in a final ruling dated March 5, 2026, stemming from out-of-competition positive tests involving two horses sampled nearly a year ago.

HIWU personnel collected hair samples from Miss Hard to Get and Surprise Boss on April 24, 2025, while both horses were stabled at Westampton Farm in Westampton Township, New Jersey. The tests returned positives for Clenbuterol in the sample taken from Miss Hard to Get and Albuterol in the sample taken from Surprise Boss. Both are banned substances under HISA rules. The ruling also carries a 60-day period of ineligibility for the covered horses, running from April 24, 2025.

The four-year ban does not kick in immediately. Given the stacked nature of Sanchez-Pinero's existing sanctions, the new ineligibility period is scheduled to begin November 25, 2035. That is because he is already serving a combined 10-year ban for a separate series of medication violations dating from 2024 onward, a cumulative sentence that began on July 24, 2025.

The March 5 ruling is not an isolated event. A January 14, 2026 HIWU ruling had already added a combined eight years and $90,000 in fines and arbitration costs tied to multiple violations. One specific entry from that batch imposed a one-year ineligibility period beginning November 25, 2034, a $5,000 fine, and a 50 percent share of arbitration costs on Sanchez-Pinero for breaching HISA rule 3230(b)(2), which prohibits causing a covered horse to violate its provisional suspension.

That charge centered on four-year-old filly Laguardia, who had tested positive for the bronchodilator Formoterol, also known as Aformoterol, after finishing second at Parx Racing on March 26, 2025. HIWU posted notice of Laguardia's provisional suspension on June 11, 2025. Despite that suspension, Sanchez-Pinero oversaw a workout for the filly. "Sanchez-Pinero oversaw a breeze by Laguardia while she was Provisionally Suspended," a HIWU spokesperson stated. "A Covered Horse cannot complete a Timed and Reported Workout, i.e., breeze, while Provisionally Suspended." HIWU disqualified Laguardia's timed and reported workouts on May 1 and May 17, 2025 as part of that penalty. Laguardia subsequently started six times at Mountaineer Park in West Virginia, a track that falls outside HISA's jurisdiction.

The breadth of the violations, spanning multiple horses, multiple substances, and multiple separate HIWU rulings across more than a year, has produced a penalty structure that now extends Sanchez-Pinero's ineligibility well into the next decade. With the March 5 addition, his person ineligibility is now projected to run through at least late 2039.