ESPN

While the new casino at Aqueduct and inflated purses have created a buzz with most New York horsemen, there’s at least one trainer who could care less about what’s happening in the space that used to house the Big A’s grandstand.

H. Allen Jerkens, New York’s most famous and revered trainer, said he did not visit the Resorts World Casino before heading south in mid-November with his horses. Nor should you look for him there with a cup full of quarters once spring rolls around.

At the tender age of 82, Jerkens says more than anything at all racing is still about the love of horses for him. So, larger purses or not, he has no plans to abruptly leave Florida and chase the bigger pots in the Big Apple. He’s quite content to spend the winter watching his horses thrive in the warmth and glow of the Florida sun -- as he’s done for decades.

“I’ll head back to New York in April, like I usually do,” the sport’s living legend said by phone from his Florida barn. “I’m not changing anything. I’ve heard about the purses but I’ve never worried about them. If you’re not winning, the size of the purse doesn’t matter. I worry about the horse part of this game. That’s what matters.”

Jerkens certainly has not been winning as much as he did in the 1960’s and 1970’s when he was sending out paupers to beat the regal likes of Kelso and Secretariat. He has a stable of 14 now, and has won a pair of races during the current Gulfstream meet.

Yet those victories by Brampton and American Angel showed the master still has a winning touch, and the thrill those moments gave Jerkens was as emotional as ever. Be it a Grade 1 stakes or a claimer, there are still times when Jerkens’ pride can get the better of him and bring tears of joy to his eyes.

“It’s still such a thrill for me to be around the horses and watch them develop,” Jerkens said. “That’s still the part I enjoy most.”

Jerkens says he has no plans to slow down, that time has handled that for him. Outfits like Hobeau are gone, and he simply does not get as many horses as he did during his glory days.

His best horse right now is Bold Warrior, a talented 4-year-old son of Bernardini, who was stakes-placed at three. It’s a far cry from years past for a man who has won more than 3,800 races and $101 million and has been in racing’s Hall of Fame for the past 37 years.

Yet for Jerkens, it’s not about the number of wins. Or how much they are worth. Or if there’s a casino to generate extra revenue.

For him, as always, it’s all about the horses.

Somewhere the grand protectors of the sport of Thoroughbred racing must be letting out a deafening sigh of relief that Big Brown choose Belmont Stakes Day 2008 to run the worst race of life.

Otherwise, on Wednesday there would have been headlines in the mainstream media detailing how a Triple Crown-winning trainer had been booted from the sport for at least the next 10 years.

Bad enough the headlines screamed out “Derby-winning trainer,” but had he been a Triple Crown winner -- making him one of only two men on the face of this earth to saddle a Triple Crown champ -- the humiliation would have grown exponentially.

As it is, the revoking of trainer Richard Dutrow Jr.’s license on Wednesday by the New York State Racing and Wagering Board was a sad and embarrassing day for racing in front of a national audience. No one associated with the sport came away unsoiled from it -- including the regulators of the sport who took way too long to finally address Dutrow’s lengthy list of violations and can’t act now like they are tough, no-nonsense overseers.

As for Dutrow, there’s no sympathy. There’s never a good feeling when someone loses their livelihood, but he brought all of this crashing down on himself.

If anything, there’s more compassion for honest horsemen whose accomplishments will be viewed in a skeptical manner by the uniformed general public -- and there are millions of that kind of people when it comes to horse racing. In baseball, the clean All-Stars of this era must endure snide remarks and unfounded assumptions about hidden steroids usage. Now in horse racing, the negative publicity sparked by Dutrow allows a skeptical segment of the population to paint everyone with the same bad brush and say a winning but honest trainer has simply found a way to cheat better.

Dutrow, meanwhile, didn’t have three strikes, he had 64. According to a Daily Racing Form report, Dutrow had been charged with 64 violations in his career as a trainer, and it’s mind-boggling to think someone wouldn’t clean up their act sooner. Included were the most recent violations that led to the revoking of his license: the finding of butorphanol, a painkiller, in a post-race sample from one of his horses last November. A subsequent search of Dutrow’s barn turned up three syringes filled with illegal painkillers and muscle relaxers.

Dutrow brazenly violated rules and regulations and never expressed any remorse over it. He simply brushed aside one penalty after another. He was outspoken, for sure, and was a jive-talker, to boot. He could be funny at time; irritating at others. His candor in speaking about the drugs he administered to Big Brown inadvertently led to a ban on steroids in racehorses and helped the sport in a roundabout manner. Yet he never seemed to take seriously what he was doing. Even while battling to save his career at the June hearings that led to Wednesday’s announcement of the suspension, Dutrow cracked jokes while being questioned. He gave the process the feel of a Comedy Central Roast instead of one that could terminate his career.

Perhaps Dutrow felt he would keep getting a slap on the wrist, so he didn’t care. In a way, when you’re on Strike 64, that’s not an unusual approach to the matter.

Plus, Dutrow’s outlook on life seems to be that he takes few things seriously. A year ago, while doing some work for the Breeders’ Cup, I spoke with Dutrow to update the information for his biography. At the end, when I asked a perfunctory question about anything he did in the last year that he would like to add, he mentioned, how should I put this, some sexual escapades.

That was typical Dutrow. Completely irreverent. Toward life, people, and the rules.

Now, pending an appeal, he might not be seen at the racetrack again until 2021 at the earliest.

It’s a hard, but deserving penalty considering all that led up to it.

Dutrow’s life has not been easy. He served a 5-year suspension in the 1990’s for his own substance abuse issues. When he finally returned to the racetrack, he was so destitute he lived and slept in his barn. Then came horses like St. Liam, Dutrow’s 2005 Horse of the Year and Breeders’ Cup Classic winner, and Big Brown and a long list of other stakes winners and he soared to the highest levels of the sport. He came within one win of a three-race sweep that would have made him the trainer of a Triple Crown champion, one of the sport’s immortals, but he never changed his ways.

One would think turns of events like the ones that put Dutrow on top of the racing world would have had him wanting to preserve the good life. But he didn’t think along those lines, and now it appears as if it’s all gone.

Perhaps now, when it’s too late, a lesson will finally set in for Dutrow and the masters of a sport where you should be out long before the embarrassment of Strike 64.

And what are thoughts on the revoking of Dutrow’s license? A fair move? Too harsh? Should it have been done sooner? Let’s hear what you have to say.

Trainer Assaf Ronen was to begin serving a seven-day suspension on Friday after one of his horses tested positive for a banned substance at Aqueduct last month. The suspension was reduced from 15 days for Ronen waiving his right of appeal.

Ronen was also fined $1,000.

Ronen was penalized for the finding of the drug flunixin, a nonsteroidal antiinflammatory, in the postrace sample of Sezzana, who finished third in the first race at Aqueduct on Feb. 19. Sezzana was disqualified from purse money and ordered unplaced.

Ronen is 3 for 19 at the Aqueduct inner track meet.