The New Jersey Racing Commission has banned trainer Cody Axmaker for two years after a horse he trained died last year at Monmouth Park and a necropsy indicated the horse had overdosed on clenbuterol, a highly regulated bronchial dilator, according to a ruling from the commission’s board of stewards. The horse, Wishful, died on May 9 after being treated for severe colic. The ruling in the case says that a “jug” of clenbuterol was found in Axmaker’s barn “on or around May 4,” and that the necropsy of the horse indicated “symptoms consistent with an overdose of the drug clenbuterol.” On Wednesday, Axmaker said that he deeply regretted the death of the horse, which he called a “complete accident” resulting from a mix-up in his barn. He has appealed the penalty, which also includes a $5,000 fine, but has not yet hired a lawyer, he said. “Anyone who knows me knows my horses are like my family to me, and the last thing I want to do is hurt them,” Axmaker said. Axmaker said that he arrived at Monmouth Park after an “18-hour-straight van ride” from Florida and that a container of clenbuterol syrup he had acquired five years ago from a vet was mistakenly unloaded from his truck into his tack room. The label of the container had “fallen off,” Axmaker said. He later instructed his staff to feed the horses, and a groom poured the clenbuterol into his horses’ feed tubs, thinking that it was “aloe vera juice.” Clenbuterol is a powerful bronchial dilator that can have steroidal effects when used consistently. Because of its performance-enhancing effects, regulators have cracked down on the use of the drug in most major racing jurisdictions over the last decade, and many now require trainers to receive prescriptions to use the drug and then prohibit horses from racing until clenbuterol has cleared their systems. Axmaker, who has been training on his own since 2011, said that he used the syrup in racing jurisdictions where it was legal to do so “to clean up lungs.” Axmaker said that a number of horses in his barn had symptoms of clenbuterol poisoning, and that he informed an investigator at the track about the mix-up the day after it happened. The horses were not allowed to be entered into races until they tested clean for clenbuterol, Axmaker said. “A lot of them were real sweaty,” he said. Wishful, the mare that died, was the only one to colic, Axmaker said. The commission ruling states that one year of the ban was handed down for having the unlabeled container of clenbuterol, and the second was based on Axmaker’s role as the “absolute insurer” of the horses in his barn. Axmaker has a career record of 117 wins from 970 starts, with total purse earnings of $1.17 million. He has had one medication violation in his 10-year career, an overage of the regulated medication methocarbamol in 2020 in Colorado, which resulted in a $750 fine.