Although he has enjoyed the support of CHRB commissioners through the various incarnations of the board through his tenure, Wood has come under criticism from staffers for his micromanagement style, and from horsemen who felt the sting of various drug-positive prosecutions.Most of the news coming out of the CHRB through Wood's tenure had to do with such positives. He earned the enmity of high-profile trainers such as Richard Mandella and Bobby Frankel in the mid-1990s for well publicized drug positives called against them. Both conditioners were eventually absolved of charges--Frankel for a morphine positive and Mandella for scopolamine, in cases that were widely thought to be examples of contamination. Trainer Bob Baffert has spent years fighting a morphine positive in a case that is still ongoing.A series of high profile, unsuccessful drug prosecutions continued under Wood in the late 1990s when trainer Paco Gonzalez was charged with a clenbuterol positive in his star runner Free House. Free House was odds-on and towered over his field in the 1998 Bel Air Handicap (gr. II), after which the positive was called, and Gonzalez was adamantly backed by Free House's owners John Toffan and Trudy McCaffery, who were on record as being against using illegal drugs on their horses.
In the past few years Wood changed course. In most cases he sought to fine trainers who were called on drug positives rather than going through the administrative law process. The CHRB has also shied away from making drug positives public, as trainers quietly paid fines to have their positives go away.
