That does nothing to heal previous damage, unless I'm misunderstanding the properties of this miracle drug.

Your assertion that lung damage does affect performance, just not enough to make our horses win, doesn't really hold up under scrutiny. Races over long distances are decided by very small distances. Even a tiny decrease in performance would cost a horse a few lengths. Maybe if horses raced a hundred times it would start to be a factor, but they don't.

so the fact that euro's train on lasix means nothing to you?

You are reaching conclusions through information that you are just assuming.

If you are trying to tell me horses run as often now as they did even 20 years ago, you are just being foolish. Check out Todd Pletcher's ridiculous comments on freshening El Padrino. They are very telling about the state of the game today.

If owners, and trainers, want to worry about losing races, that is their problem. It will ruin the game. That kind of thinking is the biggest reason starts are shrinking. It has nothing to do with 2yo horses being counted. It is very short sighted of owners to think this way. Who gives a sh!t about win percentage? You can't win money in the barn. The less horses race, the more fragile they seem to become. I'm sure any athlete in any other sport in the world would be more prone to injury if they rarely compete.

Most of them don't train on Lasix.

questions that i have with regards to bleeding.

In theory, could dirt racing cause a horse to bleed more often than turf racing? with all the kickback in dirt racing.. could dirt or dust go into the horses lungs and cause it to bleed when maybe it wouldnt?

Also.. would sprinters be more inclined to bleed than distance horses? Could putting maximum effort through a 6 or 7 furlong race be more taxing than galloping along with a full out sprint at the end in a distance race?

No. Foreign body inhalation (although yes, that occurs, and worse on dirt than turf) does not cause Exercise Induced Pulmonary Hemorrhage. Particles of dirt and dust cannot physically enter the parts of the lung (the alveolar-capillary interface) where EIPH occurs. They are too big.

EIPH is thought to be caused mainly by huge pressure differences that occur during maximal exercise between the capillaries of the lung (oxygenation) blood system and the alveoli (air sacs) in the lungs, and physical damage (sheer) in the dorsocaudal lung lobes due to forelegs pounding during intense exercise.

Yes. More intense exercise, maximal respiratory effort by the horse, is associated directly with EIPH.

A hard dirt track seems to induce more EIPH than a soft turf course, but that's observational. EIPH is associated with maximal respiratory effort and physical pounding, no matter the discipline, hemisphere or breed of horse.

Small airway disease resulting from inhalation of environmental contaminants is not thought to cause or exacerbate EIPH?

No I am telling you that there are far greater forces that affect the number of starts than lasix.

Hello? It will ruin the game? What do you think has been happening?

You obviously havent been paying close enough attention to the trends of the last 20 years. I know you have been but you are just being stubborn. Of course it is shortsighted of owners to think this way but that what they have been doing!!!!! Lukas get a lot of grief (and obviously his last 8-10 years havent been kind) but his disciples who now have a stranglehold on a huge amount of the good horses in this country dont really follow his model of success. He ran horses and ran them alot. The spacing stuff came from the sheets guys and when Frankel won everything for a few years and gave credit to this methodology everyone who could read figured this was the magic trick. Of course I'm not just talking about trainers either. There arent a handful of big owners that dont have an "advisor" whose sole purpose on life is deciding what to do with their bosses horses. Most of them wouldnt know a horse if it fell over them but they believe they can read sheets or TG's or some other methodology that tells them as soon as a horse runs a really good race you should "space" the races further or like Alpha stop running entirely. That is the exact opposite of how people felt 30 years ago. When a horse ran a big race they would want to strike while the iron was hot.

Behind a lot of this hate to lose stuff is the value of bloodstock which was a significant driver of business for the last 15 years. As soon a horse shows they can run the plot to "maximize" the horses value begins. That plan rarely includes running them where they will be challenged. Big trainers having 5 strings of horses makes it easy to transfer them to find the softest spot possible. The thing is that when owners listen to TVG or HRTV or the trade magazines, this style of management is praised and many smaller owners want to emulate that "winning" approach. Of course they dont talk about all the flameouts that are managed into oblivion (see Godolphim for multiple examples)

Of course it does. There probably arent 50 2 year olds that race this year that will run 7 times in 2012. Go back 30 years and tell me that you could say that? While I'm sure that 2 year olds have traditionally run fewer races than average 6 races a year versus 9 is a lot less difference than 1.5 versus 6.

So lung damage doesnt decrease performance? Are you really going to stand behind that statement?

In a lot of cases -- these owners would be no worse off if they had RockHardTen85 managing the stable.

It's surprising how often you see poor placement and overall management of such good and expensive horses.

I'm talking about examples more subtle than something like cluelessly running Trinniberg in the Derby -- but if some of these owners really do have people managing placement -- they wouldn't be any worse off if they just left it up to the trainer and cut out a middle man.

And the in-race tactics they use are often brutally incompetent. They make the placing look genius by comparison.

Yes, small airway disease such as chronic inflammation, allergy does exacerbate EIPH. Yes, environmental contaminants (air pollution, ammonia in air from stall, chronic dust in air from straw/hay) can cause small airway disease.

Dirt in the airways from inhalation racing doesn't get down to the bronchioles, let alone alveoli. It stays in the first 4 generations of lung branching (in the trachea and major bronchi) and is readily moved up and out by cilliary action in most cases. Not a big contributor to airway inflammation. Just like dirt inhaled into your nose when you dirt bike or run in a dusty place is snotted out readily, and doesn't give you an asthma attack. Dust in the air doesn't get down there, either. A particle has to be particular micron size to make it down there. Nature's design is good.

So horses at racing speed, where ventilation is dramatically increased, are not possibly inhaling bacteria, viruses, or other organic or inorganic matter of the requisite size while taking in clods of dirt in a cloud of kickback?

and they also send bleeders elsewhere when they discover them. they aren't kept where they can't race on lasix, and therefore won't suffer damage as they get race day treatment, not just training days.

Bacteria, viruses and other organic and inorganic matter are of markedly different sizes, and thus are only capable of reaching certain places within the lungs.

As EIPH is not caused by the presence of bacteria, viruses and other organic and inorganic matter, their presence is not directly contributory.

Lower airway inflammation that affects the integrity of the alveolar-capillary interface and constriction of bronchioles (that can be contributory to EIPH caused by pressure difference) is different from upper airway inflammation, and organic and inorganic matter are rarely, if at all, associated with lower airway inflammation.

Bacteria and viruses can cause infection with subsequent scarring if they are respiratory pathogens and are inhaled, not removed by immunologic and physical defense systems, and set up housekeeping within the lungs. That takes at least 6 hours or longer, thus inhalation during a race is not contributory to EIPH that occurs during that race.

A previous episode of lung infection/pneumonia, if it causes scarring or lung damage, can in the future make the horse more susceptible to dorso-caudal lung lobe problems, however that is not the most common location within the lung of infection/pneumonia.

Medicine: it takes a thorough in-depth knowledge of normal anatomy and physiology before one can start identifying and speculating upon the abnormal.

Do you have a point, or are you just dancing for Freddy?

As expected, you masterfully backpedaled from your earlier absolute that inhalants from racing don't affect EIPH. Antitrust had a good point that perhaps racing on dirt predisposes horses more to bleeding than on natural grass courses. No one said anything about bacteria, et al directly causing EIPH, nor suggested that inhaling kickback immediately led to EIPH in the same race. Only the notion that lower airway inflammation, for which many different microscopic sources found in dust/kickback are responsible, can exacerbate bleeding was offered. Seems like you agree even though your original response read the opposite way.

You're welcome.

No, I did not. That you are clearly unable to understand the difference between foreign body/particulate inhalation and inflammation due to COPD/allergy; and what different parts of the airway these processes affect, and what the multiple contributors to EIPH are and are not, is not my fault.

I tried to make the explaination simple. It was clearly not simple enough for you. Try reading it again. I'm sorry you didn't understand it the first time.

I'll try again, like I was speaking to a smart-azz but not-very-bright third grader: kickback on the track = big pieces of stuff = not inhaled deeply enough past trachea and bronchi into bronchioles = doesn't cause inflammation = doesn't even get to physical location where "inflammation" can happen = doesn't cause narrowing of small airways = doesn't cause changes in lung pressure = doesn't cause EIPH

Small particles such as viruses and bacteria: even if they get down into airways = their action not immediate = no they don't cause EIPH at end of race = won't even cause EIPH subsequently as different part of lung than EIPH location most usually = will only affect anyway subsequently if permanent scarring

The above has nothing to do with lower airway inflammation caused by inflammatory mediators (not the actual particulate matter) - it appears your ignorance lays here, in your lack of knowledge about COPD and what "inflammation" is and the pathways that cause it. You obviously mistakenly think it's particulate matter directly into the lungs that causes problems. You are wrong. You are confusing two different things in your ignorance.

Oh, here: I found a little 13-page article reviewing the very basic inflammatory cascade found in allergic lung diseases (its for human but it applies to the equine), so you can learn how that has nothing at all to do with "dust particles in the lungs" as you wrongly think: http://www.cardam.eu/NR/rdonlyres/.....rmediators.pdf

You're welcome. ROFLMAO.

If it does, then these horses shipping in from Europe that don't race with Lasix over there don't have any.

Before I read the rest, I already said "I'm not suggesting banning Lasix is going to do that either (re: increase field size)". How did you come to the conclusion I was saying that?

ALL horses run less, a lot less. Trying to blame it on two year olds starting less just seems a bit ridiculous to me. Seriously, you aren't trying to say 2yo start less, but all other horses run about the same are you? Really? Please tell me I'm misunderstanding something here.