I reckon there should be more of a "cull" in all jurisdictions. There is nothing wrong with thinning out the herd in my opinion.

Not a popular opinion to have though.

Actually, the media should start calling high-profile owners out on why they employ these people.

Jeanine Edwards interviews the owner of Asi Siempre and doesn't ask him a single question about the Biancone situation. Why do Jess Jackson and Satish Sanan, those advocates of cleaning up racing, employ Asmussen? And for that matter, why has Will Farish started to employ Asmussen to train some of his horses? When "industry leaders" are not ashamed of their associations with these shady characters, it tells me that they are not really serious about cleaning up the game. It's simply another case of "do as I say, not as I do."

No, I think he just took a dive on the issue. ESPN's relationship with the NFL and MLB has not stopped its reporters, etc., in those arenas from frequent comment on steroids/off-the-field legal problems.

Yeah. I've always tried to figure out how the administration of mepivicaine to a horse in the stall next to Tales of Glory resulted in Tales of Glory testing positive. I guess the laws of physics cease to exist in the Todd Pletcher barn.

And let's no forget about how Team Valor employs Dale Romans to train some of its Kentucky stock.

Fifty years ago in racing the large breeding farms controlled the stock , they culled out what they wanted and raced what they wanted , which may have not been a bad thing . They had control of the stallions and most of the good broodmares and sent what they thought were the best to the track , if a horse proved to be no good they simply culled it out, gelded it , sold it , killed it ,whatever but they didnt keep them.
You can see a trend starting in the 70's with private ownership of stallions , they were being offered to the public and the owner of the stallion approved your mare or not. That was the beginning of the end of the big farms ruling the racing world and deciding what was a good horse and what wasnt.
So now you have every Tom , Dick and Harry thinking they have a stallion prospect or a broodmare prospect if their horse can just get a graded win and sometimes not.
Dont blame the horses and dont blame the trainers , blame the people who have the stallions and mares and breed them and sell them . So you can basically say this what people want , they want speed not endurance , they want a fast 2 yr old and a quick turn around , they want the chance to profit from a limited amount of running so they can capitalize on the trends.

Couldn't agree more, which is why I'm starting to watch the europeon racing more. They still breed for distance.
On a side note, how's the Tinman feeling?

Blame them for what?

Do 99% of the horses racing today really need to be running on lasix? Are the people who have the stallions and mares the ones over-medicating horses?

I'm tired of hearing about how wonderful all of these legal performance enhancing drugs are.

Perhaps these stoutly bred stamina horses that you seem to think we need more of, can't win, even going a distance, because legal performancing enhancing medications are helping to carry a fleet footed horse further along. And many of them are being weeded out of the pedigrees in favor of horses who would simply not be as effective at carrying their speed if they raced only on hay, oats, and water.

You think breeders should have to try and breed slowpoke endurance horses who can't win, or are up-against it, in the current enviornment racing is in?

If a horse can't run to his good form without the aid of one of these wonderful legal drugs....let them go to another racing jurisdiction where they tolerate these splendid and wonderful drugs in a horses system on race-day.

if a horse needs drugs to run thru the pain, the horse should not run until the pain is gone. Look @ how many 1st time starters are on lasix to run,can there really be that many bleeders? if so, somebody in racing should be trying to figure out why so many horses are bleeding. With that said, only the tracks vet should administer the drugs, PRIVATE VETS NOT ALLOWED to administer the drugs. I would like to see the horses race w/o drugs,jmo.

I AGREE 100% WITH YOU

Articles like the one where the bozo from NC state compares a horse racing on Bute to Micheal Jordan taking ibuprofen to play in the NBA finals just lack all creditability. First of all, every trainer uses bute, everywhere. It works and it is relatively side effect free. Sure it may not be great for a horses stomach but what anti-inflamatory is? Secondly if this idiot thinks that an NBA player would refuse to take ibuprofen to play he is an idiot. They take freaking cortisone shots in their joints but wouldn't "risk" an injury taking ibuprofen. That is the kind of guy you quote if you are trying to enflame the situation or you are just plain stupid.

Lets end this lunacy about Lasix being this great destroyer of the breed. It is a freaking diuretic and has ZERO effect on the genetic makeup of the offspring of users of it. Stop kidding yourself about culling the breed of weakness or bleeders. As long as a mare has a marginal pedigree there will be someone out there willing to take a shot of breeding her regardless of how cripple she was or how much she bled. I know for a fact that one of the best producers of modern times bled buckets on many occasions. The list of unraced mares (horses who were either too slow to run or too infirm) who have been great producers is a mile long. Stallions cull themselves out after a few years by either producing or not. The decline of the quality of horses bred in this country has almost nothing to do with these circumstantial factors and almost everything to do with the quantity and desire to produce strictly fast horses.

Lasix is just one drug. It just gets brought up because it's obviously over-used. It also makes a tremendous masking agent.

I'd prefer everyone run on hay, oats, and water....and if anything shows up on a test the punishments ought to be draconian.

But hey, good luck with that ever happening. Right?

The foal crops were much larger through the 80's than they are today. And in this modern enviornment, speed oriented horses often make better sires.

This is fiction with the new testing that has been in place for years

The foal crop increase began the era of breed anything to anything which has led us to today.

I guess we are just going to have to disagree....

I've looked at some pedigrees of good horses from the days when foal crops were very small, and some of them looked like breed anything to anything types.

Arguably the two most important broodmares in American racing history, La Trioenne and Frizette, were both very moderate race mares. I believe one a career maiden, and the other a claimer who died in slaughter.

You are making my point for me. That racing success of the sire and dam, drug induced or not, can have very little to do with the success or lack thereof of the foals

I know that.

I think the drugs are the reason why their is an emphasis on speed in the pedigrees....that's my point.

And to further prove your point, the smallest crop ever foaled was the 1919 crop (two years after Man O' War) with just 1,665 horses. There are roughly seven times as many humans with trainers license now than horses than.

The star of that crop (11-for-11 at age two, and won his 3yo debut in the Kentucky Derby to go 12-for-12) was the very modestly bred Morvich. The first Cal Bred to ever win the Derby.

As I remember, his father was a very modest horse who couldn't stay, and his mother never won a race.

A must read!!
 

http://www.signonsandiego.com/sports...16delmeds.html The statistics mentioned are fascinating.

And another..
http://www.signonsandiego.com/sports...z1s16bute.html

Why can't America do this?
http://www.theage.com.au/news/horse-...560108629.html