They have very strict rules for which horses can breed in Germany, and they are getting better and better horses there, particularly at long distances.

You are buying into a argument that makes no sense. First of all of course mares individually dont make as much difference as stallions do individually but lets face it, if there are 35000 foals there are at least 35000 mares needed to produce them. The fact that stallions covered 40 to 50 mares per year in the 60's seems to have escaped everyones attention. A stallion now covers three times that amount meaning a bad stallion is having three times the effect of a good stallion. But a stallion that has weaknesses is still going to have weaknesses regardless of medication. You want to say they wouldn't be breeding? Fine but most of the well bred horses are going to get a chance somewhere. I find it amazing that everyone simply talks about the stallions.

This argument of allowing weaker horses to pass off genetic weakness is bunk. You say he was talking about steroids but I want to know where to draw the line. Like I said about PE, if she never ran after she broke down originally would she have been the same success as a broodmare? Of course she would have. Her return to the races was due to modern technology and medicine, in the 50's she would never have raced again. So why is that technology that allowed an obviously "weaker" horse to return to the races and succeed not be the same as Lasix allowing a horse who bleeds to do the same? Is bleeding an inheirent trait? Is "brittleness" a real trait? Or rather the real cause of most soundness issues, confirmation issues to blame? The whole medication is weakening the breed crowd never brings in anyone from outside of racing to verify what they are saying. Why is that? Because they would rather spew opinion rather than truth. The trend of lesser starts began long before the medication door was opened. A fact that is ignored rather routinely. Everybody says that the tracks are getting harder but Jerry Brown has shown at least some documentation that that is not the case. But it fits the argument better if it the tracks are getting harder, something else to blame. People want to say that more horses are breaking down than ever yet there is no proof that is the case.

So if i treat my horse with hyperbaric oxygen to keep it from bleeding, shockwave and adequan to keep its joints sounder, gastrogard to keep its ulcers from cropping up, RVI and Bodybuilder for its muscles and the horse goes out and wins a bunch of races and becomes a stallion it is bad for the breed? Because in 1950 none of these things were available and the subtraction of one may have caused my horse not to perform and hence not been a stallion prospect. Or I could say that my horse needs Lasix or steroids to do the same and then we are howling because those help "enhance" his performance and will in turn "weaken" the breed. So are we saying that all modern techniques that help a "weaker" horse succeed should be eliminated? We should simply let the bleeders bleed? Or whenever a horse has any infirmity just turn them out? Because if "weaker" horses are being bred and creating "weaker" horses, where exactly do we draw the line? Who determines what constitutes weakness? The generalizations used by Beyer and others are simply an agenda that has been pushed strongly recently without much rational except that it sounds right. That and the other countries are doing it. And yet virtually all of Coolmores Irish stallion roster is made up of American Bred decendants of Northern Dancer. And the euros are putting in more american style tracks and buying up our bloodstock at record levels. All products of "medication weakened" breeding.

Read the next sentence. How much influence can individual stallions have anyway? What about the tens of thousands of mares producing the foals? How will you prevent them from breeding? Hell people would rather buy out of unraced mares than low success ones anyway.

Not to mention that Native Dancer, a horse from the 50's, is getting a lot of the blame. Was it medication then?

I am not saying that regulation of medication is a bad thing but i am saying that this is way overblown.

Wow THE SLAM is back!!

A guy whose opinion is generally very good told me he thinks that Fire Slam will be a good stallion. He wouldnt tell me why.

I think the guy is spot on.. Where is standing in Turkey or Paraguay?lol

Speaking off Stallions that have have fallen out of favor Grand Slam is currently a bunt

FL

I always liked GS. Almost bred a mare to him but even at the reduced price he was still too rich for me.

I think you are over thinking this.. Medical advances aren't bad nor should they be precluded from race horses.. If you have a horse that can only be outstanding because of medication and would otherwise be ordinary or not even a runner then breeding to him or her becomes a bit more dodgey. Breeding sound to sound has to be more beneficial long term then breeding unsound and fast to unsound and fast.

it's all BS anyway nobody is going to buy slow sound horses because they are sound and hence the likelyhood of the breed being rebuilt on this premise is retarded.

BTW nobody breeds 150 mares to a crappy stallion for to long..The only way they get 150 to 250 mares long term is by producing.. You think Fu Peg is going to keep getting 200 mares if he doesn't start to have results on the track that warrant such demand?

Florida geez people will take a shot on anything I guess. I guess if you want a 6f 7500 claimer he is your guy.

I think you can get a great deal on any reasonable mare to Grand Slam..

With due respect i think everyone else is overthinking it. They are basically saying that only the strong that survive should become breeding stock. My point is that why are technological advances either including or not including medication allowing the not so strong to survive ok? Isnt anything that allows horses to compete at a level that isnt "natural" what they are talking about?

And i understand that no one will breed to a crappy stallion forever but Fu Peg probably already has produced more foals than Northern Dancer.

I think I could have had a season to GS at close to 1/2 price but it was still a little steep for my modest regional program

NY sire Raffies Majesty's broodmare sire is Surumu from Germany. RM has proven to be a successful regional stamina influence with the right mare.

Not to mention he has never had a horse with a BSF of 100 that I have ever seen.

Fu Peg was given a huge shot by people that know how to earn and have to earn to support there appetite for power. In the past when racing was dominated by people and not business such practice didn't exist.

I heard Pompa suggest Big Brown was worth 80 mil as a stallion...HUH

That's a lot of mares at 100k a pop to recoup such an investment. It's become a business not a hobby for wealthy folks.

I think the med's and medical technology are great things when used responsibly be folks.

Simply put we all would rather breed a horse to a sound fast SOB then a science experiment that without science would be a frog.. I don't think you can look past that there are to many stallions that needed too much science to make them semi successful and that i think that is the nuts of the Beyer comments.

That was my thougth exactly. Plus how often could you run a horse who is running 12F races? Still have to pay the vet and the feed and the stall, etc The casual owner wants to see his horse run more than 3 or 4 times a year.

The industry is still messed up by not having Sunday Silience and his Halo influence absent from our stock..

Hancock couldn't give that colt away nobody wanted a Halo. Finally Whittingham took him and the rest is lure.

Grand slam at 1/2 price isn't too bad at all.

I dont know that he could make that much of a difference overall. A lot of his success was on the turf and his affinity for Northern Taste mares. He may have been a great sire here also but maybe he would never have gotten a real chance. It is interesting that only recently has anyone imported sons of his.

The problem is that sound and fast dont mesh well. You have Danzig as a prime example. If he had raced on Lasix he would have been vilified as a breed killer.

My point with a colt needing to run on medication in order to do well was that, with less permitted medications, he's not as likely to perform well, and thus likely to have less of a chance to get a foothold in the breeding market. I wasn't saying such a horse would be forbidden or unable to breed, just that market desire for a young stallion who'd been a success at the races would make things harder on one that hasn't done well. This seems pretty clear to me; I'm not seeing where you're getting confused.

I don't think I said anything about "allowing weaker horses to pass off genetic weaknesses" as though one needed to give them permission, so I'm not sure what was "bunk." I think it's fairly well established that our physical traits are in our genes and we pass them along to offspring, whether we are horses, people, or Madagascar hissing cockroaches. And no, those genes can't be changed by medicine or surgery- my father's and my noses look nothing alike, but that's because he broke his as a teenager- I still got what he was born with, before that diving accident. :) Again, the argument was, if permissive medication enables horses that, under their own genetically-given abilities, would not have managed a career at the races, to succeed, those horses are more likely to have an opportunity at the breeding market, based on those artificially enhanced successes (and by "opportunity" I don't mean "permission" I mean there might be a demand for said horse that there wouldn't be otherwise. Again, I don't get what is unclear about that).

Once again, a horse returning to the races after recovering from an injury is not the same thing as running a medicated horse. I don't think there's a racing fan anywhere who doesn't understand that athletes do get injured sometimes. If anything, the fact that PE recovered from what should have been a career-ending injury is testament to her good genes, since many horses would not have been able to, no matter how heavily medicated they were, or how much metal was put into their legs.

One thing I find so entertaining about conservative mindsets is the "all or nothing" mentality- "Medicating horses can be bad?" "Fine, you're saying let's ban everything! What about ulcer medications?" "You don't want to operate on them, either, do you? Why do you hate our freedom?" ;) Because we don't know where to draw the line right this second doesn't mean the dialogue shouldn't be taking place. There are more TBs born now than 50 years ago, as you've said in earlier posts, and yet fields are smaller and individual horses make fewer starts. That, again, was the point of Beyer's article- that medication is not helping American racing- the push for it was based on increasing the number of starts horses could make, and that didn't happen. All of your comments have had to do with breeding, not the state of racing. Which of course, reinforces the biggest problem with racing, which is that breeding controls it. You yourself are a trainer, and almost all of your comments have been focused on breeding, I'm sure because that's where the actual money is. They should start calling trainers "future stud developers." (I'm teasing, of course, but sometimes it seems not that far off base to racing fans). Do you not give a horse antibiotics if it has an infection? Of course you medicate them. Do you give it steroids to build up muscle it might not be genetically predisposed to have? I would say no, as steroids aren't good for mammals (except in cases being used to treat severe illness, yes I know). If they had no adverse side effects, I think baseball bigwigs wouldn't be screaming about them so much.

I thought you made a good case in a post some time ago about medication enabling trainers to turn a horse around faster and that enabling owners to see a return on their investment faster, but that requires putting what may or may not be best for the animal below what's best for the owner, as the money is the motivating factor. Is that right or wrong? I don't know. I certainly think most trainers want what's best for their animals, and I also know racing is a very expensive sport. And, too, horses make fewer starts now, so is it really making a difference? Again, I don't know. I just thought it was a good financial argument and still remember it.

You also (indirectly, I think) bring up a number of tangents, but I think it helps reinforce that racing's issue is not medication only, or breeding only, or tracks only- it's a number of things that combined result in fewer starts and smaller fields. But, as long as the gambling dollars hold out, there's no reason for American racing to change anything. Also a very American trait- if it's not really, really, catastrophically breaking, why bother doing anything? And even then, maybe not bother. ;)

Anyway, good stuff, as always, Chuck. Thanks for responding.

I know this isn't a Beyer article, but I thought I'd post it anyway. The Sun's coverage of Preakness week is - as always - pretty stellar.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/sports/h...4909744.column

I didnt even get into the financial aspects simply because there is a limit to my typing ability in one sitting. My issue is that Beyer saying that medication is the issue in general terms without any new information and ignoring many of the issues that i brought up is simply pushing a tired agenda of which no one has offered a workable solution. The fact that field size has in fact remained static for most of the years, with only a slight decline (less than 1 horse per race) is simply ignored. Simply saying that because individual horses race less than in prior years and discounting all other factors including different racing schedules (especially 2 year olds), economics (including the rise of commercial breeding and 2 year old sales), diluted breeding stock in general (due to overproduction), trainers stats being posted next to their names (leading them to pass on spots where they dont have much chance because most owners and even people on this forum measure a trainers ability by winning %), use of the sheets theory (spacing and time are critical components), etc., to me is far too simplistic and i think that a smart guy like beyer would think a little more critically about the matter than this. Blaming Lasix, steroids, bute, etc as the main culprit when in fact they may play a very small role is troublesome for me in particular because when they get rid of these medications and nothing happens differently (like the holding barns in NY) what will they blame then?

Maybe because i am a baseball junkie and have seen a revolution in thinking in that sport I just expect more in this sport. There is almost no critical thinking and yet most of what has been held to be true in horseracing has been proven false so many times.

"Commercial farms" = factory farms

kinda like puppy mills

this is precious from Dutrow..


I don't care what anybody writes or says, we do things the right way around our horses," he says.

"And I know there's people that don't. I'm in the game, I know what's happening. When these kind of guys beat me, I don't like it because I know what they're up to."

If giving winstrol to your horses once per month is doing the right thing, I'd hate to see what doing the wrong thing is.

Winstrol is hardly the issue..trust me if it was Richard Dutrow would not be sharing his brillance with the world..

BTW congratulations to Gary Contessa and Rite Moment.. Nice to see trainers improving the filly 25 pts in 2 months..Chuck were do they get this hay?

Well, winstrol is banned in ten states now. The stuff can't be that good for horses in the long run.

The hay fairy

I am no expert but I suspect Winstrol is pretty good for horses when administered correctly by a vet.

I wish I had her number

Administered properly in low doses Winstrol is no more dangerous to horses than the xray machine in the dentists office are to people. It is a federally approved drug in horses.

me too

If you read the latest stories in the mainstream media you wouldn't think there is a long run for horses

Rite Moment went from running 60 to 70 BSF's in Nov 07 to 90 to 96 in Jan 08.. I have a feeling it wasn't 5 weeks of Winstrol Slot...More likely it was a unexpected visit from the Hay Fairy

I understand that in the proper dosage, it is probably useful, but Chuck, where does one draw the line with steroids? I'm just asking your opinion in particular.

[quote=tiggerv]Latest article from Andrew Beyer. Apologies if this was already posted.

"Yet despite the evidence that the U.S. medication policy has been a failure, horsemen have regularly resisted most efforts to curb the use of medications. American racing is addicted to drugs, and American horses will never again be fueled by hay, oats and water alone. But until the industry faces the medication issue seriously, all of its efforts to address equine safety will be misguided."

QUOTE] he is right on and it goes way beyond horses. the whole damn nation is hooked on "meds". unfortunatley 3 years ago i came down with a chronic illness with no cure(menieres disease-chronic vertigo,deafness and balance loss). they had me on 6 to 8 different pills a day. probably only 2 of them did **** for me. since theres no cure, i feel like some kind of test market ginea pig. the drug companies are making a fortune whether this crap is good for people or the horses. race day meds should be a definite no-no. if a horse has to be doped up to run it probably should not be racing. but this whole drug and anything for the bottom line is a big problem for the whole society. it goes way, way beyond horse racing. capitalism is great, but greed and hypocrosy rule the country right now. instead of doing the right thing, its all about money,short cuts and doing the easiest thing. as long as theres a profit to be made. look for more horses to be carted off unless things change. and i don't care if they run them on down pillows!

[quote=johnny pinwheel]Do you have any of those pills left?

There are many different kinds of steroids in addition to the anabolics. They all have legit uses. There is no doubt that they can be abused. But we have never had ANY regulation with regards to anabolics and the same people who are howling about banning them are the people who have never even attempted to regulate them. The crap you hear about all the issues they cause is just noise. Of course there are side effect if abused. But they can certainly be of benefit to the racing animal when used in low doses in conjunction with a proper diagnosis. The real crime is the authorities have neglected to regulate these substances which absolutely led to abuse. Now they want to go so far overboard in effectively banning them, it is a joke in itself.

Use in sales horses especially yearlings can not be condoned