REAL Sports profile on juice in racing
 

Coming up in a few minutes on HBO if anyone is interested.

not a good start to this...

Ol Stevey trying to put the shoe on the other foot.

But, in his defense (if he has one) the guy has 1000+ starters a year, i'd be surprised if he actually saddled 1/3rd of them.

wish i could have heard what Lake and Mullins had to say about this report

-bt-

Deny deny deny.

I wish they said the name of the horse who made over 500K and last raced with a broken pelvis. The trainer of that horse should be F-ing barred from ever training another racehorse.

I believe that I would be suspicious of the whole broken pelvis story.

How does a horse race with a broken pelvis?

If it is true, that is downright disgusting.

I was interviewed for this story along with many other's in the industry who were not shown. Obviously there is some truth to what was reported however during my interview they repeatedly asked loaded questions. In one instance the interviewer said to me that Barbaro was obviously drugged. But in the end they used the old standby's Sahadi and Arthur. They said that Dutrow and Pletcher refused to be interviewed and in light of Assmussens few minutes it sound like they did the right thing.

They found the horse in a feedlot going to slaughter. It is not like he had been receiving quality care. It is a real stretch to singularly blame drugs for that horses problems.

Broken and cracked... I think an animal can have a crack even hairline and it can be called broken. It may be the animal can still run as long as long it is in a part of the pelvis that is not going to hinder the stride. I bet it still hurts like hell though. Guess he was drugged up. And the pounding probably does not help with the healing process.

There is no legal drug that would mask a broken pelvis

I've been to New Holland in Pa. a couple of times and the condition of the non-thoroughbred horse were just sickly to look at and most of T-breds were in o.k. condition. Most of horses were not getting quality care like you said. It's sad to see how some people treat this wonderful animals.

It is horrible but a different topic. I am always suspect when no details are given. Just because they said that the horse had raced with a broken pelvis does not mean it was true. If it was true then why not show some video of his last race?

Well it's a given that you shouldn't believe everything you hear on a show that has a reporter that looks like an anorexic version of Grandpa Munster.

I know humans can have a broken pelvis and not know it. It hurts but sometimes they are told its just a broken tailbone and it will heal. Then they go in for X-rays and the tailbone is not cracked its actually a crack in the pelvis. The pelvis is obviously set up differently in upright animals.

So you are saying any little crack in the pelvis could not possilby be masked with drugs?

Yeah they should showed a video of his/her last race. "Real Sports" was trying to push their own agenda on the sport.

It is possible that a horse could run with a hairline fracture. It would be very difficult to pinpoint a hairline fracture without going to a clinic for xrays. Anything worse than a hairline and the horse would be in major pain and there is no way that the horse could run regardless of the curcuit.

I don't care how loaded the questions were, when one of Scott Lake's horses can test positive for cocaine and he's not seriously reprimanded, this sport has major issues.

I was glad to hear Arthur say what a bad stuation it is for bettors.

It really was not as bad as I thought it was going to be. Some of the things that they brought up are valid points.

I dont know the particulars but anything can be twisted and half truths can look alot worse than the whole truth. Not that I am defending Lake as he seemingly has little regard for the rules but we may be talking about 1 nanogram or something which would usually fall into environmental contamination level.

I was asking this because I know a large animal vet who found hairline fractures in riding ponies post mortum in school.

A lot of horses get pelvis injuries leaving the gate, hitting their hip on the gate.

I have not seen the show yet, so maybe I am way off here, but I do get a little tired of the mainstream media only doing negative stories on horseracing (except of course for someone like NBC who has a vested interest in giving the sport a positive image).
The issue of horses being juiced is valid and worthy of coverage by a show like REAL Sports. So was their story about jocks struggling with weight/eating disorders. So was the Chicago Tribune's continuing coverage last year of horses breaking down at Arlington.
I guess it just bothers me that these are the only stories of the sport these people tell. The Chicago Tribune's coverage of horseracing is horrible compared to some of the big papers in the rest of the country. They flat-out just don't care about it. Fine. But then don't get all high-and-mighty when there is some negative story to report.
Does REAL Sports ever do any positive stories about the sport? With other sports they run positive and negative stories both about individuals and the sport itself. When it comes to horseracing, they don't seem at all interested in individual stories at all, and are only interested in stories that in some way condemn the entire sport.
Rant over.

Miraja2

When does a good news story sell. Most all media stories are about crooks, killers, rapist, child predators. That's what sells. Mother Teresa stories don't sell to good.

Yes, but in sports, there are usually quite a few "good news stories" for most sports. A lot of what a show like REAL Sports does is reveal some of the darker side of a lot of sports.....which I like quite a bit. But they also include some good "heartwarming" type stories for most of the other sports.
"Hines Ward returns to Korea and is a great guy" type stuff.
I have no problem with them emphasizing all the problems that currently exist in the sport, but what about also including some profiles of all the truly good people that are involved in the sport? That only seems fair.
How about in their next installment a story like....."Will Steve Byk single-handily return horseracing to the prominence it enjoyed in the 1940s?"

You should watch it and then comment on it.

Caught it today during lunch. It was nice that Arthur Hancock brought up how the bettors are getting screwed. The piece in general did little for me in terms of a true solution. I think it will be impossible to get the 38 racing states to agree on a unilateral set of rules and regulations.

And as for commissioner...I vote for Kenny Mayne.

Sooner or later we'll all just be betting on the vets and not the trainers/horses.

DIdnt we just have an entire month devoted to a Barbaro special?

ANd the year or two before that we had Seabiscuit the book and movie. Now we have Ruffian coming to a theatre near you.

Speaking in generalities is surely not an accurate way of presenting anything.

The story of Ruffian hardly puts racing in a positive light..

Frank Whitely and LeRoy are not your idea of a good time?

I'm surprised none of the trainers told HBO that drugs have nothing at all to do with horses racing less often.....it's all because these natural dirt surfaces keep getting more and more punishing on a horse with each passing year.

Well actually they dont

Why do they race so infrequently now--and so many need a lot of time between starts?

You're saying medication, be it illegal or legal, has nothing to do with this trend?

The trend has been in effect since 1960. One of the biggest culprits in the current time is statistics. First off owners are far too concerned with a trainers win percentage, therefore trainers watch those like a hawk. Many guys will wait out a horse until the perfect senario occurs before running them. Also the Sheets mentality has become so accepted that no one wants to run back quick and risk a poor performance because the sheets guys say that it is bad. Of course at the lower tracks where much of this doesn't matter the trend is not nearly as noticable.

The funny thing about the whole starts per year per horse trend is that average field size has dropped very little in the last 40 years. I believe that it has dropped less than a horse per race while the avg starts per year has dropped signifigantly. Of course factors like winter racing and crop size are never brought up when talking about this topic, just bad trainers and evilmedications. The fact that 2 year olds in particular are campaigned so lightly in comparison to years ago is another factor that should be taken into consideration. How many 2 year olds not trained by Jamie Sanders (sorry Fearless Leader) are run more than twice or 3 times? Very few. A solid 2 year old campaign used to consist of 6 or 7 races even for the top horses.

I am not saying that we as trainers have not become too dependant on medications, because we have. But blaming everything that is wrong with the sport from breeding practices to less hardy horses to lighter campaigns on medication is just too simplistic for me.

You are right that average field size hasn't fallen off...though, that may be due more to the big increase in foal crop size since the 60's.

In 1960, the average field size was 8.95 and the average starts a year per horse was 11.31

In 2003 (most recent year I have stats for) the average field size has dropped mildly to 8.30...the average starts per horse have declined to 6.62

I believe the breeding industry has played a chief role in this long-term trend, but, I'm also think the medication (legal and illegal) have as well.

According to the '04 ARM, 2-year-old races made up just 7.7% of the races run in 2003, and the average 2yo made 3.3 starts.

I think less medication might be greatly to the benefit of the sport.

Which should drop the avg # per starts. More horses = more inferior horses= less starts

The increase in size of foal crop did more damage than anyone ever seems to realize. If you triple the major leagues to 90 teams dont you think the overall quality of player would go down? Wouldn't the overall quality of play suffer? Then why would it be any different when a great number inferior horses who would not have been bred or bred infrequently are thrown into the gene pool? Shouldn't the racing suffer?

Unlike people, thoroughbreds are not a natural breed. It is a man made breed which suffers when the selectivity of breeding stock is lowered like it was in the 70's. The breed will not ever fully recover because there is too much money at stake to eliminate much of what is wrong in modern day breed to the market practices.

Define less medication and I may agree with you. But I doubt it would change things much.
Medication is an easy target but it is a complex subject that very few who are qualified to discuss it are willing to, for fear of being cast out as a politically incorrect druggie. Advances in modern day medicine have helped every athlete in the world except baseball pitchers and supposedly thoroughbred horses.

I tend to agree with this. There is way too much racing. They could close many tracks and they should. Asia(Hong Kong/Japan) races only 4 days a week on a limited number of tracks and I believe they always have massive fields. They also have stronger medication policies.

You have a point...in that it would be harder to not run horses if fewer of them are around in the foal crop.

As for the quote above, I don't see how an increase in foal crop can be compared with an increase in number of baseball teams. Perhaps, I can see it being compared to an increase in human population size, and the effect it would have on the quality of major leauge baseball players. Or, how the increase in number of Breeders Cup races might result in the softening of the overall quality of those races.

Sadly, the trainer crop has also increased wildly since the days of Man O' War and his 1,680 foal crop. 9,760 trainers started at least one horse in the year 2003.

All joking aside, I can be very well be wrong....perhaps medications (both legal and illegal) really have little or no effect on the long-term soundness of horses and the amount of time they need between starts.

I just wish the great Barry Bonds wouldn't always need the day off, everytime he's played a game the previous night. But hey, someone has to be a fan of his I guess.