Ness barn raided at Tampa
 

Been meaning to update on this and just thought to write it up. Don't have much info, but Jamie Ness' barn at Tampa Bay Downs was raided this morning. He was at Presque Isle. Nothing further is known as of yet.

Same BS as the Levine raid last year at Monmouth Steve?

He isnt the only one thats been raided lately.

At Tampa or at other tracks?

Hard to say yet... Guess it depends on what they were looking for and if they took blood, etc.. With Levine, they took blood and tested for EPO and struck out. A great number of the nefarious looking performances are coming from simple milkshaking. Tubing isn't needed any more.. they give a paste "bullet" of the bi-carb mixture. They look for some exotic juice when in fact the horses are getting Rolaids...

I think we should all thank Rene Poulin for bringing milkshaking to TB's from Standardbred's... Can always count on the French Canadians for the good stuff

They won't find anything. He's simply Michael Jordan playing in the special olympics tournament.

Where do they sell these paste "bullets" at ?

The Bullet Depot DUH?

bullets r us.

Can these bullets beat the normal milkshaking tests? Tampa has been testing for milkshakes for a few years. They nabbed Don Rice (RIP) more than once with that testing.

The theory is that shake users have fine-tuned the bi-carb mix and amounts given to keep the CO2 levels in the horse below the threshold that tests as a milkshake positive. Since horses have widely differing levels of CO2 in their systems, the positive level is quite high. So a horse testing just under the threshold positive level can very well have been been shaked.

A very prominent trainer, who has been around, has told me that he is sure that shakes are the majority of the seemingly outrageous performances we see from certain trainers and certain horses.

m.m..:rolleyes:

all they will find is some different size shoes, a couple tongue ties, and maybe some differnet bits

Thanks for the info. Steve.

No way, not that guy

Mike Maker is a man of the utmost integrity I hear.

No. The milkshaking tests measure the total CO2 in the blood, no matter how that TCO2 gets to where it is (lasix shot pre-race, feed, milkshaking, etc)

Any trainer (or vet) that uses Tums or Rolaids (instead of plain Arm & Hammer baking soda) to "milkshake" probably isn't very bright, IMO, as they are, first, wasting a ton of money :D, and secondly, using calcium carbonate inside of sodium bicarbonate. Not the same metabolic effect.

Bicarbonate ion is the conjugate base component of bicarbonate:carbonic-acid buffer, the principal extracellular buffer in the body. Plainly, it buffers acid, hopefully delaying muscle fatigue. Sodium bicarb is a great and quick pH buffer, but the massive amounts of sodium can be problematic.

Calcium carbonate (the weak "oral antacids" like Tums and Rolaids) are not antacids for the pH of the blood or extracellular space, they are intra-GI tract antacids. They target excess hydrogen ions within the GI tract (which doesn't affect the blood or extracellular fluid pH). Calcium carbonate will bind with phosphorous in the gut (preventing absorpsion), and the calcium is poorly absorbed from the gut and so passes out and does essentially nothing to the blood in even massive overdose (luckily, as if it was absorbed en mass, the calcium would probably cause cardiac problems). Possibly cause a constipation colic. If they administer it regularly, could screw up the horses bone density.

The effect on the bodies acid-base buffering capacity ... essentially nil.

They aren't cheaters because they are smart.

Who said anything about tums or rolaids? They are using paste in dose syringes similar to those used for bute.

Steve did earlier in the thread. Yes, I can see soda bicarb paste in oral syringes, or even better soda bicarb in delayed-release gelatin capsules (but boy, you'd need alot of capsules, even if you used cattle caps, to get 8-16 oz of bicarb in there, and getting them down intact would be difficult)

I thought he was just using it as an analogy.

Steve's trainer source may be correct as milkshakes do work really well on certain horses and can move them up. We have plenty of proof that they worked as they were legal for years and if bet the Derby you likely bet on a milkshaked horse. But unlike a "hop" some horses didnt run better or actually ran worse on them. You would also see the a major improvement the first time but not the second or third.

They should make like a 4-in-1 video game where you try to make huge betting scores through larceny.

* For thoroughbred racing - you are a vet .. and you have to come up with the wonder drug strong enough to juice longshots home - and of course you'll need to stop a few short priced horses here and there along the way.

* For harness racing - you're a crooked driver. You have to stiff all your mounts as skillfully as possible to make it look like you're trying.

* For greyhound racing - you're a leadout. You have to sneak the dogs food between races and stuff to stop em ... or give them exlax or something that will give em the sh!ts.

* For Jai-alai - you're some dirty Spaniard. You need to conspire with others to fix matches and throw some games away on your own.

Game could be a hit - and teach a young wave of future bettors how to best capitalize on cinches and get the best bang for their buck from wagers like the trifecta and superfecta.

The alchemists have figured out how to use the alkaline "paste" in a way that when inside a horse (via blood,respiratory or GI tract) during a race, it is able to maintain a high enough Ph during race conditions to avoid anaerobic metabolism and lactic acidosis due to effort or exertion thus the horse doesn't tire.

The additional advantage of these drugs are that they somehow avoid an end product of CO2 measured in blood when tested. Whether the paste is metabolized to COH or COOH or anything else is irrelevant. It's obvious that the alchemy wizards have figured out how to avoid excessive CO2 which is what is tested in venous horse blood.

Nothing new, the criminals are one step ahead of the law......at least for now. Frozen blood samples for all stakes winners would seem to be a good idea for now.

Not to mention the dead Standardbreds while trainers tried to get the dose right.

It's very difficult, even if you have a bloodgas machine, an IV line, a bottle of pharmaceutical sodium bicarbonate, and a syringe, to alter a blood gas if necessary in a patient. There's a simple formula that's used. But the body has it's own compensatory mechanisms, and starts fighting any adjustments one makes. It's not utterly simple - you push the pH one way, you will change other things. You do that in a horse that's dehydrated from it's lasix, losing electrolytes in sweat on a hot day, and you could find yourself playing with fire. Or the insurance company.

Certainly one can use sodium bicarbonate to help delay muscle fatigue, and it works. But yeah, getting the dose correct - considering ambient temperature, lasix dose, what the horse ate that day, etc - would be difficult.

By correct I mean a dose that works, but isn't detectable as an overage (overages on TCO2 are set using standard laboratory practice of using standard deviations from the mean). I don't doubt some trainers sneak in their "micro dose" of soda bicarb on race day - but I don't buy that it's as predictable a result as some think (based upon how laboratories have always measured and established TCO2 levels, and what "normal patients" produce, the variations seen, etc). Your observation seems to match that.

I was talking to a vet who does alot of university research into TCO2 last month at a CE lecture. Talking that some handicappers want all TCO2 levels published, even if the levels are below the overage level.

These handicappers maintain that high, but legal levels, are nearly always a result of these trainers using "micro-milkshaking".

I think that will just result in false accusations and a witch hunt for milkshaking in guys whose horses are running at routinely high levels - because yeah, there is a good chance these guys could indeed be micromilkshaking and staying legal, or they could have changed feeds, or given the horse a bigger dose of lasix on a hot day.

Multiple things other than orally administered sodium bicarbonate affect the measurable TCO2, and some people don't want to recognize that.

With or without bicarb. you are going to go anaerobic.
The bicarb only buffers the pH so the muscles can
still contract and relax properly. Its that low pH that ruins the muscle action.
The protein in the muscle is very sensitive to pH as are almost all proteins.
Lactic acid is going to be produced with or without the shake.
The idea is to pick up those excess hydrogen ions from the lactic acid.

Agreed?
This is how I understand it.

Please discuss if you got something else as I would like to know.
I used to milkshake before 5K's that I was trying to set a PR for.
It never worked.

Too far. Try a 1 1/16th race.

Because the body is an amazing machine, that corrects whatever nonsense we do to it :D

Human marathoners can carbohydrate-load, however (if done correctly), Iditarod sled dogs can't (but the dogs can become metabolically adapted to preferentially use fat rather than carbohydrate aerobically).

I have a great interest in looking at feeding sprinters differently than route horses. Few try this in the TB world (although in other horse sports it's done very successfully)

your right about function but acidemia and acidosis are completely different effects.....as long as the blood stays neutral you can run forever which is why marathon runners train at or near the AT

If they had run em, I would have tried em.
In any case, I actually kept very close records
of my workouts and race times. And the bicarb
did not help my plodding nature as far as I
could tell.

This is why I am interested as it appears to
help horses, mammals we both are, as it were.

This is the most brilliant post I have ever seen written by you. Mazel Tov.

Where in a 5K did you hit your "wall" - did you hit a wall in that short race?

I'd load with a low dose of simple and complex carbs at 20 minutes in ... I'm just sayin ... ;)

Either way you still are going to get acidosis (ie produce
lactic acid)?

so all the bicarb does is help stabilize blood pH so the horse does
not get acidemia?

Kind of like, say, an Air Power syringe?

Just sayin'.

hmmm...

you're not maybe suggesting a known milkshaker was attempting to milkshake? it was just a cough drop....

The threshold they test for is way too high. They have a huge envelope to cheat with. Look at the normal values of horses versus that threshold. They're allowed a lot of room to alkalize with. Then, they say they aren't getting many positives(so they want to say it isn't a problem anymore.) Some even want to stop testing(because there aren't enough positives.) Fact is, they won't test at the lower threshold level they need to test at . Just like they won't punish the cheaters properly that they catch. The next time you're sitting there wondering how the fk that O'neil horse just "turned things around" against the same level competion that he's been getting well beaten........Don't wonder. Test at 35. I bet you'll get your answer.

Never ran out of fuel in such a short race.
Definitely hit a wall training for a marathon.
A good thing before doing the actual thing.
making sure you are under 3 hrs can lead to lots of problems.

Bleeding nipples. I learned about that the hard way
also. Armpits rubbed raw... the usual torture.
Bandaides and vaseline respectively.

The degree of acidemia dictates how much the horse has to breathe to offset the acidosis. If the Ph is neutral you dont have eo waste all that minute ventilation or respiratory rate. There comes a time when an acidotic horse or human cannot breathe fast enough to offset the lactic acid and the horse slows down.

It only helps if your horse can run to begin with it does not make a horse faster