Deep Impact Tests Positive in the Arc
 

Drugs - the great intercontinental uniter in racing.


http://news.bloodhorse.com/viewstory.asp?id=35878

Americo-Japanese unifier perhaps. No blurred boundaries in Europe.

I was just getting ready to post this...great minds?

You wouldn't happen to reside in Europe by any chance? If you think cheating isn't going on EVERYWHERE perhaps you needs to get your head out of the sand.

Mediocre minds?

yours maybe...:D

Oversight since it is not banned in their country?

It's always oversight...isn't it?

So, their excuse would be that they didn't find out what substances were banned in Europe and not in Japan?

" We aren't cheaters....we're stupid " perhaps? Wasn't that Steve Assmussen's latest defense? Is this part of a universal code?

Wonder if this is going to like Brass Hat problem in
Dubai with the paper work being screwed up about medication
about what you can use and not use and when you should stop
giving the mediaction.

It's a Class 3 here in the States, why would you mess with something that was questionable to even affect the horses racing performance? I'm willing to give the people the benefit of the doubt if the horse was being treated for something during his long layoff that the public was never informed of (which we never are and should be IMO).

My thoughts too saucon.

I agree ...ignorance is no excuse. I don't care what the drug was...if he had some type of bronchial infection then he shouldn't have been running...if he did not have an infection he shouldn't have been on the medication.

Does this drug have any performance enhancement? If yes, they should have given him more of it.

I'm sorry but this sounds very "Brass Hattish" to me.
And if everyone thinks that ipratropium is whats hopping up performances these days, I really can't agree.

I am amazed at the tolerance people seem to show towards drug positives. We are at a point in racing where the prevelance of undetectable performance enhancers are being used rampantly and some of the same people who may use these also get caught with overages in known illegal medications. A little gluttonous if you ask me.

Here's a thought....stop defending the cheaters and cheating...no matter what it is and who is doing it. It's basically called zero tolerance.

BTW,
Ask your friend the trainer about his absolute bull**** positive for a salve that was used to treat cracked feet.
They aren't machines and they get ailments that must be treated and the wear off times can be tricky and vary from horse to horse.
Zero tolerance on performance enhancing stuff, yeah, count me in. But you simply can't condemn trainers who treat cracked feet or lung infections or cuts the same way that you treat a guy who jams a tube into a horses mouth or injects them with a hopper on race day.
Surely you must understand the difference here.

I meant that the use of medication such as lasix is banned in Europe, where, conicidentally, the number of positive drug cases is far lower.

does it really matter if the drug is enhancing? It's banned...end of story.
And if the horse needed to be on the medication for a legitimate infection then he should not have been running.

Beth the recommended wear off times vary from horse to horse based on a number of factors, come on you know that.
I'm not defending illegal drugs, but I'm extremelt tired of certain national columnists painting everyone with the same brush who gets a positive regardless of its nature. Of course the same guy has written a lot of pump articles for a buddy of his who he claims tobe so great, who has had more postives than a planned parenthood clinic in a college town.
Ths is irrepsonsible journalism thats causing the public to believe that a trace amount of therapeutic medicine is the same as monkeying one up on raceday with high test go go juice.
Its just not so.

I have to agree with you on this. Some trainers use drugs deliberately and intentionally to enhance a horses performance in a race if there is little chance of them getting caught. However, most of the time, that isn't the case. The veterinarians make a lot of mistakes too with these medications like not giving the horse the proper dosage, or giving them the medication later than they were supposed to which can cause the horse to have a positive drug test.

Oh yeah, and I agree with your other posts too on this thread.

The question here is does it or does it not affect performance? If it does, by all means burn them at the stake. Slaps on the wrist just isn't cutting it.

I'd love to see past performances that clued you in why the horse was on a lay-off. Unless your reading the DRF religiously and it is a 'popular' horse you will have no clue.

but would you not agree that some of what is wrong with racing is the reliance on, and the acceptance of, theraputic medications? It is what has allowed many horsemen to get away with running horses that simply need TIME OFF. If this horse had a lung infection...great. treat him and give him some days...instead they obviously came too close to the withdrawl window and it caught up with them...I do not feel sorry for them.

Until every track tests for EPO it doesn't matter.

Do you realize what the size of fields would be if trainers weren't allowed to treat the tinest of things and were instead told to ship them off to the farm?

I do, and we'd have 3 race cards with 4 horses apiece in them, two days a week.
Its like saying no NFL player should play with any injury, he should sit out the week.

I am hardly suggesting that they be shipped off to the farm...but running them with banned medications (whatever they may be) is not a positive for the game IMO.

I wonder what field size would be like if there were no performance enhancing drugs whatsoever. I also wonder what the results would look like.

Believe it or not, there were people who didn't believe steroids were a problem in baseball ten years ago.

And you thought Poly was bad! :D

You can't compare steroids with something that is 'questionable' to enhance performance, but I agree, steroids should be controlled. (Especially in the Auction Ring!)

BTW,
My biggest problem is with how this is portrayed by irresponsible journalists.
I can pull the articles written by one who loves to rail out and crash out against those who he deems villains or supertrainers. I can also pull atleast two articles the same guy has written about a friend of his who trains who has a list of postives who he gushes over.
And you know who the writer and trainer I'm talking about are.
Its not being covered responsibly, this problem that we have. And convincing people that a therapy drug for a cracked foot is the same as a shot of high test on race day is only hurting the problem.

It was an allusion to people's amazing ignorance about an obvious problem and not an argument relevent to specific drugs.

I don't find the issue to be specific.

The biggest problem is not irresponsible journalism. it is trainers using illegal performance enhancing medication and an industry that turns more than a blind eye to it. What you, or I or anyone, perceive as some journalistic bias does not change what is happening out there.

Perceive? I think we perceive pretty well. And that guy is someone I respect greatly but who has ZERO credibility on that topic after that bs.

And yes the problem is drugs, no question. I agree 100%. But I really think that tracks are reacting to the journalistic frenzy by grabbing guys on small traces of therapy drugs instead of grabbing the real cheaters in order to mak a sacrifice to the journalists and people as if to say "See we got one!!"" yeah great, go grab a guy with a trace of a bronchiodilater, that will really clean this up. Can't you see whats going on? Do you really think that they grabbed 4 guys the last two years all on the same positive by cooincidence? Or was it because those 4 guys get blasted by journalists(who don't bash their buddies who have a list of positives already) and they felt like they had to nail them on something to calm the masses?

P.S.
I want them to catch guys for cheating who ARE cheating and for what they are CHEATING WITH!!! Not some trace amount of a therapeutic drug. Can't anyone see this doesn't solve the problem?

.....and he lost.....BAH!!!!

Side note!
Lets see they want to take my amatuer status.
I load up on Tylenol to take care of back pain. So they want to ban from playing?
Should I play my Golf Tournament still?
Hmm! History seems to favor me when I play a Tournament with a physical ailment. I always asked someone to hit me in the head standing next to me on his backswing with his driver thinking he could use off this pile of grass on the ground before we tee off.
:rolleyes:

I knew that the Soviet Uniom Women's 70's and 80's team were quite influential!

Eeeeeeeggzactly.

"Traces of ipratropium, an anticholinergic administered by inhalation for the treatment of lung diseases, were found in the horse's urine samples after tests carried out in France. The JRA, which was informed of the results of the test by French horse racing authorities, does not list ipratropium as a banned substance."

'Trace' amount usually means it is not present in sufficient amount to have had any effect on the day in question. You would be surprised at what many humans have trace amounts of in their bloodstreams (or kidneys). Modern techniques allow chemists to find tiny, parts-per-billion tiny, amounts of things in solution, which could not possibly enhance or detract from performance in the concentration found. Zero tolerance policies are a lazy way to get around having to use any kind of judgment.