Kentucky's ongoing attempt to end racing in state proceeds..
 

Kentucky committee votes to phase out Lasix
By Matt Hegarty

A committee of the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission voted Monday in support of a regulation to phase out the raceday use of the anti-bleeding medication furosemide starting with 2-year-olds in 2013. The new rule, which passed 4-1, will go to the full racing commission, which was scheduled to start a meeting at 1:30.

Under the rule, 2-year-olds will be banned from receiving raceday administrations of furosemide - known by the trade names Lasix or Salix - in 2013. The ban will be extended to 3-year-olds and all stakes races in 2014, and apply to all races in 2015.

The rule also includes a provision allowing the commission to reconsider the rule as of Sept. 1, 2013. Supporters of the new rule said that the provision would allow the committee to support a rollback of the ban if other states do not pass similar rules and the prohibition leads to weaker racing on the Kentucky circuit.

The rule passed despite heavy opposition from trainers. Dale Romans, a longtime Kentucky trainer, was denied permission to speak by the committee's chairman, Tracy Farmer. From a chair in the audience, Romans called the ban "the final nail in the coffin of Kentucky racing."

Follow KHRC meeting with twitter feeds..

MATT HEGARTY

JENNIE REES

GREG HALL

Welcome to Belmont Park, the future home of the Triple Crown series.........................

Well, that will cut the Derby field down to six in a couple years.

Unbelievably dumb. You have elite athletes you want to perform at the highest levels, and you don't want to help enable their lungs to stay healthy?

Ridiculous. Every trainer in KY will go elsewhere.

Funny, I recall when New York was the only jurisdiction that didn't allow lasix!

I'm still shaking my head in disbelief at the ignorance of those running this sport ... out of all the medication problems in racing, they want to outlaw the one that helps protect horses from bleeding disasters?

i don't expect the rule (if passed by the full committee) to stay in place any longer than the synthetic mandate lasted in cali. especially considering the third paragraph above!

So they are trying to phase out lasix, but mention nothing about adjunct medications?

Adjunct meds not proven to work to contain EIPH anyway. About equal result with placebo.

Yay! Per Matt Hegarty on Twitter: Vote tied 7-7 thus motion to ban lasix does not pass

Good news for race horses.

So you know who's on the wrong side of the argument, here's who voted FOR the ban:

Robert M. Beck Jr.
Tracy Farmer
Ned Bonnie
Allan Wade Houston Sr.
Elizabeth S. Lavin
Alan J. Leavitt
Jerry Yon, M.D.

is that the tracy farmer that zito trained for?

So you know who's on the right side of the argument, those voting AGAINST:

Thomas Conway
Foster Northrop, D.V.M.
Frank Jones Jr.
Franklin S. Kling Jr.
Tom Ludt
Michael A. Pitino
Burr Travis Jr.

Yes. He was a big owner once.. Now he's just big.

I love how these guys like Seth Hancock show up for a meeting like this and stump for "hay, oats and water" (the misnomer that it is). Last time I checked, he was using Pletcher as his trainer. So let me see, he's opposed to giving a horse a $20 Lasix shot on race day, but he has no problem having his horses with a trainer whose horses average four figure vet bills on a monthly basis. Can you say hypocrite?

!!!!! :D



he ought to know better.






maybe this is a ploy to get his vet bills down??

seriously, he ought to know better too.

No it won't.

In all fairness, the vast majority of his horses are with Al Stall.

True, but Claiborne has had, and currently does have, horses with Pletcher.

The list of TOBA/Jockey Club/Breeders Cup members that have horses with guys like Pletcher and Asmussen, whose monthly vet bills dwarf those of smaller stables, is pretty long.

When Turfway Park decided to install a synthetic surface I thought it was a great idea for many reasons...and I liked the idea of a third racing surface because it would help bettors who weren't mindless find edge in some situations.

When I started watching Turfway's poly races ... I thought it would be a travesty if top class horse racing is ever conducted on a surface like that.

You don't have to go back very far to find a time when lasix wasn't allowed on a major circuit...New York in the early-to-mid 90's.

The issue of the day in horse racing always seems to be a completely worthless issue and much ado about nothing. I don't care either way about lasix. It's basically vets and horse trainers VS dopey handwringers and do-gooders from within the industry.

The idea that we should get rid of lasix for PR is a laughably amatuerish move. The idea that there will be some big reaction to us removing the letter L in the program/pp's is based on delusional reasoning partly because many of the backers of the anti-medication movement have no understanding of how the "drug problem" in our game is formulated by horseplayers. I haven't met or heard of anyone in more than 20 years complaining about lasix as an issue (of course until recently when our own people stained the sport by taking their opinions based on bs public) but go to any racetrack in America and you will hear all kinds of theories (right or wrong) after a 47% trainer wins a race (or runs poorly at 2-5) or there is some dramatic form reversal. Asking people if they are for or against drugs in racing in a internet poll with no context and trumpeting those results is asinine but this is the "evidence" that they use. Saying that "we are known as a chemical sport so lets get rid of lasix" is insane not only because it will cause all kinds of unintended consequences but because it isnt attacking the real drug issue or any of the other problems of the sport. When breeders cry about lasix or other legal medications "affect" on the breed yet have no trouble with the manipulation of a foals legs (ie their god given genetic makeup) how can you take them seriously? In order to "fix the game" you must first understand what the hell is going on and it is painfully obvious that so many of the people in charge simply don't. This is the only billion dollar business in existence that relies on the opinions of mostly uneducated on the topic people to make major business decisions without doing an economic impact study on the likely effects of the potential decisions.

i remember when ny was lasix-free. kept some nice horses from running there.

ky is probably hoping to be the industry leader, and see other groups follow their lead. they'll probably be very lonely on their pedestal, which they'll ditch in a hurry when their cunning plan falls apart. ky has bigger issues, they obviously don't have their priorities in order.

on the other hand...is this a move that began behind the scenes-are they hoping for some sort of state help with this vote???