Its funny because its easy yet can also be hard to get a bad test. If every track ran "supertesting" on every horse i'm sure that you would see a ton of positive tests. Not necessarily because people are looking to cheat but because the rules are rarely absolutely clear.
I was educated by a vet who worled in both the field and lab who told me that the RMTC is using a 95% standard in their withdrawl times. That means that using those withdrawl times under normal circumstances the test will result in a negative test at least 95% of the time. That is scary from my view because if you run enough horses you may find yourself in that dreaded 5%. Of course you may have and skated because the lab wasnt testing for that med that day or your horse got beat a nose and wasnt sent for a test. Naturally you have no idea that any of this occurred because you may have followed the published rules to a T.
The attitude is that regulators are ok with this standard because positive tests make them look like they are doing a good job even if they crater public confidence. That is the reason that thresholds have been arbitrarily assigned without regard to effect on performance and why the zero tolerence politically correct push gets so much support.
The medication rules in this country are screwed up but in many ways not the way you think
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04-22-2015, 11:10 PM
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