Yikes - ATR Live

[Riot]

In light of the capabilities of many of racing's testing labs and the fact that there are no tests for many designer drugs (cobra and cone snail venom are recent examples), it's hard to reach the conclusion that a certain trainer must be clean because he/she has no positives, or only a few.

The above quote is talking about humans, not horses, and is talking about designer steroids in this case. I've no doubt some trainers may go there to try and build a more-muscled, aggressive-on-the-track horse, but I am certainly not prepared to paint every trainer as guilty until proven innocent.

I would rather look at what drug testing in horses can detect, and has eliminated. There's alot there, and alot of important stuff there.

I have no problem looking at trainers with multiple drug positives (obviously don't care about regulations) far differently than trainers that historically come back clean, time after time, horse after horse.

By that standard, Patrick Biancone ran a clean barn in the US prior to 2007 - and who, in light of recent revelations, believes that?

I don't quite know what people think trainers do with "drugs", or what effect it could have on a particular horses performance.

Cobra venom. Is every horse going to get it before they go to a race? Of course not. Why should they? It's use (misuse) would be for a sore horse, so they don't feel pain.

If a horse isn't painful coming into a race, no need to give it. If a horse is painful and could miss an important race, an unscupulous trainer could use it.

Cobra venom isn't going to make the horse run faster, or farther, but it will enable them to run when they shouldn't. And there is certainly no need to give it to horses that are not sore, even in the barn of the most unscrupulous trainer, as it's not gonna do squat for those horses.