Quote:
Originally Posted by Cannon Shell
There is next to zero chance that anyone especially a trainer in the position that Gorder is in would knowingly or intentionally give their horse meth.
The idea that a street drug, especially Meth in the state of KY (meth capital of the US) , found at the picogram level wouldn't be the result of contamination is the hard to believe part.
It is close to impossible to police your horses 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It is extremely hard to eliminate all human contact from your horses.
At the picogram level the horse could be contaminated by almost any contact. A maintenance worker from the track pees in the receiving barn stall after fixing a broken light bulb or cleaning the stall. A feed company employee. A test barn employee. Someone at the lab. Maybe the assistant trainer cashed his check before the race ad didnt wash his hands before putting on the tongue tie?
All sound a bit far fetched but a whole lot less far fetched than Gorder intentionally giving a fist time starter meth.
I'm amazed that people actually think that any viable trainer would try that.
The fact is that being a trainer nowdays is a nightmare. The rules are never actually spelled out for us, we virtually have no rights regardless of whether we are actually at fault, if we win too much we are suspicious, if we dont win enough we are clueless...
Often we arent getting paid for our services yet because a live animal is the the middle of this we have to keep on taking care of it to the best of our abilities or we are the bad guys. When a terrible incident like this happens despite it likely being completely out of our control, the internet judge and juries convict us instantly and we are blamed for the demise of racing and the euros disdain for our racing (they dont seem to like the NFL too much and they dont seem to worried).
Say you loan your car to your 17 year old kid to go to the mall. He picks up some of his friends and maybe one of those friends is a little shady and has a little bag of meth that he hides in the glove compartment when no one is looking. Now you get in the car and get pulled over for speeding and when you open the glove compartment out drop the little bag of meth that you had no idea was there. Cops arrest you for possession. Are you really a criminal?
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Chuck, unless you and Steve are privy to some information that isn't spelled out in the Steward's Ruling, then I don't know why this minimum picogram amount keeps getting brought up, and hypotheticals about a meth-head stall mucker's comb falling into a pile of hay, which got disturbed at the precise moment that the pee cup was deployed, and by osmosis precisely 21 picograms of crystal meth flew into the pee cup - I don't buy it for a second.
It isn't like it's odd that a trainer - perhaps predisposed to taking a edge, or perhaps pressured by an owner to get his firster home, with the promise of more/better stock- would use meth.
It's essentially speed - it increases heart rate, adrenalin, etc. which enhances performance; Zilpaterol abuse has been a problem in New Mexico until they started suspending everyone caught using it for
3 years (Gorder should count his blessings).
He got caught using a Class A substance. Period. It really doesn't matter if he's been getting away with it for 1, 3 or 10 years, or if this was the first time. And it doesn't matter that it wasn't cobra venom or frog juice. And it really doesn't matter that he's an affable guy, rather than a douche-bag.
It was a class A substance, and let's knock the BS off - was given to the horse by someone in his barn. Someone needs to be held accountable, and it's his barn.
04-22-2015, 08:01 PM
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