Interesting discussion

[Cannon Shell]

Originally Posted by scanman

Question for anyone:

What are the testing procedures for tracks like Belmont, Hollywood, Churchill versus tracks like Tampa, Canterbury, Penn National?

The procedures are similar. The labs that test for smaller tracks are not inferior to the bigger ones and in fact in many cases are the same. The difference is the amount of substances tested for. Even the bigger tracks (states) are usually not testing for more than 10-20 things and on some occasions less then that. Considering the amount of drugs available it is a drop in the bucket. Supertesting has been done for stakes at Keeneland and those tests are usually looking for 400 or more drugs and as far as I know there have been no positives. In a lot of cases positives are closer to speeding tickets than real crimes. When you hear Larry Jones has not had a positive in 25 years you have to take that in the context of what it really means. Meaning that under the old rules in KY which the majority of his career was spent under, it was almost impossible to get a positive test because most everything was legal and hardly had any withdrawl. The things that cause horses to magically improve and get trainers at 40% arent things that are widely known and tested for.