Santa Anita Cancels Thursday Card; LATEST: Racing Suspended

[Kasept]

Originally Posted by freddymo

Ok, two things can be right at the same time. First, perhaps therapeutic meds are less prevalent now than at any other point. Second, cheating is as pervasive as ever and not to acknowledge such is as silly as suggesting horses are on LESS "drugs." Conflating therapeutic drugs which at their core have positive benefit and efficacy with drugs that have no place in the sport is ridiculous.

You're spouting off nonsense without a single shred of evidence. What is your source for thinking horses are using more drugs of any kind? Give me a study. Give me historical context. You're 100% wrong. The list of permissible medications has been drilled down to a handful from hundreds. The withdrawl times have been drilled down continually from nearly immediate pre-race to 48, 72 hours or more.

I'd also like to hear what exactly you think any of these alleged medication-related innovations will do to stop the actual cheaters? All they do in reality is give the cheaters a BIGGER advantage. And, simultaneously, cost owners MORE (not less like Rupert insanely suggests)..

[Kasept]

Meanwhile, let's get back to the original source of this chaos: TSG's avarice for unattainable handle increases in the SoCal market which resulted in a communication/leadership vacuum via the replacing of Rick Hammerle and driving out of Dennis Moore.

In addition to the current fatality tally tripped by the impossibly difficult main track surface issue, there's going to be further breakdowns because horses are almost certainly harboring bone fissures from 3 months of training/racing on the hardened strip.

Moore has the track back to the deeper, slower version that allowed only 8 and 10 breakdowns the past 2 years, so what else has to be done to fix that problem? To his credit, Tim Ritvo has been trying to source nuclear imaging machinery which can provide early detection of horses that are developing vulnerabilities.

As we learned with the NY Task Force in 2012, all areas need to be on full alert to prevent as many horses from going wrong as possible. I can't imagine what happens with the next incident. The pressure/scrutiny that will accompany the resumption of racing is going to be incredible. It's obviously impossible to easily explain the intricacies of this business to the general public.. Tough enough to explain it to people who profess to be interested or involved.

[jms62]

Originally Posted by Kasept

Meanwhile, let's get back to the original source of this chaos: TSG's avarice for unattainable handle increases in the SoCal market which resulted in a communication/leadership vacuum via the replacing of Rick Hammerle and driving out of Dennis Moore.

In addition to the current fatality tally tripped by the impossibly difficult main track surface issue, there's going to be further breakdowns because horses are almost certainly harboring bone fissures from 3 months of training/racing on the hardened strip.

Moore has the track back to the deeper, slower version that allowed only 8 and 10 breakdowns the past 2 years, so what else has to be done to fix that problem? To his credit, Tim Ritvo has been trying to source nuclear imaging machinery which can provide early detection of horses that are developing vulnerabilities.

As we learned with the NY Task Force in 2012, all areas need to be on full alert to prevent as many horses from going wrong as possible. I can't imagine what happens with the next incident. The pressure/scrutiny that will accompany the resumption of racing is going to be incredible. It's obviously impossible to easily explain the intricacies of this business to the general public.. Tough enough to explain it to people who profess to be interested or involved.

So TSG is actually doing something about the track BUT NOT going public with that because it will point finger at who is actually at fault here. They need to shut it down until December 26th by then hopefully they can get it all sorted out and the spotlight will have subsided and they may even get credit for taking this extra time to insure safety of the horses. But as usual GREED gets in the way and they are rolling the dice in an unwinnable situation. They basically are gambling that NO HORSES BREAKDOWN from now through Breeders Cup because the media will be waiting and they will not accept that the track has been fixed and horses are breaking down at a rate that has been the historic norm.

[freddymo]

Originally Posted by Kasept

You're spouting off nonsense without a single shred of evidence. What is your source for thinking horses are using more drugs of any kind? Give me a study. Give me historical context. You're 100% wrong. The list of permissible medications has been drilled down to a handful from hundreds. The withdrawl times have been drilled down continually from nearly immediate pre-race to 48, 72 hours or more.

I'd also like to hear what exactly you think any of these alleged medication-related innovations will do to stop the actual cheaters? All they do in reality is give the cheaters a BIGGER advantage. And, simultaneously, cost owners MORE (not less like Rupert insanely suggests)..

Who suggested Med use was on the rise, especially in the wake of the symposium's findings? I would bet you a dollar that Therapeutic Equine drug sales are thriving at Merck, and I don't necessarily think that is a bad thing again I don't conflate the proper administration of drugs that are indicated with cheating.

You don't stop cheaters with anything other than security, and enforcement, which concern implements, PAYS FOR and oversees such is a different more critical discussion.

The point was TSG PR move worked...That's All

[Dunbar]

Just for some perspective here, I count 12 horses that died at either Aqueduct or Belmont since December 1 while training or racing:

https://data.ny.gov/widgets/q6ts-kwhk

IMO, it's entirely possible that the 22 deaths at SA are just a statistical blip, and are not related to changes in either management or the racing surface itself.,

Does anyone have a source for the total number of horses running and training at SA, AQ, and Belmont?

[Rupert Pupkin]

Originally Posted by Kasept

You're spouting off nonsense without a single shred of evidence. What is your source for thinking horses are using more drugs of any kind? Give me a study. Give me historical context. You're 100% wrong. The list of permissible medications has been drilled down to a handful from hundreds. The withdrawl times have been drilled down continually from nearly immediate pre-race to 48, 72 hours or more.

I'd also like to hear what exactly you think any of these alleged medication-related innovations will do to stop the actual cheaters? All they do in reality is give the cheaters a BIGGER advantage. And, simultaneously, cost owners MORE (not less like Rupert insanely suggests)..

I agree with you that if the cheaters keep cheating, they will have an even bigger edge if we eliminate all the legal drugs. That is 100% true. What we need to do is spend way more on security to try to catch the cheaters. In Hong Kong they have great security. I highly doubt there is anywhere close to as much cheating there as there is here. I understand that we don't have as much money to spend as they do, but we could certainly spend more than we are spending right now.

I heard that in Australia they have a machine that can test for like 10,000 different drugs. In this country we only test for around 20 different drugs. The machine in Australia costs $1 million. They should get one here. In addition, we need to hire more investigators to patrol the stable area. They should also put in tons of cameras all over the place.

I think we should either eliminate or at least cut way down on joints being injected. If a guy wants to inject an ankle, at the very least the state vet should have to do an x-ray or some type of imaging and then make the decision as to whether or not it would be safe to inject the ankle. Right now you have private vets injecting ankles, often times without even doing any imaging.

Should bute be illegal? I don't know if it should be totally illegal but I think the amount they give them right now is too much. Right now the dose they give is big enough that you often times can't tell how your horse came out of the race the day after the race. The trainer will tell you flat out(the day after the race) that he has to wait another day or two for all the bute to wear off, to really see how the horse came out of the race. Don't get me wrong. If a horse comes out of a race with a slab fracture, the bute will not mask something that extreme. But it is enough so that an ankle may not puff up for a couple of days. Guys will tell you that giving a horse bute is like a person taking a couple of aspirin. I would be fine with that if it were true but it's obviously not true. As I said before, the dose of bute they give a horse is so big that it will keep swelling down for 2-3 days. That is not the case with a person if they take 2-3 advil or aspirin.

I think we have made some positive changes already. Guys were totally abusing clenbuterol and that has practically been eliminated. That is a good thing. I think the restrictions on shock wave therapy are very positive. I think they have done a lot of good things in New York. We are making some positive changes but I think we can still do way more.

We should look at a place like Hong Kong and basically try to emulate them the best we can, when it comes to drugs and security.

With regard to lasix, I agree with most of what Dr. Arthur says. In this short interview he talks about lasix and other drugs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQw_bB9aO-w