Ban on drug at Breeders’ Cup keeps some away

WRITTEN BY JOE DRAPE

Cross-posted from the New York Times

ARCADIA, Calif. (Oct. 30, 2012) — Call it uncharted territory, as some horse trainers here have, or the new facts of life, as many breeders and drug reformers prefer, but for the first time in the history of the event, 2-year-old horses at this weekend’s Breeders’ Cup world championships will not be allowed to be injected with a drug that is intended to restrict pulmonary bleeding.

Next year the ban on the raceday drug will be imposed on horses in all 15 of the Cup races, in an effort to get American racing in step with the rest of the world.

Even though Breeders’ Cup officials announced the rule change in July 2011, it has been met with resistance and criticism by prominent American horsemen. It will continue to be debated until Friday, when the first of the series of races worth more than $25 million in purses are run. Leading trainers like Todd Pletcher, Dale Romans and Bob Baffert have expressed their displeasure with the ban on furosemide, a diuretic sold under the name Lasix or Salix.

“We call ourselves a world championship and we attract some of the best horses in the world each year,” said Craig Fravel, the Breeders’ Cup chief executive. “It is time to start moving to the same rules and same formats as the rest of the world.”

Even if the furosemide ban were not the cause of the smaller field sizes, Fravel said that he and his board would remain undeterred.

Read full report >>

Finally, a voice of reason in U.S. horse racing. –Editor.

PHOTO CREDIT: © INPHO / Ryan Byrne.
Sky Lantern (the grey) ridden by Richard Hughes comes home to win the Moyglare Stud Stakes (Group 1). Curragh Racing, The Curragh Racecourse, Co. Kildare 9/9/2012.

In related news, however, Richard Hannon Jr., assistant trainer to his legendary father, is sending Group 1 winner Sky Lantern to the Breeders’ Cup in Santa Anita to run in the Juvenile Fillies Turf because the drug is banned.

Hannon Jr. tells ESPN:

“We have thrown a few darts in the past without success, but there is no Lasix for two-year-olds this year which makes it a level playing field for all of us, so we will be heading across the Atlantic with our tails up.”

Crist takes on Drape re racehorse doping, cruelties and death

A racehorse steps onto the track for training. Image by Clarence Alford.

Steven Crist writing for the Daily Racing Form takes on Joe Drape of the New York Times regarding a column Drape wrote today, calling it a “dishonest diatribe.”

Hold your horses; let’s take a close look at this.

Crist states:

Since March, the Times has pulled out all the stops in depicting American racing as an exercise in animal cruelty, with absolutely no context for its repeated claim that virtually everyone involved in the industry is murdering horses at a record rate.

In our opinion, American horse racing clearly is an exercise in animal cruelty. I do not see how that can be denied. The claim that virtually everyone involved in the industry is murdering horses at a record rate no doubt is an extreme statement. However, the death rate of Thoroughbred racehorses is tragically high, and continues at its “record rate”.

We exchanged dialogue on Twitter with someone asking what is the “right number” and how many is acceptable, when we expressed alarm that 9 racehorses have been killed in a matter of weeks at the Del Mar meeting in California.

The only “right number” is zero, but is that achievable? No, it is not, giving the conditions in which horses are asked to race. There are bound to be injuries and fatalities. But to say that the current high rate of deaths is acceptable does not mean everything that can be done should not be done to lower it. Eliminating racehorse breakdowns and deaths should be the ultimate aim.

From where we sit, very little if anything of significance is being done concerning the issue of doping, breakdowns and deaths, apart from meetings among all the alphabet soup organizations that “regulate” racing where proposals are made and put down quicker than a fatally injured racehorse.

Crist then states:

Making no distinction between the legal, regulated administration of therapeutic medications, and the rare instances of actual doping and perfidy, the Times blames it all on “a culture of drugs, …”

Rare instances? Blaming it all on a culture of drugs, implying there is not one? Crist certainly is not serious here. For more information, please see Jane Allin’s “The Chemical Horse“.

Crist goes on to support the training methods and medications of this year’s Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner I’ll Have Another who was scratched the day before the Belmont. But I will not sport with your intelligence on that score. We have covered that subject sufficiently here.

However, it begs this question: Where are all of your bright three-year old Thoroughbred stars you were so excited about before the Derby if nothing is wrong with racing?

From where we sit, if Drape’s contentions are histrionics, then so are Crist’s responses to them.

We do like this squib toward the end:

” . . . encourages politicians to withhold and withdraw funds from the sport.”

Now that’s the real worry isn’t it?

Joe Drape Editorial: Run to Death at Racetracks

More Disclosure Ahead of the Travers Stakes

by JOE DRAPE

Selected excerpts cross-posted from New York Times editorial

Racehorse MI REY is injured and put down at Del Mar racecourse in California. He is one of hundreds of Thoroughbreds killed each year in U.S. racing. Image by Bill Wechter. Not filed with this report. (click to enlarge)

Handicappers and bettors have had an unexpected new factor to work into their predictions for the elite Travers Stakes Saturday at the racetrack in Saratoga Springs: the disclosure, on the Web, of each medication dose given to the thoroughbreds in the days before the race.

These are praiseworthy but overdue steps. American racing has become a world leader in catastrophic breakdowns of horses overmedicated and overraced to the point of exhaustion and death.

The tragically foreshortened career of the colt I’ll Have Another in the recent Triple Crown races laid bare racing’s easy culture of doping and toothless enforcement of penalties against trainers. After two victories, the colt was scratched from the Belmont Stakes for a supposedly “freakish” injury, but [he] was later found to have been heavily dosed with painkillers to treat chronic tendinitis. Read more >>