\"Doug, your horse tested positive for XXX. We can\'t let him run tomorrow. We don\'t want another black eye for the sport so here is our offer: You retire I\'ll Have Another and word of this test result never leaves this room. Deal?\"
I wonder how much theyre paying the connections to have IHA \'lead\' the post parade tomorrow, i cant imagine they are doing NYRA a \'free favor\'.
Sek, i wouldnt put anything past anyone, its entirely possible your theory has some merit.
You could also make a case that with the tight prerace security he wasnt allowed to do what he \'normally does\' to get a horse ready for the race.
Maybe the truth will come out at some point.
Nonsense. Why retire the horse? Wouldn\'t it make more sense to be an injury that knocked the horse out several months. What about the penalty to o\'Neill? Do we just forget about that too?
Yeah, that\'s clearly the most likely answer. It\'s not like these horses ever get hurt or anything.
Yea, it\'s not like Doug O\'Neill has a history of drug violations and absurd move-ups or anything.
And the drug violations and move ups mean that his horses never get hurt?
How do you fold your tin foil, Sek?
magicnight Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> And the drug violations and move ups mean that his
> horses never get hurt?
>
> How do you fold your tin foil, Sek?
Horses do get hurt. But the day before the Belmont, in the middle of a never before seen quarantine of horses and stringent testing, after the animal was looking spectacular for 2 weeks over the track a gallop ends his career. Sure it happens, but I got plenty of tin foil leftover for this one.
I wouldnt place a tin foil hat on a person who doesnt blindly believe everything he hears. Do you just automatically believe what people tell you magic?
More importantly, did you get down offshore before the scratch?
Yes, I\'m locked in to Paynter at 10-1.
magicnight.
NYRA comes out and says IHA failed a drug test and won\'t be allowed to run in the Belmont. The Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner, with tens of millions of dollars wagered on the race, was juiced up by a known and documented juicer and screwed the public.
What do you think the headline news is for the next week on ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox, etc.. How many 60 Minutes and 20/20 reports on doping will we see over the next several months? and how do you think that news will affect the horse racing industry?
I\'ll answer the question for you. It would be the final nail in the coffin. There\'s not a chance in the world they would let news of a Ky Derby winner failing a drug test leak out. Not a chance.
they wouldn\'t retire the horse either. Look I\'ve heard that O\'neill was a cheater a long time ago but this does not add up to me. Again, why punish the horse forever?
I love conspiracy theories. On this one, if this is true, what about Kentucky and Maryland? Did the horse win those races drug free or did those states blow it? Or the detention barn raised the stakes high enough for O\'Neill to get O\'Nailed?
I guess one problem I\'d have with this CTheory is it would mean New York was actually doing a better job on this and I find it hard to believe New York does a better job on ANYTHING.
The other problem is that you would be relying on a bunch of people to keep their mouths shut. And why is Dr. James Hunt lying? If your theory is correct this vet who examined the horse is lying. And if it comes out, and he is lying, isn\'t Dr. Hunt going to get in some trouble? Dr. Hunt\'s incentive to do this is what exactly? Maybe NYRA has some dirt on Dr. Hunt and he\'s paying off his favor bank debt from a previous conspiracy? Usually you have to pay people to shut up if they are on the level and have something to lose. In this case, who would be paying Dr. Hunt to lie?
Jerry\'s point about a lightly raced horse maybe getting hurt after doing a lot in a short period of time makes more sense to me, but anything is possible. I don\'t want to belabor this and upset Miff. LOL.
Joe Drape will probably be turning his investigative powers on this shortly and then we\'ll know the real story.
HP
Oh and I bet they are sorry they gave into those union jerks now! Sorry had to get that one in.
HP
justwin Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> they wouldn\'t retire the horse either. Look I\'ve
> heard that O\'neill was a cheater a long time ago
> but this does not add up to me. Again, why punish
> the horse forever?
Seriously? How are they punishing the horse by sending it to stud?
\"But the day before the Belmont, in the middle of a never before seen quarantine of horses and stringent testing,\"
The fact that these things happened at roughly the same time obviously feeds your theory, but the fact that they happened at the same time does not really add anything in terms of proof or evidence.
\"after the animal was looking spectacular for 2 weeks over the track a gallop ends his career\"
I would contend that the trainer was nursing this horse along, trying to walk the tightrope between keeping him fit with gallops and avoiding the breezes that may have put him off. You say tomato ...
\"Do you just automatically believe what people tell you magic?\"
No. For example, I don\'t automatically believe conspiracy theories that are based on snippets of information that do not necessarily form a whole, from a handicapper banging on a keyboard.
magicnight Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> \"But the day before the Belmont, in the middle of
> a never before seen quarantine of horses and
> stringent testing,\"
>
> The fact that these things happened at roughly the
> same time obviously feeds your theory, but the
> fact that they happened at the same time does not
> really add anything in terms of proof or
> evidence.
>
> \"after the animal was looking spectacular for 2
> weeks over the track a gallop ends his career\"
>
> I would contend that the trainer was nursing this
> horse along, trying to walk the tightrope between
> keeping him fit with gallops and avoiding the
> breezes that may have put him off. You say tomato
> ...
. . . while announcing early-on that the horse wasn\'t going to have ONE serious work between the Preakness and Belmont . . .
. . . the air raid sirens were SCREAMING . . .
We\'re not asking you to blindly believe someone on the internet, you can come up with your own theory on what happened, you don\'t have to take Sek\'s word for thing just like you don\'t have to take NYRA\'s word or O\'Neill\'s word.
Here\'s another problem with the conspiracy theory.
You\'re saying Dr. Hunt is lying (I see nobody is addressing this - the guy\'s name is right there in the Racing Form), there is a positive result, and NYRA is conspiring with O\'Neill to cover it up to save the sport of horse racing, because this news will destroy racing. NYRA does this and loses a lot of money on the deal, but horse racing is saved. For now. And O\'Neill and Reddam benefit as well, while NYRA loses millions.
Why not cover up the positive result, leave out Dr. Hunt (he is a loose end), let the horse run and make the money? O\'Neill is not a New York guy, he\'s not going to be a big problem for you down the road. If he\'s such a big cheater you can nail him with a quarantine barn when he tries to come back, IF he tries to come back, and at least you\'ve got your big payday in the bank.
Either way you are covering up the positive result, but in one scenario you make money and in one scenario you don\'t. Usually if you are going to go through the trouble of conspiring you are doing it to MAKE money, not LOSE money.
HP
I don\'t blindly believe anything, but if a trainer and a vet are telling the world that the horse has a hot foot, I\'m going to tend to believe that the horse has a hot foot, absent any compelling evidence to the contrary. I don\'t think Sek\'s musings reach that level, though I do commend him on the 10-1 on the Baffert.
So let me get this straight.
A horse based in California....a state that has better testing than most.....who won multiple stakes races in California......including the Santa Anita Derby.......who also won the first 2 legs of the Triple Crown.......has been nailed by of all jurisdictions NYRA.
Right.
And I\'m sure the United States government blew up the Twin Towers, right??
Sekrah,
Here\'s a theory. You and I handicap the races and we freeze out 1k. I rob you blind.
I\'ll see your 10 and raise you to 15. Unfortunately, also was sitting with IHA at 25\'s for the whole thing.
\"You can get what you want and still not be very happy.\"
I like a good conspiracy as well as anyone, but if that\'s what this was, they should have gone full monty and got the 100k+ in the door before a scratch.
Think of the extra hot dog sales.
LOL.
I think retirement is a bit much to give this theory creedence.
Belmont and NYRA lost the most here. The attendance just got halved.
Sorry. Larry Bramlage doesn\'t lie.
Please - drop the conspiracy theory. Please.
That was something different. The horse has a known tendency to be shinny, and didn\'t need speed work.
\"Yea, it\'s not like Doug O\'Neill has a history of drug violations and absurd move-ups or anything\"
Sek,
Thats the closest you\'ve come to an accurate statement.
Mike
haahaahahahhahah try 4-1
ever think maybe doug and paul had enough of bandwagon cuomos nonsense? i think they thumbed their nose at nyra and said take the triple crown and stick it where the sun dont shine. this horse could have covered the distance in less than 2 30. i wonder how many hot dogs and ten dollar cans of beer nyra has left over? lol. i love it. could they have been anymore unaccomidating? instead of embracing this horse they did everything they could to discourage them from running.way to go bandwagon.
They still have over month to sell all that Beer and the Hot Dogs....even the cooked ones
couldn\'t both scenarios be true? they aren\'t mutually exclusive.
the horse has had issues before the derby and was receiving electric shock therapy--which put me off betting him in the derby, even though he was the horse i liked the best (ggrrrrrr).
and the trainer has a history of playing fast and loose with the rules against doping horses.
couldn\'t the horse be both doped and injured? doesn\'t it kind of make sense that a horse with soundness issues that won two difficult races impressively within a two week span might need to be doped to do so? a horse can be a great talent and still be doped. jan ullrich was arguably the most naturally talented man to ever peddle a bicycle, but he was stilled doped....carl lewis was one of the most naturally talented sprinters ever to run a race, but he was still doped....
my first thought on hearing the announcement was that the detention bar must have succeeded in preventing the pre-race dosing, and they were scratching to avoid being big brown redux.
given that IHA\'s injury is incredibly minor at this point, his retirement seems really over the top and is the biggest red flag of all, to me at least. plus, any scans of horses that have raced as hard as he had over five weeks would show \"the beginnings of tendinitis.\" most horses in the race yesterday would show the \"beginnings of tendinitis.\" most horses at any track would show the beginnings of tendonitis--i have full blown tendonitis for christ\'s sake, and i\'ve never run farther than the end of my drive way. the whole story just doesn\'t mesh.
so yeah, what i think happened is that the horse failed a test or somebody was caught with something they shouldn\'t have had, and at first the connections thought they could keep it quiet by just scratching, but scratching screwed over the NYRA too, and if the NYRA was going to loose money, they were going to make sure the connections lost a lot of money, and said, \"retire him, or we tell.\"
i used to be an avid fan of cycling--way before lance armstrong. i learned more about human blood chemistry, oxygen transport, and lacate-processing than most doctors. one thing i never got over, and why i finally washed my hands of the sport, is that no matter how clear cut the doping wass, none of them ever really ever admitted it--that seemed to be the worst thing imaginable to them, worse even than the threat of dying, which many cyclists in their late teens and early 20s did when EPO was first introduced in the early 90s. so yeah--i can totally see o\'neil and especially reddam willing to try to cash in on the horse\'s stud fees, rather then be paraded around as the duo that stole the kentucky derby.
keep in mind that despite the wide spread belief that racing has a lot of doped horses in it, racing has never had it\'s black sox moment. it never had its BALCO. it never had its festina affair (the first time doping in cycling became incontrovertible). given all that, i can well believe that everyone involved wanted the story to go away, and really, that is the only thing that explains the insant retirement of a horse that is clearly not even lame--algorithms was lame, yet they are still going to try to bring him back; uncle mo was half dead, yet they were intent on racing him.
the one thing i do not believe is that any of this was motivated by considerations for the horse\'s well being, even though i am absolutely willing to believe the horse has soundness issues or even a minor injury
Sorry. The only truth is that IHA has a minor tendon strain, and is retired. Everybody in the detention barn saw Hunt going in to ultrasound the tendon.
Two other comments: the horse has a known (publicly stated by the trainer) tendency to be shinny (which has been treated and why he doesn\'t get much speed work), and the horse has known (publicly stated by the trainer) back problems for which he has often gotten shockwave therapy (which is like a pain-relieving deep massage therapy)
Listen: virtually every horse you guys bet, on a daily basis, has stuff wrong with it - some very serious stuff - that is managed and treated. You guys routinely, on a daily basis, bet horses whose hocks and knees are injected, who have received multiple sports medicine treatments to keep they healthy and running. Betters in the US are simply unawares of it.
Except in the runup to big race days, when the trainers try to be more vocal about the routine management things horses require.
Watching the fancy go ballistic over conspiracy theories and drugging, when it\'s just normal \"horses get hurt when they run and require maintenance\" stuff, is crazy.
People are completely clueless about horses from an agricultural sense, compared to 50-60 years ago, when most had at least parents that knew about horses.
Beth,
You just described every track in the country and a great majority of us gamblers.You will never convince the conspiratorial minded that their perception of the game is about 80% off the mark.
You really should write to the NY Times and set Joe Dope straight!
Mike
did you even read what i wrote?
i stated clearly that i believe the horse is likely to be actually injured, however, his being injured does not preclude that his scratch and retirement were doping related as well. i also clearly stated that every horse racing is likely suffering some injury.
IHA\'s retirement for a very minor injury is odd, especially given that reddam does not breed--he races his horses only--and he hasn\'t sold the horse yet and there are no plans except to return the horse to o\'neils barn indefinitely. my point was that the two camps in this thread who say it was one or the other, can both be correct. moreover, for a horse suffering a career injury it seems a little odd too that o\'neil says right after the race that he\'d have won the race easily even though injured.
believe what you want to believe--but don\'t act all holier than thou and like you know more than i do. it\'s clear you don\'t have any inside information, so you are speculating same as me. if you want to take o\'neil at his word, fine. i choose to be more skeptical and less trusting of those who\'ve proven to be repeatedly unworthy of trust.
i dealt with fans like you for decades in cycling--same hollow arguments, same ad homminem attacks. if doug o\'neil doesn\'t like people assuming the worst, he should run a cleaner stable. if reddam deosn\'t like people assuming the worst, he should hire a trainer with a cleaner track record. to criticize people for exercising their judgment and refraining from taking a proven cheat at face value is pretty low--it is asking people to be rubes and dupes, and to refuse to exercise discernment. i have a hard time doing that when money isn\'t on the line, but i flatly refuse to do it when it is.
BTW i\'m not clueless about horse-i\'ve been around horses, and riding and owning and competing on them, since i was three years old. if you know so much, then you should know that the portable ultrasound machine is pretty small and most people looking at wouldn\'t be able to understand anything they were seeing--also you should know that know an ultrasound image never clearly shows anything--you can have 10 different experts look the images and have 10 different opinions as to what they are seeing. my mother had an ultra sound of her liver--one expert though it clearly showed a tumor, one thought is showed nothing, one thought it showed calcification, and one, who turned out to be right, thought it showed an perfectly normal congenital microplasia.
watching someone perform an ultra sound tells the watcher nothing about what the ultra sound shows.
as for the idea that it would take too big a conspiracy--USADA was neck deep in BALCO and the UCI is drwowning in its participation in covering up doping in cycling--it doesn\'t take brains, and it isn\'t hard--conspiracies on much larger scales than what this would have taken happen every day and we non-are the wiser.
kekomi.
It is hopeless. These people probably think the Pacquiao-Bradley fight was on the up and up and that the judges were not corrupted, they just were incompetant Clueless Clowns. Everybody is too dumb to the pull the wool over THEIR eyes.
sekrah Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> kekomi.
>
> It is hopeless. These people probably think the
> Pacquiao-Bradley fight was on the up and up and
> that the judges were not corrupted, they just were
> incompetant Clueless Clowns. Everybody is too
> dumb to the pull the wool over THEIR eyes.
Max Kellerman was quoted after the fight that some at ringside scored the fight for Bradley. People he says opinions he respected.
Most saw a clear Pacquiao victory. That doesn\'t mean that there aren\'t incompetent people that scored the fight poorly.
It also doesn\'t preclude the fact that there might have been a conspiracy.
The problem is that you have no idea, just like you have no idea that IHA failed a drug test. You\'re certainly entitled to your opinion, but the \"I\'m right, and if you disagree with me you\'re an idiot\" routine is getting tired.
P-Dub Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> sekrah Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > kekomi.
> >
> > It is hopeless. These people probably think
> the
> > Pacquiao-Bradley fight was on the up and up and
> > that the judges were not corrupted, they just
> were
> > incompetant Clueless Clowns. Everybody is too
> > dumb to the pull the wool over THEIR eyes.
>
> Max Kellerman was quoted after the fight that some
> at ringside scored the fight for Bradley. People
> he says opinions he respected.
>
> Most saw a clear Pacquiao victory. That doesn\'t
> mean that there aren\'t incompetent people that
> scored the fight poorly.
>
> It also doesn\'t preclude the fact that there might
> have been a conspiracy.
>
> The problem is that you have no idea, just like
> you have no idea that IHA failed a drug test.
> You\'re certainly entitled to your opinion, but the
> \"I\'m right, and if you disagree with me you\'re an
> idiot\" routine is getting tired.
LOL.. No Boxing analyst worth his salt thought Bradley won that fight. HBO, ESPN, AP, Yahoo, etc.. boxing experts had Pacquiao 10-2, 11-1. LOL at the idea that the judges were incompetant and not infiltrated. You just made my point in the post that you quoted.
\"Outside of a potential rematch with Bradley, (and of course Mayweather), Pacquaio has no fights(paydays) left! I\'m sure the judges were just bozos and not bought, and Bob Arum (who manages both fighters) lucked into a Pacquaio-Bradley rematch. Hold on a second, my Kool-Aid glass is empty, would you please fill it back up to the top? Thank you.\"
Quotebelieve what you want to believe--but don\'t act all holier than thou and like you know more than i do. it\'s clear you don\'t have any inside information, so you are speculating same as me. if you want to take o\'neil at his word, fine. i choose to be more skeptical and less trusting of those who\'ve proven to be repeatedly unworthy of trust.
i dealt with fans like you for decades in cycling--same hollow arguments, same ad homminem attacks.
I\'m a veterinarian, I work with TB race horses, one of the Belmont horse assistant trainers who has just spent the week in that detention barn with their horse is a very close friend with whom I talk constantly.
I know what days blood was drawn, and what was tested for. I know tendinitis and how to read an ultrasound. Your conspiracy theory is nonsense.