https://www.paulickreport.com/news/the-biz/clenbuterol-or-albuterol-found-in-hair-tests-in-six-of-10-finalists-for-fridays-731650-sam-houston-futurity/

The testing that revealed this is largely unused by thoroughbred venues, Instead of dealing with what the drug culture does to the game and to the thoroughbreds themselves, we are arguing over Lasix and whips. Brilliant! just doesn\'t cover it .....

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/17/sports/horse-racing/baffert-suspended-belmont.html?smid=tw-share

It is one possibility, but absent seeing the vet records and Baffert/Zedan (btw, where is he in all this?) making all treating vets available to speak on all relevant topics, all of this is guesswork at best.

In short, this is another explanation as to why he doesn\'t have to be stupid to have \"cheated.\" The horse might have needed Beta to make it to the starting gate, or even to pass vet inspection, and Baffert might have learned from the Gamine episode some methods he believed would conceal the administration. I\'ve lost track of how many times over the years I have read on this board some version of the \"cheaters are decades ahead of the testers.\" He might have rationally concluded that he could escape detection.  Who knows? All I know so far is that what we have been told is BS from Bobby, which makes it hard to credit any of his explanations, even that the horse was ever given Otomax.

JB,

We are not a point where we can say with any confidence what effect the Beta had on MS.  One reason is that what we know about this matter is what Baffert has chosen to reveal. That’s it, period. We have no veterinary records. We have no testimony from any veterinarian as to what MS was given, why, and when. And some of what Baffert has revealed is gossamer, like the groom urination story, which Mary Scollay effectively debunked in the interview I posted earlier this week, and which Baffert has apparently now abandoned. In the same vein, we have no basis to conclude that the photo he supplied of a horse showing a skin ailment is MS, or even if it is of MS, when it was taken, although some good legwork by Natalie Voss has concluded that the metadata indicates that photo was taken on Tuesday May 11th, two days ago, well after the Derby. So in sum, we know virtually nothing in terms of the relevant facts of the horse’s condition at various points, including on Derby Day.

If by the effect was negligible you mean that even in its intended use, Beta would not have moved up MS as Clenbuterol or EPO would have, ok. But at the same time, we can’t even say at this point that MS could have raced without the benefit of a powerful corticosteroid that was administered 72 hours before test time. It\'s possible he has some serious inflammation or a hind end issue. Maybe not but again, why haven’t the vet(s) who treated him been produced and the vet records provided? And what else was he being treated with, so that we are able to determine what interactions there might have been between Beta and other medications/treatments, another relevant consideration? Since Baffert seems to be largely in crisis-management mode, it’s hard to understand why we haven’t been provided with all that evidence if it’s exculpatory.

I realize you aren’t here to defend Baffert and I’m not here to prosecute him either. But to give him any benefit of the doubt requires us now to believe that before the biggest race on our calendar, with a purse of approximately $1.5M, potentially millions of dollars of stud fees at stake, a race he had won six times prior, and with a raft of drug positives that he promised to reverse, even going so far six months ago to trumpet that he was hiring an independent veterinarian to provide additional oversight for his barn (which never happened, by the way), that he was so grossly negligent as to treat an ailment with Otomax, a product that contained what he knew to be a regulated substance, a fact which appeared on the Otomax label.  It’s a lot to swallow.

TDN article, containing portions of interviews conducted with Mary Scollay, Kentucky vet who s now executive director of the RMTC. Some portions were conducted yesterday, before Baffert\'s latest explanation related to Otomax. Scollay is careful to say what she knows and doesn\'t know, but the most interesting part of the interview was her statement that while she (we all) still doesn\'t know how the betamethasone was introduced into Medina Spirit\'s system, the 21 picograms is consistent with a 9 mg intra-articular fetlock injection 72 hours before the blood sample was taken.

https://www.thoroughbreddailynews.com/qa-mary-scollay-on-drug-testing-protocols-latest-baffert-explanation/

Early in the \'80\'s at Saratoga. NYRA carded a stakes for NY-breds.  At the time, I was working in the barn of Hall of Famer James Maloney, who trained a fast and talented filly named Move It Now. Maloney entered her to run against the boys in that stakes.  We led her over, she was saddled, warmed up, and as she was circling behind the gate waiting to be loaded, the starter sprung the latch. Maloney turned on his heel and went straight at a high rate of speed, cursing, for the racing secretary\'s office. No telling what might have happened had we not intercepted him. So it has happened before.

I notice that at Del Mar, an assistant starter stands in front of the gate during the loading, signals the starter as the last runner is being loaded, then moves behind the gate. Regardless, no excuse for a starter making that mistake, if it was not a mechanical failure. It\'s not a judgment call.  

Strange day yesterday! Never saw a horse literally trample a seagull during the running of a race but that happened in the Marshall Jenney at Parx.

The Arthur interview was covered previously in this thread:

https://www.thorograph.com/phorum/read.php?1,118011,118059#msg-118059

Jerry, even if you have the samples, you still need a comprehensive list of prohibited substances to test against, or testing frozen samples is pointless.
 Meaning that I take Rick Arthur\'s point to be that even if we could test some of the hypothetically frozen Navarro samples now, knew what to look for and found the sheep collagen, if sheep collagen wasn\'t on the prohibited list at the time the sample was taken, we\'ve accomplished nothing.  The testing regime all this conjures is prohibitively expensive and requires a regulatory effort that is enormous.

Fair points, but none of this came to light as a result of drug testing.  Further, while there may be evidence that the feds have but is not disclosed in the indictment, there is no allegation in the indictment that the doping has been confirmed (yet anyway) by testing.  As they say, the investigation continues, so it is possible that such evidence may be forthcoming.

But speaking of Arthur, he gave an interview to TDN that should be required reading for anyone who is serious about addressing the doping.  Two points should be emphasized. First, his belief is that the best anti-doping technique available is the use of surveillance cameras, such as the ones used at Santa Anita. He called it a \"fallacy\" to completely rely on drug testing, although testing has a role to play. Second, his discussion of SGF-1000, one of the compounds described in the indictment, further illustrates the weaknesses inherent in any testing program. According to Arthur, SGF-1000 is sheep collagen, not a typo. Such a compound may be impossible to detect in any testing regime. His point was, unless you knew to look for sheep genes in the test, you wouldn\'t find it. So, by all means, test, but unless you know what to test and look for and your regulatory scheme is as lengthy and complex as the IRS code, you may not get as far as you hoped.

It takes a strong stomach to read all of the self-serving nonsense being spewed by some of the owners who had horses with these trainers. They are shocked, stunned, disgusted by the indictments.  Anyone who has ever spent any -- and I mean any -- time on the backstretch should have had serious doubts (at the bare minimum) about the unprecedented feats of um, ahhh, horsemanship being performed by these trainers.  In particular, Gary West has a lot to answer for as he is a very sophisticated man who built a fortune by asking hard questions in other industries but now wants us to believe it never occurred to him to ask the corresponding questions when it came to the care and performance of his own horses. At lot of people had no incentive to ask all the hard questions and now are feigning ignorance. Stop it already.

Somehow it strikes me that one positive step might be a racing version of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission employed by South Africa at the end of apartheid.  How are we going to get anywhere unless there is full disclosure of what went on for far too long? Air it all, with no penalties except for failures to disclose, lies and misleading statements, and if you commit any of those offenses, a lifetime ban.

As pointed out below, it was a figure of speech, meant to identify OTHER newsworthy and/or interesting tidbits, such as the one I recited.  If it would restore the equilibrium, happy to relabel the string \"All sorts of other nuggets in this indictment.\"

Paragraph 25k of Count I of the indictment recites a telephone conversation on May 29, 2019 between Navarro and unidentified \"operators\" of a horse-racing stable in California, regarding the performance of a horse named Nanoosh. (These guys apparently never learned to stay off the phones and to not put anything in writing .. . brilliant!) One of the operators asks whether the horse was \"getting all the shit ... is this horse jacked out?\" The owners of the horse at that moment were Rockingham Ranch, Zayat Stables, LLC and David Bernsen, LLC.  Ahmad Zayat needs no introduction.  The other two mentioned were the owners of Stormy Liberal, hero of the 2018 BC turf sprint, running a 7+ (not a typo) point new top that day and earning a negative 5 1/4 in the process. Hay, oats and water, my friends, I\'m sure. There are plenty of nervous trainers, owners and vets lawyering up today.

Just conveying Senator Feinstein\'s statements about her intentions if there was a breakdown during the BC.

Regrettably, the fatality in the Classic yesterday may be the enduring memory and legacy of this year\'s BC.  If so, it may be the final nail in the coffin for racing, as outlined in the link below. If so, racing will have played a large role in its own demise, as it has done next to nothing to meaningfully address the growing public perception that racing is just an elaborate form of animal cruelty. If it isn\'t the final nail in the coffin, it might be the last wakeup call it gets.

https://www.paulickreport.com/news/the-biz/feinstein-racings-days-are-numbered-if-theres-an-equine-death-during-breeders-cup/

https://www.paulickreport.com/news/the-biz/san-diego-judge-grants-hollendorfers-injunction-trainer-expected-back-at-del-mar-sunday/