"Monitoring movement"...

[JohnTChance]

Andy Beyer had an article in Saturday\'s DRF about trainers
who win all year and suspiciously underperform during
the Breeder\'s Cup where the barns are under careful
surveillance. [If you\'re a ThoroGraph customer and you
missed it, see Jerry Brown\'s pre-race comments essentially
harping about it in his BC sheets.] In the article, Beyer writes that:

\"In the 24 hours before post time, security guards monitor
the movement of anyone who goes into the stall of any horse
entered on the card...\" And that security guards are \"on duty\"
that week.

Will this deter aggressive vets from administering rocket-fueling
injections \"in the 24 hours before\" gametime? Yes. Agreed.

But what about the DAYS JUST  BEFORE shipping into the Breeder\'s
Cup locale? Who\'s watching the horses there? Does anyone think MY COUSIN
MATT, second-time Jeff Mullins from Scott Lake [ouch!] WASN\'T INJECTED
prior to his big-odds rebound in the BC Sprint? The gelding was probably
energized somewhere in California before the ship out.

And how about Todd Pletcher? Many of his horses had Oct. 24th workouts
in New York at Belmont. Don\'t you think Pletcher\'s notoriously aggressive
veterinarian - maybe public enemy #1 - \"changed the oil\" just prior to the
ship-out? Of course he did. Even if ASHADO bounced [and still won.]

Steroid injections DONE WEEKS AGO last a long while. A horse will
\"grow into\" [get faster and faster] the steroids over time... till it hits a wall.
[See BALTO STAR\'s 3 year-old sheet. See Bob Baffert.]

The bottom line: policing has to be done ALL THE TIME for it to change
the game. Doing it merely \"24 hours\" prior to post, or even days prior
to post SOUNDS GOOD to Joe Horseplayer. But it doesn\'t really
mean much.

JohnTChance