Dead Horses Tell No Tales

[fkach]

>AGAIN-- the way the rules are set up, a trainer can be using performance enhancing drugs on his horses, and not be doing anything \"illegal.\" <

IMO, the problem here is that many people are focusing their attention on the trainers and not the industry.

Why attack someone that is following the rules in a highly competitive sport where millions of dollars are at stake when what people really don\'t like is the rules?

For all we know, there are some trainers that are using performance enhancers legally that would rather run totally clean but can\'t because they would be out of business. They are actually on our side.  The trainers we want to punish are the ones that are breaking the rules. Other than that, we need to change the industry.

[Silver Charm]

Barry Irwin wrote.

\"But if you think that Pletcher needs Silver Charm to let the world know that he may not be cheating anymore, you are either smoking your socks or drinking your bathwater (with all due respect of course).\"

In regards to smoking my socks and drinking bathwater I tried both in college and it didn\'t work..................


Barry Irwin wrote,

\"Anybody in his position would have to be loco to be using any illegal substances to positively impact wind at this point.

This is NOT news, my friend.

(And there is no proof that Pletcher ever used these things.)\"


Barry whenever I handicap races with Pletcher horses entered, (except two year olds) I see a lot of,

Previously trained by Michael McCarthy, or Anthony Sciamatta.

The 60 day suspension Pletcher recently served for doping horses at Saratoga two years ago was not a myth. I would bet big money the people who conducted those tests stand by their work. And apparently Pletchers attorney\'s agreed too because they dropped their case.  

Your above thinking is exactly why we nicknamed him, TEFLON TODD................

[girly]

Any opportunity to let your voice be heard would be a good thing. If you are concerned about drugs, opportunities may arise for you all to speak out at a forum where real decisions are made to make change.

[cubfan0316]

barry please explain. if pletcher was taught by all these great trainers, what does he do now that puts him so far ahead of them?  drugs .... period.

[sighthound]

Chuckles, being rather ignorant of real horses and real veterinary medicine, is probably unawares of acute laminitis (having only Barbaro\'s laminitis battle on TV and in the racing press to provide his medical education); and how quickly acute laminitis can strike and kill, and what it can be secondary to - septicemia, colic, etc. ...

[sighthound]

New York tests for clenbuterol, Pennsylvania, Delaware ...

[sighthound]

>>The 60 day suspension Pletcher recently served for doping horses at Saratoga two years ago was not a myth.

Pletcher was accused of one horse having a measured level of a commonly used joint-block agent, a level that is known not to be therapeutic and could not have affected the level of performance of that horse; a measured level that, by the time of his appeal, had been lowered by the governing body to below the level of Pletcher\'s found positive.  I believe he got 45 days, not 60.

Drug abuse in racing is a huge problem.  The above case isn\'t even a blip on the radar screen of importance.

The way many posters on this board are ignoring those trainers with repeated positives, of more significant and truely performance-altering drugs, in favor of going after one who repeatedly, in many jurisdictions, tests clean, is silly.

No, wait ... the more ludicrous thing is a person with no obvious demonstrated medical or pharmacologic knowledge, with zero intimate or factual knowledge of the cases in question, deigning to perform complete autopsies, including cause of death, off of a set of handicapping sheets, and publishing his findings here on this board.

No, wait ... the most ludicrous thing is that people listen to him.

Maybe someday the people on this board would like to start to contribute to fighting the abuse of drugs in racing, in some sort of positive way?

[Chuckles_the_Clown2]

sighthound Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Chuckles, being rather ignorant of real horses and
> real veterinary medicine, is probably unawares of
> acute laminitis (having only Barbaro\'s laminitis
> battle on TV and in the racing press to provide
> his medical education); and how quickly acute
> laminitis can strike and kill, and what it can be
> secondary to - septicemia, colic, etc. ...

Actually, I\'ve known of Laminitis ever since the case that almost felled Nijinksy II. It eventually got him, but not the first time.

And of course, I remember Big Red.

Besides, Barbaro didn\'t die from Laminitis.

He should have died from a broken leg, but greed took him instead.