Pletcher Positive /Question for Barry Irwin

[richiebee]

From today\'s New York Post, it is reported by Ed Fountaine that Todd Pletcher\'s 45 day suspension from a positive at Saratoga in 2004 was upheld. Fountaine says Pletcher will likely take his appeals to court, meaning it could take years to resolve.

Question (actually a redirect on my part) to sometimes poster Barry Irwin: Will Pletcher continue to train Team Valor horses? If so it appears that hypocrisy, and not discretion, is the better part of Valor.

[johndrj]

i like your style.

john

[HP]

This is a line of questioning that has been pursued before...  HP

[davidrex]

Pursue,pursued,pursuing,pursuit,pursuivant!...yes thats the attendant!
T.V. has always done things first class and thus should continue.

But Mr. Irwin,sir, there is no last boy scout, and you need not hold up a flag or banner when defending your honor.

For who else steps before us to be left vulnerable to their thoughts and beliefs?

Offering: Record your thoughts while keeping your ass covered.

[TGJB]

1-- Richie, that was a great line.

2-- Having said that, it is very unlikely that particular Pletcher transgression was anything more than a screw-up-- if he was using something like that to affect outcomes, there would be more positives. Much more likely it was what he said, local anesthetic used for an operation.

3-- I can\'t believe I am going to defend a guy who has savaged me in public, but I have to say that Barry is one of the very few that has used his high profile to try and get something done about drugs-- notably in an opinion piece in Bloodhorse. He ain\'t the enemy, at least when it comes to drugs.

\"Will Pletcher continue to train Team Valor horses? \"

I think the 8th race at Aqu answered that question!

[richiebee]

...as TP and Team V\'s Colita wins the feature at AQ at 8/1...

TGJB, if you go back to January, almost a year ago, before I even knew how to edit my posts, I COMMENDED Team Valor for their zero tolerance stance towards drugs and their firing of young Mr Nicks, who they had just retained as a private trainer.

Fast forward to the first or second day of the Saratoga meet where Barry Irwin appeared as a poster and told us all to bet our houses on La Ina, a turf mare who had just undergone an operation for an entrapped epiglottis (She won and paid $7).

Some of the posters on this board, HP and myself included, took BI to task on his refusal to blame TP for the 04 positive. Classhandicapper, who said he had previously been a Team V member, was particularly outraged that we would treat BI with such disdain.

MY particular question, which was never answered, was what would have happened if the TPletch positive involved a TValor horse.

Look, Pletcher drew a 45 day suspension. When Dutrow drew 30 days for a positive in the spring, posters on this board were so happy... \"Aha, we caught the cheater\" (remember 30 days of Dutrow\'s 60 day suspension was for a claiming violation).

If racing is going to wage a war against drugs (if you\'ve read my posts I think this war can NOT be won) you can not have loopholes and exceptions which swallow the rules.

Yes, Mr Irwin has been a high profile voice against drugs, but TGJB, since you mention BloodHorse, read if you will BI\'s eulogy of Doc Harthill in that same publication. BI admits that he himself believed in Hay Oats and Water and that Harthill believed in anything which would create a winning result which would stand long enough to cash a mutuel ticket. BI admits that he and Doc Harthill were quite the odd couple on the backstretch. My point is that you can not take a stand against drugs while standing anywhere near Doc Harthill.

Doc Harthill made Doc Allday look like Doogie Howser. But where Allday is under constant scrutiny, Harthill, as one of the preeminent vets at the racetrack, was usually given carte blanche.

[TGJB]

Richie-- I do want to wage war on performance enhancers, and I DO think it can be won, but not as long as political and bureaucratic considerations, along with ignorance, get in the way. I think Barry thinks so too. And I view Pletcher with suspicion. But I don\'t think this particular positive has anything to do with moving horses up, because if it did he either would have had more of them, or not done as well since. He\'s done okay.

[richiebee]

TGJB

   I do not want to detract from TP\'s accomplishments. His father was a very good horseman and TP came up under Lukas. I think Lukas\' greatest influence on his assistants was to teach them how to be able to find competent assistants of their own  so that they could maintain efficient winning strings of horses at three or four tracks simultaneously. If TP wants to, he dominates racing for the next 15- 20 years if racing lasts that long.

   But back to the positive. I hate to throw a \"Seinfeld\" reference in, but I think it is pertinent: Remember when Elaine was editing a book for Rava, the over the top author from Iceland? At one point, Elaine mentions something to Rava about a \"small coincidence\". Rava snaps back adamantly that there is no such thing as a \"small coincidence\", that its either a coincidence or its not. I feel the same way about positives.

[Barry Irwin]

Well, imagine my surprise when I began my Friday night refuge from the world of aggravation to find myself the subject of much consternation on the Thorograph website.

And my pleasure at finding my honor defended by Mr. Jerry Brown.

Not since the day when the Thorograph founder hosted that old television program of his, when for all the world he looked like Don Kirschner of rock concert fame, have I so enjoyed seeing him in action!

Here are some of my reactions to what has both been written and what has transpired, as follows:

1. I don\'t think Pletcher cheats.

2. I draw the line on cheating based on intent.

3. When I canned Ralph Nicks, it was because he knowingly took a shot by breaking the rules. What Ralph did was pretty inconsequential, but I had to let him go. I waited what I considered to be an appropriate amount of time and then gradually began giving him horses again. We in essence gave him our own suspension. But we did not rule him off. Had he administered something serious, he would have been ruled off.

4. What happened with Pletcher is more in line with contamination. From what I gather from Todd (and we have spoken about this in length) and vets I have talked with about this particular case, this is a non event.

5. Of course we are not going to stop giving horses to Todd based on this incident.

6. I don\'t think I am being hypocritical.

7. Trainers I avoid are those who knowingly try to subvert the rules.

8. FYI, I think a lot of trainers have cheated during the past 6 years; but I also think a lot, but not all of them, have stopped. One reason they no longer cheat is that they are now afraid to get caught. Two of the most successful trainers in California over the past half dozen years in my opinion definitely were cheating. I think both have stopped.

9. As for Dr. Alex Harthill, I thought I made it abundantly clear in my obit about him in The Blood-Horse that I didn\'t get involved in any of his magic. When we had Captain Bodgit with Gary Capuano, we used one of Doc\'s stalls and he put up sort of an addition in the front on the outside of the stall to afford the colt some added space between the crowds of people on the backstretch. All of the wise guys who knew Harthill and his black bag of dirty tricks figured something funny was going on behind the screen. Gary Capuano and I made sure that Dr. Harthill never administered anything--legal or illegal--to Captain Bodgit while he prepared for the Derby. He ran without Bute or Lasix, yet that did not stop the tongues from wagging.

10. William Faulkner once said in an interview with the Paris Review in their series of famous writers that \"in literature one rogue is worth a thousand saints.\" The same goes for racing. It is an unfortunate aspect of this game that often times the most talented individuals also are the most unscrupulous. Such was definitely the case with Dr. Harthill.

I knew the good and I knew the bad. I knew the bad because one of his former girlfriend/trainers spent two weeks staying with me and a lady friend. I heard first hand all about the magic and the larceny. But I also learned and later witnessed first hand the brilliance the man was capable of when analyzing and working with top horses.

This undeniable talent is what attracted horsemen such as Charlie Whittingham and The Jones Boys to him.

I would have to be pretty damn stupid not to form a relationship with a guy who had the talent to legitimately take my stable to where we wanted to go. The first three horses on which he performed throat surgeries came back to win stakes.

Finally, Colita today made his first start since having a myectomy at Ohio State University.

I think information of this type is vital and should be announced to horseplayers.

One of these days, perhaps even through the efforts of somebody like Jerry Brown, a support group on behalf of horseplayers will be formed and have enough clout to get racing jurisdictions to make mandatory the dissemination of information such as this.

[richiebee]

Thank you for a thorough response. I appreciate the time you put into it.

I still believe that zero tolerance means just that.

I agree that if you had a dying horse that no one else could save, you would reach out for Doc Harthill. I watched him work his magic at the Fairgrounds in the early 80s when the Dorignac\'s and Roussell owned the place and gave Harthill his own barn. I called it the \"launching pad\"

Best of luck with Ms. Winslet tomorrow.

[NoCarolinaTony]

Barry,

Well done in my opinion. These guys on this board take no prisoners.

Anything worthwhile betting tomorrow Lime La Ina? looking for some extra Christmas..... I mean Holiday Money ...like the rest of us.....

NC Tony

[marcus]

With some of the guy\'s - the Super Pro\'s , I get a gut feeling that some of these positive are not inadvertant as many might think and are a technique and easily could be a statement in response to negative public relations that seem to say nothing funny is being done here and that the positive in question was really nothing more than a silly mistake or just one of those things - thus giving the impression to the general public that the illeagal substance policies and subsequent test\'s his friends administer are working . I\'m seeing a similarity w/ this to pool hall hustlers - where part of the action is to lose a couple small games in order to get into the bigger money . Most of the trainers/Vets who are potentially doing things are very slick , that much is clear .  

[Caradoc]

Barry: You are free to hire any trainer or veterinarian you want.  You are free to post here that "I'm going to hire any trainer or vet that I think will help my stable, even if everyone thinks those guys are juicers or aren't clean."  Team Valor is a private entity, it has responsibilities to its investors, so if you wanted to be completely silent about those choices you are free to do so.  That is not the course you have taken, however, and as long as you choose to post and give statements to the racing press, what you write and say is fair game.  Your explanations about hiring and firing (and rehiring) trainers make no sense.

Here are the reasons you have publicly given for the decisions you have made.

1.  The zero tolerance standard.  You first explained that you fired Ralph Nicks as a result of Team Valor's zero tolerance towards drugs.  "Team Valor has a zero-tolerance policy with regards to drugs," Team Valor President Barry Irwin said. "We had no choice other than to do what we did.\" (Thoroughbred Times, June 20, 2004).  So the rule is zero tolerance, right?  Apparently not, because a) even if TP's violation was as a result of contamination (and to be fair to him, that does appear to be a reasonable explanation), it's still a violation, and zero means zero, and b) you've rehired Ralph Nicks, whose case led to the zero tolerance standard in the first place.  So much for the zero tolerance standard.

2.  The "impure intent" standard.  You have now shifted ground and wrote that you are making hiring/firing decisions based on what I'll call the "impure intent" standard.  Here is what you wrote on this board in July about Ralph Nicks:

"The rules state that no injections are allowed on raceday in New York other than Lasix, which must be supervised. He broke the rule by administering the shot. It could have been water and it still would have been illegal. His intent was not pure."  Again, last night, you wrote "I draw the line on cheating based on intent . . . When I canned Ralph Nicks, it was because he knowingly took a shot by breaking the rules."

Of course, this is a completely different justification than the one you offered at the time (see above – zero tolerance).  Further, if you do make these decisions based on your analysis of a person's intent, and you thought Ralph Nicks had an impure intent, why in the name of Secretariat have you rehired him?  Likewise, the \"impure intent\" standard cannot be used to explain the decisions you have made.

It is not possible to reconcile your statement to the Thoroughbred Times in June 2004 with most of what have written on this board on the subject of hiring and firing trainers.  That statement positioned Team Valor as a standard-bearer in the debate on drugs: WE WILL NOT TOLERATE DRUG VIOLATIONS BY THOSE WE HIRE.  Putting the best face on it, that statement is misleading.  I will give you the benefit of the doubt and not attribute any impure intent on your part to deliberately mislead, to cast Team Valor in a more favorable light than subsequent events suggest it deserves.

It seems to me that what you want is a 20 page document that covers everything that could potentially happen concerning drug use and how Team Valor will respond instead of simply accepting his generally anti-drug stance and subsequent thinking in individual cases. None of his individual statements was the all encompassing policy position you seem to think it was.

It seems pretty clear to me what his position is.