Charlestown Clenbuterol

[Silver Charm]

What are the rules there?

Lotsa BIG Fig horses seem to appear out of there. Some are legitimately fast like a Fabulous Strike. Who by the way had breathing problems early in his career.

Foster Shipper seems to be a little bit faster everytime he visits there.

[sighthound]

Clenbuterol helps them breath.  They go farther. Not faster.

[Silver Charm]

Farther can be interpreted as faster.

A sprinter who runs out of air after say four or five furlongs who can now hold his top speed for six has gotten faster in my book. Because if he had run out of air earlier his final time would have been slower.

Understand??

[rosewood]

Sight,

Don\'t want to get into arguments with Kool Aid,voodoo, or any other camps.

However, I have a question. If Clenbuterol helps them run farther not faster; doesn\'t a horse breathing better sometime run faster or does Clenbuterol effect not kick in until after a certain amount of energy has been used or distance has been traveled?

[rosewood]

Charm,
Sorry about redundent question, I must have been typing while you were posting.....

[Silver Charm]

Not a problem. You are making total sense.

Would someone answer the original question however?

And they can pick it up with your repsonse in the string, not here.

[miff]

\"I give them Bute and clenbuterol for training, and that is legal\"


...quote from Bruce Levine who,like many trainers,uses lots of stuff in between races.Problem arises when they administer past the prescribed guidelines or have something undetectable.


Mike

[sighthound]

Well, I understand what you are saying, certainly a horse that fades during the last eighth, but can now run out his race - yes, that\'s good.  

But clenbuterol certainly doesn\'t make a horse physically able to run more quickly.  

I think you need to understand the drug is helpful, but not magic.  Horses bedded in stalls, fed upright, living in such a dusty environment (remember they are designed to be out in a big grass field with their heads down, draining and grazing, all day long) - horses living in stabled environments tend to have chronic obstructive pulmonary disease - their airways get inflammed due to breathing in all that junk all the time.

Picture the horses at Churchill (next to an airport), at Arlington (right next to a major highway in the suburbs) - no wonder these horses can\'t breath, due to car and airplane exhaust alone.

Clenbuterol helps relax the airways (it\'s a bronchodilator), so the horse can breath more freely.  It\'s a beta-2 agonist, so it relaxes smooth muscle (such as in airways, it may cause some venodilation)  In horses it also seems to inhibt the release of some inflammatory mediators common in airway disease.

I don\'t know WV clenbuterol time offhand - you can do the search yourself by googling West Virginia Horse Racing Regulations and reading through them.

 In KY it\'s 72 hours.   After dosing by mouth, the drug is maximally absorbed after about 2 hours, and it\'s effect lasts for 6-8 hours.  

My drug books says:  After multiple oral doses, the drug\'s volume of distribution is approximately 1.6 l/kg and clearance was 94 ml/kg/hr.  Urinary concentrations of clenbuterol are approximately 100X those found in the plasma and can persist at quantifiable levels for 288 hours in urine after the last oral dose

So obviously not a drug you can overuse too close to race time and get away with it.

I\'m wondering why you are picking clenbuterol as your drug of suspicion?  If I see sudden big figures, I wouldn\'t think of this at all.

[TGJB]

Sight-- I\'ve gone through this a few times already. A couple of years ago the clean trainers in California kept telling the powers-that-be that certain trainers were giving horses Clenbuterol on raceday, and that urine testing was not showing it. The ex-girlfriend of one trainer (a trainer herself) got up at a CHRB meeting and said outright that he was giving it on raceday. The testers kept saying, if it\'s there we\'ll find it in the urine. The trainers kept saying, it\'s there and you are not finding it.

So finally California switched from urine testing to blood testing almost 2 years ago. You know what? Other than one guy (who is driving Rick Arthur nuts) the place has been shut down (Rick had me run sheets on 10 trainers for 3 months). No more move-ups except one guy. Coincidence? If it is, it\'s one hell of one.

Again-- almost all places that actually are testing at all (some are not) do urine testing, some claim that if they find a trace they then blood test. But a) most of the 18 labs don\'t have the equipment to do the blood test, b) it\'s expensive to do blood tests, and c) the lesson of California is that urine tests don\'t show it, so unless you blood test from the start it won\'t show up.

I\'m not going to argue with you about the medical effects of the drug. I\'m just going to say that a lot of trainers in California are on the record that it moves horses up. When I did the research for \"Are Racehorses Getting Faster\", two different sources said one of the ceilings on \"speed\" (meaning final time) is ability to get and process oxygen, which seems obvious. All thoroughbreds decelerate because of fatigue, even closers. More air = faster time. Work out what a 1% improvement in final time equals in lengths, and you will see what a big deal it is.

[sighthound]

So are you saying West Virginia does urine testing?

[Silver Charm]

Sight I might say at best.

Researcher had two Neg 3\'s and a Neg 1 all were in West Virginia. His other big number was a Neg 1 going a mile and 3/8ths on the AQE inner tube. I discounted all of those figs, at my own peril, and then he became ordinary.

Look Fabulous Strike shipped in there a couple of years ago and may have set the Track Record at 6 furlongs so nothing is foolproof.

But there were two horse for course types in row that teamed up for a $61 double. And a Foster winner who had run second in the Preakness and won the Jim Dandy. Last time I checked those were not run at West Virginia types tracks.

As a dedicated speed figure user this is where we can all run into problems if we blindly accepted \"what happens there also happens here\".  

Particularly when there are potentially drugs involved.