It's official, the game is clean!!

[miff]

Officials Say Report Dispels Drug Criticism

By Tom LaMarra

Racing industry officials said a report that shows 99.5% of biological samples taken from racehorses and tested by laboratories in 2010 were "clean" dispels claims that horse racing is drug-ridden.

The report, called "Drugs in Racing 2010—The Facts," was compiled by the Association of Racing Commissioners International and released Sept. 8. The report said "salacious comments" made in stories in mainstream publications "create an undeserved negative perception" of horse racing.

A few members of Congress also have targeted horse racing because of what they perceive to be—or have been told is—a drug problem.

More than 320,000 samples were tested in 2010. The report states laboratory results indicate 99.5% of them were found to contain no foreign or prohibited substance based on existing testing protocol.

"As the report indicates, horse racing in North America is one of the most highly regulated sports in the world," National Thoroughbred Racing Association president and chief executive officer Alex Waldrop said. "Moving forward, our regulatory priorities need to be based on the continued pursuit of state-of-the-art testing for new and designer drugs, clear and consistent regulation of therapeutic medications, and strong penalties for any who don't play by the rules."

"The report vindicates what I and numerous others familiar with the use and regulation of medication in racehorses in this country have been saying for years," said Alan Foreman, CEO of the Thoroughbred Horsemen's Association. "Our regulation and control of medication and the fairness and integrity of our competition day-to-day is the best and most stringent of any sport in the world, amateur and professional. The facts, both as to the nature and extent of our drug testing and the results, speak for themselves.

"It is about time that responsible individuals and organizations defended and promoted the integrity of our sport rather than continuously denigrating it."

Horse racing spends about $35 million per year on equine drug testing. The RCI notes the World Anti-Doping Agency, which does human testing in sports, spends about $26 million per year.

Jockey Club president and chief operating officer James Gagliano said the report shows that racing takes its responsibility seriously.

"To that end, we have devoted significant resources to the drug-testing initiative that was announced three years ago to develop world-class equine drug testing laboratories capable of producing consistent results through uniform and standardized testing procedures and quality assurance programs," Gagliano said. "More recently The Jockey Club has proposed the Reformed Racing Medication Rules, which have been designed to enhance and harmonize medication regulations and best practices.

"Beyond rigorous testing and punishment, The Jockey Club continues to believe that horses must compete only when they are free from the influence of medication in order to enhance the safety of our athletes and the perception of our sport."

The report touches on use of furosemide, the anti-bleeding drug called Salix (Lasix). It notes the number of furosemide overages has dropped 33% from 2001 to 2010.

Groups including The Jockey Club are pushing for a phase-out of race-day medication including Salix, while major horsemen's groups have opposed the move.

RCI in the report noted efforts by the racing industry to upgrade testing and related standards but said its imperative for regulatory agencies--most of them are under-funded--to have \"adequate resources to maintain an expansive and effective drug-testing program that can evolve as science advances are made in both testing technology and equine care.\"

[TGJB]

I will have some comment on this down the line, either here or in the DRF. Waldrop in particular should be ashamed of himself-- he was in the room when Super-Vet admitted proudly to a whole laundry list of transgressions, including EPO use. Gagliano is a good guy, he\'s working on this problem very seriously, however this reads. They (Jockey Club) will be putting forward a set of propsals, which include some of mine, if they can overcome the tracks resistance.

And that\'s where you guys come in. Stay tuned.

[sighthound]

You would help the sport by also acknowledging what is good about drug testing in this sport.

It\'s not either-or.  Treating it as such is a great disservice to this sport.

[toppled]

Doing the math, 0.5% of 320,000 horses in the 2010 sample means 1,600 horses had foreign or prohibited substances in them.  If I knew of just 1% of those, I could make a big score 16 times a year.  If you could find me 16 juiced horses a year that I could wager on, I\'d never need another source of income.

[sighthound]

You make a huge mistake assuming that that any overage means a \"juiced\" horse, let alone a horse that is somehow magically guaranteed to win a race.  Nearly all of those 1600 are non-performance-affecting trace overages of legal substances prohibited on race day.  

Sorry - that well-below-therapeutic micro trace level of clenbuterol or bute doesn\'t do crap to influence the performance of the horse, let alone qualify anywhere remotely close to \"juicing\".

[magicnight]

Hi Sight. Would love to get your take on this bit of horsemanship as related by Richiebee?

http://www.thorograph.com/phorum/read.php?1,69412,69471#msg-69471

[richiebee]

Thanks, Magic.

Kind of like asking P-Dub to react to a negative comment about Mike Smith,
Zenyatta or the Raid-az. Just joking P-Dub.

In the June 28, 2011 New York Times, an article was headlined
\"Rinderpest, Scourge of Cattle, is Eradicated\". This was a fascinating article
from a scientific, historical and religious standpoint and is not hard to find
if the almost lyrical sounding headline piques your imagination.

Rinderpest, German for \"cattle plague\" apparently has been a problem for over
a thousand years. When the UN declared that rinderpest was eradicated, it
joined smallpox as the only disease in history to be \"wiped off the face of
the Earth.\"

The Times article discusses that rinderpest hastened the Fall of the
Roman Empire and aided Genghis Khan, a great horseman in his own right, in
some of his conquests.

Rinderpest was for all practical purposes a slate cleaner, usually claiming
the lives of 95% of any herd it attacked.

The Papal Herds were attacked in 1713 and Pope Clement got his own personal
papal physician to work on the problem.

\"Charlatan cures were barred, priests were ordered to stop relying on prayer
alone and to preach from the pulpit that all herds with any sick members were
to be slaughtered and buried in lime, while healthy herds were to be isolated.
Any layman who resisted or cheated would be hanged, drawn and quartered. Any
disobeying priest was to be sent to the galleys for life.\"

One of the \"charlatan cures\" which was mentioned involved a \"traditional
prevention method --smearing the feces of infected animals in the mouths of
healthy ones.\"

Reflecting on this article, I was thinking that my boss had just kind of
reversed the above method...

Frank D is getting steamed that I have taken so much space without furthering
the TG cause. Sighthound and other vets are chafed that I quoted the colorful
parts of the Times article without mentioning that the eradication of
rinderpest involved a worldwide effort by veterinarians working under
difficult circumstances over the last 60 years...

... and did anybody notice that the Garden City at Belmont Saturday, which
should be contested on a beautiful late summer day in Elmont over a firm turf,
looks like a solid betting race?

[BB]

\"Kind of like asking P-Dub to react to a negative comment about Mike Smith,
Zenyatta or the Raid-az. Just joking P-Dub.\"

Maybe more like asking Christopher Hitchens to talk about his favorite bible verses. Of course, Sight is way too smart and classy to take the bait, but I had to take a shot.

Great followup, Richie! And belated thanks to Frank D for all his great posts during Saratoga. I only made it up there once this summer, but it seems like I was there more often thanks to Frank!

[sighthound]

Great story!  Dr. Harthill is legendary (for more reasons than that story). Those vets knew how to get a horse to run, and to \"run\".

Concept of \"probiotics\" ring a bell?  Sure it does.  We do the same thing today, only using stuff that comes in a tube paste from a pharmacy.  

Sick animals, animals on antibiotics, under stress, etc. will lose the \"good\" intestinal bacteria.  The trainer simply replaced it in this sick horse.  

Bacteria in your (or a horse, dog, specifics differ by species) intestine makes vitamins, break down food products into useable molecules, etc.  Sterile gut = no bacteria = bad news for every species.  

Newborn foals eat their mother\'s feces to inoculate their gut with the appropriate bacteria to their location.  Puppies and kittens pick it up crawling over and around the dams butt, and being licked by their dams, before their eyes open.  Humans?  Well, let your toddler eat a little dirt, won\'t hurt.

[sighthound]

Not chafed in the least over a good story, and you can tell them :-)   I know I got at least 1 question about cattle, way back in the day on my national veterinary exam, correct by recalling stories from James Herriot\'s \"All Creatures Great and Small\" book.

And there are still questions about rinderpest on national vet exams.  Nobody wants to go down in history as the vet that missed the obscure foreign contagious disease that devastated a country ....

[P-Dub]

richiebee Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Thanks, Magic.
>
> Kind of like asking P-Dub to react to a negative
> comment about Mike Smith,
> Zenyatta or the Raid-az. Just joking P-Dub.
>

These are all a distant second thanks to the Utah/USC debacle.  That cost me quite a bit.

Talk about a questionable DQ, are the So Cal stewards moonlighting as Pac-12 officials??

[FrankD.]

P-Dub,

The USC vs Utah game was the ultimate screw up by an official of any sport and the Pac-12\'s handling of the affair was worse.

My interest was with a local guy in NY and I had USC laying 9, we don\'t settle until Tuesday\'s so we both agreed on a push with the official amended score.

The officials call of an excessive celebration on a touch down can only be enforced on the ensuing kickoff. The extra point should have been kicked and the ensuing kick off should have taken place. In addition a game or half cannot end on a defensive penalty.

The fact that it took the pac-12 2 hours to amend the score is despicable and the fall out afterwards seems to matter where you bet and that houses policy ?
Some paid Utah only on the 17-14 score, some paid only USC after the change 23-14, some paid both sides and a few places even declared the game no contest.

What\'s amazing is that there is not a uniformed rule in place in Nevada. Everyone\'s rule seemed very open to interpretation.

OK Richiebee, I\'ve just exercised my poetic license on a non TG issue !!!

Good luck,

Frank D.

[miff]

Article in Thursdays DRF states that NY State Senator Thomas K Duane(D. Manhattan) has introduced legislation banning Lasix use in any race run in NY State.The article is a must read and clearly demonstrates that this NY State Senator has no idea what he is talking about and is being ill advised.

Sen.Duane goes on to urge that \"everyone refrain from wagering on any horse that is being dosed with Lasix- or worse\" BRILLIANT!!!

Sen.Duane, another clueless politician with the power to possibly f--k the game up more than it already is.


Mike

[Rich Curtis]

LA Times story:

By Gary Klein
 
September 12, 2011, 10:05 p.m.
Tony Corrente had a busy weekend.

The Pacific 12 Conference\'s coordinator of football officials spent Sunday refereeing a game between the Baltimore Ravens and the Pittsburgh Steelers, an assignment that left him flat on his back for a few moments after he was knocked down trying to break up a skirmish.

After the NFL game, Corrente issued a statement about USC\'s 23-14 victory over Utah on Saturday that said there was a \"miscommunication between the officials and the press box that led to the confusion about the final score.\"

Corrente returned Monday to Pac-12 headquarters in Walnut Creek, Calif., and spent most of the day trying to manage the continuing firestorm that began because the score was initially recorded by press box officials as 17-14.

\"All we did was clarify the score,\" Corrente said in a telephone interview. \"We did not change the score.\"

Meantime, the controversy continues in Las Vegas, where sports books invoked \"house rules\" to determine whether they would pay on one score or the other — or both.

Jerry Markling, chief of the enforcement division for the Nevada Gaming Control Board, said in a telephone interview that the staff had initiated nine \"investigative cases\" about disputes and that it was awaiting more information about possible others.

Markling said he could not recall a similar circumstance.

\"We get all kinds of different issues that come up,\" he said, but none that involved a final score.

USC clinched the victory by blocking a field-goal attempt in the final seconds. Cornerback Torin Harris picked up the ball and returned it 68 yards to the end zone. While Harris sprinted toward the goal line, USC players left the bench and ran onto the field to mob Harris in the end zone.

Confusion ensued because an official threw a penalty flag and none of the field officials appeared to clearly signal a touchdown.

In announcing an unsportsmanlike-conduct penalty against USC, the referee did not communicate over the public address system that the touchdown counted.

Corrente said the official was not required to do so, but if he had, it would have saved confusion.

\"My assumption is that somebody in the press box had to have misinterpreted the referee\'s declining signal for the foul to mean that the touchdown was no good,\" Corrente said.

Corrente said an official saw 23-14 on the scoreboard at the peristyle end of the Coliseum. The officials left the field, went to their locker room and filed a postgame report with a score of 23-14.

Scoreboard operator Kyle Lucas confirmed that the 23-14 score was posted briefly but said he took it down after seeing the penalty flag. He said members of the statistics crew told him not to re-post the points.

About an hour later, members of the officiating crew were approached in the parking lot by USC radio broadcasters Pete Arbogast and Paul McDonald, who asked them why the touchdown was taken off the scoreboard.

\"To a man, they turned and said, \'Huh? What do you mean?\' \" Arbogast said. \"None of them had any idea that it was even an issue to that point.\"

The officials contacted the Pac-12 office, starting a process that eventually produced a statement from Mike Pereira, a Pac-12 officiating consultant. He said the penalty was a dead-ball foul that could not be enforced because the game had ended. He also said officials had ruled the play a touchdown.

\"The penalty is one of those weird ones that would be enforced on the next kickoff,\" Corrente said. \"But there\'s no kickoff, so that\'s why you dispense of the penalty.\"

NFL rules require that an extra point be attempted because point differential is part of the league\'s tiebreaker system. College rules say a team can try an extra point when games end with a touchdown, Corrente said, but are not required to do so.

[miff]

Clowns at NYRA, track super mainly,did a \"job\" on the Belmont surface today with the threat of rain.Horses look to be falling down along the inside, raw times only about 15-20 lenghts slow so far.


Mike