NYT: Drugs & I Want Revenge
 

October 6, 2009

Lawsuit Sheds Light on Use of Legal Medications in Horses
By JOE DRAPE

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/06/sports/06horse.html

Five months after the Kentucky Derby favorite I Want Revenge was scratched the morning of the race with a bad ankle, his owners are embroiled in a lawsuit that has exposed the fault lines of administering legal drugs to America’s thoroughbreds.

IEAH Stables, which bought 50 percent of the horse in March, asserts that I Want Revenge was ailing as early as April 7 and that the co-owner David Lanzman, who managed the colt’s racing activities, failed to disclose the injuries to IEAH. Lawyers for Lanzman deny the charge and say an injury to a ligament in I Want Revenge’s right front ankle was discovered for the first time on the day of the Derby.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/06/sp...r=1&ref=sports

Interesting piece.. Pretty irresponsible and disingenuous of Drape to include these statistics and assert that the U.S. has the "worst mortality rate" without explaining to a largely ignorant readership that the majority of American (main track) racing is very different than European and Australian (turf) racing.

Nice mug on Lanzman, would that face lie?

No lasix. Bleeders out.

Thank you for bringing that up- that was the first thing I thought when I read the statistics- that he was clear to distinguish between synthetic and dirt fatality statistics in the US, but then lumped everything in Europe into one statistic.

Are turf fatality statistics for US tracks compiled and released anywhere?

Though I did find it very interesting that Northrop felt the owners deserved more transparency about treatments and medication an animal is getting, but the betting public doesn't. As the lolcats would say, dood, srsly?

IEAH, Lanzman, Jeff Mullett, and Dicky Dutrow......what a great team.

I don't know much about the inner workings of horse racing (ownership,training). But,it sounds as if IEAH made a bad investment, purchased in March and horse starts ailing in April. The vets make it sound like a normal day leading up to the race with the work that was done on him.
Rules should be in place for horses running clean on race day. No meds in the horses system at all. If found in system fines,penalties and/or suspensions enforced. Please advise if i'm missing something.

If you didnt know the stats, would you think 1 horse out of 1000 is a "much lower" rate than 2 out of 1000?

But in his defense it is the NY Times so the standards of writing are relatively low.

I doubt the betting public would have any clue what to do with the information or how you would control the validity of the information in the first place? Wouldnt the ability to further abuse the system be greater by allowing trainers/owners/vets to create a shadow of a doubt on claiming horses by taking a bunch of xrays and injecting a bunch of things before a horse dropping in class runs, even if wasnt done or needed? How would you police the vets to insure that they were indeed doing the work on the horse listed?

Define clean. No meds in a horses system? Define no meds. What levels? What limits? It just isnt that simple.

No lasix,Bute or anything. No drugs at all. Like in my 1st post i dont know if these are truly needed,how do they help a horse or anything the like. But it seems to me that a horse that bleeds should not run until the problem is fixed instead of given Lasix as example. Couldn't we have rules like Europe no drugs in system on race day. I admit i don't know much about that stuff but horses racing w/o drugs seems best to me. Thanks for your input Chuck as you know a heck of alot more than me on the subject.

And to boot, he was using numbers that have been rendered moot anyway! Those stats were refuted 48 hours after they were originally released. As Lenny Shulman suggested to me early this morning, Drape has turned into something of a bombthrower and firestarter on drug, rescue and surface issues.

The problem is that you need to have some baselines, guidelines, etc. The tests now are sophisticated enough to pick up minute doses of just about anything if they are looking for it. The problem with the rules is that in many cases finding something in a horses system and its ability to actual affect performance are totally different animals. What we are doing now is simply detecting the presence of a substance with no regard to its effectiveness. Which is not only a huge waste of time and resources but gives off the false impression that every horse is pumped full of drugs every time there is a positive. I am NOT saying that some arent or that certain trainers and/or vets arent going over the line. But all this nonsense about eliminating Lasix is so far off base that I cant believe we continue to even debate it. Lasix is an effective treatment for the deficiency of bleeding in horses. There is no one reason why horses bleed. There really is no prevention. And to want to ban its use, especially when it finally has a university test that proves what we already knew, it works, is spiteful and damaging for the horses. The idea that bleeding is some how bred into or can be bred out of horses is stupid.

I also dont believe that European racing and especially Australian racing is all that clean either. The majority of "hops" that have been used over the years were developed and first used outside of the US. The only place that probably has as close to totally clean racing (in terms of medication) as any place is Hong Kong. And there is virtually no way to duplicate their set up.

Horses do just fine without lasix in Europe Chuck.

He does work for the NY Times!

All issues that are either improperly explained, been greatly expanded or completely jumped the shark.

Well then lets just have all racing in Europe! And why do so many horses improve when they come here and use Lasix? Maybe because they were bleeding?

What's your point? Lasix isn't natural. If we went to hay and oats and no lasix I wouldn't care if a ton of horses couldn't run. We need a healthy breed. Not the best bleeders around....And the bigger isssue is lasix is a masking agent.

Lasix cant mask anything anymore. That is patently false. And since when has racing become organic? Natural?

If we went to hay, oats and water (which has never been, there was lots being done back in the day that simply wasnt detectable ) then you would have more horses bleeding, more things tried to make them stop bleeding, more inconsistent form and form reversals, and less healthy horses. Perhaps you missed the part where bleeding isnt caused by Lasix and its elimination wont lead to less bleeding or bleeders.

There they run a tiny fraction of the number of race held here and the ones that bleed get sent to the US. The one's who's owners can't afford to send them here send them to France to be processed into spam. One ugly secret is that a far higher percentage of European TB's end up on dinner plates and dog bowls than here in the US.

Isn't NYRA's ace in the hole, when it comes to taking all those races off the turf, that the course is just NOT SAFE (for horse and jock)? Your point seems to be that heavy European turf courses are safer than dirt. I would agree with you.

These "Rainbow Blossom" people kill me.......

i think they take them off once it gets too soft so it won't do damage to the track. we run meets for weeks at a time, the euros for the most part run boutique meets, don't they? so they can afford to run on whatever type of ground they have, since they don't have to worry about losing days of racing after.
i don't know that 'heavy euro courses' are safer, but a study i saw seemed to imply that turf racing in general is safest. i don't recall that there was a difference between our turf and theirs.

Thanks for explaining, it just seems too many trainers use Lasix on horses to believe that many horses bleed even on FTS. Thanks again for explaining the reasoning.:)

If horses couldn't use lasix you wouldn't breed bleeders. Simple as that.

"Corticosteroids can be injected into joints and have therapeutic value. They also are prevalent at American tracks, and often given within days of a race, especially in the sport’s lower levels where sore horses must make it to the starting gate."

The "therapeutic value" I have no problem with . The part about using them so that "sore horses make it to the starting gate" is troubling.

NYRA has to use the course for longer than a 3 or 4 day meet once a month

How anyone could have as clear a view of economics as you and still post something like this is amazing. It is like saying if we got rid of antibiotics, no one would ever get sick.

"Bleeding" isnt a physical characteristic of a horse anymore than a cold is a physical characteristic of a human. Total crock.

Then they should state this plainly rather than going with the 'safety' angle.

"We want to save our turf course at all cost".

While I don't buy your cold analogy, I agree that it doesn't make sense, economically, to only race those horses that don't bleed under pressure.

Why in the world would anyone want only the gifted equine athlete competing when we can have every doofus bleeding horse out there doing its thing as well? Worked for Brady Anderson (and the others).:rolleyes:

How is bleeding not a physcial characteristic? I think the Euro trainers would disagree....

Because there are multiple causes of bleeding, most which are related to outside factors. Lots of times the cause is stress. More horses bleed in severe weather, really hot and humid or really cold. Horses bleed because they are sore. Horses bleed because they have respiratory infections. Horses bleed if they hit their heads in the gate. Horses bleed because of allergies. Why is it not hard to understand that bleeding doesnt just happen because a horses sire and dam were treated with a diuretic?

Do you know any Euro trainers? Ironically I do and they are always asking for new things to treat their horses.

You obviously dont understand the issue either.

Yes Aidan O'Brien is on my speed dial of course. The point I was making is there is plenty of horse racing in the world without lasix, you seem to think there wouldn't be which is silly. We'd be fine in this country without lasix, we were before lasix. It's also kind of easy to be biased in this argument as a trainer who relies on it. Are there horses you don't give it to? Probably not, which means regardless of whether a horse needs it or not you give it....which is what nearly all U.S. trainers do.

I love this argument. Because I use it and actually have years of practical knowledge dealing with bleeders and Lasix I am too biased to accurately understand the issue properly?

Why do you think trainers started using Lasix?

I dont "rely" on Lasix. I use it because it works. If they banned it I would have to find another product to use because bleeding wont stop without Lasix. Just as Polytrack and no toe grabs havent stopped horses from breaking down. It is a false argument

Surely a less snarky response would do better but fine....Fact is, if you use it with every single horse, from the get go(as in first race and on), you have no idea who needs it and who doesn't.

I understand the issue. You want to treat ALL bleeders the same way. Bleeding because of stress in hot weather is different from bleeding because of a blow to the head. I got it. Why do something specific when you have the general: LASIX.

Why bother with making sure the horse is fit enough to be put under pressure, or good enough. Or, maybe, the horse is just not of the type that can endure training. Rather than keep these 'frail' types out of the gene pool, just hit them with some generic drug, and it's all good BECAUSE, you can't be breeding all these horses and not running them simply because they just can't endure the training/activity.

I find it interesting that you know so much about training horses. During your opinion forming research on the topic did you never come across a trainer or vet attest to using Lasix as a tool of prevention? One thing I have found is that horses with a single severe bleeding episode are much more likely to become chronic bleeders than those that never have one. So I should risk my horses health and my clients investment to find out if my horse "needs" it? The idea that horses that are "bleeders" shouldnt run be allowed to run makes as much sense as saying kids that are stupid shouldnt be allowed in school.


Do you wait till your tires run flat before replacing them?

Because they wont let us use anything else except the adjunct stuff that hardly makes a difference.

I would love for someone to tell me how many horses you need to cull to affect the "genepool".

I didn't realize I couldn't have an opinion on lasix if I wasn't a trainer. I missed that memo....Fact is I'd rather not have it like a good portion of the world. That's it.

i've seen the 'they don't use it in europe' argument before...but it seems every euro horse is on it within minutes of touching down at the airport when they fly in for the bc. i guess trainers suddenly aren't so hesitant once they are allowed to use it. maybe it's the north american climate that makes horses into bleeders.

Ive always wondered why a majority of Euro's use Lasix when they come and run in the states. If all is fine in well and the horses that race in Europe and abroad dont use Lasix to run on when they are at home why do they use it here? Hmm maybe because the horses do bleed there , maybe not gushing out their noses always , but when scoped after a race they show that they have bled.
Just a little FYI , trainers in Europe and abroad do use Lasix for workouts , maybe not with every horses every time but they do use it .