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Originally Posted by Kasept
Look.. As many know, I'm very friendly with Marty and Karla Wolfson, so I'm going to be biased in this conversation. It would be nice if trainers didn't need to use any medication to keep the horses running, but they do, and will continue to. As the conversation with Dr. Lewis of RMTC concluded yesterday, the public perception is going to be negative whenever there is ANY kind of 'positive'.
Within racing, people can differentiate between things like anti-inflammatory overages and more nefarious positives. But the overall impression of the public is that anything in this area constitutes 'cheating'. So as with steroids and their negative implication, these infractions have to stop. One way to make this particular playing field level would be to have Model Rules applied through all jurisdictions. Then there will be no explanations, excuses or otherwise because everyone will have a standard set of guidelines to be working under.
And there has been great progress on the Model Rules initiative...
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Trainers don't really need to use medication...they seem to do a pretty damn good job of racing on little to no medication in Europe and Asia (Hong Kong). Yeah, trainers use medication because they can, but there are limits. Trainers have a responsibility to know what the legal limits and thresholds are wherever they go especially if they are going to be entering and running in a particular jurisdiction it is their responsibility to be aware of what they are. That's twice that Wolfson has done it. Now I agree that Pletcher isn't exactly the cleanest guy out there in the world and he deserves what he gets and so on, but how do you explain Wolfson moving horses up off Bill Mott.
Miesque's Approval was coming off races where he was simply non-competitive and even dropped into a 50K claimer at Belmont where he went off favored and he couldn't beat the group that he lined up against that day. The very same Bill Mott who is arguably one of the best trainers we have known as well as one of the master turf trainers we have ever seen. Miesque's Approval becomes non-competitive, shows up in Marty Wolfson's barn, and poof, he's a new horse and he's a G1 caliber horse. That's the type of crap that Beyer calls trainers out on and he has every right to call them out for that stuff.