breakdowns

[Rupert Pupkin]

Originally Posted by Cannon Shell

Who exactly pays for MRI's or Nuclear scans? The tracks? Or the owners?

I agree that it looks really bad when a horse drops and breaks down. But you have to be realistic with these scans. First off they are very expensive and secondly very few tracks have a local facility to do them anyway. Do you ahve any idea how much time it would take to nuke scan or MRI an entire card of horses? Not to mention that you have to tq them.

Out here they have the facilities for the nuclear scan at Santa Anita but not Hollywood. So if your horse is at Hollywood, you have to ship to Santa Anita.

It would cost a fortune, but I guess they could conceivably make every horse have a nuclear scan once a month or so. But even if they did this, how would they decide what constitues an injury that you are not allowed to run with? If a horse has a small chip, is he allowed to run or does the chip have to be removed?

If a horse has a small tear in his tendon, is he allowed to run?

The truth of the matter is if they were really strict, every race would be a 2-3 horse field.