Kentucky Overturns Drug Suspension's
 

As a fan of this sport, once in a while I feel that I am always seeing things in a negative light. That no news is good news and I am sitting here waiting for the next scandal to happen.

I think the Kentucky stewards got this one right. Even though this decision took way to long and might open up a appeal for every positive test, they did the right thing.


http://www.paulickreport.com/news/th...-arnold-sharp/

This is much larger than it may seem. This paragraph,

As a drug is processed by the body, it may be broken down into pieces which are chemically different from the original substance. These are referred to as metabolites. Guilfoil said there were metabolites for ractopamine in the test samples, but there was not a sufficient amount of ractopamine itself. The stewards were advised Monday that without the presence of ractopamine in a sample, it should no longer be considered “positive.”

seems to say, unless we catch you with an illegal amount of the actual drug in your system in the post race sample, you're clear. The trace amounts of cocaine or methamphetamines - no problem if all we've got are metabolites, or the actual sample amount is too small to have

That logic seems to indicate a horse like Masochistic shouldn't have been on the hook because there either wasn't enough steroid in his system to help him or it had all been metabolized and one of the metabolites, at picogram levels mind you, was still in Masochistic's system, just like the two horses in KY.

It all seems fishy to me.

It's safe to say these jurisdictions and their testing labs and procedures are dysfunctional to one degree or another. IMO the whole testing system is a money grab for labs and regulators with very little accountability.

It can not only happen to you...it can happen to you twice.

Joe Sharp (along with media darling Jorge Navarro) was also hit with a Class 1 positive (methamphetamine) at Monmouth Park only as far back as last October. Both he and Navarro (whose positive was for cocaine and morphine) were only fined rather than suspended (minimum one year) because there were mitigating circumstances.

https://www.paulickreport.com/.../na...-class-1-drug- violations-mitigating-circumstances-cited/

What is the point of banning steroids if you just pump them up for months, let the stuff clear, and race once or twice a year? Maybe Ellis took the brunt of a poorly written rule, but I feel no sympathy for him since I think he was trying to skirt the intent of the rule. He was even warned he'd fail and took a chance anyway.

I wasn't defending Ellis. It just seemed that if you applied the KY logic to Masochistic, Ellis skates.

KY has certainly created confusion around the meaning of "zero tolerance."

Yeah, I agree. You have to wonder if this happened to Navarro and Karl Broberg what would have happened.

I can't describe the warm fuzzy felling this gives me.

Guess if you run "about" clean, you are OK in this game.

:puke:

I think we should be asking about a urine sample of the trainers.
Is this a game of checkers or what ever we are about to find out.