Quote:
Originally Posted by bobphilo
One could claim that anything that makes a horse feel good is performance enhancing. What we are talking about here is performance enhancement through medication. Specifically medication not being used to treat a diagnosed medical condition.
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Yep.
And it's worth noting that in many other sports, even a diagnosed medical condition isn't a defense for the taking of performance enhancers unless there is a lot of documentation and strict limitations.
As I said, track athletes have been suspended two years for takiing cold medications. It didn't matter that they actually had colds, because the medication enhanced performance. That's what a serious drug testing protocol does.
Even if you believe in Lasix as a bleeding treatment, horse racing has gone about it all wrong, basically creating a system where the drug is routinely administered as a performance enhancer whether the horses are bleeding or not. If Lasix were treated the way sports that are actually serious about regulating drugs treat this sort of thing, the rule would be no Lasix at all except that a horseman could, at great time and expense, jump through a ton of regulatory hoops to establish that a particular horse was a chronic bleeder, which would then allow a state doctor to administer the medication, in a dose and at a time when it is most effective for treatment whether or not it is most conducive to improved performance. And the horse would be in a detention barn for a significant time up until the race to prevent masking of other drugs.
Horsemen wouldn't like that, because that isn't the reason they give their horses Lasix.
