Quote:
Originally Posted by classhandicapper
I'm 100% not trying to imply anything about Shug because his generally very clean record speaks for itself, but there was a period at his peak in the early 90s where his win% was 30% for the year and even higher at some meets. Sometimes it seemed like every horse he put on the track would improve just enough to win at the next level. I used to hate betting races where he had a horse entered because they would appropriately take extra money on that assumption. So it was hard to bet on or against him. He'd routinely beat me with horses that moved forward.
I guess the point I am making is that just because a guy is winning everything in sight doesn't necessarily mean he's one of guys that's cheating. If you have great stock, are a great trainer, are working hard, and spotting your horses well you can get on quite a roll and still be racing clean.
I'm not sure how we catch all the cheaters, but we have to CATCH them.
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The flip side is also true. I've seen this dynamic in other sports where people are rushing to declare their favorites "clean" because they haven't tested positive or shown outward signs of doping. If you go back before his positive tests, you will see Alex Rodriguez got LOTS of that publicity, with sportswriters holding him up as one of "the good guys".
In the 1988 Olympics 100 meters final, where Ben Johnson was famously disqualified for a positive stanozolol test, it turned out 7 of the 8 people on that starting line, including eventual inheritor of the gold medal Carl Lewis (who benefitted from the same sort of publicity A-Rod did), ended up being linked to PED's.
My point is, (1) lots of people use these things and don't get caught (the BALCO scandal implicated numerous athletes who had passed every one of their drug tests) because they are very smart and careful about gaming the testing system; and (2) once some people in a profession are using, everyone has to use. Otherwise you end up like Jack Van Berg did, being in the Hall of Fame but having a 1 for 55 streak.
Don't divide the racing world up into good guys and bad guys. Instead, presume that EVERY successful trainer may very well be cheating. Passing tests is about knowing how not to get caught.
If you want to root out PED's, not only do you need more tests and (especially) harsher punishment (those 2 year suspensions track and field hands out for a first offense look very smart in light of the fact that so many dopers never fail a test; 1 failed drug test could reflect dozens of violations), but you also need more investigations like BALCO and the Servis thing, where you catch people who are passing tests on the supply side.
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