Horses positive for Meth. Trainers held blameless

[thespaah]

According to reports, 6 horses in various barns tested positive for Methamphetamine.
The trainers were held to not be at fault...
Not looking always for the worst in people, but thinking in terms of the real world, a person in just about any other occupation would have at least been suspended from their job and ordered to undergo some type of remediation. at worst, their employment would have been terminated.
These guys get to come up with polluted horses or equipment and nothing happens to them. NO sanctions. No repercussions.
If there are those frustrated with the game, it comes as no surprise.
I think there should be zero tolerance.
Cameras can be installed in every barn at a very low cost. So if for example, someone is out of "get" a trainer or other on site employee, the security cams and other safeguards can be used to protect reputations.
In conclusion, the use of illegal and banned substances MUST be stopped.

[betovernetcapper]

With today's testing, a horse (or person) can test positive for an amount of a drug that will have no effect. The amount of Meth to affect a human's performance might be the size of a baby aspirin. A 10th of that might not affect a humans performance, but still would show up as positive. You could pick up a trace amount from food or drink. You could conceivably test positive for alcohol after eating a salad or a teaspoon of cough syrup.
Given that a horse is substantially larger than a person, it would require a higher amount to effect his performance, but trace amounts can show up & such trace amounts may be from someone taking the drug & having some residue on their hands when giving the horse food or water.
I think some common sense should be applied in determining guilt or innocence in this kind of thing.

[SuperPickle]

Originally Posted by thespaah

According to reports, 6 horses in various barns tested positive for Methamphetamine.
The trainers were held to not be at fault...
Not looking always for the worst in people, but thinking in terms of the real world, a person in just about any other occupation would have at least been suspended from their job and ordered to undergo some type of remediation. at worst, their employment would have been terminated.
These guys get to come up with polluted horses or equipment and nothing happens to them. NO sanctions. No repercussions.
If there are those frustrated with the game, it comes as no surprise.
I think there should be zero tolerance.
Cameras can be installed in every barn at a very low cost. So if for example, someone is out of "get" a trainer or other on site employee, the security cams and other safeguards can be used to protect reputations.
In conclusion, the use of illegal and banned substances MUST be stopped.

So a couple points on this..

1. There have been a lot of stories about horses testing positive for street drugs going back almost 50 years including a high profile one back in the 80's in which D. Wayne Lukas had some cocaine positives. In almost all cases it was surmised these were inadvertent contaminations versus people drugging horses to win races. As we all know in the 80's everyone was on coke and some of the coke ended up in horses.

2. Given the positives were across multiple barns its a pretty valid theory that it was contamination versus an attempt to gain an edge.

3. Street drugs like coke and meth are barely performance enhancers. You can argue because they are uppers they could stimulate a horse to generate more energy and ran faster however a vet or chemist would tell you there's literally dozens of things that you could given them that would be both more effective and would carry much smaller penalties. It's unlikely anyone is trying to improve a horse's performance with coke or meth.

On the surface this looks like something but there really isn't anything here.

[betovernetcapper]

I've been reflecting on this and Meth is maybe the last thing I'd want to give the average horse if I wanted to win a race. Race horse's tend to be nervous & a bit strung to begin with. On Meth, they would lose their race on the way to the paddock.
In the 1930's the street name for Heroin was horse, because it was said to be used to fix races. Most horse's have some kind of pain but under the influence of heroin they wouldn't notice it. Re the meth, I don't think there is any there, there.

[Pensacola Pete]

Originally Posted by thespaah

According to reports, 6 horses in various barns tested positive for Methamphetamine.

Maybe the stewards figured that the horses left their stalls and bought it on the streets.

[Donttellmeshowme]

Originally Posted by thespaah

According to reports, 6 horses in various barns tested positive for Methamphetamine.
The trainers were held to not be at fault...
Not looking always for the worst in people, but thinking in terms of the real world, a person in just about any other occupation would have at least been suspended from their job and ordered to undergo some type of remediation. at worst, their employment would have been terminated.
These guys get to come up with polluted horses or equipment and nothing happens to them. NO sanctions. No repercussions.
If there are those frustrated with the game, it comes as no surprise.
I think there should be zero tolerance.
Cameras can be installed in every barn at a very low cost. So if for example, someone is out of "get" a trainer or other on site employee, the security cams and other safeguards can be used to protect reputations.
In conclusion, the use of illegal and banned substances MUST be stopped.

What track? Which trainers?m Need more info.....

[Shemp Howard]

The Race Commissions seem bent on keeping this information under wraps.

I've been trying to get information on a horse that was disqualified from a winning purse at Penn National for almost two months.

E-mails have gone ignored, even to the Secretary of Agriculture who oversees the Commission.

I;m now writing to the Governor.

Transparency....forget about it.

[cato]

Sending an email to an organization demanding information is not really an effective way to obtain information - especially if the organization would like to avoid giving the information. Its really easy to delete emails...

If the information on the horse or the event in question is information that ultimately made its way to a governmental organization (like a racing commission) then you just need to do written freedom of information act request and they are obligated to respond in a certain time period.

Its a simple process on the federal level and I assume it would be approximately the same on a state level.

PM me if you need help and I'll look into it.

Best, Cato

[cato]

In Pennsylvania its the "Right to Know Law". Google it and you should be set on the right path.

Or go to this site

https://ballotpedia.org/Pennsylvania_Right_to_Know_Law

Happy hunting!

[Tom]

Originally Posted by Pensacola Pete

Maybe the stewards figured that the horses left their stalls and bought it on the streets.

"....5 wide on the far turn, skimmed Union Avenue, picked up a stash and ducked back in for the drive. Ride was high in the saddle at the wire."

[burnsy]

Originally Posted by Tom

"....5 wide on the far turn, skimmed Union Avenue, picked up a stash and ducked back in for the drive. Ride was high in the saddle at the wire."

I think you have to cross town to buy that stuff........Not much on Union Ave.

[Inner Dirt]

Originally Posted by betovernetcapper

I've been reflecting on this and Meth is maybe the last thing I'd want to give the average horse if I wanted to win a race. Race horse's tend to be nervous & a bit strung to begin with. On Meth, they would lose their race on the way to the paddock.
In the 1930's the street name for Heroin was horse, because it was said to be used to fix races. Most horse's have some kind of pain but under the influence of heroin they wouldn't notice it. Re the meth, I don't think there is any there, there.

I am guessing it was sometime in the 80's a trainer had an uncanny ability to claim 870 yard runners at Los Alamitos and successfully move them up the claiming ladder and win, some going from $2K all the way up to $20K. Of course when the horses were claimed away from this trainer they would quickly sink back down the claiming ladder. It was later discovered he was giving them heroin. The guy's name escapes me, anyone else remember this incident?

[HalvOnHorseracing]

This is a more complicated issue than most people want to acknowledge. Environmental contamination is an issue that racing has been wrestling with for a while. While the absolute insurers rule was designed to punish trainers for any kind of positive, and the detection devices have gotten more and more sensitive, it is becoming clear that trainers can be saddled with positives for levels so low that they almost certainly were not the result of a trainer purposely spiking a horse. When you see a positive for cocaine or meth at the 20 picogram level, either the trainer gave the horse the drug so long ago it has lost all efficacy or it was a result of contamination. Even the Olympics, MLB, NFL and other sports have de minimis levels before enforcing standards. Horse racing does not separate violations into potentially performance enhancing levels and irrelevant levels. I could only say that if you tested positive for cocaine at a ridiculously small picogram level, you knew you didn't take it, and it probably came from money you handled, but you were convicted and punished anyway, you'd raise holy hell protesting the unfairness of it. But there is no problem trashing a trainer in the exact same position.

The New York absolute insurer rule is one of the few that has been changed to allow trainers a positive defense for positives where they can prove neither they nor any employee was responsible for the positive.

Trainers who purposely cheat should be seriously sanctioned. Period. But that's not every positive.

[PaceAdvantage]

When it comes to this game "almost certainly" can never be counted on...

[Tom]

"Probably not" is generally the best you can hope for.