Drug Free Racing Is Only Hope

[pandy]

I still think that drug free, and lasix free racing, would eventually increase horse ownership and help the sport. And it's not difficult to achieve. All they'd have to do is ban lasix and put in strict drug rules and enforcement like they have in Japan. Just recreate their model.

I'm not sure that the use of lasix isn't directly tied to profits. The owners may have been duped. By putting all thoroughbred and harness horses in North American on lasix, the racing industry put millions of dollars of additional profit into the pharmaceutical industry and veterinarian's also benefited immensely. Doctor's, vets in this case, always push drugs because they make more money when they put clients on drugs.

I'm very suspicious of the way the medical community works with Big Pharma and the drugs that are sold to humans. Millions of Americans are taking non-essential drugs that have serious side effects and these drugs, like Viagra, birth control pills, and many others, are huge money makers for the medical/pharmaceutical industry because they create illnesses which then lead to more drug sales, and more medical care. The public has been duped and so has the horse racing industry.

[lamboguy]

Originally Posted by pandy

There were more horses when there wasn't lasix here. Lasix increases the cost of owning horses, the vets have to get paid and of course the drug isn't cheap.

i agree with your post. lasix cost $15 per race.

in this day and age you almost have to use the lasix otherwise you can't win. most horses DO run faster on it.

[rastajenk]

Pandy, you've mentioned Japan a couple of times. Do you know how horse ownership works over there? I don't, so I'm asking; in other words, up front I want to say I'm not trying to be a smart-aleck know-it-all, but I have some questions:

When you own a horse in Japan, do you have control over when it races? Can you hire and fire trainers at will? If it needs a break, can you take it to your farm for a few months? Can you train off a farm? Do they even have enough room for horse farms?

Can you choose the level at which you race, or does the racing association do that? How many tracks are there to choose from; can you ship from one to another looking for your best spot? Can you start small and end up in Dubai, like California Chrome's owners did?

I think the cultures are so different as to make American-to-Asian horse racing comparisons nearly worthless, but as I said at the top, I'm open to learning I could be wrong. But I have a feeling the Asian way of ownership wouldn't be very appealing to most potential American owners, regardless of the drug issues.

[pandy]

The only thing I know is what I've read about their strict drug rules and the outstanding racing and training facilities. But we wouldn't need to adopt their rules of ownership, just the drug rules, which work. Their horses race more often and break down far less than ours.

Of course, our horses raced more often and broke down less than they do now when we didn't use lasix.

[rastajenk]

Well, you connected the drug and ownership dots in post #8 in this thread; that's why I'm suggesting it's probably more complicated than that.

Are we sure horse broke down less often in the good ole days, in the days before wall-to-wall full-card simulcasting allowed us to see everything everywhere?

[lamboguy]

aside from the no drug's, limited ownership and limited amount of horses one trainer can have on their roster's should help turn this game around in a heartbeat.

in my opinion, if this happened they would have to build more racetracks here with the demand for the sport again.

[Tor Ekman]

Originally Posted by lamboguy

lasix cost $15 per race.

ponder the math on that for a moment and it's apparent there is an impressively sized sub-economy dependent on the continued administration of the drug. Extremely unlikely it's ever going away

[forced89]

I own horses. I believe the Owner should control how much a horse is medicated. In my case I watch my vet bill carefully. If I see a bunch of charges for other than a procedure that my trainer and I have agreed to and/or the charge for administering bute the day before race day and lasix on race day, my horse is coming home for some R&R. This accomplishes two things. First, it keeps my vet bills from approaching the National Debt, and second, it ensures my trainer is not masking a potentially serious problem with drugs. If it takes cocktails of drugs for my horse to compete, I want nothing to do with it.

[lamboguy]

Originally Posted by forced89

I own horses. I believe the Owner should control how much a horse is medicated. In my case I watch my vet bill carefully. If I see a bunch of charges for other than a procedure that my trainer and I have agreed to and/or the charge for administering bute the day before race day and lasix on race day, my horse is coming home for some R&R. This accomplishes two things. First, it keeps my vet bills from approaching the National Debt, and second, it ensures my trainer is not masking a potentially serious problem with drugs. If it takes cocktails of drugs for my horse to compete, I want nothing to do with it.

good for you, and i must say that most people think the same way as you do.

[Ruffian1]

Originally Posted by forced89

I own horses. I believe the Owner should control how much a horse is medicated. In my case I watch my vet bill carefully. If I see a bunch of charges for other than a procedure that my trainer and I have agreed to and/or the charge for administering bute the day before race day and lasix on race day, my horse is coming home for some R&R. This accomplishes two things. First, it keeps my vet bills from approaching the National Debt, and second, it ensures my trainer is not masking a potentially serious problem with drugs. If it takes cocktails of drugs for my horse to compete, I want nothing to do with it.

Good for you and I agree and appreciate your way of thinking.
I will say that I was fired by an owner for NOT having high enough vet bills . It couldn't have been about winning as we were doing that. Gotta love it.

[PaceAdvantage]

And here I thought...

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[HalvOnHorseracing]

It is often the case that drug and medication opponents cite Hong Kong, Japan, Dubai, and some European countries as models for North America. I've done research into racing in Hong Kong. Everything except the owner and trainer of a horse is controlled by the HKJC. Grooms are assigned and paid by HKJC. They are paid a living wage (something like the equivalent of $60,000 a year) and are only assigned three horses to care for at a time. Vets, farriers, other personnel - all work for the HKJC. They control the gambling aspect. They don't have casinos or independent ADW's competing with their monopoly.

The big difference between all those jurisdictions and NA is the number of race days per year. Hong Kong has 86 days with 10 races a day. North America had close to that number of races last weekend. Japan, as far as I can tell, has 23 race days with 12 races per day. That's 276 races. Dubai is also 23 race days. They are space farther apart as well. Japan's racing days are from February to December. It appears that January, July and August are dark, with May being the big month with five racing days. Same with Hong Kong. 86 days spread throughout the year.

Hong Kong could probably get through a season with 2,000 horses in training. Japan and Dubai even less. I counted 24 North American tracks running this weekend. Say 240 races a day with an average of say seven horses per race. That's 1,680 horses a day. In a Friday, Saturday, Sunday that's 5,040 horses. If they run once a month that's somewhere in the vicinity of 30,000 horses just to supply a month of North American racing.

Now if North America ran 100 days a year they could probably find enough horses that were fully healthy and had little or no EIPH and the whole drug question would become moot. But if you have to figure out how to keep 30,000 horses healthy enough to race, there are probably going to be NSAIDs like banamine or bute in the equation, and maybe a few other therapeutic medications. Look at the 0.5% positives for medication and drugs and you'll see almost all of them are for overages of therapeutics that have limited performance enhancing effects, and almost all of those overages are NOT for administration on race day.

The entire discussion about drugs invariably comes down to Lasix. It is the single drug allowed for raceday use. Europe has many of the same medication standards as North America, in some cases their standards are even less stringent. What Europe doesn't have is raceday Lasix. Some Euorpean countries do allow Lasix for training purposes. Either you are pro or anti Lasix, but any discussion about medication in racing that goes beyond that has a lot more to do with the desire of some heavyweights to limit the available racing stock, drive small venues out of business and allow the wealthiest operations to get wealthier. It is the obvious outcome of cutting down the pool of horses that are in racing condition.

I for one am tired of the argument that if Japan or Dubai or Hong Kong can do it, so can we. It is not even apples and oranges - it's more like watermelons and spinach. When someone makes a post that says, here is how you can copy one of those jurisdictions and run 1,000 races in a week during the summer, then there is something to discuss. And if your opinion is that there are too many tracks and too many races, well that is a different discussion. And unfortunately, unlike Hong Kong, we don't have the HKJC to make all the decisions about which state gets to race and for how many days. You have 39 jurisdictions to wrangle (don't forget Canada) and if you think, say Colorado, is going to give up it's piece of the pie because it will be good for racing to have fewer low level claimers to keep healthy and we want to be like Japan and Hong Kong, good luck with that.

[Wan Chai]

Lot of wrong numbers and wrong ideas - wow, the grooms in HK would love to be getting $US 60k - but your overarching argument, that Hong Kong cannot be replicated in the US, is right.
Surprised you didn't use Australia as your comparison - the only jurisdiction in even the same universe as US in terms of horse in training/races run.
Vets have too much say there too but much better drug regime than US

[Track Phantom]

Originally Posted by lamboguy

aside from the no drug's, limited ownership and limited amount of horses one trainer can have on their roster's should help turn this game around in a heartbeat.

in my opinion, if this happened they would have to build more racetracks here with the demand for the sport again.

One of the worst things that has happened to racing, at the root, is this (combined with the idea that horses need 4-6 weeks between starts). If these horses were more dispersed, field sizes would be much larger. When Pletcher has 15 3YO fillies who qualify for an allowance race and enters just one, that is a problem.

As far as drugs, I would love it if the game were clean but don't think that would change anything, at least not in the short term. Doesn't really matter since it will never happen.

[Hoofless_Wonder]

Originally Posted by HalvOnHorseracing

...I for one am tired of the argument that if Japan or Dubai or Hong Kong can do it, so can we. It is not even apples and oranges - it's more like watermelons and spinach. When someone makes a post that says, here is how you can copy one of those jurisdictions and run 1,000 races in a week during the summer, then there is something to discuss. And if your opinion is that there are too many tracks and too many races, well that is a different discussion. And unfortunately, unlike Hong Kong, we don't have the HKJC to make all the decisions about which state gets to race and for how many days. You have 39 jurisdictions to wrangle (don't forget Canada) and if you think, say Colorado, is going to give up it's piece of the pie because it will be good for racing to have fewer low level claimers to keep healthy and we want to be like Japan and Hong Kong, good luck with that.

I'll agree that comparing HK to NA racing as it stands today is more like watermelons to spinach, since Hong Kong is such a highly regulated "closed system". But I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility that their model could not be adapted to one of the year-round circuits here, say like NYRA, southern California, south Florida or Kentucky.

I have my doubts that a national level organization can steer the industry in the right direction, as the political fallout from trying to get all the racing jurisdictions to align would be difficult to overcome. But that doesn't mean one of the larger circuits can't lead the charge to improve the sport. If NYRA reinstated their ban on lasix, surely that would be a step in the right direction?