Page 87 - March 2016

Then the endoscopes became cheaper and more vets had them, and suddenly people were seeing more bleeding in racehorses. “It led to
a huge campaign for Lasix to be a permitted medication to help reduce bleeding from the lungs when horses were running. Lasix gained favor and most race trainers have been using it. New York was the last state to authorize the use of Lasix and that was in 1995. Up until about 1996, the majority of the Kentucky Derby win- ners ran without it, and since then almost every horse in that race runs with it,” says Casner.
“I was no different than any other trainer.
I thought these meds were necessary and beneficial, and never really thought about the consequences of long-term use. It really wasn’t until our horse Well Armed won the Dubai World Cup by 14-lengths without any medica- tion that I realized horses didn’t need it. This was by far the most impressive performance in his career. No horse has ever won that race by more than about 3-lengths. It was a phenom- enal performance and the thing that was so amazing about it was that he ran a mile and a quarter at high cruising speed all the way and continued to widen his lead in the lane without use of the whip.”
In his races in the U.S., Well Armed was a Grade 1 winner and a multiple graded winner, but had never performed to the level he did in Dubai. “He always got the jump on his compe- tition at the head of the lane and maybe opened up 4 or 5-lengths between him and the others, but then there would always be horses running at him at the end. We always knew that he
was going to shorten his stride during the last 1/16 of a mile. Sometimes he got nailed on the wire,” says Casner.
“His race prior to the Dubai World Cup was a Grade 2 race and he wasn’t competing against horses as good as those he ran against in Dubai. But, he shortened his stride and
got beat on the wire. After he won the Dubai World Cup by 14-lengths (a race in which med- ication was not permitted), I had an epiphany and began to reflect back on my own training career when I ran horses without medication,” Casner says.
“We ran our horses about every two weeks and competed in about 18 races
per year. With the advent of medication, the number of annual starts per horse
was reduced dramatically because of the dehydration effect of Lasix (a diuretic used medically to reduce excess fluid/edema in the body, makes horses urinate more). It takes horses a minimum of three weeks to recover from the administration of Lasix and most trainers prefer to give a horse five weeks off before racing again,” he says.
“A term that came to use in the 1990’s among gamblers and trainers was talking about when a horse ‘bounced’. The bounce meant that a horse ran a really good race
and then didn’t do so well on his next one
and ‘threw in a clunker’. In other words, he bounced in that next race. That was a new term for me. I’d been away from the racetrack for about 12 years, and when I came back I wondered what that meant. I soon learned it was describing a horse that had run in a tough race, in hot weather, with excessive dehydra- tion; he had not totally recovered from the previous race,” Casner says.
“That never happened when we were run- ning these horses without meds. They held
their form and ran well and recovered well. The day after a race they were bucking and playing,” he explains.
“After Well Armed won the World Cup,
I started to question whether medication was really in the best interest of our horses. About six years ago, I bought scales for my trainer Eoin Harty’s barn in California and a set of scales for our barn on the east coast and started weighing these horses to try to figure out what was going on. We’d weigh them pre-race and post-race - the morning before they ran, and then the morning after the race to see what their weight loss was,” he says.
“I’d always heard that horses would urinate off about 25 pounds when Lasix was administered. Weight loss is one of the
Butazolidin, as well as another NSAID Banamine, acts as a blood thinner and can cause bleeding in race horses or stomach ulceration in some horses. Use of it can lead to the administration of Lasix to stop the bleeding. Lasix is a diuretic with its own set of side effects
After his horse Well Armed performed better than he ever had before and won the 2009 Dubai World Cup by 14-lengths without any medication, Casner reflected back on his career when he did not use any medication and questioned whether medication was in the best interest of his horses
A horse that is exerting himself generates heat that must be dissipated through sweat, which evaporates and helps cool the body. Sweating removes fluid and electrolytes, however, and excessive loss can create dehydration
SPEEDHORSE, March 2016 85
EQUINE HEALTH