Page 30 - New Mexico Horse Breeder Summer 2018

Drugs? What drugs?
there? When will we get there and will we know what to do when we arrive?
First – We live in a drug-based culture.
Second – We’ve lived here for so long that it’s become a normal, accepted life-style. Third –
We see nothing inappropriate in popping four Ibuprophen a couple times a day...every day...
for that drumming headache or throbbing hip or swollen ankle. Down the pills and, in a very short time, the headache disappears, the hip feels great and the ankle looks nice and slim. Because of
our long-standing acceptance of western medical practices, it never occurs to us to ask why we had the pounding headache or the screaming hip or the too-large ankle in the first place. That’s because our drug-based culture directs us to treat the symptoms rather than the underlying causes. Symptoms,
after all, are glaringly obvious and easily managed (enter four Ibuprophen), while the identification of causes requires far too much earnest, time- consuming investigation. Too inconvenient. Too many hours or days or months lost. Too many races missed. No one has time to wait on a cure. Just fix whatever hurts and, if necessary, we can fix it again tomorrow or the next day and so on.
We’ve lived this “drugged” lifestyle for so long that it’s only natural to transfer it to other areas.
Is our reliance on Ibuprophen any different from giving race horses a jolt of Bute to relieve their aches and pains so they can “go to work?” Not really. So should all the folks out there shouting about the evils of so-called permissive medications at the racetrack simply shut up and get a life that focuses on minding their own business? No.
We’ve dealt with illicit drugs in racing since racing began. For one thing, racing is one of the most intensely competitive sports on the planet. It’s not about a team, or a group, going against another team or another group. Instead, it’s more of an eyeball-to-eyeball squaring off. The blood-engorged veins stand out on the horses’ necks, mirrored by the same veins on the tense jockeys as they crouch low and wait for the gates to crack open.
The drug exploits during the “glory days”
of bush track racing in the 1940s have all too frequently made folk heroes of the wrong people. Adjective-laced tales of unashamed doping....
of shooting substances such as morphine into
a horse’s veins....have come down through
the years as ribald, knee-slapping stories about trainers who could throw a needle like a dart.
So, yes. Yes, we have drugs in racing. Yes, we’ve had our collective shoulder to the wheel for decade after decade to eradicate the illegal substances. Some of the drug names are as familiar as our own names, and fall across our lips just as easily. But...
Work Is Being Done
There are organizations dedicated to pushing rocks of resistance out of the way and clearing the path for a clean, safe, respected sport. There is nothing easy about the task and it’s impossible to gulp four Ibuprophen and magically rid the industry of all the symptoms.
Please raise your hand if you remember the first time you were at a racetrack, thumbing through the pages of that day’s/night’s program, and suddenly noticed every horse in every race had a tiny “L” (Lasix) to the right of his/her name. In the blink of an eye, every race horse in the United States had mysteriously become a “bleeder.” It was tantamount to an instant plague settling in the dust over the racing industry.
by Diane M. Ciarloni
Lasix was a fundamental component of the “permissive medication” movement that began drifting throughout North American racetracks in the 1970’s. Riding shot-gun during that same time frame was Bute (Phenylbutazone). Both became the standard, rather than the exception, on the lengthening roster of allowable race-day meds.
More than five decades have passed since then and drugs in racing are an even more contentious, mind-boggling topic than ever, whether the discussion is about the “legal” or illegal variety.
Just look at the seemingly endless list of possibilities, running from A through Z. There are the NSAIDs. There are the steroids. There are the venoms from snails, snakes and tree frogs. There are the anti-depressants that relax humans but rev up horses. There are the substances that make pigs fat and horses fast. There are some so nasty that horses have died between the stall and the starting gate.
Over the years, the illegal substances have killed
a shameful number of horses, while simultaneously blackening racing’s eye of integrity until the sport
is running almost blind. Associations, tracks, individuals, commissions and other organizations all make clarion calls about eradicating the abuses but, too often, these become nothing more than empty and rapidly deflating grand gestures. We’ve all heard pronouncements such as, “My trainer knows better than to use drugs on my horses” or “I promise you’ll never find drugs at such-and-such track.” Then, when we look carefully at the person uttering the words, we see tell-tale signs of the fresh sand that covered his/her head just moments earlier.
Facts: We Do Have Drugs
Most are illegal and even the legal ones, such as Lasix, are under attack.
Added facts: In recent months we’ve seen prominent trainers, training for prominent people, tarred and feathered with positive drug tests. There have been “champion” horses associated with those trainers. Embarrassing, to say the least. It also disproves the old chant that only “scum” trainers abandon their moral standards to drugs. Nope. The truth of the matter is, strange things often happen when the combination of money and a client’s demands are on the line.
Questions: How did it all begin? Where are we now? Where are we going? How will we get
We all know about Lasix. It’s supposed to be used to control bleeding. And, according, to most opinions, it does control bleeding. But there are other concerns, other questions.
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New Mexico Horse Breeder