Thursday Was Drug Day

Here are a few thoughts on a Thursday. Since everything seemed to flow from drugs today, we'll talk about that. I didn't even watch those hearings though. I figured they'd be a lot of rehashed entrenched positioning.

Anyway.........

I wonder why people at Congressional hearings on racing decide to take a slap at harness racing. For comparison's sake, I guess, like somehow if a horse runs, it's drug free, but oh those harness racers! Regardless, it strikes me as a weak-minded argument. Maybe it was at home in Congress. OK, that was too easy...... I apologize.

I wonder why, too, that a statement like that would even find an audience. Really, a few years ago when there was that Aranesp/EPO/DPO raid in Kentucky that found a pile of it, does anyone really think it was all for harness horses racing for $1450 purses at the Red Mile?

Speaking of raids, I wonder what happened with the DeFlorio thing. Remember:

"Aranesp, the potent form of EPO was blatantly being advertised on the Web site involved, and strong analgesics, bronchial dilators and other performance enhancers were found in the raid."

He got fined $600. I sure hope he never did anything like that again, because, yikes, that's a pretty draconian penalty.

Further, with that, and other busts, or trainers with snake venom in their fridge, or frog juice (or many other things they have no test for, or had no test for), I wonder if anyone other than me cringes when racing brings up that '99.875483621% of tests come back clean', thing again and again? I guess it plays well in the media, but gosh, that's embarrassing.

Speaking of Frog Juice, a couple of trainers today blamed it on the vets. Interestingly enough, according to them, for $103 a dude would apparently inject your horse with this concoction one hour before race time. Isn't there some sort of ban on vets giving stuff on race day? That's just in Ontario I guess. Regardless, I'm just a dumb bettor, but if some dude wanted to inject something into my horse one hour before race time for a Benjamin, I think it may be a red flag. But I'm just a dumb bettor.

I wonder if that is true and some bad vet was giving $103 shots before race time. If he did 15 horses a day, that's about $1600. This mystery man might do something for breathing or bleeding too, at maybe $200. Maybe a drench. That could be something like $5000 a day in revenue, and with vet markups, he might be pulling out $4200 profit a day. Not bad, if true.

I wonder why when talking about changing the way drugs are used in racing, some people against it bring up stuff like:

'In 1939 in racing you should have seen what kind of bad stuff was going on'

Holy moly, in 1939 some dude who wanted a race to be purified was invading Poland, in some areas beating a spouse was considered part of everyday family life, and drinking and driving was called "Friday".

I wonder: This sport is very clean for the most part, and it's not much different than any other sport or business that gives away billions a year in revenue. In addition, most everyone I know, and you know, love horses and would never do anything to hurt them. Why is it, then, when someone is caught with something bad, many participants seem to rally around the dude if he's a "nice guy", or because "he gave me a ride home once". I have never been able to figure that out. You don't hear too many say "Bernie Madoff bought me a drink once, so I hope he doesn't go to jail"

OK, enough about this crazy drug stuff.

Tomorrow we'll have a look at the M Pace (a super interesting card) and a few other things.

Have a great night everyone.