Dysfunction is Infectious

Yesterday, the Baconater penned a piece on his site, "California Gets It Wrong On Lasix".

"I can’t in good conscience place any more bets on races in California – not after what happened at the California Horse Racing Board meeting last week. The CHRB voted 5-2 against the recommendations of its own Medication Committee that a trainer’s private veterinarian not be allowed to give race-day injections of furosemide, or Lasix, the diuretic used to treat exercise-induced pulmonary hemorrhage."

We have a policy that works in almost every other racing jurisdiction and has for years, a policy that is absolutely, 100% common sense, that was passed after due diligence, and it's voted 5-2 against?

Although some might say California has been the state or fiefdom with more dysfunction than anyone else, it appears to be clear there are others that orbit around the California sun.

We've seen cobalt in the news lately, with hard and fast rules set, in other countries and states. Despite that, Ohio decided it needed a cobalt "study" in April. Not to be outdone, the USTA just this week decided - you guessed it - it needs a cobalt study. It's great that there's so much money in racing for these things. Hopefully one day, every state, commission, horsemen group and alphabet can all do their own cobalt studies.

We see the same exact thing with whipping rules. State 1 studies it to death, and passes a rule. Two years later another state starts from scratch, studies it, passes a rule. And on and on. Just watch, there will be another state soon who does the exact same thing. What a colossal waste of time and money.

Further to this merry go round, we have states like Arkansas. Reading this story makes one's head spin in Linda Blairian fashion.

This dysfunction is not dissimilar to the broken window crime pattern. If someone gets away with it, we can, because there are never any consequences. Dysfunction is infectious.

This is why there is so much grassroots support for the USADA bill. People wonder how in racing there is this support. The sport is filled with rugged individualists who want little to do with federal regulation, want nothing to do with rules; it's a "hands off my horse" culture. However, with all this dysfunction, all this sometimes bizarre behavior, this clinging to the status-quo while Rome burns, these individualists have no place left to turn. Who can blame them?