What's Going On Here : rmtc

Rip Off the Medication Band-Aid - By Eric Mitchell

aspradling — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 14:54:00 GMT

(Originally published in the July 23, 2011 issue of The Blood-Horse magazine. Feel free to share your own thoughts and opinions at the bottom of the column.)

By Eric Mitchell - @EJMitchellKy on Twitter

The Breeders’ Cup board of directors took a big step July 14 toward leveling the international medication playing field for Thoroughbred racing.

Beginning with the 2012 World Championships, Breeders’ Cup aims to ban all race-day medication for the 2-year-old races. The ban is expected to expand to all races by 2013.

By race-day medication, we mean all drugs but primarily Salix and any other adjunct anti-bleeding medication, which are currently allowed.

The clock for the ban of race-day medication began ticking down last March when the incoming and outgoing chairmen of the Association of Racing Commissioners International called for a five-year phase-out of race-day medication use. The phase-out challenge was followed in June by a two-day international summit during which veterinarians and researchers extolled the effectiveness of furosemide (Salix) in reducing bleeding (exercise-induced pulmonary hemorrhaging) in racehorses while racing jurisdiction executives and trainers outside the United States talked of how bleeding can be managed without drugs. A follow-up meeting to the summit will be held Aug. 4 by the Racing Medication and Testing Consortium, a group of 25 industry stakeholders that is now taking the lead on the proposal to ban race-day medication use.

What tack the RMTC may take after its next meeting is not clear as there is no reported consensus on the necessity of a ban or, if consensus is reached, on the ways to implement it.

What is clear, because of the Breeders’ Cup board’s action, is that the U.S. racing community better have an answer and a plan before 2012.
If an industry-wide ban is not implemented by 2013, we will have horses racing regularly on Salix leading up to the championships, then running one of the biggest races of their careers without it. From a betting standpoint, this cannot be good for the form of this high-profile event, which attracted more than $111 million in handle last year.

There is also a proposal on the table to phase in the race-day medication ban only in graded stakes first. The problem is the same as with Breeders’ Cup times 25. You’ll wind up with a patchwork of medication rules. A horse can run through its conditions on Salix until it gets the opportunity to run in a graded stakes, and then it’s racing cold turkey. Is this fair to the horse? Fair to the bettors? It doesn’t seem so.

Forget partial race-day medication bans. We have enough problems now with patchwork regulations. Let’s put all U.S. racing under one medication policy and put the U.S. on par with the rest of the world by moving forward on a race-day medication ban as soon as possible.

Summer Racing Returns

On a lighter note, July is a special month on the racing calendar; bringing us two big, feel-good, destination race meetings that highlight the year. The perfect climate and location of Del Mar bring sun- and horse-worshipers to the edge of the Pacific just north of San Diego to embrace the lazy days of summer. Across the country in the small upstate New York hamlet of Saratoga Springs, East Coasters congregate to celebrate the bred-in-the-purple Thoroughbreds competing in daily stakes action and the unveiling of 2-year-olds hopefully taking their first strides toward next year’s Triple Crown trail.

The debate rages back and forth between Easterners and Left Coasters as to which is the more scenic venue; which town has the finer culinary fare; and which boasts the most beautiful people.

The answer to all these questions is…you can’t go wrong either way.

Although racing thus far this season lacks a star of Zenyatta’s magnitude, we are likely to see over the summer top-flight runners such as Smiling Tiger, Flashpoint, Blind Luck, Havre de Grace, Awesome Maria, Winter Memories, Courageous Cat, and a host of other potential headliners looking to make names for themselves.

And, in an encouraging vein, there will be weekly Saturday live national television coverage of Saratoga’s feature race on NBC or its sister network Versus, beginning with the July 23 TVG Coaching Club American Oaks (gr. I) and going through the Sept. 3 Woodward Stakes (gr. I). Included in the deal is a full slate of grade I action—the July 30 Diana Handicap, the Aug. 6 Whitney Handicap, the (Sunday) Aug. 7 Alfred G. Vanderbilt Handicap, the Aug. 13 Sword Dancer Invitational Handicap, the Aug. 20 TVG Alabama Stakes, and the Aug. 27 Travers Stakes.
Is there any better time to be a racing fan?

Features Editor Lenny Shulman contributed to this column.

The Battle of Salix - By Eric Mitchell

aspradling — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 12:44:00 GMT

(Originally published in the June 4, 2011 issue of The Blood-Horse magazine. Feel free to share your own thoughts and opinions at the bottom of the column.)

By Eric Mitchell - @EJMitchellKy on Twitter

Another battle over the medication Salix is brewing. We say “another” because Thoroughbred racing has been wrestling with this drug on and off since the 1970s when there was a mixed bag of prohibition and acceptance among the racing states. New York was the last state to fall, lifting its ban in 1995.
Today, debate is heating up again over the effectiveness of the anti-bleeder medication (formerly known under the brand name Lasix) and more importantly whether it should be allowed on race day since research has shown it is a performance-enhancing drug.

We know this about Salix: It is effective in preventing exercise-induced pulmonary hemorrhaging (EIPH), which is known more commonly as bleeding. Horses with EIPH have their pulmonary systems stressed to the point where capillaries and blood vessels burst, and they bleed through the nostrils. We know from research that racehorses with EIPH do not perform as well as horses without this condition. We also know that using Salix improves performance, which is the reason a maiden claiming race for 2-year-olds June 1 at Delaware Park, shows eight of the nine horses entered are listed as running on Salix and/or an adjunct medication. Actually, for the entire race card, only five of 89 horses entered will not be racing on Salix.

We’re not picking on Delaware Park. These statistics are the same at all North American racetracks.

A study conducted in South Africa—the results of which were published in 2009—was significant because it reaffirmed the drug works to reduce EIPH and that horses on the drug perform better than those without it.

Now what does racing do with a drug that effectively treats a serious condition but is known to influence performance in a sport with legal gambling?

In Australia, all horses can be trained on Bute, Salix, and other medications provided the horses are free of any traces of the drugs on race day.

In France, no medication is allowed whatsoever, even for training. A veterinarian has to prescribe treatment and a set time is established for treating the horse. Any trace of medication found in a horse on race day triggers a disqualification. The testing in France is so good that bloodstock agent Patrick Barbe said, “If there is one drop of Bute in an Olympic-sized swimming pool, they can find it.”

The British Horseracing Authority makes a clear distinction between medication and doping. Medications are permissible during training and have definitive withdrawal times designed to ensure the medication by race-day is at such a low level that it cannot affect performance. Zero tolerance does not apply to these drugs. Doping agents, however, are not allowed in any concentration, and diuretics (Salix) are included on that list along with anabolic steroids and tranquilizers.

But it is not clear-cut, at this point, simply to state the U.S. should adopt the policies of these other racing countries because these locales don’t have any problems with drugs.

Trainer Rick Hiles, a member of the Kentucky Equine Drug Research Council, recently related a story about an individual who asked why a European country had no positives for phenylbutazone, the non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug called Bute. The drug can be administered no later than 24 hours before a race in the U.S. The reason for the lack of positives, Hiles was told, was that the jurisdiction didn’t test for the drug.

Hopefully an international summit scheduled for June 13-14 at Belmont Park will shed plenty of light on how the U.S. can improve its medication policies and ensure the safety and well-being of racehorses. The summit is being organized by the National Thoroughbred Racing Association, the American Association of Equine Practitioners, and the Racing Medication and Testing Consortium.

The program will include presentations on the current status of medication issues in racing, an overview of EIPH and its impact upon horse health, management and treatment alternatives for EIPH, and testing issues surrounding treatment for EIPH. These topics will be followed by international panel discussions on regulatory issues surrounding race-day medication, veterinary viewpoints on the management of EIPH, and the management of EIPH from a trainer’s perspective. The second day of the summit is closed to the public and media. The agenda for day two is a facilitated discussion among RMTC members and invited guests.

Here’s hoping the summit does not drive only one side of the debate and instead is educational, filling the gaps in everyone’s knowledge about a very complicated subject.
Then, at least when the battle comes, decisions will be made after informed and passionate debate instead of ignorance and fear.