What's Going On Here : salix

Following Up on the Pledge - by Eric Mitchell

aspradling — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 23:41:00 GMT

Nearly two months have passed since a coalition of more than 60 owners launched an experiment into Salix-free racing, pledging to run their 2-year-olds without the controversial anti-bleeder medication (also known as Lasix) on race day.

Several trainers managing the medication-free horses say not enough time has gone by to ascertain any significant differences between the Salix and non-Salix runners in their barns, but they noted that none of the Salix-free horses have shown any signs of bleeding after their races so far.

"We scope every other time they work and every time they race," said trainer Graham Motion, whose barn had 25 juvenile starts between July 20 and Sept. 5 with 16 starts made without Salix. "I have been pleasantly surprised that we have not had more that have bled after a race."

The encouraging news has a caveat.

"I don't see this as any real form of information," said trainer Tony Dutrow, who had 27 juvenile starts during the same period, with 14 of the starts made without Salix. "Most first-time starters are limited in what is expected of them in their first race. A great deal of them are not putting into their first race what they will put into their subsequent races."

Motion, Dutrow, and a couple of other trainers all said they have not noticed an appreciable difference in the well-being of horses that have not been running on Salix versus the ones that have. In addition, none of them said they had reservations about not using the medication.

"I'm totally comfortable with running horses without Lasix," said Al Stall Jr., who won the Mountaineer Juvenile Stakes with Maybe So for owner Adele Dilschneider without Salix. "I am not doing anything different with them, just leading them to the paddock. If a horse bleeds, then we'll probably just give him some time off."

A chart on this page shows how the non-Salix horses have been performing. Between July 20 and Sept. 5, a total of 749 2-year-old races were run in the U.S. and Canada. Among the winners of those races, 660 (88.1%) ran on Salix and 89 (11.9%) did not.

Among horses that finished in the money, 87.4% raced on Salix and 12.6% ran without the medication.

Looking just at this year's Saratoga meet, the number of runners that were not given Salix the same day they raced rose to 121 from 49 during the 2011 meet. Ten horses without Salix became winners compared with four last year. The Blood-Horse compiled the statistics for 2012, while the 2011 statistics were provided by the Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association.

Trainer Kiaran McLaughlin, who has been racing 2-year-olds without Salix for a couple of years, agreed that not too much should be read into the early race records of juveniles.

"I just don't win first time out," McLaughlin said. "They always need a race. It has nothing to do with whether they are on Lasix or not."

Godolphin's grade I winner Alpha, a 3-year-old son of Bernardini that McLaughlin trains, didn't race on Salix as a juvenile. He did happen to win his first time out by six lengths, then came back to finish second behind Union Rags in the Champagne Stakes (gr. I). After Alpha turned 3, he began racing on Salix.

McLaughlin, however, added the juveniles that do not run on Salix have maintained their weight better and seem to recover more quickly after a race than the horses that do race on Salix. As for any bleeding?

"So far we have been very fortunate," he said. "We scope after every race and so far we have had only one that showed a tiny bit of blood. Other than that we have not seen any that have bled."

A couple of months of racing is certainly not enough to draw any conclusion, but the early results seem encouraging, even to the trainers.

"The way I see it, you would rather not take a pill in the morning than take a pill," said Stall. "It is good when a horse goes without Lasix and doesn't bleed. It feels good as the trainer when they are clean."

It feels good for the rest of the sport, too.

Leading by Example - by Eric Mitchell

aspradling — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 13:10:00 GMT

(Originally published in the April 28, 2012 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

Kentucky recently took up the race-day Salix debate and once again illustrated how difficult it will be to pass state rules banning the anti-bleeder medication.

A proposal to ban Salix use in all 2013 races for 2-year-olds died on a 7-7 vote by the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission April 16. Besides banning the medication’s race-day use in 2-year-olds, the failed proposal would have extended the ban to all 3-year-olds in 2014 and implemented a full ban in all Kentucky races by 2015.

The issue is not completely dead, however. During the same standing-room-only meeting, the commissioners agreed to table for 30 days an amendment pitched by KHRC member Tom Ludt to ban race-day Salix in only stakes races for 2-year-olds. In 2011 Kentucky tracks offered 12 stakes for juveniles, excluding the ones run during the Breeders’ Cup World Championships’ visit to Churchill Downs. Of the regularly scheduled stakes, six were run at Churchill Downs, five at Keeneland, and one at Turfway Park.

While the sampling of races is fairly small, we suspect it will not diminish the rancor that has saturated the race-day medication debate since the outgoing and incoming chairmen of the Association of Racing Commissioners International suggested a year ago that all medication on race day be banned within five years.

The legal and political processes will continue to be a tough slog.

For all racehorse owners, however, who are passionate about the elimination of race-day medication because it’s harmful to horses and to the integrity of the sport, there is a cleaner and quicker solution. They can stop giving their racehorses Salix.

Yes, the question has been asked before of owners who support the ban and the response has been almost unanimous—Salix is a performance-enhancing drug and owners who race without it are putting themselves at a competitive disadvantage. What’s needed, they say, is a uniform ban so everyone is competing on a clean and level field.

Fair enough, but at least one owner, who passionately believes race-day Salix is bad for racing and bad for horses, has taken the leap of faith and now preaches the gospel to other owners.

Bill Casner, long-time owner and former partner with Kenny Troutt in WinStar Farm, began racing his 2-year-olds without Salix last year. In an opinion piece written for The Blood-Horse (Dec. 3, 2011, pg. 3429), Casner said his horses are thriving without the drug. They’ve scoped clean, maintained weight, and have been fresh and recovered the day after a race.

His horses have performed well, too. Right to Vote, a gelding by Political Force out of What a Knight, finished third in the Champagne Stakes (gr. I) behind Union Rags and Alpha. The gelding came back March 24 to win a $62,750 allowance/optional claiming race at Gulfstream Park over Scaramagna, who won an allowance race in his next start, and Incredicat, who won the $100,000 Wando Stakes at Woodbine April 21.

For any owner who truly believes the racing world won’t end without race-day Salix, Casner recently told the Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders board of trustees he is proof that positive change can be made without the political pain and frustration, according to fellow owner, trustee, and believer in drug-free racing, Gary Biszantz, who attended the meeting.

“Bill is the only owner I know who has made the commitment and is running without Lasix,” Biszantz said. Casner may soon not be alone as several owners in the TOBA board meeting pledged to phase out Salix in their own stables, perhaps starting this year with 2-year-olds.

“I’m happy to help get this started,” Biszantz said.

Owners write the checks. They have all the clout and leverage required to make significant change. How powerful would it be if a substantial group of owners agreed to race without Salix and showed it could be done successfully? What owner wouldn’t be delighted to cut his veterinary bills and still have a healthy stable?

All that’s required now is the will to make it happen.

Protecting the Brand - by Eric Mitchell

aspradling — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 14:14:00 GMT

Perception is reality. Over and over we hear this phrase as it relates to politics, business, and even Thoroughbred racing. These three words are used so often because the concept is real and powerful.

Unfortunately, racing is dealing with its own shady perceptions. At the forefront is a belief that North American horses need race-day medication to compete. Race-day medication means allowing a horse to run on the anti-bleeding drug Salix.

Having horses running on drugs is not sitting well with people in this country; heck, it’s not even sitting well with our fans.

The “Driving sustainable growth for Thoroughbred racing and breeding” study done this year by the international management and consulting firm McKinsey & Co. indicated only 46% of racing fans would recommend horse racing to other people. By comparison, 82% of baseball fans, 81% of football fans, and 55% of poker players are evangelists for their sport of choice. Then when McKinsey asked how many racing fans considered themselves “proud to be a fan,” only 35% said yes compared with 66% for other sports.

Can we blame Salix for the bad perception? We can blame a big part of it. In the same study 78% of horse racing fans said medication was an issue negatively affecting the sport, and 36% said it was among the top-three issues facing the industry.

Part of the perception problem is the general public does not distinguish among Salix or cocaine or anabolic steroids. Drugs are drugs.

Salix does help horses with exercise-induced pulmonary hemorrhaging, known more commonly as bleeding or the rupture of capillaries in the lungs due to the tremendously high level of air pressure while horses race. But not every horse is a bleeder, and not every horse requires Salix on race day. We know this because horses are running without it on race days in every other racing jurisdiction in the world.

So now we are caught in a war of rhetoric. The pro-Salix camp says the North American racing industry will collapse if we don’t keep race-day Salix use—field size will diminish, and owners will abandon the sport. The anti-Salix camp says the breed will weaken and the sport wither because fans old and new will not support horse racing if racing on medication persists.

Fans are racing’s customers. Fans also become bettors and owners. If we don’t deal aggressively with the perception that horses must race on medication, then the reality is we’ll have fewer owners, bettors, and fans.

Dealing in Facts

One of the biggest challenges in the debate on medication use has been squaring comments with facts. We had a question raised about a statement made by trainer Rick Hiles, a member of the Kentucky Equine Drug Research Council, during a KEDRC meeting in May. Hiles relayed a story from an unnamed individual who wanted to know why an unnamed European country had reported no positive test results for phenylbutazone, a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug called Bute. The reason, the individual told Hiles, was that the country doesn’t test for Bute, and we repeated Hiles’ story in this column (The Blood-Horse of June 4, page 1515). We followed up with Dominique de Wenden, secretary general of the International Federation of Horseracing Authorities. He said by e-mail: “We are not aware of any Western European country not testing for Bute.” When Hiles was contacted and asked about De Wenden’s comment, Hiles said his source was referring to England and that the source had actually talked with someone in a lab overseas. The reason for no positives, Hiles said, might be because the threshold is high enough that no one crosses it.

The bottom line of this tale is that all Western European countries do test for Bute and the level is far lower than the 2 micrograms/ml allowed in the United States. Dr. Rick Sams, director of the HFL Sports Science testing lab in Lexington, said the level of detection in Europe corresponds to the same level at which Bute can no longer be detected in urine, so any amount detected is considered a positive. We couldn’t find an exact threshold for Bute, but Sams said it is in nanograms/ml. A nanogram is 1/1,000th of a microgram. One reason England does not have any positives is the recommended withdrawal time for oral and intravenous Bute is seven days, according to the European Horserace Scientific Liaison Committee. To be below the 2 microgram/ml threshold in this country, horsemen cannot give 2 grams of Bute within 36 hours of a race.

Navigating the complex world of medication use in racehorses is tricky enough even when all the facts are known. Let’s hope everyone serving on an industry board, council, or committee dealing with medication has a renewed commitment to shining light on the truth rather than clouding the issues with hearsay.

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.