Drugs are not used to heal horses at the track but to exploit them without loss of time which results in gross abuse and death since there is no adequate safety net for horses and jockeys are refusing to demand change even to save their own lives.

The claiming game is very abusive, dangerous and lethal. That is where all the good horses that are not wanted for breeding purposes end up when they become exhausted or lame. There are not enough rules to protect claiming horses, including limiting by how much and how fast horses can plunge by since that is what they do when they become lame and their owners are scum. They are drugged, blocked and sent to run. Owners who dump lame horses in claiming races and get them claimed will get a check whether their horses are DEAD or ALIVE.

The lives of horses and jockeys are knowingly put at risk by owners, trainers, vets, officials and track management, all who amazingly operate above liability, animal cruelty and criminal laws. Lame horses are drugged, pass the pre-race exams then race.

As the quotes below prove once again, these exams, when performed at all, are at best inadequate if not corrupted in order to fill too many races with too few surviving lame horses. Drugs are used to dump horses and get a check.

This is the major reason why race horses are killed every day at race tracks around the country or as a result of training and racing injuries somewhere else. If any racing insiders including racing secretaries claim to have no idea as per why so many horses die, they are lying. When even a dead horse can still be paid to its abusive owner! Such rules were made in equine hell and have attracted evil-doers who make everyday racing impossible to market.

Abusing and cheating go together.

Quotes from “Voiding Claims possible under CHRB Proposal”
from The Blood Horse

“Dr. Rick Arthur, the CHRB’s equine medical director, told the board — which met in the ballroom of chairman John Harris’ inn and restaurant off Interstate 5 in Coalinga, Calif. — that the rule would “take the incentive away” for trainers to drop unsound horses to far below their claiming level ability in order to rid themselves of an unsound animal.

He cited one instance of a trainer and owner at Hollywood Park last fall “high-fiving” in front of the horse ambulance after a horse that had been claimed from them broke down in a race.”

Questions:

Were these two “high-fiving” monsters reported to the police for animal cruelty and endangering the life of jockeys and horses?

Were they banned from racing nationwide forever?

Are lame horses still allowed to race in CA every day in particular in claiming races?

Is anyone monitoring horses taking the plunge?

Are they double-standards for accident/abuse/drug prevention between horses racing on national TV and in claiming races?

Are the accident/abuse/drug prevention sloppier and abuse (the racing of lame horses) increasingly permissive as the racing level drops?

Assuming that every racing insider knows why horses become claimers then take the plunge in claiming value. Is there anything done to limit the size and time between substantial drop in claiming value to protect horses and jockeys from accident and death?

I don’t mean to pick on the CHRB which is more transparent and pro-active than most racing juridictions.

Drugs need to go especially on race day. Only healthy horses capable to train and run without chemicals should be in race training, be loaded in the starting gates and bet on.

All therapeutic drugs should be sold in therapeutic doses only at on-track drug stores and given to horses only to cure them and in front of officials.

Trainers, vets and all along with barns should be searched often. Rewards should be offered to whistle blowers. Surveillance cams should be installed in all barns. Trainers should drug-test the stable help regularly. Drug-sniffing dogs should be used in stable areas.

Adequate funding should be dedicated to soundness monitoring, random physical exams and drug tests, electronic equine medical record keeping and reviewing, more tests and super tests.

Transparency should be offered to jockeys, buyers, horseplayers, horse fans and the public, including equine physical condition and medical records, the fate of injured horses after 24 and 48 hours, one week, one month and six months. Necropsy results should be released to the public.

Cheaters need to be banned. Honest owners would buy their horses and more good people would decide to become owners. Honest trainers would stop going out of business if they don’t drug and push their horses hard and would get horses from cheating trainers.

Horses would last much longer.

Fast acting substances that pass through the horse’s system rapidly virtually undetectable are in vogue. State law enforecment officials can help the Racing Commissions by getting involved. Horse doping to gain an ilegal advantage is a crime, not just an “I got you this time, your turn’s coming.”

In a nutshell, it says aminorex is a metabolite of levamisole in the horse. Levamisole is a legal wormer that can be used for cattle, horses, swine, sheep, etc. So horses that were given this perfectly legal wormer tested positive for an illegal drug. In other words the aminorex positives were basically false positives.

Please note that the US government article says It has been “established unequivocally” that the use of this legal wormer in horses can lead to the presence of aminorex and other illegal drugs in urine and blood samples. Illegal drugs that were NEVER administered to the horse.

It’s bad enough that you’re apparently ignorant of this widely published data, but in addition your statement “Interestingly, aminorex, while still tested, has disappeared from racing” wreaks with innuendo. The reason aminorex “disappeared from racing” was because the testing labs figured out how to avoid the false positives caused by a legal wormer.

I have to ask myself if you are also ignorant of other scientific data regarding false positives and other drug testing problems. And is a person so ignorant of important data truly qualified to address the picogram testing level currently used in your state, which very likely produces false positives?