Menace of Drugs- part -I

"Finding an American racehorse trained on the traditional hay, oats, and water probably would be impossible,” commented John Scheinman in Washington Post on 27/4/2003… Veterinarians give them drugs to keep them on the track when they shouldn’t be racing.
"There are trainers pumping horses full of illegal drugs every day,” says a former Churchill Downs public relations director in MAXIM (may 2002) “With so much money on the line, people will do anything to make their horses run faster.” The New York Sun opined that because “thoroughbreds are bred for flashy speed and to look good in the sales ring … the animal itself has become more fragile”
R Dutrow , the trainer of Big Brown who won Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes has admitted giving Winstrol which was withdrawn before he ran in Belmont and ended in the rear rather than in front.
Makes me reminiscence… few reminiscences dating back to 90’s of last century!
Long ago- 20 years is a pretty long time in racing parlance, an editorial in ‘The Indian Thoroughbred’ in Jan ’91 gave the names of more than a dozen trainers(some of them dead now) of western India who were ‘offenders’ of drug abuse – more than 100 minor and major violations of the use of prohibited drugs were detected at that time. Again in 1994 the story was repeated and while 10 cases were reported for ‘drug abuse’ in western India after 900 samples were tested ; none( not a single) was tested positive out of 600 samples sent for test from rest of the racing centers(Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai, Delhi, etc.). The only exception was that while all the samples of western India were sent to forensic labs ‘outside’ India ; all the samples from ‘rest of India’ were tested in India only! No more comments, because it happened in last century!…
Now let us look at the realities of situation. A thoroughbred is not a natural breed but is a creation of humans. He can run faster than 70km/hr for a short spell of time and is expected to repeat or better the performance every time he runs. To maintain his fitness he is given better feed, food supplements and drugs to alleviate injuries, tiredness and sport related ailments. Drugs can be painkillers, multivitamins and also steroids to hasten-up the recovery for next race. Food supplements, vitamins and some painkillers are permitted by racing authorities but ‘performance enhancing’ drugs called anabolic steroids and some cortisones are prohibited because they temporarily improve or enhance the performance of a runner.
Why some (or many?) of the trainers use, with the tacit approval of the owners, these drugs ?
As said earlier a thoroughbred(TB) is not a natural breed but is a creation of homo sapiens and therefore will have some shortcomings because the Darwin’s law of ‘ survival of the fittest’ is not fully applicable to him.

(to be continued)