I’ll start with what I see as the difference between opinion and fact. Let me use the death penalty as an example. People who favor the death penalty may cite the need for the ultimate punishment for the ultimate crime. People who don’t favor the death penalty may make some moral argument or cite the cost of going through all the appeals. There are some facts involved – we can calculate what it costs a state to deal with the appeals – but whether that cost is too much or not problematic will rest on individual opinion. Facts are tangible – they lay before us. Opinions are not – they reside within us.

One of my readers sent me this and I thought I’d share it. It is from a Richard Feynman lecture on quantum electrodynamics.

“I’d like to talk a little bit about understanding. When we have a lecture, there are many reasons why you might not understand the speaker. One is, his language is bad – he doesn’t say what he means to say, or he says it upside down – and it’s hard to understand. Another possibility is, especially if the speaker is a physicist, is that he uses ordinary words in a funny way. Physicists often use ordinary words such as “work” or “action” or “energy” or even, as you shall see, “light” for some technical purpose. Thus, when I talk about “work” in physics I don’t mean the same thing as when I talk about “work” on the street. During the lecture I might use one of these words without noticing that it is being used in this unusual way. I’ll try my best to catch myself – that is my job – but it’s an easy error to make.

The next reason that you might think that you do not understand what I am telling you is, while I am describing to you how nature works, you won’t understand why nature works that way. But you see nobody understands that. I can’t explain why nature behaves in this peculiar way.

Finally, there is this possibility: after I tell you something you just can’t believe it. You can’t accept it. You don’t like it. A little screen comes down and you don’t listen anymore. I’m going to describe to you how nature is – and if you don’t like it, that’s going to get in the way of your understanding it. It’s a problem that physicists have learned to deal with: They’ve learned to realize that whether they like a theory or don’t like a theory is not the essential question. Rather, it is whether or not the theory gives predictions that agree with experiment. It is not a question of whether the theory is philosophically delightful, or easy to understand, or perfectly reasonable from a point of view of common sense. So I hope you can accept nature as she is – absurd.”

After the articles on Kellyn Gorder’s fine and suspension for meth use came out, there was a thread started on a site called Pace Advantage. Some of the intitial comments were predictable. Here are a few

• Accidental contamination? Yeah, that is what it was, I’m sure. Probably from those unmarked drugs.
• in addition to the meth the article said “Gorder also has been suspended another 60 days for illegal injectables and hypodermic syringes having been found in his barn.” I guess these were planted.
• dudes pic looks like he’s on meth

And this exchange:

• Player A – I dont see an explanation for that [the discovery of syringes and unmarked medication in the stable area] coming in the near future and if it does come, I do think one of the normal sabotage-esque excuses will be used.
• Player B – Wrong. Gorder gave an explanation the afternoon after this was first reported. It had to do with medicine prescribed a particular horse and he admits that it should’ve been long ago been thrown away instead of being found still sitting in his office.
• Player A –If thats the case I stand corrected and hadn’t seen that. That being the case, the explanation you mentioned was in response to injectable medications, syringes, needles and oral medications not properly labeled being found? All of these things had to do with one particular horse and they were just left in his office? You find this believable?

I’m not trying to pick on anyone, but these sort of posts make a couple of important points.

• horseplayers have achieved a cynicism that goes beyond simple concern.
• they can be unnecessarily mean. Was it really necessary or even humorous to suggest Gorder’s file photo looks like he is on meth, the implication being he was probably sharing it with his horses?
• It is common for the comments to start right after someone reads the headline, and less often the meat of the story.
• and looking at the last exchange, the presumption the trainer is guilty, with likely not a reasonable explanation or mitigation, weighs strongly in the minds of the people who post. The last guy even divined a connection between the syringes and unmarked medication that were found and the meth positive, even though the two things were unrelated.

Eventually someone referenced my posting on Gorder, which was different than the stories that appear in the Bloodhorse, DRF or Paulick because I interviewed Gorder at length, talked to officials, looked for feedback from the people who do the testing, and I made an effort to write a complete, factual story. The comments then started being posted on my story. This wasn’t necessarily typical, but it was one of my favorites

“this dudes credibility went right out the window when he stated only three scientists in the world believe global warming isn’t caused by humans. At that point he became just another ass clown.”

If you didn’t read my piece, I was making a point about how opinion has become the equivalent of fact, and I used the example that despite nearly universal agreement by scientists on the existence and cause of global climate change (climate change, not global warming, a passe term), it is somehow equivalent to say, nope that’s not the case. By the way, my attempt at humorous hyperbole was in fact over the top because the actual number of articles published between 1991 and 2012 that do not reject human caused global warming was 13,926, while the number that DO reject the idea of human caused climate change is 24. So the guy had a point, although it wasn’t that I am an ass clown. Sorry – it’s more than three scientists. I was wrong.

Now before anyone else wants to take off about climate change, there are plenty of things that could be argued. Are the models the scientists are using to predict change accurate? How much is actually related to human activity? The one thing that we cannot argue is what has been published. It is a documented, unequivocal fact that 99.9% of the articles that have been published supported the idea of human caused climate change. I don’t care if you buy climate change or not, the number of publications is what it is. Perhaps the 13,926 scientists (or more) responsible for those articles are also ass clowns, but it doesn’t change the fact that is what they published.

Once the bloodletting began, it was pretty unmerciful. I won’t go into all the detail, but in general somehow or another I was put in the category of favoring drug use (not the first time that has erroneously happened) and being some sort of paid lobbyist for horsemen or a horsemen’s group. Eventually the discussion got into my presentation of studies on milkshaking and cobalt which was:

• milkshakes may increase performance, but generally such improvements are seen in high quality male horses and aren’t going to be more than 2%. Studies have also found that some horses will run worse after milkshaking. Studies on cobalt show it does not have the same effect on horses that it had on humans and so far hasn’t been shown to be performance enhancing. HOWEVER, I FULLY SUPPORT STANDARDS FOR BOTH, AND ESPECIALLY COBALT, THAT ARE BASED ON FINDING LEVELS ABOVE THAT WHICH COULD BE DEEMED “NATURAL” IN A HORSE. In other words, performance enhancing or not, I don’t have the slightest issue with setting a standard and nailing the scofflaws. Given both things are so easy to detect, a trainer would have to be self-destructive to try it anyway. As proof I cited the RCI statistics that listed 14 TCO2 violations (most of which were not milkshaking) and 6 cobalt violations in 2014. Both these substances are likely to be distant memories in a short period of time.

I got stuff like this.

“So you talk to vets and phamacologists and we are suppose to believe all these vets and what they say just because you talked to them?”

“Let me tell you something straight up pal. Milkshakes and cobalt make horses run faster and longer. They are performance enhancing. You can slice and dice it anyway u want, but those 2 things help a horse immensely. Fact……”

“All im saying is milkshakes and cobalt are performance enhancers. You keep ur head in the sand and think they are not.”

The honest truth is that I’ve never given a horse cobalt or a milkshake, I haven’t talked with a  trainer who has, and I don’t have first hand evidence about the impacts of those treatments. All I know is what I read, and if that is revisionist crap, well I guess I’ve got my head in the sand. But, what does 6 cobalt violations say to you, because it says to me, we’ve got this one under control. If you are on Pace Advantage, look at the thread. It’s horrific.

Back to my original concern, that opinions trump facts. The posters say the studies are wrong, because they really know the truth – cobalt improves performance and its use on the backside is rampant. Pages of saying what I said above just fell on deaf ears.

The more disturbing part of the conversation goes something like this

• the alchemists are five or six steps ahead of the testers;
• of course we don’t know what these alchemists are using because we don’t know what to test for.

To be fair, at one time milkshaking and cobalt were the magic elixirs that trainers were using. We knew about them, but we didn’t know exactly how they worked biochemically on horses and whether they needed to be regulated. Testing was done, and the glacial wheels of regulation development turned, and eventually they were regulated. Now that they are regulated, the argument goes, the alchemists have found something else. And when the authorities get on to that, they’ll go to something else. We are expected to believe there is a bottomless well of undetectable, performance enhancing substances ready to find their way into race tracks everywhere, and if we don’t we are deniers, naive, or just idiots.

It reminds me of the folks peddling the acai berry. The pitch goes, for thousands of years it has cured everything from aneurysms to zoonotic hookworm, and now it is available to you. Being the head in the sand skeptic I am, I asked, if this juice actually did everything you said it did, don’t you think Big Pharma would have wrapped up the world supply of the berry? Still waiting on the answer.

My questions, which I think are relevant questions, are

• give me a sense of what these unknown substances could be chemically. Are they blood doping agents? Are they amphetamine-like agents? Are they steroidal-like agents? Do they affect heart and lung efficiency? I’ve been on the backside – secrets don’t last long in that little village.
• How come we, the bettors, know who these alchemists are, but the racing commissions either don’t know who they are or are just choosing to ignore them? Trainer A goes from unknown bum to super trainer, and the commissions ignore it?
• given the ability of modern mass-spectrometers to find picogram levels of over 1,800 substances, give me an idea how trainers are getting away with it?
• Given we haven’t busted any underground compounding labs making joy juice for horses, does that mean the racing jurisdictions are not looking for them or are just befuddled?

General answers are.

• We don’t know what the substances are, but when a trainer improves a horse by X points, that’s anecdotal evidence they exist. We can’t find them because we don’t know what to test for.
• Racing commissions can’t find the the bad-guy trainers because they don’t have enough money for enforcement (despite having the money to perform 324,000+ blood and urine tests post race).
• There were testing devices in the 90’s and trainers were beating them, so it makes sense they are beating the current crop.

I’ve acknowledged the existence of substances that can improve a horse’s performance, but the fact I am not willing to rest my case on anecdotal evidence that seems to cast me as an apologist or worse someone who favors drug use. Let me be clear on my position. ANY TRAINER WHO KNOWINGLY USES PERFORMANCE ENHANCING DRUGS IN AN ATTEMPT TO IMPROVE THE PERFORMANCE OF HIS HORSE SHOULD BE FOUND AND PUNISHED. If you remember nothing else from this article, remember that. I’d even go so far as to say, if they get caught using a poisonous substance at levels beyond the natural level in a horse, such as cobalt, regardless of whether or not it is performance enhancing, they should be punished.

I’m not sure how much more anti performance enhancing I can be. I do write about trainers that have been, in my opinion, treated far more like crooks than the evidence suggests, and I will continue to identify those situations. Frankly, I think my positions are perfectly consistent. Of course, that is just my opinion to which I am entitled.

The idea that there is a rush to judgement when the 200 word blurb appears in one of the racing sources, or that there is a wide perception that while there are some honest trainers (Graham Motion) there are a lot of cheating trainers on the backside, should be concerning to all of us. I for one would repudiate any argument that commissions are underfunded to do proper investigations. Say you are testing the first and second place finishers of every race on a ten-race card. Say in one race you decide to only test the winner and “save” the other test you might have done for your enforcement efforts. Zero extra cost. If you have enough money to do 324,000 tests a year, you have enough money to test horses from the suspected bad apples. I believe racing has a responsibility to respond to out of the ordinary statistics, like a trainer going from 15% to 30% winners, or consistently improving horses by 10 points. They need to tell the betting public, we’ve looked and here’s what we found.

You’re never going to convince all the people. But when you have the SUPPORTERS of the game convinced there is hanky-panky all over the backside, you have a real problem that has to be addressed NOW. When you have people who follow horses writing that they KNOW milkshakes or cobalt use are rampant, you have a responsibility to address that innuendo. When you have anyone asking legitimate questions getting pilloried, you’ve got a problem.

Whatever RCI or the states are doing, it isn’t having an impact on the public perception that cheating is an inherent part of the game. So I’m going to do my part to help.

IDENTIFY TO ME TRAINERS YOU BELIEVE ARE WINNING THROUGH CHEATING. I will pick one, investigate and report my findings here. No punches pulled. 

A user on PaceAdvantage.com named thaskalos posted a reply to my piece on Kellyn Gorder. First, I want to compliment the poster for taking the time to craft a thoughtful response. It took time and effort and was appreciated. If we are to have an elucidating debate on any issue, it can only occur if all parties are willing to agree to be civil. His comment is posted below. My response follows.

So…according to Mr. Halvey, there is no drug problem today in horse racing. It’s all the fault of the “governors of the sport”, who create the perception of rampant cheating in order to “secure their jobs”. Only a tiny percentage of blood and urine samples come back positive…and almost all of the violations are for legal, therapeutic drugs. In fact, Mr. Halvey suggests that the only problem with the drug situation today is that the drug tests are too PRECISE, and innocent, hard-working horsemen like Mr. Kellyn Gorder inadvertently get caught up in this maddening web which is as likely to punish the innocent as it is to punish the guilty.

But then we get this:

“We are not idiots. Of course there are cheats, and I imagine there are drugs that are a step ahead of the testing protocols, but I want to know. Where are the labs making the drugs? Why isn’t racing spending money finding these Breaking Bad actors and closing them down? How many veterinarians are willing to lose their livelihood just to make a few bucks injecting horses with secret potions?”

Only a few of the horsemen engage in cheating practices of this sort, Mr. Halvey assures us…and it would take only a modest effort to round these undesirables up, and drive them out of the game. But it’s those dastardly “governors of the sport” again…who refuse to clean up the game because they supposedly have so much to gain from presenting the drug problem in the sport as a much bigger issue than it currently is.

Mr. Halvey ignores a few pretty important facts in order to strengthen his hypothesis, of course. He ignores that there are plenty of reports put out by esteemed veterinarians which suggest that powerful illegal drugs DO exist out there which “greatly increase a horse’s locomotion”…while other reports clearly indicate that there are indeed veterinarians out there who are willing to jeopardize their livelihood in order to illegally make some quick bucks. One doesn’t have to go far to encounter these reports; some of them have appeared on the pages of this very board…and we have talked about them plenty.

Do the “governors of the sport” gain anything by greatly distorting the drug problem in the game today, and blowing it out of proportion…as Mr. Halvey suggests? What possible benefit could come to these governors of the sport, by them giving the perception to the public that this game is nothing but a den of thieves? Aren’t these the exact same “governors of the sport” who have concealed the truth behind every single scandal that has ever come down the pike in this game’s long and checkered past? Hasn’t every jockey race-fixing scandal, every trainer arrest, and every past-posting incident in this game gotten covered up, and brushed under the carpet…in an attempt to protect the so-called “integrity” of the game, at the expense of properly informing the public…who have faithfully supported this game for DECADES? Wasn’t it Andy Beyer who declared in print a few years back, that it was common practice in California to “punish” the connections of the positively-tested winners of prestigious races, with hushed-up suspensions and slap-on-the-wrist fines…in a well-orchestrated attempt to keep these incidents out of public view, thus protecting the “integrity” of the game?

And we are now supposed to believe that these same “governors of the sport”, who have fought tooth and nail to keep racing scandals of all kinds away from public view for all these years, are now making a determined effort to exaggerate the drug problems in this game…because it somehow offers them the benefit of added “job security”?

I’m sorry Mr. Halvey…but I just don’t see it. I really can’t believe that these “governors of the sport” are overstating the drug problems that are currently plaguing this game. Overstating problems of this magnitude isn’t what these people are really about. If they could…they would brush the whole thing right under the carpet. THAT’S what these folks are really good at!

It is unfortunate your interpretation of my piece was that there is no drug problem in horse racing. More accurately, my points were

• There is not a rampant or performance enhancing drug problem in racing. This is borne out by the statistics gathered by the Association of Racing Commissioners International. I’m not sure how you could interpret the documented statistics otherwise. One-half of one percent of tests have a positive and almost all of them are for approved therapeutic medications. 47 positives out of over 324,000 are for class 1 and 2 substances, and of those 47 all but a handful were again for misdosed therapeutics or environmental contamination. There is not an absence of drugs in racing. But considering almost 99.6 percent of horses test clean, and almost all the violations are related to therapeutics, what other conclusion could you come to other than the problem is not rampant?
• I also concluded that the current program of post race testing is effective at discouraging use of illegal, performance enhancing drugs.
• I certainly did not suggest the tests are too precise. I read my piece a couple of times and simply couldn’t find anywhere where that was a conclusion. In fact though, if you want to know my opinion AND the opinion of Dr. Steven Barker, the pre-eminent equine pharmacologist in the United States, the precision that the new mass spectrometers have has led to the adoption of inappropriate standards and associated overreaching enforcement. In the case of Kellyn Gorder, it is unlikely there is a pharmacologist or veterinarian who would not conclude the highest likelihood for the positive was cross contamination. As I said in a previous piece, if you took every single person on the face of the earth, all 7 billion or so and weighed them, they come up near a trillion pounds. 48 picograms would be the equivalent of one four year old boy somewhere among the other seven billion folks. Let me make this absolutely clear. The machines are not too precise. I have no criticism of the ability of a mass spectrometer to measure the amount of a substance. The issue is zero-tolerance in the face of seeing contamination level or non-performance enhancing level positives.

Kellyn Gorder is caught up in the zeal of Commission directors to impose an agenda that often ignores fairness and justice. Even if you believe a picogram level positive is enough to punish a trainer, do you think a year was the right punishment? In the real world, 48 picograms is insufficient to convict a human of most drug violations precisely because the likelihood it is a contamination positive is just as high as if the substance was ingested. The major point of the article was that Gorder was convicted based on never identifying for certain just how the horse got 48 picograms in its system, and was given a punishment that can hardly be seen as justified, in my estimation. If you are among those who believe there is no need to prove anything beyond the existence of an illegal substance at even a minuscule level, we’re going to have to agree to disagree about Gorder. I believe if you are going to take a man’s livelihood away for a year, you should be damn sure he actual did something to deserve it.

Let’s focus on the issue of home labs making powerful and illegal drugs. First, you have to believe that the mass spectrometers that can test for over 1,800 substances at a trillionth of a gram are not capable of identifying these drugs. That is almost always not the case. Second, most of what you refer to as “powerful, illegal drugs” are in fact legal drugs that are illegal to administer to horses in certain doses and at certain times. Heroin is an illegal drug. Stanozolol or fluphenazine are legal drugs that have a standard for horses. Your statement that “powerful and illegal drugs do exist” and that such drugs “greatly increase a horse’s locomotion” is true even in the absence of anyone using them. If your point is that these drugs are being regularly used by trainers and vets, again, the statistics do not bear this out. You reference reports without citing any, and this is at the very least not helpful. Give me documented cases that substantiate the accusation that “powerful and illegal” drugs are being administered on some wide basis.  Big, big difference between “illegal substance” and “illegal level.”

In any case, this is entirely different than my point, which was that there is speculation that there are alchemists one step ahead of the testers, and all I asked for was some sort of proof they exist and the commissions are making an effort to identify them. And I will advise you that for the most part, the pharmacologists do not consider veterinarians expert in the chemistry of drugs. I would agree that vets are experts in the administration and the efficacy of drugs. I know quite a few pharmacologists and vets, and I think they both would agree with those statements.

I have not purposely ignored whatever the reports by esteemed veterinarians are that you would like me to reference. In any case, you are conflating two issues – the existence of performance enhancing drugs and their manufacture by underground labs. My “hypothesis” was (1) knowing as much as I do about compounding medications, it is difficult to believe it is going on in underground labs and in large proportion, and (2) if it was going on we’d have stumbled onto one of them sooner or later. We hear about meth labs being busted all the time. When was the last underground equine pharmacology lab that got busted? I’ve already conceded there are strong, performance enhancing substances. If they come from pharmaceutical manufacturers they are detectable. We know them and their chemical makeup. And if someone thinks they are boutique, designer drugs, undetectable by highly sophisticated machines and manufactured in uncertified labs, I’m just asking for a bit of proof, not anecdote as in, that trainer improved a horse by 10 points after a claim so he must have some undetectable, performance enhancing juice. Once again, nobody seems to be able to come up with more than a handful of isolated incidents. Two or three trainers just doesn’t constitute an avalanche.

I ignore no fact. Reports saying drugs exist do not refute the facts of the RCI post-race testing. Considering only a handful of the 47 Class I and 2 violations were for illegal drugs that increase locomotion, I’m going to say what I said in the article. The number of cheating trainers and veterinarians cannot be very significant, unless you think they are conspiring to administer secret, undetectable amphetamine-like drugs. And if they are, just tell me the commissions are making every effort to find them.

I’ll offer you this. One trainer injecting his horse with cocaine does not constitute a runaway drug problem, especially if he is found and punished.

I really can’t respond to the cover-up suggestion. There are web sites that list every administrative and medication violation on a trainer’s record. Frankly, I can tell you which trainers brought their horse late to the paddock and got fined. The racing commissions are public agencies with sunshine requirements. I’ve not had any trouble finding information on trainer convictions. I’m not sure what a hushed-up suspension looks like. It’s in the minutes, it’s in the hearing record, and it is in the databases. Whatever Andy Beyer said many years ago, I’m not seeing it today. The rules have changed in favor of transparency.

But again you conflate your issue – commissions covering up violations – with my issues – commissions adopting inappropriate standards, standards NOT based on good science, standards that wind up convicting trainers that are hardly guilty of a conscious attempt to defraud, and then emphasizing the great job they are doing catching these trainers. Surveys show that perhaps 30% of racegoers believe drugs are rampant in racing. How do you suppose they got that idea in light of statistics which say the problem is manageable and being managed? You can believe everything is being swept under the rug, but you need more than your offhanded opinion to prove that point. The racing commissions have changed 180 degrees from some point in the past. Many believe drugs are the reason racing is in decline, and they have made a conscious effort to find violations, punish them and let the world know they are on the case. If you want to convince anyone otherwise, you need to find a RECENT case where a trainer was caught red-handed and the commission covered it up. That’s how you convince people, not by inflaming with anecdote.

I’ve written about Doug O’Neill’s conviction for oxazepam in NY, almost certainly a case of cross-contamination. I’ve written about Ferris Allen’s conviction for stanozolol in MD because the commission (erroneously in my opinion) adopted a zero-tolerance standard. I’ve written about Bill Brashears conviction (http://halveyonhorseracing.com/?p=1351) for banamine overages that would have never occurred had the RCI adopted a standard based on their own scientific testing instead of being arbitrary and adopting a standard they knew would result in a high number of positives. All these are on the blog. You want proof they would like to pad statistics – there it is.

The answer to your question of how the governors of the sport have been fighting tooth and nail to keep racing scandals away from the public while exaggerating drug problems is not one I could address since I never suggested they have been engaged in cover ups. Perhaps it happened at one point, but it ain’t happening today. Commissions see their “aggressive” and public enforcement as inspiring new public confidence in the sport. Today, commissions are issuing press releases about scoflaws. Today, Ray Paulick and the Blood Horse and the DRF are all over these things. If ever there was a case that screamed for cover up, it was Kellyn Gorder. Highly respected, very clean, de minimis amount of meth – what better case to sweep under the rug. It just isn’t happening anymore. READ the stuff the RCI and RMTC are putting out. They think they are the only guardians of the sport and they have said, they want to get all drugs out of racing, including a lot of therapeutics. I’m not making it up – it is documented and available on the internet AND referenced in the Bill Brashears article.

You can believe the conspiracy of silence if you want, but don’t suggest I do. I don’t. And don’t suggest your anecdote trumps my facts. Of course, instead of taking my word for it, do what I have done – talk to a cadre of horsemen who believe that is exactly what they are up against.

In fairness, I have a network of objective, highly regarded experts at my disposal. I have done extensive research which means I don’t have to resort to anecdote. I have talked to numerous racing commissioners and executive directors. This is something I know a lot about. Not necessarily everything. But a lot.

Most of all I would urge you to focus on the major point of the article. Kellyn Gorder may or may not be guilty, but given the paucity of evidence and lack of investigation, does he deserve to lose his livelihood for 14 months?

I posted your response on my blog. How about you do the same on PaceAdvantage.