The January 30 issue of ESPN the Magazine did a cover story on Alex Rodriguez. There seems to be no residual doubt Rodriguez was deeply involved in using performance enhancing drugs. I don’t mean therapeutic drugs like butazolidin. I mean drugs that had only one purpose – to give him a physical edge.

Earlier in the issue writer Mina Kimes did one of those pieces that writers often do. I call them, if only someone as smart and clever as me was in charge, all the sport’s woes would be fixed pieces. It’s amazing how many people not in charge apparently should be in charge. I should know. I write enough of those pieces.

Her proposal was for a sports czar so that sports teams couldn’t blackmail their home cities into giving them millions of dollars as a payoff to not move their operations to another city (usually Los Angeles). Another great idea that we can add to the trash heap of good ideas coming from frustrated writers with all the answers and none of the power.

Whether or not my stuff compares to Mina’s stuff, I’m sure her editor is light years better than mine.

Speaking of A-Rod, I’ll bet you didn’t know that MLB allowed him to treat his low testosterone with injections of the synthetic version. It was the illegal juice on top of the legal juice that did him in. If you watch enough of TVG or HRTV, you start to wonder how you ever managed to make it this far without testosterone supplements, super beta prostate, Cialis or some other wonder treatment that will restore you to the peak of performance. Just be thankful you aren’t a racehorse subject to the protocols of trainers and the subsequent criticisms of the naturalists. I’ll take my Cialis and sit in a disconnected bath tub on top of a plateau watching sunsets without hearing about it, thank you very much.

Lately I’ve been stuck in a rut writing about the tussle between trainers trying to stay clean but getting pinched by racing’s own version of Torquemada, the Association of Racing Commissioners International and the Racing Medication and Testing Consortium.

I understand the water, hay, oats people. Their position is simple – horses should be running only if they are healthy and drug free. They want to see the animals competing based on their inherent talent and ability, not some artificially induced state of euphoria. In their minds, what could possibly be wrong with that?

If they win this battle, they might make their next mission to go after the cortisone, torodol and, what the hell, baking soda taken by professional human athletes. I don’t think I’m going to ever convert over to WHO. I honestly believe that whether the athletes are human or equine, there is a way to safely and effectively use therapeutic medications, and not punish trainers who use them they way they were intended to be used. A trainer who winds up with a picogram medication violation and points for a legal drug (fluphenazine) that the owner administered in the correct dosage 53 days  earlier has, in blunt terms, been screwed by his chosen profession.

There are abusive trainers out there. There are trainers willing to “cheat” to get an edge. The unfortunate thing is that they are probably known to other trainers who have their own version of the “blue line” and refuse to turn them in to track authorities. Trainers willingness to tolerate the bad guys only winds up putting all of them in the same bucket, giving ammunition to the anti-medication crowd. We need to get the real bad guys out of racing, but that is a much smaller percentage than the anti-drug folks would have you believe.

I had a fascinating conversation with someone on Twitter about something called epigenetics. Epigenetics is an emerging field of research that is looking to tie environmental factors to genetic responses. I know. This sounds a little more complicated than whether horses peak third off a layoff. This explanation comes from Manolis Kellis from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“The epigenome is the additional information our cells have on top of genetic information. It is made of chemical tags that are attached to DNA and its packaging. These tags act like genetic controllers, influencing whether a gene is switched on or off, and play an instrumental role in shaping our bodies and disease.”

These epigenomic tags are attached as a result of exposure to environmental factors, potentially including drugs we put into our system. This field of research has excited the WHO folks, who are hoping epigenetics “proves” that Lasix has weakened the breed.

There’s only one problem. I asked Manolis Kellis if it was possible that running on Lasix has weakened the breed by somehow passing along these epigenomic variations. He said,

“Trans-generational inheritance of epigenomic marks is still a hotly debated area. Our cells go through two rounds of reprogramming specifically to erase epigenetic marks, both during gamete formation, and during pre-implantation development…Thus, it is highly unlikely that the epigenomic marks we study here escape these two cycles. There is some evidence of trans-generational inheritance. Some of it could be environmental. Some could be mechanisms that escape these processes”

I’m sure the epigenetic folks will focus on hotly debated. I’m focused on highly unlikely. Whatever genetic triggers Lasix may stimulate while the horse is racing, the probability these are passed on is very low. We know this anecdotally because we have not seen dramatic or chaotic genetic changes in humans, horses, or any other animal for that matter. What we’ve seen is the effect of environmental exposures on individuals, leading to things like high blood pressure or diabetes. It perhaps makes sense that if a respective gene is passed along and the progeny are exposed to the same environmental factors, they may wind up with the same conditions, but that underscores the more likely culprit if you believe the breed is weakening – lack of diversity in the gene pool.

That will be a discussion for the next blog.