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.