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.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.  The Who

I used to say that whatever job you have, the first thing you demand is that your boss be the person in the company most qualified to be the boss. Even if you are a customer of the company it is critical to believe the person in charge is capable of making sure the company provides the best customer service possible.

The boss walks a fine line between keeping his employees and shareholders happy and making customers believe the company also has their best interests at heart. When either group has complaints, even if those complaints are off the wall, the groups expect the boss to at least listen. They expect the boss not to be arrogant or dismissive. They expect the boss to be measured and wise in his response. They realize that they may not always get their way, but they will respect decisions that are made with sincerity, thoughtfulness, and fairness.

If you follow the public media, taking potshots at racetrack management  is a common occurrence. If Twitter had been around since the 50’s the documented list of complaints, real or imagined, would be volumes longer.

Management has done plenty right. As is normally the case, good decisions rarely get mountains of praise, but bad decisions will unleash a volley of negative response. But it is different now than it was in the 50’s. Then the sport was still closer to the summit than the base. The big three (baseball, horseracing, and boxing) were still the big three. Football and basketball were years from becoming the mega-sports they are today.

If you told track management in the 50’s that by 2015 they would be a minor sport struggling at many levels, you’d have been laughed out of their offices. Why is attendance lagging? What are the real problems? Drugs? Too many tracks? A balkanized structure in which states govern with a myriad of different rules? Takeouts that are too high? Too many overlapping post times? An aging customer base? In-breeding that has weakened the breed?

If you did a survey, all of those things would show up on the list, and they are problems, but the basic issue is that the racetrack experience is no longer an essential part of horseracing. On any given day, the percentage of dollars wagered at locations other than the racetrack approaches 85%. Except for the boutique meets like Saratoga, the on-track experience in 2015 is often not much different than it was in 1955, other than warehouse sized video screens and better betting machines. In fact, racing in many cases is taking place in the same facility it did in 1955. Racing has lost its appeal as a gathering place for race fans and has been reduced to its one critical element – betting. How did you fall in love with horseracing? Was it no more complicated than you could bet a horse? Or did it have something to do with the atmosphere of the track? That first time you heard thundering hooves. The smell of cheap cigars. Surly tellers.  We’ve lost the one thing that hooked us. We loved being at the track. It was the place we felt at home. How do you attract new fans, young fans, when the experience has no more romance than a video game?

I’m not suggesting we go back to the 50’s when you could only make a bet at the track, but there has to be a place where the racetrack experience becomes real to budding fans. Horseracing has to be different – better – than a lottery ticket or a slot machine. The stars of the sport must become an essential part of the experience; it must rival the other sports for fan attachment.

It is rarely marketed as a sport, especially on the racing channels. If you knew no better you might think he raison d’etre for racing channels is to promote their affiliated betting sites. How much of the day is devoted to education? How much of the day is devoted to the beauty of the athletes? As long as racing makes its sole line of promotion gambling, it misses the opportunity to promote itself as a sport. The NFL may be as popular as it is in part because of betting on games, but it doesn’t market itself as gambling but as a sport with team loyalty and star power. There is a lesson in there somewhere.

The irony is racing is trying to attract a younger generation by marketing the sport to them as an opportunity to spend money they don’t have. Despite a society that venerates older people by giving them discounts on everything as if they were on the edge of a financial cliff, the reality is that there is no generation so financially well off as the one comprised of people looking in the rear-view mirror to watch their disappearing middle age.

The medication rules being promoted by ARCI  and RMTC will help some people believe in the integrity of racing, but all the medication rules in the world are unlikely to ever satisfy the animal rights people who firmly believe the one thing a horse was born to do, run, must ultimately end up as abuse if the running occurs on a racetrack. And as I have pointed out, despite the ARCI promises of fair medications rules, the implementation in places like Maryland hasn’t been quite so smooth.

The solution to balkanization can take many forms. There is a faction that believes there must be a central authority for all tracks with a uniform set of rules, sort of a Roger Goodell for horseracing. There is a faction that believes over time if we do nothing in particular the small tracks will continue to fade away until there are only the mega-jurisdictions left. Sort of a Darwinian approach – the strong will survive.  There is a faction that believes the entire idea of horseracing should be taking a back seat to the real gambling money-maker, casinos. The one solution I never hear is some form of revenue sharing, much like the National Football League does to ensure small market teams have an equal financial ability to compete.

The high takeouts? This is in fact complete ignorance and disdain on the part of states. Despite the studies that consistently show lower take means higher profits, it is harder to sell than space heaters on the equator. This is really the place where bettors can influence tracks. Player boycotts have generally been ineffective because bettors will simply not give up playing the high takeout tracks en masse. If you are betting tracks in Pennsylvania with a trifecta takeout at 30%, YOU share equally in the criticism. Stop betting there and perhaps they will change.

Perhaps the most difficult problem to solve is the betting menus at many tracks. Unless a track is handling Belmont, Gulfstream, Saratoga, Santa Anita or Del Mar type money, the first thing a track should look at is consolidating pools. There should be no separate show pool but a combined place/show pool that plays to the first three horses across the line. There should be no races with separate quinella and exacta pools, but one exacta pool. A $1 exacta box is the equivalent of a $2 quinella. And if someone whines they would be lost without a $1 quinella, perhaps they are undercapitalized to be betting, The minimum bet for most of the 20th century was $2, even when middle class people were only making $80 a week. Now that even the minimum wage pays four times that much, bettors still demand a ten cent minimum on some bets. You figure it out. Smaller tracks often do a bang-up job of discouraging betting by having pools too small to provide an incentive to act. Unfortunately, unless some group of major bettors gangs up on management, those in charge are unlikely to change the betting menu.

There are a lot of really smart people who care deeply about the game out there. If the bosses are smart, they will find them and listen to them and change the things that should be changed.

Even if you are on the right track, you’ll get run over by the train if you just stand still.

Scott Lake, once THE mega-claiming trainer in the Mid-Atlantic, was initially suspended for 60 days by the Maryland Racing Commission for having a horse test positive for the steroid stanozolol, sold as  Winstrol.  Maryland recently adopted the Racing Commissioners International (RCI) rules developed under the National Uniform Medication Program (NUMP). You know how each state has rules for how many points a driver can accumulate before losing his license? NUMP is the same concept except not only does each violation accumulate points, it also comes with a suspension. The more points you accumulate, the longer each subsequent suspension is.

Lake had a stanozolol positive at Penn National in June, which earned him four points on the NUMP scale. The second positive at Laurel in December earned him another four points, jumping the initial 60 day Maryland suspension to  120 days.

Lake appealed, although his main argument seems to be with the fairness of the cumulative aspect of the penalty. Lake suggests that the same violation should get the same penalty for all trainers, apparently irrespective of previous violations.

It’s an interesting topic for argument, but I have two issues I’d rather discuss. First is the inconsistency regarding regulatory levels in the various jurisdictions. I’ll give you a real life example.

A trainer (nameless for the moment but one that I will eventually doing a big story about) was found in violation in Pennsylvania for the drug fluphenazine, a class 2 medication. The drug is used to calm down horses  with behavioral issues. The particular horse in question had flipped on multiple occasions during training and the stable veterinarian recommended fluphenazine. Fluphenazine, sold as Prolixin, is an anti-psychotic drug used to treat schizophrenic type behavior, and while you can argue about whether it is the best choice given other treatment options, it is a relatively cheap and effective treatment for the type of behavioral problems this horse had.

The horse in this case responded well to the treatment. The trainer then decided to look for a race for the horse, but first checked with his vet to make sure he wouldn’t violate any medication rules. The vet, Maryland based, assured the trainer that Maryland rules required only a seven-day waiting period after the treatment. The trainer entered the horse in Maryland 21 days after the treatment, and the race didn’t fill. He then found a race in West Virginia and again the race didn’t fill. Finally he found a race in Pennsylvania, 35 days after the horse was treated. Unfortunately, the vet wasn’t fullly familiar with Pennsylvania rules regarding fluphenazine, and the trainer didn’t do any research, so he assumed 35 days would be plenty of time between treatment and race. The horse won, was tested and came back positive for fluphenazine.

The problem was that in Pennsylvania there was a zero-tolerance rule for fluphenazine. In the hearing the trainer was told there was a 180 day waiting period for the drug. In almost all horses, fluphenazine will completely metabolize in 45-90 days, so while the people in Pennsylvania provided advice that was a bit too conservative, it is likely under a zero-tolerance policy any horse would almost certainly test positive after only 35 days. Was it the trainer’s fault he didn’t know the rule? Technically, yes. But the fluphenazine had long since stopped having any real physiological effect on the horse, and having adjacent states with such disparate standards has to drive trainers in the Mid-Atlantic crazy. The fluphenazine made the horse capable o racing where it wasn’t previously, but it didn’t make horse run faster.

Once again, I’m going to go into a lot more detail about this in a comprehensive future report, including some surprising opinions from leading equine pharmacologists, but at this point the trainer is stuck with a Class 2 violation even though the horse almost certainly won on its own ability. Pennsylvania’s rule in this case was the equivalent of getting a speeding citation for going a quarter MPH over the speed limit.

The second issue is that there is a substantial difference between a positive for theraputic drugs and drugs that have no other purpose than to either enhance or depress performance. The drug Lake was cited for, stanozolol, is an accepted theraputic medication, although as a steroid it can have performance enhancing effects. In humans it is known as a “cutting” drug, meaning it builds lean muscle mass while reducing fat. In horses it is often used to stimulate appetite. The injectable version has a half-life of about 24 hours, meaning it would be a while before a horse’s system was completely clear of the drug. In fact, it would show up well after the drug had stopped having any measurable physiological effect.

ALL DRUGS ARE PERFORMANCE-ENHANCING and given modern measurment technology that can detect picograms (trillionths of a gram) it may take months before some drugs become unmeasurable. If you took ibuporfen for a headache yesterday, it would be detectable tomorrow even though four hours after you took it the headache returned.

Many owners, especially at the smaller tracks, simply can’t afford to take essentially clean horses out of training for an extra three months while the picograms reduce to zero.

I don’t want to blame the storytelling press – after all, they just report the news, not make it – but they are not fully doing their job when they don’t report the level at which the violation was measured and the likelihood that level was performance enhancing or depressing. It is important that the racegoing public understand when a positive is technical and when it is substantive. Trainers are pilloried for positives, but how often do you see a story taking a racing commission to task for punishing a trainer for a positive at a no more than a trace level? I know I’ve written about Doug O’Neill and the oxazepam violation that would have been laughable had it not been so costly.

Too many trainers are winding up with violations that are for trace levels of theraputics and that do not impact performance in the way a high level of a Class 1 opiate would. Subsequent violations result in excessive penalties. Too many trainers wind up with “points” for violations that no trained equine pharmacologist would call performance-affecting.

I don’t know enough of the details surrounding Scott Lake’s violations for stanozolol to know if he is a “cheat,” he got caught up in not paying close enough attention to medication standards in the different states, or if he just pushed the medication evelope a little too hard. Fining and suspending trainers who are trying to keep their horses on the track with legal, theraputic medication, and who are racing them well after the theraputic effects have dissipated is not in the best interest of racing. It creates the appearance of rampant drug abuse.

Racing commissions rightfully work to keep the game clean, but there is no shame in reserving the harshest punishments for only the truly guilty. In a subsequent post I’ll go into detail about how racing commissions can do a fairer job of only punishing those who deserve harsh punishments. In the meantime, let’s expect more than a regurgitation of the racing commission press releases from the mainstream press. Let’s provide enough detail to know whether we’ve been protected or a clean trainer has been caught up in the system.

I was reading about the alleged rape at the University of Virginia in which the members of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity were accused of staging a gang rape initiation ritual. The story appeared in Rolling Stone and the outrage that emanated after the publication was no surprise. There is inevitably a rush to judgment in such cases, and the fraternity paid by having their house trashed, windows broken, and being forced to move to hotels. Pretty much the same thing that happened to the Duke Lacrosse team. Considering the non-stop media coverage of the Rolling Stone story and the vitriol spewed on social media sites, the guilt of the frat boys was a forgone conclusion.

The only problem was none of it was true. The members of Phi Kappa Psi realized within 24 hours of the story being published that not only were they innocent of the alleged charge, the incident never occurred. At that point, the fraternity decided to not say a word for fear of making things more difficult. They shut-up and took a public pounding. Much of the credit for exposing the fraud goes to T. Rees Shapiro from the Washington Post, who did what Rolling Stone did not – finally talked to the fraternity members. Sabrina Rubin Erdely, the Rolling Stone reporter, blithely ruined the lives of innocent people in the name of sensationalizing what may be a legitimate problem, just not in this case.

We’ve all watched old Westerns where a mob insists on instant justice for someone accused of a crime. We’ve read and seen real pictures of black people who were lynched in the 20th century. Lately we’ve watched video of groups like ISIS beheading hostages guilty of little more than not being a zealot bent on ruling the world. In each of those cases the vast majority of us are repulsed, and immediately see the wrongness of pronouncing someone guilty before knowing all the facts or because they are in some way different. We know mob justice is wrong, but sometimes we are helpless to stop ourselves against the tidal wave of public opinion. If you were one of the people who thought Phi Kappa Psi deserved to be stoned the day after the story came out, you might be feeling, at the least, sheepish. Given an opportunity, the system would have properly investigated the allegations, found the facts, and meted out any punishment. Unfortunately, the only crime in this case was committed by the fake victim and the reporter who didn’t do her job.

Yet in horseracing we are often quick to rush to judgment when it comes to trainers. David Jacobson generates such enmity that over a thousand people signed a petition asking that he be thrown out of New York. Jacobson was suspended in 1981 for failing to provide a horse named Hugable Tom with proper care and was kept out of racing until 2007. Since he has been back he has been the poster child for everything wrong with racing. The petition cites his three medication violations for phenylbutazone and clenbuterol and his numerous fines for “failing to conduct business in a proper manner.” Let me tell you, the list of transgressions meriting a fine by the stewards is almost endless and I’ve previously mentioned things like a male stablehand being fined $50 for using the ladies bathroom because, in his mind, the men’s facility was disgusting. The fine would have been higher except he did remember to put the seat down when he was finished.

Jacobson’s heinous instances of failing to conduct business are usually not specified by New York, but in one case necessitated the scratch of his horse resulting in the cancellation of a race (at the winter meet at AQU by the way). That’s right, it was Jacobson’s fault that AQU had to cancel a race. His other offenses included things like

• not having the proper colors for his horse in the paddock;
• not having the proper foal papers;
• using an unauthorized blinker;
• a turf shoe violation.

He also ran a horse in Pennsylvania in violation of New York state racing rules. Figure that one out.

Oh, and his drug violations for clenbuterol and phenylbutazone – they occurred in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Maryland, not New York. That’s right, he hasn’t violated New York’s medication standards since 2007. In a subsequent piece I’m going to go into great detail about the failures of laboratory testing and how the results are misued by racing commissions.

The petition also cites five horse deaths as the final nails in Jacobson’s coffin. However, not once does it mention the evidence that the deaths of these horses was clearly a result of Jacobson’s negligence. They died, Jacobson was the trainer, he needs to be ruled off the track.

So what has the New York State Gaming Commission figured out? Well they haven’t figured out what medications he is abusing. They haven’t figured out how Jacobson was culpable in the racetrack deaths of his horses. And believe me, New York has looked at Jacobson the way CSI looks at evidence. In fact, the most New York has on Jacobson is that he is guilty of the equivalent of a series of parking tickets in that state.

Am I defending Jacobson? I am defending his right to due process. I am defending his right to be judged on the facts of his transgressions and the severity of the violations by a proper authority, not a mob of people hopped up on their own righteousness. He may be innocent or guilty, but there is a right way to go about proving that.

Jacobson is not a sympathetic figure. His father, Buddy Jacobson, was famously quoted as seeing horses as nothing more than machines, a way to make his living. He felt no great attachment to them in the way many horse lovers do. While David has been circumspect enough to not express the same negative feelings toward the animals, he is stained with the unavoidable problem of being Buddy’s son. New York never forgave Buddy Jacobson for leading the nine-day strike by stable workers, and it is not a stretch to suggest some folks still carry a grudge. Jacobson does seem to run his horses at short intervals, and to many who are not licensed trainers that is all the proof they need to label Jacobson as abusive. Ignore the fact that the horses are checked by the state vet before being allowed to start. The state apparently shares no culpability in the mind of the mob. New York dealt with trainers like Jacobson by installing a 14-day rest rule for the AQU winter meeting. That wasn’t enough for the mob. Nothing short of the death penalty will be punishment enough.

Do you know how much pressure there is on trainers, especially those with sizable stables, to fill out fields at AQU in the winter? Do you know about the bartering that goes on between the racing secretary and the trainers? Enter Horse A over here, and I’ll write a race for Horse B. As much as New York may dislike trainers like Jacobson, they need them to run a successful meet.

If the mob had petitioned NYRA for a proper investigation and hearing, fine. If the mob had asked for a public meeting to discuss Jacobson, fine. Frankly, I’m tired of those who may even sincerely believe they are the defenders of the sport calling for summary justice against those they have convicted in their minds. You aren’t helping by singling out trainers. You are reinforcing the notion that cheaters abound in racing. You provide the cynics and the haters with one more reason to oppose the sport. Do it the right way. Investigate cases. Find the evidence racing commissions have ignored.

If Jacobson is abusing horses, running them when he knows they are hurt, or improperly medicating them, I am going to be the first to call for racing to deal with him. Just show me the incontrovertible evidence. But until then, my focus will be on the fairness and competency of the racing commissions, many of which hide behind the absolute insurers rule and do ridiculously poor investigations. I will not be part of the mob who follows the ironic dictum of Sheriff Cobb in the movie Silverado.

“We’ll give him a fair trial, followed by a first class hanging.”

There is no doubt in my mind that the vast majority of racing officials and executives care about the sport. When they do things that may seem to hurt the sport, I am just as certain that wasn’t their intention. That still doesn’t diminish the criticism that is heaped on the decision-makers when they obviously screw-up.

There isn’t a delicate way to say it. NYRA deserves some culpability for accepting entries for horses that were ineligible under the new emergency rule that requires entrants to have at least 14 days between starts, and then scratched those horses on race day. On Sunday this resulted in two three-horse fields and a four horse field. In what can only be described as a higher power showing an off-beat sense of righteous indignation, a major snowstorm is scheduled to hit the New York area starting Monday, creating a high probability that racing will be cancelled Thursday. This means the 11 horses for which entries were accepted even though they had a race within the last two weeks will technically not have to be declared.

Fortunately for NYRA there are convenient scofflaws available – the trainers. Based on racing rules, it is the trainer’s responsibility to only enter his horse in races for which the horse is eligible. The stewards rulings are not posted yet, but it will be interesting to see if they fine the trainers who entered those horses on Sunday.

What needs to be discussed is how this situation could have been avoided. The trainers were obviously not happy about the 14 day rule. Their comments were somewhere between the compromising “how about a few days less” and the snarky “they’ve obviously never trained a horse.”

The question is, how much discussion could have gone on to reach an acceptable consensus if the trainers think it is on the poorly conceived side of the line?

Managing people or an organization is not easy, and believe me I know that from personal experience. But it is a lot harder when you believe you know what is best for everyone without giving them a chance to have input into the decision. If you’re a boss you are paid to make decisions. The buck stops here and all of that. But if the decisions you make are seen as “stupid” by everyone except you, well, the chances are the people in the “it’s stupid” camp have a point worth listening to. And even if in the end you are right, you still need everyone’s help and support to get the decision implemented in the right way.

Horses are dying at what seems to be an alarming rate on track at Aqueduct. NYRA understandably wanted to take action but there are two parts to any plan: the conception and the implementation. If either are not good, the plan fails. Not all horses need two weeks between starts, but I suspect it could be difficult and expensive to do an assessment on the dozens of horses entered within the 14-day window. It was certainly easier just to make a blanket rule, but perhaps not the only option. The right thing for NYRA to do is to make an assessment of how the on-track breakdowns can be addressed most effectively, and if that means modifying a decision they had already made, that is the right thing to do.

Because the alternative is another embarrassment like the one that occurred Sunday, and that is simply not acceptable.