45 days for a non milk shake

[FrankD.]

Drug O\'Neil given a 45 day suspension for not milk shaking the horse Argenta in 2010 at the Del Mar meet.

You have to read the words in the DRF article to believe this and we wonder why this game cannot attract new fans? Another slap on the wrist along with an 18 month probationary period for no more \" non milk shakes\".

Unbelievable that they can come out with this horse bleep on the verge of a possible triple crown. Does anyway in the management of this sport have a clue?
REALLY!!!

Frank D.

[sighthound]

Isn\'t that nice?  Now the talking heads will have something to talk about on Belmont Day!  They can explain to the public what milkshaking is, and why slots matter to horse racing, and how management of Belmont was just fired for a little \"discrepency\" with the public\'s win money ....

Oh, yeah ...  Triple Crown?

[miff]

\"The unnamed officer, in his recommendation to stay 135 days of the 180-day suspension, found that O\'Neill was not guilty of giving the horse an illegal \"milkshake.\" He found that milkshaking -- an illicit concoction of baking soda bicarbonate and/or other alkaline substances that is fed to a horse shortly before it competes -- was not the cause of the TCO2 overage\"

Sight,

Can you think of an industry/organization with more ineffective people running it, US Congress aside.


Mike

[sighthound]

Not if you eliminate Congress.

I believe it\'s true the horse was not milkshaked.  It could have been something in the feed, etc.  But they should have said what they \"discovered\' raised the TCO2, to explain why they are mitigating the punishment.  The lack of transparency is absurd in this day and age.  

We are actually allowed in the stewards room, in Australia for example, while trainers and jocks make their case for intereference dq requests.  If a fav finishes up the track, that jock is in the stewards room right after the race, and usually within a couple races a stewards announcement is made about what happened.

Yes, they have their own problems, but we can take a lesson from the steward transparency of other jurisdictions.

[TGJB]

For at least 5-7 years now alkalyzing agents have been available in pill form. They are (or at least were) available at your local CVS (I think the brand name was \"Foss Fuel\" or something like that, if Ron Linfonte is reading this he can help). Since at least back in 2008 when I was working with the Jockey Club Committee we\'ve known that guys were breaking up the stuff and putting it into feed-- you don\'t need to tube them any more. O\' Neill\'s defense at the time of the violation was (paraphrase) that anybody could just throw it in the feed of his horses.

Correct. Like the horse\'s trainer, for example.

[sighthound]

The allowable TCO2 levels are set to allow for 96% of \"accidental\" usual overage causes (weather, feed, etc) to be excluded.  

In other words, if you come up positive, less than 4% chance something was not purposely done to tamper with the horse.

Security is a real problem with the lack of backstretch security. The first time I was on a backstretch, I was amazed at the lack of protection to a trainers horses.

But you can\'t be allowing every trainer to claim that a horse with an overage must have had something mixed into it\'s sweet feed race morning by some stranger.

[TGJB]

Especially when he\'s had two of these and a few others before.

[sighthound]

You can readily hurt another trainer you have a beef with, you can easily dope a horse of his and make him have a positive.  It\'s easy to do on the backstretch, unfortunately.

We need a national racing organization, that can establish normal testing procedures and regional acceptable laboratories.  We need a security video camera hooked to a central monitoring room looking down every shedrow, on every backstretch. None of that will ever happen.