It's a Bird

[MonmouthGuy]

It\'s a Bird tested positive for naproxen following his win in the Grade 2, $500,000 Oaklawn Handicap on April 4, according to an official with the Arkansas Racing Commission.

http://www.drf.com/news/article/104118.html

[Rick B.]

How much of a penalty should the connections receive for a class 4? (Naproxen is more commonly known as Aleve.)

I want the game cleaned up too, but taking a look at it from an owner\'s perspective for a moment, would I be OK with, say, losing all of the purse money over the rough equivalent of an aspirin? I don\'t think so.

[MonmouthGuy]

Perhaps the penalty should be dependent on what the level of the \'overage\' was, so the commission can take an educated guess on how much pain/lameness was being hidden?  If it is a trace amount, a slap on the wrist may be the right penalty?

Kentucky recommends that it not be used 5 days before the race so it must take a while to clear the system.

[miff]

In NY it can be given 48 hours out.Pretty innocent stuff, used liberally around the track and not surprisingly by Wolfson.Lack of uniform rules on permissible drugs also a problem for the intellectually challenged Lords Of Racing.

Sight,

Is there a \"normal\" period of time for this stuff to clear.

Mike

[Michael D.]

Wolfson had two different class 4 positives with Can\'t Beat It back in \'06 (though one was so minor the penalty was later reduced).

[HP]

Here we go again.  Someone tests positive and people leap in and say \"it\'s no big deal.\"  Why are they giving this stuff to a horse to race?  If YOU needed Alleve to go out and race I would send you home and tell you to go to bed.  There\'s a reason for these rules, and the last thing we need in racing are \"medication apologists.\"  

Why on earth do you want to see horses run if they need this kind of medication to get around the track?  I don\'t care if you\'re an owner, or whatever the hell you are, what\'s the difference?  If your horse isn\'t fit to run without this so-called \"aspirin\" then he can\'t run!  Put him back in his stall with some warm milk.  What is so hard to understand about that?  Is it odd to try to protect horses from abuse when they can\'t say \"you know, I don\'t that aspirin is going to do it today boss.\"  

Now you can continue this thread with the usual suspects saying it\'s no big deal, it\'s only aspirin, and they shouldn\'t get suspended.  But you really want to clean up the game.  RIGHT!  

HP

[miff]

HP,

Are you kidding, you don\'t know that horses with all sorts of minor ailments are out there racing every day at every racetrack.Many of them have been given helpful legal drugs up to cut off time.

Napronex is very common and horses DEFINITELY need help with their aches and pains otherwise there would be no racing as we know it.The overzealous that are not aware of the help that these animals need are in the dark as to what is going on with the legal stuff.

Now,if it was a monster dose on race day(don\'t know details) then I agree,hammer the guy.Otherwise this is common help for soreness/inflammation that may not have passed in the usual amount of time.

Cali allows Bute to help the horse with it\'s issues and it\'s banned just about everywhere else.


Mike

[MonmouthGuy]

miff Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

>
> Now,if it was a monster dose on race day(don\'t
> know details) then I agree,hammer the
> guy.Otherwise this is common help for
> soreness/inflammation that may not have passed in
> the usual amount of time.
>
>
> Mike

Agreed. That was what I was trying to say.

[Rick B.]

HP Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Here we go again.

> I don\'t care if you\'re an owner, or
> whatever the hell you are, what\'s the difference?
> If your horse isn\'t fit to run without this
> so-called \"aspirin\" then he can\'t run!  

Try a little common sense.

If I wake up with a mild headache, I don\'t crawl back into bed -- I take a couple Aleve and go to work. Big deal. It\'s just not the same as taking hits off of a crack pipe. The law and my employer fully understand the difference between minor analgesic medication and much stronger, performance altering substances: the former are legal and socially acceptable, the latter are not. There is a reason for this, namely, order of magnitude: as far as any other effect than relief of minor pain, aspirin-class medications don\'t do jack shit.

Absolutist thinking in the equine \"War On Drugs\" is a waste of time and energy -- we are never going back to just hay, oats and water. Efforts to create uniform medication rules and stiff penalties for serious infractions are useful; an overblown hue and cry over something as trivial as an aspirin just distracts from more serious issues.

[sighthound]

>> Sight,
>> Is there a \"normal\" period of time for this stuff to clear.
>> Mike

Depends upon liver and kidney function (as with humans).  As some have already accurately said, 5 days provides ultimate safety, but in 48 hours in most horses it should be gone.

If the drug is far less than the pharmacologic amount needed to influence the horse (trace amounts), to me that\'s very different than a more significant amount in the horses\' blood (given closer to the race, etc)

We can test now and detect literally \"whiffs\" of drugs.  If your barn help uses cocaine off duty, your horses can test positive for it simply from contact transfer from their hands, without blow ever being in your barn or on their person.

[sighthound]

Good reference:  The Racing and Medication Testing Consortium http://www.rmtcnet.com/content_modelrules.asp

Note that it\'s far more of a performance-altering threat to give a horse caffeine, than anabolic steroids.

Class 1:  Stimulant and depressant drugs that have the highest potential to affect performance and that have no generally accepted medical use in the racing horse.

Examples:  morphine, heroin, cocaine, cobratoxin

Class 2:  Drugs that have a high potential to affect performance, but less of a potential than Class 1.  These drugs are 1) not generally accepted as therapeutic agents in racing horses, or 2) they are therapeutic agents that have a high potential for abuse.  

Examples:  barbiturates, valium, caffeine, codeine, mepivacaine/lidocaine

Class 3:  Drugs that may or may not have generally accepted medical use in the racing horse, but the pharmacology of which suggests less potential to affect performance than drugs in Class 2.

Examples:  Acepromazine (tranquilizer), boldenone (Equipoise, an anabolic steroid), clenbuterol, testosterone, stanozolol

Class 4:  This class includes therapeutic medications that would be expected to have less potential to affect performance than those in Class 3.

Examples:  Tylenol, Zyrtec, cortisone & dexamethasone & prednisone (corticosteroids), isoxsuprine, ketoprofen, bute (phenylbutazone)

Class 5:  This class includes those therapeutic medications for which concentration limits have been established by the racing jurisdictions as well as certain miscellaneous agents such as DMSO and other medications as determined by the regulatory bodies.

Examples:  Tagamet, Prilosec, Zantac

[HP]

Some pretty insulting stuff here.  

Maybe the response should be

\"we have rules, and he broke them, but it\'s okay.\"

Common sense indeed...

HP

[Rick B.]

The \"common sense\" stuff I\'m referring to involves examining the rules to see if they make any sense at all -- zero tolerance for Aleve? That\'s ridiculous.

Common sense would seem to dictate that since this is an everyday substance that is widely used (at least by humans, possibly less so in horses these days), some minimal threshold should be established to guard against things like possible passive exposure, environmental contamination, and incomplete elimination of what is a legal theraputic medication.

Sorry if you are insulted, but if you can\'t draw a distinction between an aspirin violation that is possibly being recorded due to a poorly thought out rule, and a serious med violation, I can\'t help you.

And if you want to keep beating the \"but, it\'s the rule!\" drum, go ahead, but doing so won\'t advance the campaign for reasonable and uniform drug rules one inch. \"Zero Tolerance\" needs to be used wisely and sparingly, for the most egregious and obvious transgressions, like the use of elephant juice and cobra venom. But for aspirin? Please.

[TGJB]

Sight-- they need to re-evaluate Clenbuterol.

[HP]

So then you need to beat the drum that says \"let\'s get better rules.\"  If the rule is \"poorly thought out\" then that needs to be the main part of your effort, right?  I\'m all for it.  

If the OVERWHELMING MAJORITY of trainers can comply with this rule and Wolfson can\'t, don\'t you think this needs to be addressed?    

Based on my limited research...there have been numerous advisories to horsemen about using naproxene.  There are guidelines about how to use it and when to stop using it to comply with the rules.  It doesn\'t sound like something that a front line trainer would really have a problem understanding...

HP