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Is this April 1st? Mascherino, the man who so bravely spoke out against Yarmouth prize money and drug testing (http://www.horseandhound.co.uk/competit … aid=115950) having one of his horses test positive for morphine…at Yarmouth.
I’m just glad that the prize money is going to a fellow strike leader and that there appears to be an innocent explanation for the pain suppresant morhine being found in the horse’s blood.
Not that Mark Johnston was too keen to talk about the incident by all accounts…
And this coming alongside the news that, after finishing a circuit early, Sam Thomas received a piece of Waterford Crystal at Fakenham yesterday for being the track’s top rider during 2007/08.
Racing, you gotta love it.
Any views on the news item at top right of page 8, Glenn?
Advice: don’t read it while eating potentially life-threatening breakfast cereals.
Prufrock,
I’ve no objections to them updating rule 4 to remove anomalies. For example, why is rule 4 applied to place dividends when the number of places has decreased? How is a horse more likely to finish first three of fifteen than first four of sixteen?
Sadly I doubt they will be looking into this issue.
I would have thought, in this modern age, a rule 4 could take account of the whole book. Sadly, this doesn’t seem to be on the agenda either, with a more rough and ready policy that can only disadvantage punters being implemented.
Probably unwise to make much of the morphine thing.
Doping rules are a bit silly at times – an egcup full of most of this boards’ users pee would, when added to a winners sample, cause the animal to be disqualified. Caffeine would be detected albeit in the most minute quantities. Daft seeing as it could not affect performance.
Morphine raps are normally due to feed contamination. If just a few, possibly just one, poppy seeds got into the animal via carelessness at a foodmill, there would be enough morphine there to blow a test. Tis unlikely to be connections injecting the animal with heroin.
Do you think the morphine may have aided the disqualified winner Alex? The comments in running have him down as rallying bravely to get up. Quite a rare comment you might say.
If it is indeed a feed contamination point, the amount of morphine would be minute – a tiny fraction of what would be required to have a discernible effect.
To prove the theory try getting stoned on the poppy seeds you can buy for human food use. It really will not work. Even a kilo would not get you there and that amount would not really be possible to consume at one sitting (probably half a cubic foot or thereabouts of seed).
Not guilty m’lud of being a washed up bass player.
My nom de bandwidth is that of the finest player to ever pull on an Arsenal shirt. But I bear no resemblance to the greatest ever inside left either.
he did a tv programme not long ago about the cocaine trade which would have made him quite knowledgeable about narcotics; also he’s a farmer these days….
Methinks that Alex James’ knowledge of narcotics comes more from consuming vast quantities of them whilst the Britpoppers were very successful rather than from researching a telly programme.
And I do rather doubt his new found farming credentials. Does he ever do the mucky jobs (arm up a ewe’s fanny. for example). I’m not entirely confident that he does.
But the bloke does make cheese and that is a noble profession indeed.
Would there be any suggestion that the drug rules in racing are true strict?
If the effects of food contamination are likely to be insignificant, why are the acceptable levels set so low?I remember the fuss about Red Mills, but, I had thought that there was a beneficial effect coming from the completely natural drugs found in much of the good-old fashioned meadow hay. The purge on "weeds" seemed to destroy the mixture of plants that did us fine for so many generations.
My view is that some of the levels are far too low. As I implied upthread, the idea that consuming a tea spoon of normally brewed tea has some stimulative effect on a horse is plainly nonsense. But, in their defence, the BHA would point out that there is little or no research available that determines the level at which banned substances have an effect. Thus the disqualification threshold is set at a trace. I sympathise with that attitude but it does give some silly results.
Thank you, AJ; it’s certainly a difficult situation.
I read somewhere that, in some cities, over 75% of the money in certain ATMs is physically contaminated with traces of drugs. Keeping free from all trace must be very difficult, imo.
The trouble is that the illicit substances that are probably in use in racing are the ones they can’t find or, dont’t even look for, imo!
Your example of coke contaminated bank notes is apposite. If, for example, you handled a good few having landed a decent bet at Ascot and a minute amounts of coke got into you, you would feel thoroughly upset if you failed a work related drug test the next day and got fired as a consequence. I’m sure that the same is happening to racehorses and that is unfair.
As to the unknown substances, I guess the horse dopers are normally ahead of the testers if an analogy with human athletes is correct.
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