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Drone,
Absolutely agree that the whole thing is unsatisfactory, and inevitably leads to doubts about how many other illegal drugs are slipping through the net.
As you may have guessed I’m basing my posts on a source fairly close to the action, and even they aren’t clear whether the lack of info about Sungate is symptomatic of Italian standards, or whether it wasn’t recorded because the amount was so small.
Suffice it to say that if you actually wanted to give your horse a shot of stanozolol, injecting it with Sungate would be a very inefficient and costly way of doing it – a bit like trying to get drunk by swallowing cough syrup!
If I remember correctly, the vet from Rossdale’s wrote a research paper up on the exact subject. So…
A number of Newmarket trainers have had horses treated for stiff joints by a qualified vet from a reputable and long established Newmarket practice. By the strict wording of the rules of racing, it is the resposbility of the trainer to ensure that their horses aren’t given any banned substances, but should we really expect them to check the list of ingredients of every product. And bear in mind, even if they had, there was nothing that would have immediately shown that Sungate contained a banned steroid. That info was only obtainable by means of a detailed internet search.
Once it became known that Sungate did contain stanozolol, they stopped using it. The amount of steroid in Sungate is small and becasue it’s injected into the joint, not into the muscle, it’s effects on the horse are negligible, compared to what Butler was doing with the stronger substance.
Hi AP
I’m not saying you’re wrong, but I’d be interested to know how you can be so sure that there is nothing on the packet to suggest what the active ingredient in Sungate is. I’ve not held one in my hand, but pictures of the packaging on websites selling Sungate when the Butler story originally broke seemed have Stanozolol written on the side in fairly large letters. And there’s actually no reason why the manufacturers would want to hide it – after all, the drug is legitimately manufactured, and licensed for use on horses.It was a presentation at a conference….
https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=6&cad=rja&ved=0CEwQFjAF&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.voorjaarsdagen.org%2Findex.php%3Foption%3Dcom_phocadownload%26view%3Dcategory%26download%3D1486%3Aramzan-preliminaryclinical%26id%3D68%3Abeva-hippozorg-award-2012%26Itemid%3D97&ei=uM-gUvzhFYqqhQeyuoGQBw&usg=AFQjCNH-JUWyQYzQ4P5va7mUW51Pn4MQXg&bvm=bv.57155469,d.ZG4
Apparently, in Zurich, if you fail a driving test three times, you must be checked out by a psychiatrist. Which seems a tad excessive, doesn’t it?
But for the fact that we are all capable of making an incomprehensibly bad decision in some sphere of life, maybe even in our whole life’s orientation, more or less deliberately, poor Gerard Butler’s lapse into folly would seem to me to be inexcusable.
However, I hate the thought that Gerard’s whole future could be blighted – he and his family must be going through hell now – because of that moment of folly. ‘Moment’ because, doubtless, the moment the decision was made, the die would have been cast.
I’m not trying to excuse his action or downplay his culpability, but this is just one occasion when I would love to see mercy shown, see people rally round him, and in due course, maybe see his banishment from training curtailed somewhat.
The fact that other trainers were using Sungate would have been just the sort of half-baked excuse an ambitious young person would need when taken with an insane idea.
"But until the Butler random tests, NOBODY knew it contained stanozolol – not the vets, not the trainers, not the BHA. It wasn’t listed as an ingredient. And because a horse that has had an injection to a joint cannot be raced for three months, to allow the active ingredients to leave the system (I know about this as Salute had such a treatment once), there was never any chance of stanozolol being detected in a racecourse test."
Find that very hard to believe, AP. The manufacturers of Sungate, the Italian company Acme, produce a nice glossy full colour 60 page document with frequent reference to the product containing Stanazol. Indeed the first chapter is entitled…
1 – PHYSIOLOGICAL AND PHARMACOLOGICAL BACKGROUND TO STANOZOLOL
It can be downloaded here
http://www.il-picchio.it/wp-content/upl … grafia.pdfButler wouldn’t be the first BHA patsy.
Presumably the Italian regulators permit the sale of drugs without necessarily specifying what’s in them. Even one as potent and notorious as stanozolol
Lest I be accused of impugning the integrity of the Italian manufacturers of Sungate and that country’s drug regulators I would, in light of the rather splendid and encyclopaedic 60 page full colour brochure featuring frequent references to stanozolol, often in a very large typeface for the visually challenged, like to withdraw the above quote and apologise unreservedly to the maligned parties: it’s a very British trait to lay the blame for our shortcomings on Johnny Foreigner isn’t it?
Dear oh dear
Mr Butler’s actions were not a "lapse into folly" or what he himself described quite laughably as an "error of judgment", rather a well-planned case of systematic animal abuse compounded by lies and obfuscation. One doesn’t accidentally buy phials of Rexogin from dubious on-line sources (apparently the drug is endorsed by Ben Johnson, no less!) and attempt DIY injections on horses. His momentary lapse, it appears, lasted well over two months.
I’d rather not see a person who engages in such activity ever be given a training license again.
On a broader point, it seems that vets are not regulated in any way by the BHA, but answer solely to their own regulatory body, The Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons. There seems to be a number of them traipsing around racing centres with seemingly little idea of the ingredients in some of the drugs they administer.
Mike
given a training license again.
On a broader point, it seems that vets are not regulated in any way by the BHA, but answer solely to their own regulatory body, The Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons. There seems to be a number of them traipsing around racing centres with seemingly little idea of the ingredients in some of the drugs they administer.
Mike
I watched a documentary about the illegal trade in exotic animals where the undercover reporter was introduced to a group of UK Vets who liked to supplement their income by supplying lions and tigers etc to anyone who had the money to buy them. It seems that having a veterinarian qualification gives you carte blanche and an air of sainthood.
Thanks for the good crack. Time for me to move on. Be lucky.
I watched a documentary about the illegal trade in exotic animals where the undercover reporter was introduced to a group of UK Vets who liked to supplement their income by supplying lions and tigers etc to anyone who had the money to buy them. It seems that having a veterinarian qualification gives you carte blanche and an air of sainthood.
Mr Butler obviously went to the wrong vet. I guarantee if he’d purchased a lion and a tiger rather than Stanozolol, his horses would have run much faster. And I’m pretty sure there’s nothing in the BHA rules against having big cats in the yard.
AND, you could feed them the losing platers.
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