Re: WILL BIG BROWN WIN THE TRIPLE CROWN???
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So, will annals one day show 'Big Brown*?'</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><!--startclickprintexclude--><TABLE height=25 cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR><TD class=datestamp>Updated<SCRIPT type=text/javascript>document.write(niceDate('5/21/2008 11:32 PM'));</SCRIPT> 12h 14m ago |
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</TD></TR><TR><TD vAlign=top align=left>By
Christine Brennan, USA TODAY
Not much can get in Big Brown's way now. His victories are getting bigger and bolder. The Triple Crown, horse racing's first since 1978, is within reach. This, clearly, is the horse of our dreams.
Except for that steroid thing.
Yes, the scourge of baseball and cycling and the Olympics now has officially hit the sport of kings, even though it has been lurking for years. Big Brown's trainer has admitted giving his horse Winstrol ? the same anabolic steroid that Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson took 20 years ago before the Seoul Olympics, the same substance that got Johnson kicked out of the 1988 Games and stripped of his gold medal in the men's 100 meters.
It's also the steroid that Rafael Palmeiro took to both ruin his image and get drummed out of baseball in one fell swoop.
Isn't it lovely the company Big Brown is keeping? Although, to be fair, it should be noted that ? so far, anyway ? the drug doesn't seem to have done much to increase the horse's home run production.
This is just what the horse racing industry didn't need following the tragic, on-the-track death of Eight Belles in the Kentucky Derby. But this is what it, like so many other sports, must now deal with: its very own Steroid Era.
"It is embarrassing to have a lead horse be on steroids," said Don Catlin, who created the Olympic testing lab at UCLA and, as one of the world's best-known doping experts, is now working with the equine industry. "The world is sitting up and saying, 'Hello, wait a minute.' That's why the industry has to get ahold of this issue.
"It's not just Big Brown; it's many, many horses," he continued. "It's legal to give horses steroids in Kentucky, so (trainer Rick) Dutrow didn't violate any law. In some states, though, it's illegal. I've been trying to get the equine industry to wake up. It's tragic what they are doing. They don't like being in the headlines as a sport that allows steroids, so they're working on it."
In fact, by the end of this year, what Dutrow said he regularly does ? give all his horses an injection of Winstrol on the 15th of every month ? will be illegal if Catlin and the racing industry get their way. Right now, 10 states ban the use of non-therapeutic anabolic steroids in horses ? but not the Triple Crown states, which also include Maryland and New York. By the end of the year, the hope is that all 38 states that conduct horse racing will ban steroids.
"We don't feel that steroids should be used in a performance-enhancing way," said Eric Wing, senior director of media relations for the National Thoroughbred Racing Association. "Big Brown is one of the horses currently receiving them on a regular basis. He's not the only one, but come next year, he won't be able to receive them."
There is a great debate in the horse racing world over just how helpful and just how dangerous anabolic steroids are. Do they aid a horse's recovery between races? Do they build muscle mass, as steroids do in humans? If that's the case, it's possible more leg injuries are occurring because of the horse's increased bulk.
"It's tradition for horses to be given steroids, and you hear a lot of veterinarians defending tradition, but they are defending a tradition that is harming racing," said veterinarian Joe Bertone, professor of equine medicine and pharmacology at Western University of Health Sciences in Pomona, Calif. "In terms of public opinion, if there's not that much benefit in using them, and I don't think there is, and they taint the sport that much, which they do, then they should be banned from racing."
For about four years, Catlin has been studying why this sport allows steroids to be used. "It's often wishful thinking on the part of the trainer: We need steroids for this and that," he said. "I push them for references, and suddenly things begin to change, and you hear (steroids) work exactly as they do in humans. The more I looked into it, the more interesting it became. It reminded me of the days of the sporting world at the time of Ben Johnson."
So, with all that he knows, is Big Brown's run for the Triple Crown fair, or not?
Catlin stops for a moment. "What can I say?"
He pauses again.
"It's a very valid question."
...add Christine Brennan to William C. Rhoden as clueless. She equates steroid use in horses, which is legal, to steroid use in humans(the scourge of baseball and cycling and the Olympics), which is illegal. There is no question but that steroid usage in horseracing is controversial; but there is also no question but that it is LEGAL! Horseracing decided some time ago to make steroids legal; they may at some time decide to make them illegal; it is not for some journalists to decide what is right and what is wrong but to report on what is happening.
And once again, I think the discussion about steroids brought about by BigBrown's TC quest is a positive for horseracing!
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Kentucky takes step to regulate steroids
</TD></TR><TR><TD></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>[FONT=Arial, Helvetica]The complicated nature of regulating anabolic steroids in racehorses came to light May 20 when discussion among members of the Kentucky Equine Drug Research Council and others seemed to indicate the easiest route is an all-out ban on the substances.
