very good read.
a couple of thoughts be me
“If you lose money in a gambling enterprise you automatically assume you didn’t lose because you are unlucky or you made a poor selection off the program, you lost because somebody cheated.”
I can just speak for myself. Me as the handicapper asks that if you are going to do something, do it consistantly. if you are going to cheat, if you are cheating, as long as the outcome is the same I'm good.
but my conern about drugs is moreso the bred itself. making horses walking cocktails is not good for the bred, it's not good for anyting in the long run, and we have horses that because of the dependance on legal an dillegal drugs, drugs you have to have out the horses system by X date, drugs that help with breathing, whatever, we are basically useless outside the united states, which on the higher level of things, limits what a horse can do.
“There’s a saying amongst trainers sometimes if you are winning at less than 10 per cent you can’t train but if you’re above 30 per cent you’re cheating.”
that's just silly.
Through the first nine months of 2007, more than 9000 drug tests were performed on horses competing on the Commonwealth’s eight racetracks, only 37 of those tests came back positive. Which means more than 99.97 per cent of the horses tested came back clean. The problem is the even small numbers of positive tests do the sport major damage. Nuckols says, “When those come up I think it’s bad for the industry as a whole and unfortunately some very public people that train very big stables have had positive convictions.”
here is the million dollar question:
does that mean that there are no drugs in horse racing, or that trainers just are better at not getting caught, then drug labs are at testing.
I can tell you from a human persepctive, drug tests are a waste of time unless youa re doing a hair or blood test. a piss test can be passed by anyone with any resemblance of intelligence with 24 hours of notice. if you get caught with dirty pee, it doesn't mean you were doing drugs (it does), it means you were not smart enough to not get caught.
out of all (human) drug tests, 1 out of 10 are false positives and 1 out of 4 are false negatives. that is a verified fact. meaning out of 4 tests that are done and come back negative for drugs, the person was really using, he just found a way to mask
is it different for horses?
also, I know when I complain about drugs, it's not just the ones that are illegal. dependance on any drug is not good for horses long term
