Testing the Drug Tests

There was a front page article in Thursday's New York Times about the failure of Olympic drug tests to detect all the substances that athletes use to enhance their performance. One substance in particular, recombinant human erythropoietin, known as EPO, always managed to go undetected.

My point is this. If drugs can slip through the cracks of what is called the "world's toughest anti-doping program" just imagine what is not being detected in the bloodstreams of thoroughbreds in training. The tests used to detect drugs in horses are notoriously unreliable--hence the standard procedure by most trainers to ask for a second reading on a split sample--and my guess is that most of the time horses run on all sorts of illegal cocktails that slip through the cracks.

Which is why a total prohibition on all pharmaceutical substances is needed--and even then will have to be vigilantly enforced. This will cost money and should ideally be part of each racetrack's operating expenditures, and the enforcers should only be federal agents if the government is willing to pay and train them.

I know that the concept of federal enforcement of anything makes some people nervous but I spent the day on airplanes Wednesday traveling to Providence R. I. and back for business and I was actually impressed by the TSA inspectors who all seemed a cut above most of the ones I routinely encounter. Maybe its because they know that flying has become such a hassle that they went out of their way to be nicer, but I think it also might be because they are getting more training and better salaries.

Anyway, all of this on the heels of Steve Asmussen's notification of a drug overage in the filly Timber Trick who broke her maiden at Lone Star Park in Texas on May 10. This time the drug was lidocaine--a local anesthetic. And why does it take so long to get the results? Note the infraction occurred on May 10 and he was officially served notice on June 26.

There are a lot of pieces to the puzzle and it seems to me that you can't fix the whole without first repairing the parts.