And Who Wants Revenge Now?

Nothing new in Joe Drape's fabulous article from the October 6 New York Times, other than the fact that when money enters the picture, veterinarians begin to spill the beans about just how much medication is really being used along the back stretches of North American race tracks.

In case you missed the piece, it is about the fact that IEAH Stables, which owns 50% of I Want Revenge (the horse that was scratched from the 2009 KY Derby the morning of the race) is suing the other 50% stakeholder, David Lanzman, for failing to disclose the extent of the horse's injury. Lanzman, of course, says the bad ligament was found the morning of the Derby.

It gets interesting when veterinarians who treated I Want Revenge prior to that fateful morning, reveal that the horse was given what Drape calls the equivalent of "new transmission fluid" two times well before the Derby. The Times reports that I Want Revenge was being treated with "antibiotics, synthetic joint fluid and corticosteroids" well before the first Saturday in May.

None of this is new, of course, but it points once again to the fact that horses are being asked to literally risk their lives, by running in compromised health, at the hands of their caretakers. Legal or not, as Drape reports, "there is a consensus among equine researchers and surgeons that legal medications and cortisone shots, over time, leave a horse vulnerable to a catastrophic breakdown."

Contrast the US figures for racehorse fatalities: 1.47 per 1,000 starts for synthetic tracks and 2.03 per 1,000 starts for dirt tracks, with those from England: .8 to .9 per 1,000 starts, and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to make the connection. Medications for racehorses are all illegal in England; they race on the proverbial grass and oats.

It will never stop unilaterally until all medication is banned. And that will probably never happen because with gambling coming to racetracks, the purse money is just too good to pass up.

See what happens when money becomes part of the picture. . .