EPO - Its devasting consequences

[SleepyFox]

[QUOTE=DickHertz;3737496]
You can have a drug test done, but they won’t test for EPO[/QUOTE]

If EPO is such a big problem where you race, why don’t you and the rest of the “good guys” petition for the option of an EPO test for claims? Sounds like that might be a step in the right direction for y’all. And/or start pushing for at least testing the winners for it.

You know I hear about a lot of OTTB’s with kidney and liver problems, I’ve always wondered what exactly was the culprit or if it was a combination of things.

A lot of legal and otherwise beneficial things can cause kidney and liver problems, so be cautious about assuming it’s all EPO. From what the Midatlantic posters on here say, it sounds like EPO is a problem there, but it’s use isn’t common elsewhere.

[Laurierace]

Penn National has way bigger problems than EPO. Their track is closed more often than its open. When it is open the base can be seen in spots. They need to close down and clean house, again.

[DickHertz]

[QUOTE=gholem;3738603]

And what/where/who has lead you to believe that EPO can be detected for such a long time after injection? Everything I’ve read suggests it is basically out of your system in less than a day and can be detected at trace levels for maybe a couple of weeks at absolute most.

.[/QUOTE]

Because lab testimony from the case between Amy Albright and Charles Town / Penn Gaming stated the trace levels of EPO can be present up to and possibly over a year.

[DickHertz]

@SleepyFox;3738846

If EPO is such a big problem where you race, why don’t you and the rest of the “good guys” petition for the option of an EPO test for claims? Sounds like that might be a step in the right direction for y’all. And/or start pushing for at least testing the winners for it.

Two words…Penn Gaming, key word “gaming”

[caffeinated]

Here’s a good article from The Horse about EPO testing:

http://www.thehorse.com/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=1888

Thought I’d share. I was confused (I had also been under the impression that testing for EPO was really difficult/impossible) so I looked it up.

The tricky thing seems to be that no one knows how long the antibodies stay in the system and it seems to vary between horses. (note: “trace levels” of EPO don’t stay in the system longer than a few days or a week, it’s only the antibodies they can test for, and horses generally need to be given EPO multiple times to develop those antibodies in the first place)

[GollyGee]

Unless things have progressed a long way EPO is very difficult to test for. Since the body naturally makes it unless you have many blood samples from the same horse to prove it has increasing levels the testing won’t work well.
Its the buying of the drug and the prescriptions being written that nail the offenders. Its not something normally prescribed for a horse.
Tracking down thru drug stores/wholesalers is how most get nailed!!

[CarolinaTbreds]

How does the trainer that claimed this horse explain the fact that almost all of his horses run very poorly (he has a 4% win percentage).

I’m not saying that this guys story absolutely couldn’t be true but I take anything I hear from an extremely low percentage trainer with many grains of salt as they’re constantly looking for excuses to give people why they win at 4% and another guy wins at a 30% clip. They love to tell people this guy does this and this guy does that and that’s why they win a lot more races than I do and usually it’s a line of bull.

[DickHertz]

The guy just doesn’t have the stock to compete at Penn National. If you pull the PP’s for all the horses he’s run, you’d see what I’m talking about.

The horse died and received a diagnosis from New Bolton. What does 4% vs. 30% have to do with anything? The guy at 4% isn’t an excuse maker, he is actually a very wealthy man and trains the horses for fun with his girlfriend. He loves horses and the game, he doesn’t make excuses.

[DickHertz]

[QUOTE=GollyGee;3738964]
Unless things have progressed a long way EPO is very difficult to test for. Since the body naturally makes it unless you have many blood samples from the same horse to prove it has increasing levels the testing won’t work well.
Its the buying of the drug and the prescriptions being written that nail the offenders. Its not something normally prescribed for a horse.
Tracking down thru drug stores/wholesalers is how most get nailed!![/QUOTE]

Yeah, that’s what I’ve heard. From what I’ve ascertained, the test they run at Delaware is bull****. At Penn, a couple of trainers have been called in and told IE “this test is cloudy with EPO, stop using it.” Like they’re going to stop using it if they don’t lose the purse (at a minimum).

[gholem]

[QUOTE=caffeinated;3738955]
Here’s a good article from The Horse about EPO testing:

http://www.thehorse.com/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=1888

Thought I’d share. I was confused (I had also been under the impression that testing for EPO was really difficult/impossible) so I looked it up.[/QUOTE]

Thank you for this article, it clears things up. The manufactured form of EPO is the human version and is apparently different enough from the horse version that a horse does produce antibodies for it. And they do stay around a very long time on purpose.

They have to use direct testing in humans because we don’t build up antibodies to our own form of EPO. The direct test isn’t effective for nearly as long which is why most major athletic bodies (cycling and track) require random out of competition testing.

The manufactured version is very slightly different from the natural one, which is why it can stlil be directly tested for.

Another test they used to use in cycling is to simply set a limit on the red blood cell concentration of the blood. Super easy to test. It can also be used to determine if more extensive EPO testing should be done (if the red blood cell concentration is really high.)

[GollyGee]

The testing cost in equines for EPO is about $1500. I just did a quick fact check.
And Dickie I stand behind you statement regarding precentages. If you are a Stephanie Beattie or Scott Lake saddling horses in almost every race @ home base and ship outs of course you have great precentages. How does a trainer w/ maybe 10-15 head or less compete against a whole barn full. For alot of people
just to run to 6th place and get a check is a good night, not having your horse break a leg or worse suffer an expensive career ending injury, is a good night.
Then there are those who just throw caution to the wind, plug in Clem-buterol and spin the roulette they won’t get super tested that night.
Fiddle w/ the Dex dosage etc. Whats 15 days off compared to a check and people who only look @ precentages then throw horses and day money @ you. Its a bump in the road, not a full blown crash n burn.
Then there are those owners who are blinded by a banged tail and fleece covered halters and white paddock bandages. Don’t care about the rampant chemical abuse just want the win and to look impressive.
Ever look on the other side of some famous trainers barns where the not so fancy impressive stakes horse might have stalls, or go to the off track stabling?? Can be an eye opener, wall runners, weavers, cribbers, diggers, just plain nuts lame skinny burn-outs.
The more you saddle the bigger your chances will be, and if you play w/ EPO and have owers who don’t cringe @ vet bills you have the odds stacked in your favor.
Its even harder to imagine in this game that you can drop a $25K allowance horse in for $5K and wipe the competition off the board. Just for a win photo.
In no other arena can you run your competitor up and down the scale. Like taking and Olympic show jumper to a 2ft jumper class.
There are non rules in this game that go way beyond the imagination.
But there are so many trainers looking for those high precentages to attract the client w/ deep pockets.
Don’t wind me up I could spin this stuff all night n day.
Funny thing is I do NOT own a single running horse and do Not work @ track or train race horses.

[SEPowell]

[QUOTE=DickHertz;3737496]
You can have a drug test done, but they won’t test for EPO[/QUOTE]

What a bummer. I hate epo.

Why aren’t they using the test developed in 2006?

[DickHertz]

[QUOTE=SEPowell;3740156]
What a bummer. I hate epo.

Why aren’t they using the test developed in 2006?[/QUOTE]

Because they don’t care !

It took a baseball scandal for them to realize steroids have no place in racing so who knows what it will take for them to tackle EPO.

[FairWeather]

I’m not doubting the diagnosis, but just questioning how they tested. If EPO could be tested effectively, lots of folks would be up shits creek.
IMHO EPO is one of the biggest threats to racehorses, and I would LOVE to see it eradicated, I just don’t think the testing is significant enough to catch the ass’s who are doing it.

There are several at Charles Town that I am certain are EPO users, but know they’ll never be caught until the testing becomes significant enough to detect without a doubt.

I’ve also had a horse go through withdrawal from EPO and it’s awful. My vets told me literally “he’ll live, or he’ll die, and there is nothing you can do about it”. He was so thin I had to keep a sheet on him at all times for fear of being called into the authorities, despite feeding him 4 times a day. He was lethargic, depressed and anorexic. It took nearly a year to get him right again. AWFUL AWFUL stuff.
He did live, but has had lasting immune issues.

Not that this is any kind of proof, but A trainer friend at Charles Town had an owner claim a nice filly from the person I believe had this original horse (in the first post–the EPO giver if i’ve done my research correctly). Within two weeks, the horse was on it’s way to completely crashing, lost a ton of weight and looked awful. Trainer let owner know the horse was done and it would take a year to get her right, knowing what the issue was, (3 yo sound filly). So she’s sitting in a field somewhere right now where she’ll remain for the rest of the year.
People who use EPO are butchers and absolutely do not care about animals.

[DickHertz]

I know the same people at Charles Town you are referring to Fairweather. They use the Canadian version of EPO because it, for some reason, isn’t detectable at all right now with racehorses.

I thought for a brief period of time that the Congressional hearings might scare some jurisdictions into getting real tough with drugs, but most just did “something” to show they are trying. Unfortunately, I think it’s going to take a whistle blower or footage of what happens during withdrawl to just get the process started. Racing has shown that, except for a couple of jurisdictions, they are are content with the status quo.

Why can the higher % trainers at Penn get multiple positives this year for Clen Buterol and never get a 1 day suspension? Just doesn’t make sense.

The person you are referring to, the owners always want to claim their horses and they just don’t understand how it works - you can go with them and win races at the expense of every horse you own or you can try to play it right and hopefully make some money. I just get irritated because a lot of owners with them turn a blind eye and just think the trainers are excellent conditioners. Don’t get me wrong, there are dozens of high % trainers who I believe do it right, but there are about 5-6 who run in the Mid-Atlantic I know cheat. You just simply can’t move horses up the way they do by changing their feed and rubbing them more…nobody rubs horses more than I do and you can’t move a horse up 20 lengths and five class levels with just TLC. When we claim them we take x-rays, pull blood, and do everything possible to make the horse better, but you can’t make a horse go from a 40 beyer to a 75 like some trainers do. Obviously, there are times when some people don’t pull blood on their horses and they miss something, but that is not all that common. Makes me want to just keep a couple of horses of my own to train for fun and forget trying to make a career of it. If these drug issues continue, I’m guessing I’m not going to be the only one to step away from racing.

[SleepyFox]

[QUOTE=GollyGee;3740084]
Don’t wind me up I could spin this stuff all night n day.
Funny thing is I do NOT own a single running horse and do Not work @ track or train race horses.[/QUOTE]

Okay, I’ll bite. So, how did you gain the knowledge to speak with authority on the subject then?

[SleepyFox]

[QUOTE=DickHertz;3741087]
Because they don’t care !

It took a baseball scandal for them to realize steroids have no place in racing so who knows what it will take for them to tackle EPO.[/QUOTE]

Please excuse my ignorance, but what have the horsemen in your jurisdiction done to to try to get EPO testing performed? As have been posted on this thread, other jurisdictions test for EPO, so it’s certainly not unprecedented. And, the tracks do have an interest in testing because it is in their best interest to provide as fair of a product as possible to the horseplayers.

[GollyGee]

[QUOTE=SleepyFox;3741861]
Okay, I’ll bite. So, how did you gain the knowledge to speak with authority on the subject then?[/QUOTE]

I do track lay-ups and see the end results, have a very good friend who is vet @ the track and bigger training center, have a wonderful farrier who does race horses.
I am at the tracks alot picking up and returning lay-ups as well as post surgical rehabs.Having lunch shopping w/ the girls enlightening.
Keeping my mouth shut eyes and ears wide open.
Two of my friends train as well. They run @ diffrent track and train @ diffrent locations in 2 seperate states so I hear scuttle coming and going.
I also buy and re-make OTTB’s into show horses about 10-12 a year, so drug withdrawl, ulcers,stall vices, bad shoeing, over use of joint injections, wind operations etc. are all things I need to be very current on to make the wisest purchase choice, ask all the right questions and know who to buy from and who to run from.