Hard to say because when steroids were legal we didn’t have the kind of ulcer medications or knowledge that we do now.
I would hope they would have tried everything on the market for ulcers first, if that was indeed the real reason for having the horse on them.
Wasn’t there sone research done on the effect of some steroids on bone density some years back? Inspired by an unusual number of breakdowns in big races???Cant remember…
I used Winstrol on one Paint gelding leaning towards TB type years ago, maybe 82. Maybe 6 at the time, always had trouble holding weight, not a great eater. Think I gave him two shots a couple of months apart as vet advised. It worked. Very well. Much better eater, held his weight from then on. Got a little studdy but that passed by fall and he continued to be a much easier keeper and hold condition on even a heavy show schedule, never needed to repeat the shot.
Am a little surprised at the trainer’s comments regarding being held out of the race…know it’s a business but…
I always thought it was odd that we could pump horses with as many steroids as we wanted and that was fine but god forbid they got a tab of bute on race day while pro athletes could get shot up with pain killers at any point during the actual game but never have a steroid even for legit medical reasons.
I think some common sense would be nice but the problem with that is people find a way to abuse any policy they can come up with.
Even Paulick is chiming in. This gelding was artfully named because inevitably everyone involved will become uncomfortable. Poor DVM Rick Arthur is being entangled in the drama by nice guy Ron Ellis. It would have been nice if this had been a short story but when Ray starts writing about the next chapter one wonders what other mischief awaits.
http://www.paulickreport.com/news/ray-s-paddock/yet-another-chapter-masochistic-saga/
Splitting with Team Shah was probably not how Baffert wanted to finish out 2016, but on the brighter side losing big spender Shah was not as bad as comatose Mariah Carey finishing out 2016 with a career ending performance on New Year’s eve. Bob still has great horses in the barn while Mariah has lost both her memory and her talent.
Woops! Meant the last post for the Baffert/Shah thread. At my age getting ahead of myself can’t be good. Sorry. Impossible lately to correct posts on COTH lately. As an aside, I guess the other bright side for Baffert is that he doesn’t have Masochistic in his barn.
"In hindsight, there is a pretty clear pattern to Masochistic’s vet’s list history and his race record. The gelding was placed on the list for 60 days for medication on Aug. 29, 68 days before his Breeders’ Cup runner-up finish. He was also placed on the list twice last spring: on April 4 and on May 2, the latter being 67 days before winning the Grade 2 Pat O’Brien. Furthermore, Masochistic was on the list for 60 days for medication April 15, 2015, 73 days before winning the G1 Triple Bend…
According to a search conducted on a website maintained by InCompass Solutions (a Jockey Club company), 34 Thoroughbreds were added to the vet’s list in California during this time with 60-day holds for medication use. According to Mike Marten, a spokesman for the California Horse Racing Board, this designation would only be used for Thoroughbreds receiving anabolic steroids.
See the full list here.
Masochistic was one of three horses appearing on the list three times last year, and one of a total of five listed horses in the care of trainer Ron Ellis when recorded. (By our count, only Peter Miller had more horses on the list during this time, with a total of nine.) A majority – eighteen – have not started since they reportedly received steroids, though in some cases, they have not yet been released from the list.
Some trainers waited as long as six or seven months after the anabolic steroid administration to run back the horse in question. Others, like Ellis, cut it closer; seven started back less than 80 days after getting a steroid, and one horse even started back 63 days after administration. A search of ThoroughbredRulings.com suggests this start did not result in a violation for a positive post-race test."
Ron Ellis does not have a big stable - only 116 starts last year.
Ellis (and any horses he was training can’t be transferred to a different trainer for the purpose of running in the BC) and Masochistic have been banned from BC 2017…
http://www.bloodhorse.com/horse-racing/articles/218955/breeders-cup-bans-ellis-masochistic-in-2017
Ouch, but good for them.
Interesting that Masochistic specifically was banned - not like it is the horse’s fault! Wonder if it has to do with what Palm Beach posted above, that he has been administered the steroids multiple times.
Any other Ellis trainee, how far in advance of the BC would they have to be transferred to a different trainer to be eligible?
Agree with findeight. They will just monitor the list of horses he has at the track.
I doubt very much anyone will monitor anything this year other than graded stakes winners from the Ellis barn and the only one that fit that description in 2016 was Masochistic. The BC sure wasn’t risking much by taking this courageous stand.
Out of curiosity, what happened to Pletcher after Wait A While and Life At Ten? What about Doug O’Neill’s issues or the spate of dead horses for Baffert or Asmussen’s PETA problems?
I’m sure glad racing is throwing the book at Ron Ellis. Sends a powerful message.
Everyone who enters a horse in the BC knows the penalties for getting a bad test which includes being barred the next year. It isn’t “racing” doing anything, it is the BC enforcing their rules.
It’s not the horse’s fault but but setting the horse down gets prevents owners from just moving the horses to somebody else who just might do the same thing and hope they won’t get caught. Like the show horses, owners fund it, discipline wont have the desired effect unless you turn off the tap.
Owners and ownership groups aren’t that naive and expect results.
Will everyone just step back a minute and look at what actually happened? Up to the point of entry, Ellis was entirely within the rules. You don’t let the Equine Medical Director know what you are using and when you are using it if the intention is to cheat. Was he within the spirit of the rules? That’s debatable but there is no penalty for that. If the CHRB wants to change the rules, that’s what they have to do but they can’t punish someone for making them look bad when he was following rules that they set out.
So a trainer who was following the rules and whose horse tested for a trillionth of a gram of a substance that the CHRB and the Equine Medical Director knew all about before the BC and who ran well inside the guidelines they adopted and put forward has now lost a $250,000 purse, a year of having any decent horses in his barn, tremendous earnings potential of his best horse and probable suspension (and this is a guy who has never been suspended and NO ONE who knows him thinks of him as a cheater).
Gives these guys in California tremendous incentive to follow the rules because I can’t imagine how much worse it could get if he just used some unreported cocktail. In the meantime, Avila who had the same horse and had an Acepromazine positive was assessed a small fine and a 30 day suspension (and there is no way anyone confuses Ellis with the Witch Doctor).
Again what happened to Pletcher and is it commensurate with this?
Pronzini, I wholeheartedly agree. This whole thing stinks.
Pronzoni, I’d be inclined to agree as well. If BC’s intention is steroid free, I’d like to see all states take a 0 tolerance approach.
Ellis knew about the steroids and it sure didn’t sound to me like he tried to hide it. He knew he was rolling the dice that the horse would test clean as he couldn’t get the type of test done in the short amount of time before the race.
I get why BC did what they did and yes, if rules were broken, then penalties should apply.
Either 0 tolerance across the industry or some max minimal amount.
I’m glad to see an organization with the balls to do something. I don’t care who did what to whom; make some rules and have some ethics and stick to them. Ellis was very obviously training the horse on steroids instead of horsemanship and got what he deserved.
Now let’s have all organizations adopt uniform rules and get rid of the localized rules. If a horse is doing that poorly, send him to the farm and give him what he needs to get turned around, but with an eye towards what is in the horse’s best interest, not the purse money, and so he has time to adapt and acclimate and just be a horse, not a money machine. Hang with Momma Nature, she knows best.
[QUOTE=Palm Beach;9006503]
I’m glad to see an organization with the balls to do something. I don’t care who did what to whom; make some rules and have some ethics and stick to them. Ellis was very obviously training the horse on steroids instead of horsemanship and got what he deserved.
Now let’s have all organizations adopt uniform rules and get rid of the localized rules. If a horse is doing that poorly, send him to the farm and give him what he needs to get turned around, but with an eye towards what is in the horse’s best interest, not the purse money, and so he has time to adapt and acclimate and just be a horse, not a money machine. Hang with Momma Nature, she knows best.[/QUOTE]
It seems to me that punishment for drug violations in horse racing is based entirely on to what degree your infraction made the mainstream news and made TPTB look bad (embarrassment) and has nothing to do with actual animal welfare or the integrity of the sport.
Some of the absolutely shadiest individuals skate by for years.
I agree NCRider. This whole thing has a whiff of optics. Ellis is an easy target in part because how many horses and clients does he really have that this affects? The problem is that everything including the steroid he used was entirely legal the way he used it and in the jurisdiction where the horse was training. The CHRB knew about it and by implication sanctioned it. So there should be no punishment for training on steroids --is it fair to give the trainer a double helping of grief if the horse has the poor form to show metabolites after a race of a substance reported to the powers that be under their own rules?
Importantly Ellis hasn’t said he is blameless–he clearly rolled the dice and there is that trainer insurer rule he has to deal with. But if this case does anything, there should be an examination of what we allow horses to train on and how sensitive do we want the post race testing to be. Testing down to picogram levels on legal substances doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. Ironically enough, if you look at the CHRB rules other steroids have nanogram levels over which the horse can not test. This one because it is artificial does not but when the testing gets into trillionths of a gram, it starts to look a little silly frankly except there is nothing funny about the consequences here.
Now if it is mepivicaine or EPO, I’d be the first in line with the pitchfork but there has to be some rationality about traces of legal substances and for that matter slight overages.
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