Chief Stipe

I'll kick this off. First thing I'd change is get rid of any bullshit regulations that make someone like @Karrots think twice about posting sheer positivity anonymously on social media.

I'm a little bit over all the negativity especially the demonisation of excellence. So Harness BOAY'ers what IS wrong with Harness racing in New Zealand? What would you change?

Yep. I'm not getting vaccinated and I'll go to court and fight on the street to stop my child from being vaccinated. Even if she supposedly has the rights to decide herself. I have a really bad feeling about this mass vaccination programme. That is magnified by the fact that I'm not often wrong.

Rule Number(s): 869(2)Following the running of Race 1, the Mid-Winter at Addington (Amateur Drivers) Mobile Race, an Information was filed by Stipendiary Steward, Mr P Williams against Licensed Amateur Driver, Ms S Wigg, alleging a breach of Rule 869(2) in that she used her whip with more than a wrist flicking motion driving ... (Feed generated with FetchRSS)View the full article

Rule Number(s): 869(2)Following the running of Race 1, the Mid-Winter at Addington (Amateur Drivers) Mobile Race, an Information was filed by Stipendiary Steward, Mr P Williams against Licensed Amateur Driver, Ms M McIntyre, alleging a breach of Rule 869(2) in that she used her whip with more than a wrist flicking motion ... (Feed generated with FetchRSS)View the full article

Rule Number(s): 869(2) and Whip and Rein RegulationsFollowing the running of Race 6, the #Completethefleet-Support the Horse Ambulance Trust Pace, an Information was filed by Stipendiary Steward, Mr P Williams against Licensed Open Driver, Mr RE Cameron, alleging a breach of Rule 869(2) in that he used his whip with more than a wrist flicking motion when ... (Feed generated with FetchRSS)View the full article

I tend to agree Curious. Not that I've seen any data but purely from observation. When I look at the longevity of some of the elite horses and the times they can run you'd have to say the breed has improved. However the horse has a fundamental bio-physical-mecahnical issue. Nature never designed it to run fast for so long. Two issues - it's pulmonary system and it's legs. I doubt in 100 years you could breed those flaws out unless you wanted to race Clydesdales. LOL the modern breed would easily outrun any natural predator from the moment it hit the ground!

Well I was going to ask you that but I thought you were agreeing that the breed has been weakened. In my opinion the breed hasn't been weakened but we have bred them to go faster and longer doing something that from a physics perspective they aren't designed to do.

Exactly. Bafferts latest positive was for a legal therapeutic drug at infinitesimal non therapeutic levels let alone performance enhancing. Now Thomarse will come back with the "where there's smoke there's fire" masking argument. Well if the can detect 21 pictograms of a legal medication why can't the detect the same level of something illegal?

Where are the stat's to support that the drop in number of starts per horse is significant AND relates to breeding rather than other factors such as opportunity and handicapping?

You should educate yourself fullstop. You are a typical internet troll where you rely on repeatedly misquoting and misinforming in the vain hope that if you do it often enough someone will believe you. Again misinformation. What do you deem as "sudden"? Breaking a leg, a heart attack or falling over in a box? Why are you asking questions if you don't know the answers? Hint: Don't take up criminal law.

Tell that to Chris Waller and Winx and Verry Elleegant. Or for that matter to Jamie Richards and Melody Belle.

Yes and if the Industry doesn't address these issues then we will find ourselves in a no win situation. Where we can't practise good animal husbandry and open ourselves up to accusations of exploitation and neglect while at the same time publicly exposing ourselves to accusations of drug abuse when raceday positives of no therapeutic or PED value are inevitably found. I have serious doubts that an ex-cop leading the RIU will help let alone put a fire under the long time Industry appointed Chief Vet Grierson.

Really Thomarse. I fully understand what picograms are - however you have no comprehension whatsoever which isn't surprising given your constant posting of crap that shows you don't even understand basic statistics or probability. Hence your failure as a punter and a tipster. Are you for real? You infer you know EVERYTHING about picograms and you post this nonsense? SO there are 50,000 mls of blood circulating in a horse. For arguments sake we'll use 10 picograms of a substance - lets say Morphine. It is circulating in that blood at a concentration of 10 picograms per ml. Who knows what Thomarse is rabbiting on about but let's assume that he is inferring that we should multiply that 10 picograms by 50,000 mls to get the total amount of morphine circulating in the blood in the horse. So 50,000 times 10 = 500,000 picograms. That's 0.0000005 grams! Or 0.0000000005 kilograms of morphine circulating in the blood stream of a 500kg horse. Recommended dosages of analgesic (pain relief) morphine is around 0.22mg/kg. For treating a horse with colic the recommended dose is 22mg per hour for a 450kg horse. At that dosage pain relief lasts for 4 hours. That's 220,000,000,000 picograms or 4,400,000 picograms per ml of blood. (Happy to have these figures challenged by a vet or the RIU but at the end of the day 21 picograms per ml is very very very small). Now Thomarse will have us believe he knows better than ALL the scientists and ALL the vets when he says that 21 picograms per ml or in round figures 0.00000048 of the recommended therapeutic dose had a performance enhancing effect! Dream on idiot! You're an idiot who I wouldn't let near ANY horse! You'd rather a horse was drowning in its own blood?

Yes. The intent of the rules are to stop people cheating or gaining an advantage on raceday by administering an illegal or legal drug. If a legal drug is approved for therapeutic reasons and a positive is returned on raceday then some consideration should be given to what level was detected and whether or not that level was therapeutic or performance enhancing. If the level detected was neither therapeutic or performance enhancing then no advantage was gained. The classic case of that was the recent morphine positive from the Te Akau stable. Not only is morphine a legal therapeutic substance (albeit of limited use) but the administration was agreed by all to be only from environmental contamination and it was at a level that had no therapeutic value (morphine is not a PED). If the racing jurisdictions don't address this issue then we will see more and more positives returned not through deliberate administration but because the levels that can be detected are infinitesimally small. The irony is that 10 years ago the Te Akau positive probably wouldn't have been detectable!!!

I'm sorry @Tesio YOU just don't get it. It isn't black and white nor is today's Zero the same as Zero 5 or ten years ago. Tests today can easily find levels of a substance that weren't close to being detectable previously. For example the PCR test used for Covid-19 return a positive for one molecular size part fragment of the virus. The classic case in NZ was the 2013 Chilcott harness racing positive to Tramadol. Chilcott was taking Tramadol for a back injury - at some stage it appears that going through her work one of her horses was contaminated. The test result was 100 picograms per milliliter (Bafferts positive was 9 picograms). Professor Tobin as the expert witness drew the analogy that 100 picograms/milliliter was the equivalent to 1 second in the life of a person if they lived to be 320 years old! At that level there was zero therapeutic value. The end result was the horse was disqualified and Chilcott fined and ordered to pay costs. The recent Te Akau was a better case of environmental contamination. Again very very low levels of morphine were detected. Levels that were so low that it was agreed that there was no chance of a therapeutic effect at that level. Yet Richards got his first ever positive, a fine and the horse was disqualified losing $40k in stakes and black type. Both these cases highlight that Zero thresholds results in poor justice. Hence with Workplace testing for humans they have a threshold whereby environmental contamination is not an issue even though the result is not zero. You could return a positive to a prohibited substance by having brushed past or been in the company of someone who had used the substance yet you hadn't. Granted in both the above cases the environmental contamination could have been avoided. However in the Oulaghan and Baffert cases they were using legitimate medications to treat their horses. With Baffert the level returned at 9 picograms was nowhere near a level that was performance enhancing let alone therapeutic. Surely in these instances the new Zero shouldn't be Zero. Otherwise you have the media highlighting that the industry is rife with horse drugging and people such as Thomarse bang on about from a point of ignorance for months although in @Thomass's case make that decades.

You have no idea why this horse was named what it was. The fact that you make these inferences about the name disturbingly says more about you than anyone associated with the horse. You certainly have a weird mind.

What about after fast work? Or using supplements that have a preventative property before hard work or racing? No I don't support that nor have a I promoted it. Where have I mentioned "blockers"? Or for that matter medicating for a race? Of the recent Thoroughbred positives mentioned on this forum which one was performance enhancing? I'll answer that for you. NONE! ZIP! NADA! ZERO! Not the Te Akau morphine one, not the Baffert one, not the Oulaghan one. Not only were they not at a level that was performance enhancing they weren't even at a level that was therapeutic!!!!

They haven't eliminated it yet have they.

No they are being given therapeutics to mediate and prevent the inevitable and in the interests of equine health and welfare. As for the general public being informed - yes if it is published in the alarmist way that you @Thomass and the Washington Post it then the public will be alarmed. Hence my opinion that the Feds and the Industry should do something to stop unnecessary publicity that portrays the completely wrong scenario. For example the recent Te Akau positive to morphine publicity was all negative for something that was environmental contamination for a legal therapeutic substance measured at a level that barely registered above zero.

The Washington Post haven't covered themselves in glory recently particularly during the Covid-19 pandemic. As @curious points out with the statistics the article on Baffert is a beat up. Unfortunately people such as yourself @Thomassand the Feds do nothing but fuel the anti-racing brigade. I seriously doubt, unless you are completely ignorant, that you actually have equine welfare at heart let alone horse racing.

Rule Number(s): 340Following the running of Race 1, the ATLAS QUARRIES maiden, Mr Williamson presented an Information alleging that Mr Bishara committed a breach of Rule 340 in that he misconducted himself when instructing Ms T Newman, the Rider of SELVAVERDE trained by Mr Bishara. Rule 340 provides: "A licensed person ... (Feed generated with FetchRSS)View the full article

Rule Number(s): 631(6)(c)Rule 918 of the Rules of Racing enables a Stipendiary Steward to seek a Ruling (where there is no Defendant) from the Judicial Committee on a matter referred to in the Information, because of the following circumstances. Mr Williamson requested that "Race 3 be declared void due to mechanical failure ... (Feed generated with FetchRSS)View the full article

NON RACEDAY INQUIRY RIU V T MUSIC - PENALTY DECISION DATED 17 JUNE 2021 - CHAIR, MR S CHING Created on 18 June 2021 BEFORE A JUDICIAL COMMITTEE HELD AT ADDINGTON IN THE MATTER of the Rules of Greyhound Racing New Zealand IN THE MATTER of Information No. A09914 BETWEEN MR R QUIRK Stipendiary Steward for the Racing Integrity Unit Informant AND MR T MUSIC Secretary/ Manager Respondent Date of Hearing: 17 June 2021 Venue: Addington Raceway Judicial Committee: S Ching (Chair) Present: Mr R Quirk, the Informant Date of Decision: 17 June 2021 PENALTY DECISION OF JUDICIAL COMMITTEE The Charge: [1] Information No. A 09914 alleges that: On the 14th of June 2021, Mr Music, Secretary/Manager of the Christchurch Greyhound Racing Club, failed to scratch ROSIE’S CHOICE from Race 12 after being notified by the trainer, thus causing the runner to be late scratched (no runners were denied a start). The Plea: [2] The Information was served on Mr Music, on the day of the meeting. Mr Music had signed the Statement by the Respondent at the foot of the Information indicating that he did admit the breach of the Rule. Mr Music had also endorsed the Information that he did not wish to be present at the hearing. [3] The charge was heard prior to the scheduled start of the meeting of the NZMTC race meeting at Addington on Thursday 17 September 2021. [4] A letter was provided from General Manager, Mr M Godber, authorising Mr Quirk to lodge an Information pursuant to Rule 66.2(a). The Rule: [5] Rule 62.1.o reads as follows: Any person (including an Official) commits an offence if he/she: (o) has, in relation to a Greyhound or Greyhound racing, done a thing, or omitted to do a thing which is negligent, dishonest, corrupt, fraudulent, or improper, or constitutes misconduct. Submissions of the Informant: Mr Quirk provided written submissions to the hearing as follows: [6] On Monday 14 June 2021 the Christchurch GRC conducted a meeting at Addington Raceway. I was Steward in Charge of this meeting. At 1.48pm Trainer N Wanhalla rang me asking why his dog, ROSIE’S CHOICE, was still shown in the fields as he said he had scratched the runner on Saturday by sending a text to Tony Music. I rang Mr Music who confirmed that he had received the text while he was away from home and had forgotten to enter the scratching in his book when he got home. I then scratched ROSIE’S CHOICE from her race. It should be noted that no runner was denied a start as a result of this error. Decision: [7] As Mr Music had admitted the breach, the charge was found proved. Penalty Submissions: [8] Mr Quirk provided written submissions as follows: Mr Music has a clear record under the Negligence Rule and is a very efficient and capable Administrator. This offence would normally be dealt with as a Minor Infringement, if a Trainer forgot to scratch in time, however the Rule does not refer to Officials, so this must be done by way of an Information. The penalty for Trainers where no dog is denied a start is a fine of $150 and the RIU sees no reason why this penalty should be different from that situation. Reasons for Penalty: [9] The Penalty Guide for an offence under Rule 40.1, where a Trainer fails to scratch in time, under the Minor Infringement Schedule, results in a $150 being imposed in a situation where no dog is denied a start. Where a dog has been denied a start, due to a Trainer omitting to scratch in time, a $300 fine is imposed under the Minor Infringement Schedule. This Committee finds that there are no aggravating factors to consider and agrees with Mr Quirk that this breach can be compared with similar breaches where a Trainer has omitted to scratch on time. The Committee therefore determined that an appropriate penalty in this case was a fine equivalent to what a Trainer would be fined for a breach where a dog was not scratched in time and no dog denied a start, that being a fine of $150. Penalty: [10] Accordingly, Mr Music is fined the sum of $150. S Ching (Chair)

There would not be one horse that does not complete a race that does not finish with either EIPH or is sore. That's a fact for any high performance equine athlete. Especially those that try. Those trainers that use modern methods and technology to prevent, mediate and medicate the inevitable should be applauded not denigrated. The zero threshold today is not the zero threshold of yesterday. The accuracy is to a level that it is returning positives for trainers that are doing the best for their horses. It is legal to administer the majority of drugs that are returning positives during training for therapeutic reasons but there must be a zero threshold on raceday. That level can be so minute that it has no therapeutic value let alone a performance enhancing effect which it never had at full dosage. So who is setting up the "woke" animal rights groups? The trainers who are looking after the health and welfare of their horses using modern treatments and technologies (many the same that Olympic athletes use) or the industry Feds who are too lazy and or incompetent to get pff their arses and address this issue? PS: I'll continue to call Thomarse an idiot as long as he posts crap written in his pseudo juvenile humorist style I.e. the moment he has respect for the forum then he will receive respect in return. That and his banging on about the same crap that he has been banging on about for two decades e.g. Kevin Myers and Trackside.