the galah

Reading about hair testing. It seems it has its limits. It doesn't detect recent use.Normally they say it takes at least 10 days to show in hair. So as well as being more expensive,you can see why they do urine and blood. As to the original topic. The bute positive by the telfer team. The amount of bute given to a horse will decrease by 50% on average every 7.22 hours. Each horse metabolises at a different speed,some may be as fast as 5 hours and some as slow as 9 hours,but the average is 7.22 hours. So by the end of day one,90% has been metabolized and by the end of day 2 only 1% of the original dose remains. So if a horse is given the recommended dose he should not be returning a positive above the threshold level around 2 days, long before the withholding time which is 9.8 days. Then there is also a measurement uncertainty level which labs factor in to cover a horse that metabolizes it slowly. Again,with that measurement uncertainty factored in,even a slow metabolizing horse should be under the threshold level around 2 days after treatment. Also the levels in the horse include all its tissue,not just the bloodstream so in effect the bloodstream level should be slightly lower. So really theres no excuses for a horse to be presented to race with bute above the threshold level if the withholding time had been adhered to.

By the way chief,i see you sort of answered my question with your reply. Hopefully your right and they can always detect it that way. It would be interesting to know what % of tests in victorian gallops racing are done on hair compared to urine and blood. And what about nz,what % ,.i guess they would only do that if they had intelligence or a positive from urine or blood. They should be transparent about stuff like that. I would imagine ,given the higher cost,the % for hair testing would be very low It all seems like doing something after the fact. If they really want to catch cheats,in my opinion they should do more out of competition testing. I have always thought they should be working more closely with customs as well.But they don't seem to bother doing that. Personally i think recentlythere has been a shift and some who are employed by the riu are actually keen to catch cheats,not everyone though . And i think HRNZ isn't on the same page and would rather they didn't,especially anyone high profile. I think its nearly always been like that.

They said it was because they had washed the curtains and the thermal lining stuck to them. You would know more about that type of stuff with your property background. I'm with you though. I think it was mould as it was black and the previous tenant didn't open his windows and we noticed they dried the washing inside.people should air their house shouldn't they. More healthy that way. I guess it pays to check the curtains beforehand like you mention. I Did find a product that removes mould from curtains. Only $70.made in nz.

Talking about testing.Not horse related,but not that long ago we rented a house that appeared it may have mould on the back of some curtains when we moved in. A nice house,but hadn't noticed the back of the curtains. Anyway,the real estate lady said they had been told it wasn't mould,even though they agreed it looked like mould.So i did my own inquiries. I found to do the proper test for mould would cost me over $2000. That curtains aren't covered in the tenancy act according to the tenancy tribunal lady and the healthy homes people said that wasn't their area of expertise. Luckily the real estate people agreed to replace the curtains but i found it all a bit strange and seemed to be a loophole to expect a tenant to have to pay such high testing costs to prove mould.

I haven't been able to find anything specifically about that or what people or trainers do to avoid detection of that method,but maybe they should focus on hair testing more.All thats a bit over my head. it obviously would be an expensive process.

So say your a trainer, or say you were a bloodstock agent on the client list of the recent performance enhancing dope pusher in the usa and made regular trips to where many of his other clients were,or say you were an owner associated with a stable,or a combination of these Your saying every time they travel overseas, they are searched at the airport or mail they may have sent to themselves or an intermediary person is searched by customs. Who are you kidding.You know that happening is very rare. No i haven't contradicted myself. As far as links,i don't know how to post them.Just google it . Many there .the most recent one i read was from about 4 years ago. If you insist it can be detected at least a month after use like you say it can,then how about you post the link to that. i don't think that exists.

Yes ,i have assumed guilt.Its like getting caught for drink driving. Theres the same assumption of guilt as test results are pretty straight forward. Just googled it and it comes up for sale on line,mostly overseas gyms and places that sell body builder products. Read some of the body building chat sites and they talk about the high it gives users,that the sense of well being is unreal,that they feel a million bucks,etc. From the studies i have read,after use it only is testable for days,not weeks like you suggest. Also depends on whether the horse is treated with something else to help limit the time its testable. The best way to test is out of competition testing. Thats how they caught the trainer of regazzo mach. He was using a different steroid. Also ,depends on the type and capabilities of the testing to uncover it. To avoid detection and still gain benefits,its used in pre training to gain muscle mass which will be retained for a period of time after steroid use is discontinued.Thats why out of competition is so important. They should be focusing on out of competition in nz more,instead of using resources to target people who obviously don't give their horses anything.They should be doing regular out of competition testing at stables that have had positives in the last 5 years. The theory you have about no one off/top up treatments. Why would a user not do that if they believe that it is not testable after just a few days.

I don't need to google again. I never mentioned one shot,so don't know why you suggest i did.. If they are going to use performance enhancers,then i'm sure they would have taken advice as to how to use them to get the best effects. Obviously given the positives,they got the testable time frame wrong. Anabolic steroids are used to increase the bodies natural rate of building muscle and in turn fat burning capabilities when adhering to a healthy exercise and diet regimen. So when anabolic steroids are used with a healthy body,their body will use the hormones to increase their weight through muscle gain,thus improvung performance. I think the trainers concerned don't treat their horses with the respect they should. i goggled the harness trainer gammalite mentioned,Mark reed who trained regazzo mach.He was found to have used a different anabolic steroid on Regazzo mach.That was after out of competition testing,not race day testing. Gammalite said they paid a big price for him. Now hes stood down from raving for 12 months. People shouldn't have any sympathy for the owner of regazzo mach. He had his horse trained by someone with a terrible record. I googled Mark reed and he has been put out several times over the last 2 decades for milkshaking both harness and gallopers as well 3 times being put out for his own drug use for the likes of meth.Twice in the last 5 years. And that is who the owner of regazzo mach sent his his horse to. What a mug. Mark Reed actually is what i believe is a typical case.I believe the trainers who use performance enhancers in the past, will very likely be looking to gain an edge in the future,irrespective of whether they have been caught previously.And trainers who take drugs themselves,whether it be meth or mdma or whatever,are most likely to view the use of drugs on their horses as being acceptable.

Google is a great thing if you want to learn about this stuff. After doing a bit of research my take is these trainers are highly likely cheats who will access and use the latest designer drug that they think they can get away with. Why would a feed merchant have any of this stuff and why if they did would they put it in the feed they sell. That explanation makes no sense at all to me. I don't profess to be an expert on all the different things that some steroids metabolise into when put into a horses or humans body,but what is logical is the drugs that were detected in the system of the 5 trainers horses who returned positives,were designed to enhance performance and build muscle and increase strength. Formestane has been recognised as a performance enhancer and been banned from human sports for some time and its use in equine sports has been detected in the last decade or so and banned in equine sports as well due to integrity being compromised. It seems formestane rapidly breaks down in the body, it metabolises into several different things,one of which is hydroxytesterone which is an anabolic androgenic steroids(AAS). AAS make the body build muscle and increase strength. Anabolic steroids can have long lasting performance enhancing effects while no longer being detectable in testing. Studies have shown the use of formestane is best detected by testing for hydroxytesterone and one study said can be detected up to 34 hours after use. These type of steroids are associated with delayed development of epiphyseal growth plates in standardbreds which are crucial in bone growth and elongation. There use has potential long term risks of injuries in training and racing. Obviously if used in standardbreds,trainers may have to use things like pain inhibitors to allow horses to race and be trained while having soreness. These trainers deserve to be disqualified for some time in my opinion.

My thoughts?No one uses a known detectable drug. They only use drugs that they believe aren't detectable or believe will have left the horses system enough to not show up in testing,but still can enhance performance.E.g. epo Your comments about the control sample appear correct.I bet someone was relieved they got that done. I think gammalite has very likely hit the nail on the head when he has said ........might be the same sort of stuff doing the rounds. History shows when you get clusters of these things,they often can be traced back to one particular source.

yes a good summary of what happened. Bdjoe too good. The Telfers have him back to his best. 3.11 a very good time from a stand first up. my tip All americanlover went a nice race but just worked a bit hard when taken on early. Johnny cox continued his good form when harold smith was too good. Hes a very fast horse with speed to match all but muscle mountain and may be able to sneek a place in some of those better trots,although may need another season to get used to the best. Beach ball was a good win. He looked the one but i wondered whether he would back up on his hard run last week,but kevin chapman seems to condition them to be able to do that. Tokyo rose showed big improvement in her race,but maybe the field may not have been as strong. Still she won easily.black pearl and cyren shard went well in that race given the runs they had. Now i'm going to watch and see if olivia thornley can get With Style off the fence to win the last. An entertaining nights racing it has been.

Yes a nice john dunn drive and aardiebythehill toughed it out very well.. Rather unfortunate that the starter let them go when midnight dash was in the process of swinging side on. i think horses that do that just before they start,they often keep going sideways and that is exactly what midnight dash did and Muscle mountain copped a very bad check. rather unfortunate,but it happens sometimes.

A wilson house ,wake me when its over drive in race 3 tonight on johnny mac.. I wasn't on,so had a chuckle,but he must be getting close to being ready to let loose? Problem is he just killed any next up dividend by coming home too quick and you still can't be sure what he will do next time. Oh well.

The hrnz website advises that the gore all weather track is back in action later this month. As far as racetracks go,gore's is pretty and has a relaxed feel to it. I think its a good thing they can race there again as apart from re engaging the locals,it provides a track with a different style of racing and suits horses who have good manners and can get around the smaller tracks well. Also,importantly,in the past if you wanted to find a track which had a welcoming attitude to visiting trainers and also how they did their best to cater for anyone who was looking to train a horse, then gore was such a place. Sometimes some racetracks are run by interest groups who while well meaning,often cater to their own personal interests when it comes to the management of land and facilities and put self interest ahead of the sport and ahead of supporting those wishing to find somewhere to train. Gore previously was run how racetracks should be run. To promote harness racing and participation in the sport. Hopefully things are still the same now as they were not so long ago when they used to race all their meetings on their home track. The hrnz decision to change to allow racing at gore i think is a good one.

I see the terms of the bonus relating to nz bred stallions includes clauses "A breeder or breeding entity ceases to exist if they have had no service attempts in the previous 5 years on the hrnz infohorse system". Also "if a breeder or breeding entity ceases to exist there will be no further bonus paid". So from that i take it that the breeders of nz bred horses that earn stakemoney this season, will have to have bred from a mare in the previous 5 seasons. So if you bred a nz bred horse say with the wife in 2017 and it earnt say $20,000 this season,then in theory if you and the wife had bred another horse in nz in the last 5 years you would get 10% of stakes won by the horse you bred in 2017,in other words $2,000 (or $1000 for you and $1000 for the wife).That seems straight forward enough. However,what isn't clear from the terms is for example whether the horse you bred from in the last 5 years was one that was just in your name and not jointly with your wife. Given that is a different entity,does that mean you get no bonus.Or do you still get the 50% share of the bonus the 2017 horse you bred has earned? Given the just published terms and conditions say a breeding entity has ceased to exist if they weren't the ones breeding in the last 5 years,so that appears to mean no you won't get the bonus?

Read what the above actually says. "Clear results for prohibited substances'. It does Not say that the results found no trace of the use of prohibited substances. Theres clearly a difference. Its all in the wording to create a perception that they want people to have. My conclusion from reading the press releases was that prohibited substances may have been found,but at levels below the threshold that would make them illegal. If they truly wanted to be transparent and stop speculation,they would have released the results of the toxicology tests they undertook.Sometimes its more about what information they have that isn't disclosed.

Is that the horse nathan williamson trained. how is he going in australia?

i had to look up colander. yes my mum did have one of those. I would class him as the nearest thing to an investigative racing journalist i know. I have to admit when it comes to the telfer case he does seem to have speculated a bit there. But hey hes a punter so i guess thats just in his nature. But just as he may be speculating as to a link in the cause of the telfer racehorse deaths,so are you when you say there was no evidence of bute. The official reports i have just re read don't state that. They do not state there was or wasn't the presence of bute in the horses system. Why did they not publish the results of the tests they did in full to discount that. The failure of the RIU and HRNZ to be totally transparent in the publishing of the results of their investigation has created the speculation we currently talk about. Their brief press statements around the horses deaths could be taken two ways. Archie butterfly is not at fault for their lack of transparency. So we will have to agree to disagree about that chief.

Fair comment about vets.They do their best and have the welfare of those they treat as the top priority. But i think lines can become blurred sometimes when there is pressure placed on vets by trainers to give their horses the latest legal treatment which may enhance performance.Also i think there is a prestige involved if you are a vet for a leading trainer,and with that comes added pressures. Also i think there occasionally have been vets who have shown a greater willingness to provide their knowledge on some matters to high achieving trainers,than they have other lesser known trainers. Sometimes that may be based on certain trainers being very good customers turnover wise,so thats understandable,but occasionally sometimes its not and there may be a little discrimination that has gone on.But hey thats life and business i suppose. The best vets i have known,(i haven't known that many),are in my opinion those who treat every person and every horse they see the same,in other words do whats best for the horse with both its short term and long term health and performance in mind and give honest assessment of that when required,irrespective of how good the trainer or horse is. But vets also rely on honest information from trainers and trainers are often under pressure to achieve short term results,so sometimes they aren't always totally 100% honest given the pressure they are placed under from owners. Trainers can often feel a lot of pressure to achieve results for their owners. Its a business where there is often high stress and pressure levels for those involved,which is often how a horses health may occasionally be compromised or trivialised.Owners place a lot of pressure sometimes.Its not all straight forward.

I've no idea what peter profit has written and i had thought you had earlier stated that you weren't a subscriber, not sure whether you changed that,but my point is unless people know what hes written in full then who knows whether there is any merit in it. Hes an investigative racing journalist and its hard to think of anyone in nz who could be called that. So i'm not commenting on what hes written,but you have raised the topic of the recent positive returned by a runner from the telfer barn. Heres the thing. The first time i have read anything in nz about the telfer positive was in the RIU decision on their website yesterday,regarding the horse concerned disqualification. Why is it peter profit had a headline about the Telfer positive on his website several weeks before anyone else knows of it? Why are nz racing authorities trying to hide such things by giving them as little exposure as possible? I had a bit of spare time and did a bit of research just for interests sake. The drug the horse returned a positive for (phenylbutazone and oxyphenbutazone )has an interesting history. It was first developed for use on humans in 1949 as an anti arthritic drug which gave pain relief and was an anti inflammatory,but by 1986 was banned from use in humans in most western countries because of its side effects. One of the main concerns was the drugs effect on bone marrow which resulted in some patients who had been prescribed it,(over a period of time or elderly),not being able to make enough new blood cells for the body to work normally. While this was relatively rare, that and other side effects resulted in its ban on use in humans. Seemingly one of the reasons it took so long to see the bad side effects was because the testing trials were done on animals like rats and rabbits. With rats and rabbits and horses too,it metabolizes and is excreted 12 times faster than in humans which lead to misleading models for humans. Vets started using it in the 1950's.it was considered cheap and easy to administer and early on considered highly effective with minimal side effects for treating the symptoms of things like lameness. it wasn't until 1967 that the first vet study on possible effects was officially published. The 1968 kentucky derbywinner returned a positive to it after it was banned. The ban was lifted in 1974.In 1986 13 of the 16 kentucky derby runners had been administered it then it was banned again shortly after as they were getting too many law suits filed,for example jockeys being injured when their mounts fell when breaking a leg while running on the pain killer. Then it got a lot of publicity when it was administered to a horse called wide awake who collapsed and died on the 3rd day(show jumping) of the badminton horse trials in 1976.Many argued it couldn't be linked to that but thresholds came in and then they totally banned it from that horse sport in 1993,lifted the ban in 2009 then banned it from use prior to competitions again the following year in 2010. So in horse racing its still allowed and has threshold levels and its common for vets to prescribe. They say to stop using it 10 days out. Apparently regular use can produce a cummulative effect on the readings if tested. So whats all that mean. Well we all know all drugs can have negative side effects. Doctors weigh up the positive side effects against the negative side effects when prescribing anything. Vets do the same. But are vets or horse trainers actually placing enough weight on the negative effects some drugs they prescribe and trainers use? Are some trainers and vets prioritising financial gain and are they sometimes not giving the same thought and respect to their racehorses as they would a human? Is it ok that this happens.

Friday nights field certainly looks a race worth watching and a field where there will be no short priced favorite. In fact the whole night the betting fields are pretty even and there seems plenty of horses around for this time of year. Methven also has big fields and some nice betting races. I see last weeks turnover at addington was good and you would think this friday may be even better. The new brighton cup looks like it has many chances and most likely will come down to who gets the early lead and who gets to trail. For me All american lover looks ideally placed and hopefully can begin as well as she normally does. Her driver johnny cox is currently driving with good confidence. Perhaps the main danger could be her stablemate b d joe,although he was quite inconsistent at the end of his last campaign.At his best he would deserve to be favorite,but i still fancy all american lover myself. Shes currently paying $8ff and $2.80 a place which seems about the right price to consider a wager,especially a place. Muscle mountain at $1.40 seems a fair price. Horses like him seem to suit being on the ur so he should go away no problem,which means $1.40 seems a reasonable bet.

Just read his hearing decision on the RIU website. It said because he had a clear record and admitted the charge he got 2 days off,so i assume the admitting the charge saved him one day suspension. My opinion is similar to brodies. i.e.you see others do the same thing sometimes and not be charged. Still he did plead guilty. As far as the 6 day suspension including every canterbury and otago race meeting between yesterday and the 24th of september,well that seems strange given Mr clark has only had 11 drives so far this year.They said they factored in the 2 year old having broken its pedal bone 5 or 6 months ago.From which you can only conclude,that to include every upcoming meeting, they must have believed the 2yo trotter was to be given 6 starts in the next 3 weeks. How come other drivers can't say that when their penalties are considered?

Some may not be fans of mr clarks driving sometimes,but it seemed a bit of a stretch to see him suspended for 6 days for his drive on his 2 year old trotter imperial command yesterday. Seemingly he diminished his horses chances by pressing on and trying to take the lead.Of all the drives hes done,they seem to have picked on one that looked nothing much out of the ordinary to me. The strange thing is Mr Clark plead guilty,so with the benefit of hindsight must have agreed with the stipes. And the penalty seemed a little unusual as well.He was suspended until 24 september,which they said was 6 days. In the past they have based the length of suspensions on the number of recent drives for other drivers. For example an amateur recently got a 3 month suspension for a 6 day penalty. Mr Clark has only had 11 drives this year.

Obviously a very good horse is the winner,but personally i think it would have been better for harness racing if the grant dixon trained leap to fame had won.The reason i say that is the horse performs at the same level every time he lines up,as do nearly all horses trained by dixon who run around on the queensland circuit. I think hes in the mould of top horses from the past,and people can relate to him better and can see if you get a great horse and train it well, you can still win the big races. I think with an emma stewart trained runner winning,and winning quite easily the average person involved in harness racing can't relate to that. Encipher obviously a top mare,but if you watched its recent races ,while winning,you couldn't say you could have predicted last nights performance.Its last start it beat a top field in victoria,but only just won after getting the perfect run and it was a blanket finish with about 6 horses within a length.Thats why it paid $30 last night. Sure it was driven by brilliant driver and the trainers obviously are tops,but it looked primed for the night . The thing about it was how after the race it looked like it wasn't even tired. so thats my opinion.

According to the hrnz website,the betting figures for last week saw a change in the recent pattern,just to confuse things a bit. Addington on friday night,even with its run of hot favorites,had a higher turnover last week when compared to rangiora on sunday. In fact rangiora on the sunday,with similar fields to ashburton ,couldn't even turnover as much in 10 races as ashburton did with 8 the week before.