Testing God - Anatomy of a Breakdown

The Unbelievable’s first race for us was in November of 2006. It was just shy of two years earlier that I was awaiting arrival of the documents concerning the deadly spill at Turfway Park.

At this time, it had been awhile since Jerry had been actively training. That was heartbreaking to me, because that was what he loved to do. And he was so good at figuring out and caring for the horses. But things had changed so radically on the racetrack, and every day we were faced with the living, breathing proof of that downhill slide.

Jerry had begun to feel that if he refused to give the horses that he trained the drugs that so many seemed to be using, his clients were at a serious disadvantage. If his horses were racing steroid-free against horses that had the “benefit” of those drugs, even if it was to their detriment in the long run, he was competing on a very un-level playing field.

And, it was difficult to attract clients when your way of doing things (fixing problems and giving horses time to heal) was so much more expensive than the inject-and-run solution that other trainers were offering.

Obviously, it wasn’t all trainers that were throwing their horses under the bus. Two trainers—Buff Bradley and Paul McGee—could be counted on to send horses to ReRun that were good candidates for a second career. If the horses they sent had problems at all, they were problems that could be fixed, and there wasn’t any ‘wait and see’ while the drugs wore off.

Within a day the FedEx guy delivered a good sized box, and I began sorting through the paperwork to see exactly what it was the reporter was dealing with.

Contained in the packet were past performances for the horse that initially broke down, causing the deadly accident. Also included were pages of drug records on the race day medications that had been administered, as well as a video tape.

Race day medications are the drugs that horses are allowed to have in their systems when they race. In Kentucky, at the time of this spill, they included Bute and Lasix, as well as Banamine. These are all common medications that are still in use in racing today, but now there are “levels.” That simply means there is a limit to how much of the drug can be present in a horse’s system at race time. Back then, although many other states had levels in place, in Kentucky there were none.

There were other medications that were allowed as well—different types of bleeder medications, anabolic steroids, and the thing I came to see as the biggest problem of all—cortisone injections into joints. Let me clarify the above statement—when I said that steroids were “allowed,” it probably would be more accurate to say that they weren’t tested for, so they were used. A lot.

As it is for humans, some drugs are necessary and can be a good thing. The potential is always there for a good thing to go bad, and that was the path that the racing industry had taken.

Drugs absolutely have their place—to be used for treatment of an injury and to heal. Drugs should never, ever, EVER be used to cover up a problem, or to artificially enhance a horse’s performance. Misuse of drugs seemed to be rampant.

Let me go on record here as saying that in my opinion, race day medications are not the problem. I would imagine that it would be difficult to mask significant pain solely with the use of Bute or Banamine.

Why, you may ask, would it be good for a horse to feel pain? So that they stand a fighting chance to live through a race. If a horse can feel pain, they would have the chance to pull themselves up before suffering a catastrophic injury. If a horse is going “off” while warming up before a race, the jockey can feel it and try to have the animal scratched, potentially avoiding disaster.

Bute, in lesser amounts given just on race day would be like taking aspirin for muscle aches. In large amounts used day after day, its affect can be harmful—slowly eating away at the stomach until it is damaged beyond repair.

Judging by what we had seen and documented in horses entering the ReRun program, our industry had taken a flying leap over the ethical line.

Daily Notes: Sorry about the recent lack of posts…to be honest, some of this stuff is very hard for me to write about. It would be easier to not include what I am about to talk about over the next couple of days, but I will, for a couple of reasons. The first reason is that it plays an integral part in The Unbelievable’s story. And the second reason is that, if I gloss over the ugly bits, it seems that a whole lot of horses have suffered and died in vain.

In making my way through Rich Toward God, I have arrived at the part where Dr. Hood discusses the inevitable—You’ve been tithing faithfully but nothing is happening. You’ve been sowing, but the harvest seems to be delayed. Does this mean that God has failed? Or lied? What’s he waiting on?

I bet if you readers are being honest, that very thought has already crossed your minds. It certainly crossed mine! Because much like UB, I’m not a patient person. Ah—maybe that’s it! God is trying to teach me some patience! (Actually, I suppose that could be a reason!)

Over the next few posts, I’m going to look at Dr. Hood’s potential reasons for delay one at a time.

Reason 1: Timing—You may be prepared and ready for a blessing, but God may still be preparing the situation for you. Or, he may be preparing someone else who is not yet ready. But don’t forget, you are part of the solution, too. So keep waiting until the Lord completes his work because the end result will always be much better.

Today back in the day pic shows me with my good friend Christine Gabriel. I believe this was taken at Monmouth Park in NJ where we were working on the notes team for the Haskell.