eye123
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Post by eye123 on May 11, 2021 6:17:16 GMT -5
Paulick Report :
Betamethasone is a corticosteriod used to reduce inflammation. It can be utilized in four ways: direct injection into a horse's joint, injection into the bloodstream, subcutaneous injection near soft tissues that may be inflamed, or via topical applications.Betamethasone “is a medication that has legitimate applications in the care of race horses,” Scollay told HRN. “It's not a heinous substance. But it is a substance that we want to control in proximity to a race, largely to protect the safety and welfare, of course, because anti-inflammatories have the ability to mask inflammation, signs of inflammation, that can be warning signs either to the horse's connections or the horse itself that there is an injury present that could escalate into something far worse if pressured.”
"When we do a pre-race examination, we're looking for signs of inflammation, and signs of inflammation include pain but also include heat, swelling, redness if the skin is visible. And so a summation of that – a joint that is warm to the touch compared to the opposite joint that has swelling or edema, or fill in the joint compared to the opposite joint. It's not just a matter of masking pain, it has the potential to mask other flags that would cause concern – and perhaps result in a different decision in terms of whether or not the horse should race."
The recommended withdrawal period in Kentucky for a betamethasone joint injection is 14 days, so no closer than two weeks before a race. The allowable threshold for betamethasone in a post-race test used to be 10 picograms, but that was changed last fall. Now, no trace amount is allowed.
When used as a joint injection, a typical dose of betamethasone would be nine milligrams, Scollay said.
But then that drug leaves the joint, enters the bloodstream and is distributed throughout the body,” she told HRN. “And remember that a racehorse has upwards of 50,000 mls (milliliters) of blood. So you're not talking about 21 picograms in that entire horse's body. You're talking about 21 picograms in one ml of blood. And there's 49,999 other mls of blood, not to mention all the other tissues, the muscles, the organs, the brain, the skin, all the other tissues of the body. That drug distributes throughout the entire body. So 21 picograms, you know, you can be a little overly reductive and say that's nothing. But when you can contemplate the total sum of medication that may be in the body at that time point? It's a different story.”
If 21 picograms (remember, 21 trillionths of a gram) were found in a single milliliter of blood, that means upwards of 1,050,000 picograms of betamethasone was circulating through the horse's bloodstream at the time of the test. (That translates to 1.05 micrograms, or 0.00105 milligrams.)
Again, that doesn't include the amount of the medication remaining in the horse's tissues.
All of the above leads to the following question: if Medina Spirit was never administered this medication, how did it get into his system?
Scollay doubts that intentional sabotage is a factor in this case for two reasons. First, horses are under 24-hour security beginning on Tuesday of Kentucky Derby week. Second, the choice of a therapeutic medication to sabotage a horse just doesn't make sense.
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1hooper
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Post by 1hooper on May 11, 2021 8:45:41 GMT -5
Stole this quote from the Ragozin board, made me laugh only because it is so close to the truth.
One of the greatest lines I've heard recently came from a KY vet that was talking to me about this case yesterday. He said "these new performance enhancing drugs are a miracle of modern science. We give them rocket fuel and they piss apple juice."
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Post by spiderjohn on May 11, 2021 9:08:01 GMT -5
I believe that every Derby runner was tested---only one came back positive(over twice the allowed limit). Isn't this Baffert's 5th positive in how many years? Justify--Gamine--Authentic?--Medina--Bayern?
We still watch his runners blast out of the gate and seem to find another burst down the lane--very similar to what we watched with the Servis and Navarro runners-and where are they today?
Reminds me of a young string @ Toga a few years ago, where many ran out of their skin on the track, then became ill and passed(all with the same trainer).... all because they may have grazed on a "bad patch of grass".
Churchill's press statement was short and not so sweet to the point--Ky is not S.Cal or NY.........they can make it happen without Baffert and the others... Do you really think that it is only Bob Baffert?
Where will it go?
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Post by cherokeescot on May 11, 2021 10:55:27 GMT -5
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Post by spiderjohn on May 11, 2021 11:06:59 GMT -5
Anyone think that maybe Concert Tour will be scratched? Until his last start, he displayed the same characteristics---has he been tested out west? Should we assume that this only relates to Medina and Gamine? And we know what happened with the Justify positive---can we trust S.Cal jurisdiction? Are NY positives made public knowledge?--I don't believe so....
Is playing by the rules that earth-shaking?
I honestly assume that they all cheat That way it doesn't affect my handicapping, and I am probably wrong about a short few.....
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gam
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Post by gam on May 11, 2021 11:17:42 GMT -5
Anyone think that maybe Concert Tour will be scratched? Until his last start, he displayed the same characteristics---has he been tested out west? Should we assume that this only relates to Medina and Gamine? And we know what happened with the Justify positive---can we trust S.Cal jurisdiction? Are NY positives made public knowledge?--I don't believe so.... Is playing by the rules that earth-shaking? I honestly assume that they all cheat That way it doesn't affect my handicapping, and I am probably wrong about a short few..... Spider, they don't all cheat, which is why this isn't like a Lance Armstrong situation where, from all appearances, a cyclist couldn't win if he wasn't doping. Speaking of Lance Armstrong, there's an interesting thread on the Ragozin board under that heading. just read it all. Hadn't been there in a long time but went after seeing Hooper's one post which referenced it. If nothing else, stuff that has come out the last couple days has me feeling vindicated in learning that my suspicions weren't wrong. I've assumed that these substances for which BB and others are testing positive isn't the true substance being given to the horses that are producing the results we see on the racetrack.
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1hooper
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Post by 1hooper on May 11, 2021 11:34:02 GMT -5
Laughable. Who is the vet? Here is the label for Otomax. Use is for canine ear infections only. Otomax® Intervet/Merck Animal Health PRODUCT INFORMATION NADA #140-896, Approved by FDA (GENTAMICIN SULFATE, BETAMETHASONE VALERATE AND CLOTRIMAZOLE, OINTMENT) VETERINARY For Otic Use in Dogs Only CAUTION: Federal law restricts this drug to use by or on the order of a licensed veterinarian. Keep this and all drugs out of the reach of children. DESCRIPTION Each gram of OTOMAX ointment contains gentamicin sulfate, equivalent to 3 mg gentamicin base; betamethasone valerate, equivalent to 1 mg betamethasone; and 10 mg clotrimazole, in a mineral oil-based system containing a plasticized hydrocarbon gel.
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1hooper
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Post by 1hooper on May 11, 2021 11:40:31 GMT -5
If the Horse Racing Integrity Act was up and operational they would now be gathering phone and vet records of everyone involved with this stable. Even owners. Cesspool.
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1hooper
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Post by 1hooper on May 11, 2021 14:43:21 GMT -5
Ask yourself why Baffert would admit to using a product for days containing betamethasone before the split sample result comes back.
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forego
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Post by forego on May 11, 2021 15:24:01 GMT -5
Ask yourself why Baffert would admit to using a product for days containing betamethasone before the split sample result comes back. So, Medina Spirit's dermatitis flare up was the best kept secret in America. Never a whisper about anything untoward with him coming out of the SA Derby. Baffert stands up in front of the cameras and unequivocally states the horse never was treated with Betamethasone. He then starts with raising all kinds of possible ways (otherwise known as throwing sh!t against the wall and hoping something sticks) the horse could have been contaminated. They include: all kinds of people touching him or having access to him that ordinarily would not, infield and post race; then there's the groom and cough medicine angle, peeing in the hay and then MS eating the hay (definitely one of my all time favorites) and when those don't take we now have the ointment treatment for dermatitis that he was (conveniently) unaware contained Betamethasone. I thought ignorance was not a defense but obviously we'll have to see. Assuming for the moment that the dermatitis actually occurred, can be caused by a whole host of things which it doesn't sound like they have a clue as to what caused it. Could it be stress the horse was experiencing? I know for me, stress is definitely a factor when I have outbreaks. That aside, if the horse is having that kind of a flare up and you're needing to aggressively medicate to get it under control, the horse shouldn't have been entered to run and Baffert failed in his responsibility of taking care of the horse. So now, he's been advised that the medication contained Betamethasone could be the reason for the potential presence of it in MS. And there you have it, the reason for the failed drug test, and I'm so sorry....blah....blah....blah. I imagine he is hoping that they will accept what he's given them and won't dig deeper, running additional tests on MS and putting Baffert's whole operation under a microscope.
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eye123
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Post by eye123 on May 11, 2021 15:24:04 GMT -5
Interesting how they stopped applying the medication "RIGHT" after the derby (the lawyers understanding ....yeah) so they say so he should be allowed in the Preakness. (Bull@#$%) “It is my expectation, based on consultation with experts, that if the primary test results are accurate and betamethasone was in the horse’s system on May 1, it would have cleared by now,” Robertson said. Dr. Mary Scollay, the executive director of the Racing Medication and Testing Consortium, said on Tuesday after reviewing a photo of the affected area that it was “not implausible” for a daily application of the ointment to show up on a post-race test. “I say ‘not implausible’ because I’m not aware of any data on topical applications and how they show up on blood concentrations,” Scollay said. “But we now know we have an exposure to betamethasone. And if you look at the photo it’s a truly expansive area. If they are covering that whole area every day, that’s a lot more than five drops down a dog’s ear.” And here we have "THE EXCUSE" Kentucky Derby winner Medina Spirit was treated with an anti-fungal ointment containing betamethasone, the substance detected in his post-Derby blood sample, up until the day prior to the race, trainer Bob Baffert said in a statement released on Tuesday. The ointment, a prescription medicine called Otomax with various uses in veterinary medicine, was used to treat dermatitis on Medina Spirit’s hind end after his second-place finish in the April 3 Santa Anita Derby, Baffert said in the statement, which was released through his attorney. He said that he learned that the ointment contained betamethasone, a corticosteroid, on Monday, one day after announcing that Medina Spirit had tested positive for the substance after the Derby. Playbook 101 for the Baffert Team Credibility out the window. Need harsher penalties, period.
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gam
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Post by gam on May 11, 2021 16:44:26 GMT -5
Ask yourself why Baffert would admit to using a product for days containing betamethasone before the split sample result comes back. He knows the second test will be positive, too. This admission creates, not plausible deniability, but plausible (but mitigated) accountability for a version of events that can seem like an honest and relatively harmless mistake.
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ozzy
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Post by ozzy on May 11, 2021 19:24:53 GMT -5
Hoop, nice to see you found the label for Otomax so easily. I have a veterinary compendium app on my phone and easily found the same thing so shouldn’t Bob have been able to do so as well before letting his arrogance/ignorance get the best of him and going on media blitz? The Shaggy Defense (Wasn’t me) won’t work here with the absolute insurer rule being enforced as it should in this case. It’s likely the split sample comes back positive and the horse will be DQ’d from the Derby by this time next year for sure. Interesting some high profile owners are making changes already.
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Post by mysaladdays on May 12, 2021 1:00:39 GMT -5
Spendthrift is already moving horses. 1 to Pletcher (and scratching out of the Chick Lang), and 4 youngsters who were going to Baffert are now going to Mandella.
I think a lot of people non racing people are mistakenly thinking this is about cheating, when that beta is not a PED---- but I imagine that Spendthrift, being in the stallion biz, does not want one of their horses DQed due to sloppy practices in a barn. Am I on the right track with this? It's making it look like Baffert doesn't seem to have a really good handle on what exactly is going on in his own barn--- All these contaminations and such, you simply can't have sloppy practices going on these in this business at top levels.
As the trainer he's the one who is supposed to have his entire operation "under a microscope"......and it just seems like theres a lot of really sloppy practices going on at that barn and it keeps happening over and over again. I mean, anyone that does not want to level cheating accusations on a trainer would at least be able to say this is certainly what is happening?
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gam
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Post by gam on May 12, 2021 8:39:17 GMT -5
Spendthrift is already moving horses. 1 to Pletcher (and scratching out of the Chick Lang), and 4 youngsters who were going to Baffert are now going to Mandella. I think a lot of people non racing people are mistakenly thinking this is about cheating, when that beta is not a PED---- but I imagine that Spendthrift, being in the stallion biz, does not want one of their horses DQed due to sloppy practices in a barn. Am I on the right track with this? It's making it look like Baffert doesn't seem to have a really good handle on what exactly is going on in his own barn--- All these contaminations and such, you simply can't have sloppy practices going on these in this business at top levels. As the trainer he's the one who is supposed to have his entire operation "under a microscope"......and it just seems like theres a lot of really sloppy practices going on at that barn and it keeps happening over and over again. I mean, anyone that does not want to level cheating accusations on a trainer would at least be able to say this is certainly what is happening? Mysaladdays, I think you're missing the bigger possibility, the elephant in the room possibility. There are PEDs in existence for which the authorities/agencies do not have a test or that are, for now, undetectable. As Hooper quoted in another thread, a Kentucky vet purportedly said "they can give them rocket fuel and they pee out apple juice." However, these PEDs do sometimes create a false positive for something far less performance enhancing and seemingly relatively harmless, such as dex. So here, the possibilities seem to be 1, that the horse got unintentionally contaminated, 2, he was injected with the substance, say in an achy joint, but it did not clear in time, 3, he was given this ointment and they didn't know it contained beta or 4, he was given a designer PED but it caused a positive for beta.
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Post by mysaladdays on May 12, 2021 11:55:58 GMT -5
Spendthrift is already moving horses. 1 to Pletcher (and scratching out of the Chick Lang), and 4 youngsters who were going to Baffert are now going to Mandella. I think a lot of people non racing people are mistakenly thinking this is about cheating, when that beta is not a PED---- but I imagine that Spendthrift, being in the stallion biz, does not want one of their horses DQed due to sloppy practices in a barn. Am I on the right track with this? It's making it look like Baffert doesn't seem to have a really good handle on what exactly is going on in his own barn--- All these contaminations and such, you simply can't have sloppy practices going on these in this business at top levels. As the trainer he's the one who is supposed to have his entire operation "under a microscope"......and it just seems like theres a lot of really sloppy practices going on at that barn and it keeps happening over and over again. I mean, anyone that does not want to level cheating accusations on a trainer would at least be able to say this is certainly what is happening? Mysaladdays, I think you're missing the bigger possibility, the elephant in the room possibility. There are PEDs in existence for which the authorities/agencies do not have a test or that are, for now, undetectable. As Hooper quoted in another thread, a Kentucky vet purportedly said "they can give them rocket fuel and they pee out apple juice." However, these PEDs do sometimes create a false positive for something far less performance enhancing and seemingly relatively harmless, such as dex. So here, the possibilities seem to be 1, that the horse got unintentionally contaminated, 2, he was injected with the substance, say in an achy joint, but it did not clear in time, 3, he was given this ointment and they didn't know it contained beta or 4, he was given a designer PED but it caused a positive for beta. I was trying to give latitude w/out being accusatory until the split sample came back. But yes, I knew from reading Navarro and Servis testimonies that certain PEDs are undetectable.......but may cause false positives of other substances that ARE detectable, i.e. in their case, SGF-1000, while undetectable by current testing standards, can produce a “false positive” for dexamethasone – a corticosteroid, like Betamethasone. At that poiint I was asking my chemist friends how similar dex and beta were. I was thinking probably like Sprite vs. 7-Up? I do find it odd that it took Baffert et al 3 days to figure out how to read the label on that tube of skin cream. Maybe time to turn the barn over to Jimmy Barnes or something. What is also missing from the conversation is the souped up track that CD went with on SAT.....souped up like the Santa Anita track was when 27 or so horses died on it in 2019 and everyone was saying there was nothing wrong with the track. I think it's pretty sad when we are taking long-distance routers, training them like quarterhorses, when that kind of breeding / conformation is not condusive to this regimen. The true stamina distance horses over the pond run at least til 5 if not longer, because the way that kind of breeding runs is not to burst out of a gate like a QH (which is what causes bleeding anyway, the sheer stress of it)......they are going a long distance and have a chance to get warmed up, galloping along. Baffert has benefited from the SA souped up track for decades now, his runners can barely survive 1 year on the track, and he drops so many who don't make it along the way.......and we seem intent on turning every other track into the same type of surface on big race days. THis has to stop, IMHO. I wen totally against the chemical horse when I read an interview with Michael Blown at Old Friends, some years back, and he said some of the rescues/retirees they get do not have even 1 good vein left in their bodies thru which to administer NECESSARY medical and restorative treatments. That should make anyone sit up and take a stand against turning these lovely beings into pin cushions. Give only what is necessary and natural to the system, unless a horse has a medical diagnosis that requires *treatment*. In which case they need recuperative pasturing and should not be racing at all anyway.
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gam
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Post by gam on May 12, 2021 12:22:01 GMT -5
Ya, I understand not being accusatory. After all, we don't "know" for a certifiable fact. Of course, we didn't "know" for 100% certain that Servis and Navarro were doing it either --- but "we knew." With Baffert, I've been pretty much convinced for some time. What I feel some uncertainty about is what percentage of his horses are getting extra help and how often. Also, a question I've had going way back to bloodhorse forum days, is how much the substances move up the horse. Not sure there's any way to answer that question.
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5wide
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Post by 5wide on May 12, 2021 12:42:41 GMT -5
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Post by cherokeescot on May 12, 2021 18:07:30 GMT -5
Turn the barn over to Jimmy Barnes ? He must be the “unluckiest” assistant trainer in history ! 😉
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Post by mattcoll on May 14, 2021 11:43:30 GMT -5
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forego
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Post by forego on May 14, 2021 12:25:30 GMT -5
Definitely a great interview and agree it is pretty damning of Baffert and his operation. Somehow I don't think this interview will get any airtime from NBC this weekend.
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gam
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Post by gam on May 14, 2021 13:23:13 GMT -5
Eddie O was on the local sports talk show the other day talking about the NHL playoffs and the Penguins. They did turn to the Derby late in the interview and it was pretty much "company line" type responses. Of course, if Eddie has other opinions or suspicions he can't really express them until some hard evidence turns up. I'd guess the broadcast tomorrow will probably follow that path.
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1hooper
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Post by 1hooper on May 16, 2021 20:17:30 GMT -5
Pete Townshend on betamethasone.
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