Re: Where's the outrage??? (1463 Views)
Posted by:
JohnTChance (IP Logged)
Date: June 17, 2017 04:42PM
The people who don’t think there’s a strong pharmaceutical element to Baffert’s success last Saturday are very very stupid. But there’s lots of stupidity going around in this world: Dennis Rodman is on his way to North Korea to talk to Kim Jong-un. And I just watched the documentary WEINER on cable. Stupidity is everywhere. It can’t be stopped!
We’ve been through this argument many times before in the past 30 years: One winter in Florida twenty years ago, there was a Canadian-based trainer named Frank Passero, who won 14 straight races at Gulfstream Park. He was hailed as a training genius! What a guy! What horsemanship! Wow! A book was written about him! Horses claimed by Passero had move-up tendencies much like what we see all the time today, and Passero’s move-ups at Gulfstream that winter particularly infuriated a lot of horseplayers. One of them was Andy Beyer, who cried foul in his Washington Post horse racing column. In response, a moron from the Daily Racing Form named Matt Hegarty scolded Beyer: How dare Andy accuse Passero! That’s not allowed! Where’s the proof? You can’t go to the bathroom without a bathroom pass! Fast forward in time to today: It turned out Passero did indeed have a move-up magic potion: A “new” “Canadian” pharmaceutical named Clenbuterol. The Racing Form might have a big B to indicate Bute or a big L to indicate Lasix to it’s readers. But it doesn’t have a big P for Peppermints or a big X, Y or Z to indicate all the other stuff racehorses get.
The secret to Bob Baffert's success has everything to do with his longtime vet Vin Baker. Some schmo (actually the New York Times racing writer) wrote a book a few years back titled something like THE UNTOLD STORY OF AMERICAN PHARAOH. Oooh! Gee. The inside story? Really? I saw this in a Barnes & Noble bookstore once and quickly checked the index for Baker's name. Was it there? No! What a joke. Books like this are meant for the broad base of unsophisticated racing fans. That is, those who believe that racehorses run merely on hay, oats and water. After a while, racing fans with half a brain and an understanding of speed figures realize that the animals they bet on are sustained and enhanced, at the very least, by legal drugs. A few years ago, the curious case of sudden deaths of 7 horses from the Baffert barn revealed a powerful thyroid drug was involved. INCREDIBLE! What else ya got? Only a moron would conclude these animals don't get some really really really strong stuff that really really effects them.
In the end, he who has the best (most aggressive) vet.... wins. Wins a lot. Wins preposterously. All the time. Again and again and again. And it all happens in the spaces between the numbers Jerry puts down on his sheets, behind closed doors.