I feel compelled to comment about Cerin. I have worked with Vlado when he trained for Graph Racing and another outfit I'm involved with, and though he is a mega pain in the butt (think Dickinson without the accent), and although we had a falling out and are not speaking, I have to point out that he has been on the forefront of the California group trying to get detention barns. I suspect that his story about the feed may actually be true-- which is to say that he heard the guys who were beating him were using a feed additive (Stan Bergstein mentioned a powerful one from New Zealand in a column a couple of months ago), and tried it. It is possible that some of these additives contain an alkalizing agent or something else which is moving up the horses, which would explain Mullins' otherwise inane comment about the horse only being slightly over the limit.

Point being, the threshold level may have to be dropped. If anyone knows why there should be ANY level of alkalizing agents in a test, I would like to know it. Just for starters.



TGJB