Jerry:

http://www.racingnsw.com.au/page.asp?parm=vet.bicarbonate

This policy describes the sources of and takes into account all the other alkalinising agents in feed, supplements, etc. and still holds trainers to a 36 TCO2 limit...while advising them to watch what they're giving the animals at race time.

I also believe that Vlado is totally above board, and has welcomed scrunity in all facets of racing from the first time he started training in CA (we UCLA folks really do stick together!).

But seriously, folks, there was an instance a while back where he had some type of finding and even the other trainers were saying that someone planted it on him because of his outspoken support for detention barns and testing. While I don't know if anyone stooped to such means, there was a backing off on the part of Santa Anita to implement any of the current activities last winter...probably due more to Mullins' and Frankel's threats at the time to take all their horses somewhere else.
TGJB wrote:

> 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.
>
>



Delmar Deb