Re: California Beyers (436 Views)
Posted by:
Delmar Deb (IP Logged)
Date: March 06, 2005 03:21PM
Ok, I'll chime in...now that I've finished my rant over the state of racing out here via email and telephone for the past 3 hours!
Rick Arthur is a practicing vet in southern CA and includes Mandella and Headley among his clients. HOWEVER, he has been both an advisor and technical consultant to the CHRB and racetracks for as long as I can remember. Arthur was the one person that every faction of racing seemed to feel comfortable with in going to for an opinion, advice, etc. on medication related matters.
The track is doing the testing from its own resources...remember, milkshakes are not illegal here and do not fall under the auspices of the CHRB yet. Arthur is not a "shill" for the tracks, anymore than Ingrid Fermin is "after" Mullins. If she had not included Mullins horses in the testing program, she would be ignoring every piece of information available to the public via Beyer and TG numbers, visual moves within a race of elongated acceleration and/or powerful spurts of energy that make you wonder what the horse had for breakfast!
Lastly, Mullins has been the most arrogant and "in your face" practitioner for the past couple of years. When he comes out firing and reaches 40% or more winners, he keeps throwing them at you almost daring you to find anything. Then when they start searching the barns, he falls to something akin to where he is at today (2 for 37 or something like that?).
Last year on SA Derby Day, however, when he was in another seach and fall slump, he lit up the board in almost every race he entered with horses (prior to Castledale) winning off by lengths and looking like Man o War in the process. His main client (Bob Bone) had the only winning ticket in a $1 million plus Pick Six at Del Mar last summer - where any inside knowlege of the condition and/or treatment of the Mullins horses in the last 2 races would have proved most beneficial! Maybe Mullins really means that the $2 bettors are idiots and addicts...and the ones who bet a lot more and have "inside" information are OK?
Lest you accuse me of looking for excuses, I will be the first to tell you that inside information on medication is out there for anyone to see - look at the horse, look at the stable, look at the trainer stats and you can figure most of it out yourself. Dale Romans hasn't had a winner at GP in a month - he was quoted in an interview 2 weeks ago when he brought down Roses in May for a workout at GP that his barn at Palm Meadows was sick...so he was keeping Roses at GP until Dubai. I stopped playing Romans' horses until they win again.
The race track media out here will do anything to cash a bet. And with a couple of notable exceptions (Jeff Siegel and Bruno de Julio), the morning airwaves were full of excuses for Mullins...ranging from 'the reporter made him say that' to 'Jeff is under a lot of pressure these days'!
What happened to accountability and responsibility. Pointing the finger at someone else doesn't make you clean - but that's what he's doing...maybe Karl Rove is running his campaign?
In any event, with Magna's servers crashing during the heart of the Gulfstream card and SA and off-site betting facilities refusing to hire sufficient tellers, etc. for the record crowds - the $2 bettors won't need Mullins advice to stay away...seems that the very ones who put the sport on for public consumption are trumping even the medication controversy in the public's mind.
And for this I worked 35 years to retire and go to the races everyday???
Delmar Deb