Re: Surgeries and procedures (581 Views)
Posted by:
Caradoc (IP Logged)
Date: July 31, 2005 09:13AM
There are a couple of threads to pick up on here:
Class:
I’m having a hard time seeing anything wrong in HP’s question to Barry Irwin about Todd Pletcher. Except for the last part of Silver Charm’s post, which is just name-calling, what treatment in this thread toward Barry is objectionable?
Barry:
I join CH in one respect – I do think you have insights and experience to contribute, so I hope you continue to post here. But the stuff about Nicks/Pletcher is a dodge. The facts of the case are that Nicks, himself a head trainer only a few months and someone who learned his trade working for a Hall of Fame horseman that no one believes is one of the abusers, instructed a vet to give a horse an injection of calcium. Calcium is hardly on the top ten list of performance enhancers. Further, Nicks said that he planned to scratch the horse in question and thus thought the injection was permitted, apparently unaware that he had to wait until one minute after the horse was scratched to order the injection. Where is the impure intent in all that? Perhaps you had a hard time identifying an impure intent at the time, because you were quoted as saying that you terminated Nicks not on the basis of any bad intent, or the seriousness of the rules violation, but rather on the basis of Team Valor’s zero tolerance policy towards drugs (calcium!). “Team Valor has a zero-tolerance policy with regards to drugs,” Team Valor President Barry Irwin said. “We had no choice other than to do what we did." (Thoroughbred Times, June 20, 2004) Under these facts, that's pretty hard-nosed, but we can all respect a rule that has the right spirit and goes in the right direction, as Team Valor's surely does.
So, if Team Valor’s policy is zero tolerance, regardless of intent, regardless of substance administered, why is Todd Pletcher still training horses for Team Valor? Why does zero not mean zero?
Peter