Re: Teflon Todd (519 Views)
Posted by:
Silver Charm (IP Logged)
Date: December 29, 2006 06:09PM
Hopefully several things develop and quickly. Not to put too much of a "blue sky" on things but there has been progress, however there needs to be considerably more.
Racing is not the only sport with drug issues. Baseball reportedly had 8 of 10 players working out of a certain training facility test postive for steroids and yet did nothing about it. Football is going to have to "blacklist" a Defensive Player of the Year candidate because of steroids. But back to reality the Eclipse Award winning Trainer is serving 45 days, last years Trainer of HOY served 60 days, a perrenial nation leading wins contender is serving 180 days. Several off-the-charts win percentage guys are sitting or have already taken their seat in the penalty box.
The difference between Racing and the other two sports is racings income relys solely on pari-mutual wagering while the other two sports have considerable ticket sales income and even more from TV. All of this cheating effects the outcome of the events and historical statistics but only one sport suffers if the viewer thinks he was robbed out of a bet by results that were chemically enhanced.
Since the two biggest Track Mgmt companies are publically traded (Magna and Churchill) has anybody looked into what kind of exposure they may have under Sarbanes-Oxley by not having enough controls in place to effectively protect the integrity of the outcome of their races.