Re: Should it be legal? - Another view (592 Views)
Posted by:
lfe2211 (IP Logged)
Date: August 02, 2007 10:59PM
miff Wrote:
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> The point many are missing on the legal race day
> and in between legal race day stuff is simply
> without them the game would virtually be history.
> Many less racing days, much smaller fields and
> added economic pressures on the owners, trainers,
> workers and race track operators.
>
> It's nice to have a purist attitude but without
> some type of help these animals would race maybe
> half as much and racing at the main tracks would
> suffer dramatically.A common sense approach to the
> whole drug issue supported by strong testing and
> lifetime banishment for serious offences would
> eliminate a great deal of this problem.The
> backbone of the disingenuous/incompetent race
> track operators is racings major stumbling block.
>
>
> Mike
Racing in Europe and Japan are conducted without the use of exogenous drugs. The purses in Japan are astronomical and the betting handle is about twice that of the US in less than half the total number of races per year.
(somewhat dated betting and racing stats in this reference)
http://www.scientificgames.com/sgcorp/industryinforacing.asp
The drug rules for The Japan Racing Association (Table 2, bottom of page) are here:
http://japanracing.jp/japan/rules.html
Why not emulate Europe and Japan and eliminate all exogenous drugs. I'd personally like to see fewer racing days with bigger fields of drug free horses. It's probably a naive wish but I think US horse racing would be the better for it.