There are some weird ideas on this series of posts...here are a few insights about them.

First, horses have been on steroids a lot longer than human athletes. I've been breeding for 25 years and the first broodmare I bought off the track went from muscle-bound to frail in a few weeks.

The steroids were legal, so no one was cheating. On the other hand, steroids do some nasty stuff to some horses, beginning with building their body mass beyond the strength of their skeletal structure. Producing breakdowns.

The good trainer knows just how far to go with steroids or he ends up with no horse.

Second, none of us really know if certain trainers are using drugs, but suspect it, based on the performances of their horses and in certain cases, the times they've been caught operating outside the rules. When Assmussen was questioned about his 19 violations on the HBO special, all he could claim was that people were jealous of his success.

Still, one might say he was just pushing the envelope, training on drugs that did not clear his horses's systems by race day. OK.

Regardless of what we know or don't know, our suspicions can be very helpful as betting guides. For example, I suspect a crooked trainer can get away with a lot more at some tracks as opposed to others.

That's how I tracked the Triple Crown with uncommon success this year, believing it would be made harder to cheat at Churchill than it would be at Pimlico or Belmont.

Several years ago, knowledgable about the differences in legal painkillers allowed at the Triple Crown tracks, I predicted Charismatic's Belmont breakdown. I reasoned he became a different horse in Kentucky because so much more was permissable there (as opposed to California), maintained it in Baltimore where no one would know any better and finally feel the pain in NYC, where the restrictions were the tightest. Feeling the pain, I reasoned he would misstep at some point in the race and he did.

The fliperoo of leading trainers from recent seasons at Saratoga makes me suspect that something is being done there that was not done at Belmont, by the track, to chill out the super trainers and I factor that into my handicapping.

I predicted to friends (not on a post here) that English Channel would flatten out in the stretch run of the Sword Dancer. Does that make me a genius or just lucky? Well, maybe somewhere in between, but I will predict this horse will fire bigtime at the Breeders Cup if he is entered in the Turf, because I know Monmouth and don't believe they have the capacity to do anything more than hand out blankets of flowers to the winners.

For my part, this will be my last post on the subject. I think Jerry Brown's recent post amply described the current state of affairs in racing and no one on this website has anymore insight than does Jerry.