Op/Ed

After watching the GII Pennsylvania Derby this weekend, where Will Take Charge once again got the better of Moreno, I felt even more compelled to write about the accusation and ongoing investigation of jockey Luis Saez using a buzzer during his winning ride in this summer's GI Travers S. A buzzer, better known in the business as a “battery” or “machine,” is an outlawed battery-powered electrical shock device.

The publicity and well-deserved outpouring of sympathy going to Ramon Dominguez, who sustained a career-ending injury early this year, is another reminder about how dangerous racing can be, even for one of the world's top jockeys.

I, along with some 300 other invited guests, attended The Jockey Club Round Table last weekend in Saratoga. Many of Thoroughbred racing's stakeholders had a seat at the Round Table.

Eight and a half years ago, I wrote an Op-Ed piece for The Blood-Horse in which I urged the racing industry to strongly consider using the United States Anti-Doping Association as a national watchdog for horse racing.

Does Lasix cause horses to race less often? Forget about racing's image, the weakening of the breed, how Europeans view our sport, should it be part of the Breeders' Cup, even whether or not the drug is effective in treating bleeders. The question that needs to be debated and answered is whether or not the drug has created a horse that cannot race as often as its predecessors from pre-Lasix times. If it has, the economic effects on the sport have been devastating.

When the claiming horse who had been winning for $25,000 is in for $10,000 after a six-month layoff, is the trainer trying to steal a purse or dump damaged goods on another stable? It's like a poker game, only these chips aren't made of plastic. They're horses and it's appalling that the very nature of the claiming game incentivizes trainers to run unsound horses in an attempt to dupe their competitors.

California has become the battleground in the national debate among horsemen, vets and owners over Lasix. Thanks to funding, energy and passion from the Thoroughbred Owners of California (which also has trainers on its board of directors) and Dr. Mark Dedomenico, the debate about whether to continue to use Lasix or ban it is reaching a fever pitch.

Rick Dutrow has officially been banned from the game for a decade. Interestingly, like the notorious American miscreant Al Capone, Dutrow was knocked off his perch not by what people suspected he did, but by technicalities. Capone was not sent to prison for murder, but famously for tax evasion. Dutrow has not been suspended for using illegal practices as many suspect him of, but for lesser infractions.

I read with interest Charlotte Weber's letter that appeared in the TDN on Dec. 21. That same day I also read the CNN article, "How Racing Became Cool" and an article in the Wall Street Journal on hand-held devices and Internet gambling. The combination gave me cause for year-end thoughts as we turn the page on 2012.

This Swahili phrase means, “The journey, it has blown apart.” I write these words because my own journey in the horse business has come to an end.

When the Breeders' Cup debuted in 1984 it was a revolutionary concept. The fertile mind of the late John R. Gaines combined the idea of extraordinary purses of $1-million or more with the idea of running seven championship events on the same day, funded by a variation on the funding mechanism of Futurity races that depended on breeders' contributions to build the huge purses.

Where one lives can change one's perspective. Six years ago we moved from Lexington, Kentucky to the Tennessee county with the lowest population density and lowest per capita income of any county in a state where per capita income as a whole is 13.2% lower than the national average, according to 2010 census data. As a direct result of that move, my immediate, gut reaction to last week's brief suspension of exports of horses for slaughter to Canada was different than it might have been had I remained surrounded--insulated, actually--by...