New Lasix-Free Bonuses, But Same Results at Oaklawn

By T.D. Thornton

Back in January, Oaklawn Park took a creative approach to try and reduce the number of horses running on Lasix at the 2015 meet: The track announced it would pay a 10% bonus above and beyond the winner’s purse share to any horse that won a race without being administered the drug on raceday. 

The incentive program sounded promising, and Oaklawn director of racing David Longinotti was cautiously optimistic before the meet that the bonuses would at least “move the needle” in terms of reducing Lasix usage. 

But now that a full season is in the books, allowing for a side-by-side comparison of 2014 to 2105, it appears as if the incentives didn’t make a dent. 

In fact, given an overall sample of 950 races, it’s amazing how little the Lasix usage at Oaklawn changed from one year to the next, at least in terms of race winners. 

In 2014, when no bonus program was in effect, Oaklawn ran 473 races. Five races were won by Lasix-free Thoroughbreds (four horses total, with one repeat winner). Overall, barely 1% of all winners ran Lasix-free.

In 2015, with the 10% winning bonus, Oaklawn ran 477 races. Five races were won by Lasix-free Thoroughbreds (four horses total, with one repeat winner)–exactly the same as the previous year. 

“We haven’t really done the full evaluation yet, but looking at the numbers from this year to last year, I’m not sure we had any impact,” Longinotti said earlier this week. 

Had the bonus program been in effect in 2014, Oaklawn would have theoretically paid out $14,850. This year the incentives totaled $12,803 (the bonus money came from the track itself and not from the purse account). 

Lasix (also branded Salix) is furosemide, a once-unsanctioned but now nearly universally prescribed legal diuretic in American racing. It gained widespread use in the 1970s for its ability to reduce exercise-induced pulmonary hemorrhage in equine athletes. 

In the decades since its legalization, there has been heated debate over the role of Lasix as a performance-enhancer and in fostering a culture of over-medication. Well into the 1980s, long after Lasix became commonplace at tracks nationwide, Oaklawn had resisted its acceptance. According to Longinotti, Arkansas was one of the last tracks in the country to permit its regulated use. 

Was Longinotti surprised that the incentives didn’t work better? 

“Not really,” Longinotti said. “Shortly after we announced it, you heard some talk about it [among horsemen], maybe the first ten days of the race meeting. But after that it kind of went away.” 

A season-long study of result charts by the TDN bears out Longinotti’s line of reasoning about the interest tailing off: Through the first seven dates of the 2015 season in January, 32 horses started without Lasix. Over the last seven dates of the meet in April, only 17 runners were Lasix-free. There were no Lasix-free winners between Mar. 9 and the end of the meet. 

In fairness, Oaklawn does not conduct 2-year-old racing, and a sizable shift within the industry has been for owners of juveniles to pledge not to race their young horses on Lasix. Back in January, Longinotti told the TDN that he expected maiden races, particularly those for newly turned 3-year-olds, to be responsible for a sizable segment of the Lasix-free population. 

“Kind of what we expected was that if you had a first-time starter, you might give him a race without it, and then evaluate based on that performance,” Longinotti reiterated. 

Based on a day-to-day tallying of the charts, the bulk of non-Lasix users did tend to clump in maiden races and races for 3-year-olds. Three of the winners who earned Lasix-free bonuses were 3-year-olds (a maiden-claimer, a maiden special weight, and a NW2L allowance). A 4-year-old, A.P. Brannigan (People’s Choice) won an Arkansas-bred maiden-claimer and a state-bred NW2L in back-to-back starts. 

Conversely, showcase racing dates, when the cards were heavier on allowance and stakes horses, represented a higher cluster of horses that raced with Lasix. For example, the Oaklawn’s two biggest days of racing, GII Rebel S. Day (March 14) and GI Arkansas Derby Day (April 11) combined to yield 216 starters, but only one horse out of that two-day aggregate was entered Lasix-free. 

As far as the future of the bonus program at Oaklawn, Longinotti said it was too early to tell if the incentives would be brought back for 2016 or tweaked into a different format. 

“I think it’s too premature at this point to determine if it had an impact or if it didn’t. We’ll do that here in the next couple of months,” Longinotti said. 

Longinotti said Oaklawn has been monitoring other developments in the realm of drug use reduction, such as Keeneland Race Course’s plans to run a limited number of Lasix-free races in 2016. Keeneland’s plan follows a contentious vote in March by the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission to allow the carding of races restricted by medication conditions. 
“When this whole thing came up last summer, doing something along those lines was something that we kind of considered,” Longinotti said. “But then we determined that the one thing we did not want to do was to incentivize a horse who needed Lasix to not run on it.” 

Longinotti said he prefers to take a broader perspective when considering how the Lasix issue fits into his overall racing program at Oaklawn. 

“I’ll be honest with you, I think there are a lot more important issues that the industry’s facing rather than Lasix or no Lasix,” Longinotti said. “We have a lot of issues to face. That’s just one of them.”