RACING
COBALT The new blood doping saga Catching cheaters is like playing Whac-A-Mole. Regulators smack one here, and another turns up there. Early in 2014, Meadowlands owner Jeff Gural got wind that some Standardbred trainers were using high doses of cobalt in an effort to increase their horses’ performance. He hired Brice Cote, a former harness driver and New Jersey State Police officer, to investigate. Gural also sent samples to a Hong Kong laboratory to test for cobalt. As a result, Gural banished two trainers from his three racetracks by his power of exclusion when their horses registered high levels of cobalt. At the time of their expulsion, cobalt was not a violation of New Jersey racing rules, so Gural took matters into his own hands. WORDS: DeniSe SteffanuS PHOtOS: SHutteRStOCK, HORSePHOtOS, tHOmaS O’Keeffe/ROSSDaleS
I
N September 2014, while investigating a report from one of its security officers, the Indiana Horse Racing Commission uncovered allegations that veterinarian Ross Russell had instructed his assistant, Dr. Libby Rees, to administer “cobalt products” to his clients’ horses. Rees became the whistleblower in this case, and her testimony, among others, caused IHRC Executive Director Joe Gorajec to recommend a fine and a 20-year suspension of Russell’s racetrack license. On September 30, IHRC enacted an emergency rule setting the cobalt threshold at 25 ppb (parts per billion). In January, horses conditioned by three of Australia’s top trainers, Peter Moody, Mark Kavanagh, and Danny O’Brien, were found with excessive cobalt levels, spurring an investigation by Racing Victoria. Racing jurisdictions have taken a critical look at cobalt levels in horses’ blood because of the presumption that these high doses can be used as a blood-doper to enhance performance. This presumption is based on allegations that human athletes have been using cobalt for the same purpose. The problem is that the ability of megadoses of cobalt to enhance performance is not backed by published scientific studies in humans or animals. Scientific literature that talks about high doses of cobalt is fraught with words such as “presumed,” “suspected,”
36
TRAINERMAGAZINE.COM ISSUE 35
“purported,” “anecdotal.” This largely is the defense cheaters have been relying on in case they got caught. Blood doping is the term you’ll hear tossed around in sports that require physical exertion and stamina. Simply stated, it means increasing the blood’s ability to deliver oxygen to exercising muscles, thereby increasing stamina. Oxygen is carried to muscles by red blood cells, and then the blood carries away lactic acid, the waste product left behind when oxygen is used by those muscles. Lactic acid causes the burning you feel when your muscles tire. The natural hormone erythropoietin (EPO) causes bone marrow to produce red blood cells. Increase EPO and you increase red blood cells, thereby increasing
oxygen delivery to muscles and decreasing exhaustion. Regulators in human and animal sports banned the use of epogen, a genetically engineered form of EPO, that was being used by cheaters because, in addition to being illegal as a performance enhancer, epogen caused the blood to thicken to sludge and leave the athlete—human and animal— with an irreversible form of anemia. Now regulators are faced with another attempt to replace training with cheating— giving high doses of cobalt by injection, hopefully to enhance performance in the same way epogen did. Cobalt is the trace mineral that bacteria in the digestive tract use to produce vitamin B12, which is essential for the formation of red blood cells. The normal equine