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INDUSTRY
Do Bleeders Breed Bleeders? In February 2010 we ran article in Issue 15 of North American Trainer titled “If Lasix is the answer... what is the question?” This was in response to the report published from South Africa in late 2009 on EIPH and racing. Fast forward to June 2011 and the debate resurfaced as part of the “International Summit on Race Day Medication, EIPH and the Racehorse” held at Belmont Park. By Sid Fernando
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WO days after trainer Kelly Breen won the Belmont Stakes with 24-1 shot Ruler on Ice for owners George and Lori Hall, Belmont Park was the venue for the “International Summit on Race Day Medication, EIPH and the Racehorse,” on June 13 and 14. The juxtaposition of the race and the two-day summit was appropriate for the issues at hand. Breen, who trains privately for the Halls and who’d won the Grade 2 Louisia na Derby earlier this season with Pants On Fire, has been a vocal supporter of the race-day diuretic furosemide (Lasix, Salix) as a therapeutic necessity for bleeding, or exercise-induced pulmonary hemorrhage (EIPH). His position is typical for trainers (and veterinarians) and is the stance embraced by the powerful National Horsemen’s Benevolent Protective Association (HBPA). But a growing number of owners and breeders, led by the New York-based Jockey Club (TJC), want to ban race-day medications altogether, especially the race-day use of furosemide, to bring U.S. medication policy in line with the rest of the world. New York was once the bastion of the Old Guard and was the last state to allow the
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use of race-day Lasix in the US, on September 1, 1995, and now through the Jockey Club it leads the fight to ban it. On April 28 of this year, anticipating federal legislation that could change the Interstate Horse Racing Act of 1978 with medication-policy amendments, TJC president and chief operating officer James L. Gagliano issued a statement with the support of Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Associati on (TOBA, publishers of The Blood-Horse); Kentucky Thoroughbred Association (KTA); The Breeders’ Cup, Ltd.; Keeneland Association; and Thoroughbred Racing Associations of North America (TRA) that said the Jockey Club “stands convinced that the elimination of race-day medication is essential to achieving optimal stewardship of the horse, the sport, the public perception and confidence, and the business of Thoroughbred racing. We welcome the fresh opportunity, created by the current attention to furosemide, to steer back to a more proper path and urge the development of a comprehensive plan to phase in these reforms, including medication-free competition.” Though the Jockey Club, which regulates matters relating to breeding stock and
administers the Stud Book, has funded some studies in the past relating to EIPH and racing, including a 2009 South African research project, it nor any of its allied groups – essentially the same people involved in ownership and breeding at TOBA, Keeneland, and the Breeders’ Cup – has analyzed the effects of bleeding and heritability. Through the years – and this is surprising – no one had commissioned a “Do B leeders Breed Bleeders?” type of study in the U.S., where more “bleeders” presumably go to stud than anywhere else in the world. Quite unexpectedly, just such a scientific study surfaced on the first day at the Belmont summit and said that bleeders likely do sire bleeders – more ammunition for the Jockey Club’s and its allies’ position. The summit was organized by the American Association of Equine Practitio ners (AAEP), the National Thoroughbred Racing Association (NTRA), and the Racing Medication and Testing Consortium (RMTC), groups that aren’t unified and in agreement about banning race-day furosemide. Therefore, this particular study, another from South Africa, must have come as a surprise to the AAEP. Titled “A genetic analysis of epistaxis as associated with EIPH in the Southern African Thoroughbred,” by H. Weideman, S.J. Schoeman, and G.F. Jordaan, the study had first appeared in 2004 in the South African Journal of Animal Science and was largely unknown outside of South Africa, and therefore not examined and debated here beforehand. The study’s definition of a bleeder was a strict one, too: a horse had to exhibit epistaxis, or bleeding from both nostrils, to be classified a bleeder. It was introduced at t he summit by Scotsman and