For the first time, all races will run without medication
For the first time, all 14 Breeders’ Cup races this weekend at Del Mar will be run without race-day medication, the final step in a process that had the antibleeding medication Lasix prohibited in races for 2-year-olds at last year’s world championships.
Irish trainer Aidan O’Brien called the rule expansion “definitely a good thing.”
Breeders’ Cup CEO Drew Fleming said he believes the prohibition led to a record 46 foreignbased horses competing on Friday and Saturday, including seven from Japan.
“We don’t medicate our horses over here at all,” O’Brien said, “and the only medication they get is any kind of antibiotics for cold or flu or infections.”
O’Brien, second all-time in Breeders’ Cup purse earnings among trainers, previously used Lasix on his horses in the Breeders’ Cup to be on an even playing field.
Formally known as furosemide, Lasix is a diuretic that is widely used in the U.S. to prevent or curtail exercise-induced pulmonary hemorrhaging. Most of the rest of the world’s major racing jurisdictions prohibit it on race days.
“It’s a legal medication, it’s a therapeutic medication, and I’m not sure the general public understands that,” said Hall of Fame jockey Jerry Bailey, who is an analyst on
NBC’s coverage of the Breeders’ Cup. “Less medication to the general public I think would be positive.”
This year’s Triple
Crown races were run without Lasix, as well as most of the graded stakes at such major tracks as Churchill Downs, Belmont and Saratoga in New York, Santa Anita and Del Mar in California and Keeneland in Kentucky. That includes races in the Breeders’ Cup Challenge series, which guarantees winners a spot in the twoday world championships.
“To the public, it’s probably an impressive rule,” Hall of Fame trainer Richard Mandella said.
Breeders’ Cup officials began on-site pre-competition testing a day earlier this year, collecting blood and urine samples from all 166 horses entered. Results are due back before scratch time on Friday.
The top four finishers in each race will be subject to post-race testing that looks for more than 600 compounds in blood and urine samples, said Dr.
Jeff Blea, the CHRB’s new equine medical director.
Strict whip rules enacted in California a year ago will have to be followed by jockeys, many of whom come from out of state or overseas for the richest two days in North American racing.
Riders are limited to six underhand strikes in a race and are allowed two strikes before giving their horses a chance to respond. Whips can be used only on a horse’s hind quarters or shoulders, cannot break the skin, cannot be used in a motion that begins above the shoulder, and cannot be used when a horse is out of contention or reached a maximum placing. Violators can be fined or suspended.