Breeders’ Cup rules set

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. Breeders’ Cup CEO Drew Fleming said he believes the prohibition led to a record 46 foreign-based 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.” Trainer Aidan O’Brien, second all-time in Breeders’ Cup purse earnings among trainers, has said he 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 two-day world championships.