Banning Lasix and other medications in major stakes races is an idea with merit, certainly in the eyes of breeders, because the sport should not be crowning drug-dependent champions who go to stud and beget drug-dependent offspring. But those of us who have lived through the whole Lasix era know the defect of the Breeders’ Cup’s plan.
In the 1970s and ’80s, bettors were obsessed with Lasix because they constantly had to guess what would happen when an underperforming horse got the drug for the first time. They had to guess what would happen when a horse went on or off the medication because he was shipping between jurisdictions with different Lasix rules. After Alysheba won the first two legs of the 1987 Triple Crown while treated with Lasix, he went to New York (where the drug was still banned) and finished a badly beaten fourth in the Belmont Stakes. The main story line of an otherwise compelling Triple Crown series was Alysheba’s drug dependency. It was not a good story for the sport.
The Breeders’ Cup and the American Graded Stakes Committee would create a regular recurrence of Alysheba-in-the-Belmont scenarios by banning Lasix in selected big races. Horses would run on Lasix in ordinary races and then compete without it in the main events — scenarios that would confuse and anger just about everyone who bets on these races. The opinion of the customers ought to count for more than the disapproval of the foreign racing executives that the Breeders’ Cup wants to placate.
The only sensible way to ban Lasix is to prohibit its use in all American races, but that will not happen, because the rules are made on a state-by-state basis, and pro-medication horsemen have more clout on the state level than do the nation’s elite owners and breeders. Industry leaders concerned about medications have plenty of other work to do: The performance of many so-called supertrainers suggests that illegal drug use is rampant, and it continues to corrode public confidence in the game. But the battle over Lasix was decided long ago, and it’s too late to overturn the results.
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