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Sports

What If Zenyatta Was Deprived of Lasix?

In the second part of Patch series, people opposed to the banning of Lasix as a race-day medication, including the great filly's trainer, have their say.

There is little question that the best horse racing story of this era, or any era for that matter, was Zenyatta’s amazing run of 19 straight victories before barely losing to a horse named Blame in the 2010 Breeders’ Cup Classic in Louisville, Ky. During her run, Zenyatta, a filly, had dramatically beaten the boys in the 2009 Breeders’ Cup Classic at .

Well, think about this for a moment: If Lasix, the diuretic that helps prevent internal bleeding in racehorses, were banned as a race-day medication, there may never have been a Zenyatta story, as least not that one that captured the nation and put horse racing back on the front page.

Insiders say Zenyatta was a bleeder and needed Lasix. When the filly’s trainer, John Shirreffs, was asked about the proposed banning of Lasix as a race-day medication, he said he was “vehemently opposed” to such a ban.

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However, when asked specifically about Zenyatta, he declined to go there. “I don’t want to single out any one horse, but generally speaking, a ban of Lasix would be a very bad thing.”

Jerry Moss, Zenyatta’s owner, also skirted the issue. When asked if we would have had the Zenyatta story without Lasix, he said, “I don’t now about that.” But he does oppose a ban of Lasix as a race-day medication.

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“I think if Lasix were made illegal, then trainers and veterinarians would just turn to something else,” said Moss, a member of the California Horse Racing Board.

Another CHRB member, vice chairman David Israel, used the same wording as Shirreffs when he was asked about the proposed ban. “I am vehemently opposed,” he said.

Keith Brackpool, the CHRB chairman, declined to give his personal viewpoint but did say, “It is going to be a very interesting debate.”

This is the second part of a on that debate. The first part examined the argument for banning Lasix, which has been proposed but some organizations and prominent people in horse racing. But most of the people interviewed by Patch during a one-month investigation were outspoken in opposing such a ban.

“It’s ludicrous,” said 71-year-old veteran trainer Kathy Walsh. “Lasix is a preventative that 85% of the horses need to prevent bleeding. The people who are pushing for this ban are misinformed.”

Trainer Darrell Vienna said, “It would be a huge mistake to ban Lasix. Calling Lasix a performance-enhancing drug shows these people don’t know what they are talking about. The exact opposite is true. These people are ignorant about this topic.”

Trainer Bob Baffert is another strong opponent of the proposed ban.

“When I first got into racing in Arizona, I wasn’t even aware of Lasix,” he said. “I have no idea who many more horses could have raced if they had been given Lasix, but I am sure it was quite a few. I think once a horse shows that it needs Lasix, that horse should be able to get it.”

Trainer Bruce Headley said, “It would be like banning aspirins for humans. We take aspirin when we get a headache, and that is a good thing. A horse needs Lasix if he is a bleeder.”

Hall of Fame jockey Eddie Delahoussaye said, “I raced before Lasix was around and I raced after it became a legal medication. We’re a lot better off with it than without it, I’ll tell you that for sure. In the old days horses that bled a lot couldn’t race and I don’t know what became of them.

“I was in Kentucky recently and talked with Dr. Rob Holland, one of the leading horse veterinarians in the country. The way he explained to me, I was convinced that Lasix is a preventative diuretic, not a steroid or performance-enhancing drug of any kind. I think there are a lot of misinformed people dealing with this issue.”

Most private veterinarians are against the proposed ban because administering Lasix puts money in their pockets.

But Patch interviewed two veterinarians who are in regulatory positions, Rick Arthur and Dana Stead.

Arthur, the medical director for the CHRB, said, “I think horse racing could survive, even thrive, without Lasix. But there clearly is no consensus here and I think it is going to take multiple generations of horsemen learning to manage horses that bleed rather than giving them Lasix before we reach any kind of consensus."

Stead, a track veterinarian working the Southern California circuit, said, “I would like to eventually see a ban but it’s not something that is going to happen over night. We’re not going to have Lasix on Dec. 31 and then not have it on Jan. 1.”

One retired trainer who asked not to have his name used got into a discussion with this reporter and former jockey Alex Maze about this issue. The retired trainer said he got out of horse racing because of drugs and is opposed to drugs of any kind.

Maze told him that banning Lasix, in addition to putting horses and the jockeys on top of them at risk, would also decrease field sizes and that would impact the sport as a whole.

“Now there is one argument that has me rethinking this issue a little,” the retired trainer said. “The one thing that could hurt horse racing more than anything is a lack of horses, and I would hate to see that.”

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