Lasix-free racing | Horse Racing Free Tips

Bobby Flay Talks Breeders’ Cup Triumph On Writers’ Room

Still riding high from a scintillating victory in the GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf with fast-finishing Pizza Bianca (Fastnet Rock {Aus}), celebrity chef, restaurateur and owner/breeder Bobby Flay joined the TDN Writers' Room presented by Keeneland Tuesday afternoon. Calling in via Zoom as the Green Group Guest of the Week, Flay appreciated the significance of winning on racing's biggest stage with a homebred, teased a potential Royal Ascot trip with Pizza Bianca and discussed how he would approach racing's marketing challenges and more.

Flay made a huge splash at the 2014 Tattersalls October Sale when going to 1,250,000 guineas (around $2,122,050 U.S.) to purchase a regally-bred daughter of Galileo (Ire)–the highest-priced filly sold in the Northern Hemisphere that year–he named White Hot (Ire). But the filly never made it to the races. Flay could've cut his losses and sold the mare back at auction, but instead held onto her to breed, putting trust in her pedigree, and she rewarded him with a Breeders' Cup winner as her first foal.

“She has a lights-out pedigree,” he said. “She's by Galileo, she's a half to Pour Moi (Montjeu {Ire}), who won the English Derby, and that's just the beginning of the pedigree. It goes on for pages. It's a Coolmore family. And one thing about buying into a Coolmore family, those guys are so focused on making their families better and better that they're going to spend money all over that pedigree until the end of time. So I made that bet. I took a leap of faith and it didn't work out. The horse never ran, just wasn't good enough. But I knew I was going to keep this horse for the rest of her life. My feeling was, at some point, the blood will show up. If it's that good, something has to happen, directly or indirectly, that's going to help your family. But you have to be patient. You may have to invest more money actually to continue to breed, but at some point it will work. And I obviously did not expect it to work with the first foal, but it did. It's all gravy from here on out.”

Flay has become a breakthrough celebrity and, as a result, a de facto ambassador of racing. He was asked about how receptive people in his world are to the sport and what can be done to introduce more potential owners and bettors into the game.

“There's only one way to do it. You have to expose them to it,” he said. “If you ask me for a recipe and I just hand you a piece of paper or tell you to go download something off a website and you make it, it's going to be one way. But if I actually show you how to do it, it's going to come out differently and probably better, because I'm showing you as opposed to telling you. It's the same thing for racing. If I tell people about my experience, they're like, 'Oh yeah, that's great.' I take people to the big events, because I want them to see racing at its best, see the best horses and the biggest crowds, and then they're hooked. They're like, 'I can't believe I've never done this before.' I hear that all the time. Every year, I take about 25-30 people to the Belmont Stakes. Half of them have never been to a race before. They become racing fans.”

Elsewhere on the show, which is also sponsored by Coolmore, West Point Thoroughbreds, XBTV, Lane's End and Legacy Bloodstock, the writers discussed their takeaways from last week's interview with Travis Tygart and Tessa Muir of USADA, debated whether or not Lasix-free racing is a big deal anymore and addressed potential remedies for the wagering public in situations like the Breeders' Cup Juvenile Turf mess. Click here to watch the podcast; click here for the audio-only version or find it on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

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Florida Trainers React to Lasix Ban in Stakes

In Imprimis (Broken Vow), Joe Orseno has the morning-line favorite in Friday’s Janus S. at Gulfstream, the first race that will be held at the South Florida track under new rules that prohibit the use of Lasix in stakes races. Orseno isn’t looking forward to what will become the new normal for horsemen across the country at most major tracks.

“It’s a big adjustment and I’m not fond of the new rules,” he said. “I don’t see how you can take a horse who has been running on Lasix his whole life and all of a sudden penalize the best horses in the country for being good horses. They didn’t think this through. I don’t know how it won’t be animal cruelty when you see a horse come back and there is blood coming out of both nostrils.”

Though no fan of the new rules, Orseno doesn’t believe that Imprimis will have a problem and he did start the turf sprinter without Lasix in 2019 when venturing to Royal Ascot for the G1 King’s Stand S. Imprimis was sixth that day in his only career start without the anti-bleeding medication. But Orseno is adamant that the new rules will cause more problems than they will solve.

“Lasix isn’t going away,” he said. “These horses are still going to train on it and we’re going to breeze our horses on it. We’re going to do everything but run on it that day. And you know what? They’re going to find other things to use on these horses, whether it’s tomorrow or the next day. Someone down the line is going to find something they can cheat with and everyone is going to find out about it. All they are doing is creating cheaters in the sport. This just isn’t good.”

Trainer Eddie Plesa Jr. will send out Miss Auramet (Uncaptured) in the day’s Abundantia S. It will be her 17th career start and first without Lasix. Like Orseno, he is not a fan of the new regulations.

“I have been doing this for a long time and the one medication that I have seen that has been most important for the well being of the horses has been Lasix,” he said. “There has been a negative reaction to Lasix, but not from the horsemen or by horse people that use it. They say a concern is that it masks other drugs. I don’t see it that way. I see it as a medication that people take every single day. It helps people without doing anything negative to them and it’s the same thing with horses. People that aren’t horse people have made these decisions and I think it was somewhat fueled by PETA and others. If you went ahead and polled all the horse trainers they would be overwhelmingly for the use of Lasix.”

Lasix will be less of a factor in the Cash Run S., a race for 3-year-old fillies. With Lasix having been banned in 2-year-old races at Gulfstream in 2019, most of the starters have been running medication free. That’s nowhere near the case for the Janus S., which brings together a group of veteran turf sprinters, most of whom have never run without the medication. That includes the second choice on the morning line, Extravagant Kid (Kiss the Kid). Trained by Brendan Walsh, the 8-year-old veteran will be making his 47th career start. Walsh has no idea what to expect.

“You wonder what’s going to happen with an older horse like this one who has run a bunch of times on Lasix,” he said. “How is he going to react to it? We’ll just have to see what happens. He’s not a bleeder but he’s never run without it. We’ll be able to form a better opinion after we’ve seen a bunch of these races. It’s hard to make any judgments.”

While Walsh is willing to keep an open mind, he is among the many horsemen who believe the sport has far bigger problems than Lasix.

“I don’t think this is the be all and end all of the problems here,” he said. “There are a lot more factors outside of this. Lasix is one of the sport’s lesser problems.”

Trainer Jose Delgado will start The Critical Way (Tizway) in the Janus. He says his horse has been getting the minimum dosage of Lasix and should be fine without the medication. But he is among those who is not in favor of the ban. He doesn’t want to see situations where horses are visibly bleeding from nostrils after running without Lasix.

“I really don’t think it is fair for a lot of horses because they normally bleed,” he said. “I don’t know why they are doing this. Maybe PETA has something to do with it. You’re going to see horses come out of races bleeding from the nose and the public is going to see that. That’s not going to look good. But what can we do? We have to follow the rules.”

Kent Sweezey has Blind Ambition (Tapit), a horse who comes from off the pace, in the Janus. Sweezey said the Lasix ban is more likely to hurt front runners because they exert themselves early on in their races.

“I think the pace will be a big thing,” he said. “I’d love to see it where horses settled rather than always having some horse going :22 and change on the front end. You may not see that anymore because if they do that they’re going to bleed without the Lasix. It could be so bad that they won’t be able to run for another six weeks or at least run competitively for another six weeks.”

That’s something bettors may need time to figure out. And not only will they have to decipher races like the Janus and the Abundantia where every horse is coming off Lasix, there are nine horses on the Friday card at Gulfstream that are racing with Lasix for the first time. There will be dozens more in the days ahead, most of them newly turned 3-year-olds who are coming out of 2-year-old races where Lasix was banned in 2020.

Orseno wishes they just left everything the way it was.

“There are a lot of things they need to address, things a lot more important than Lasix,” he said. “And now they are picking on the best horses in the country by banning it in stakes races. To me, it just doesn’t make any sense.”

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Lasix-Free Racing for 2021 Stakes Races At Gulfstream

The 2021 stakes races run at Gulfstream Park will be carded Lasix-free, effective Jan. 1, 1/ST RACING announced Friday.

The move to medication-free racing reflects the commitment made in April 2019 by 1/ST, along with other major racing organizations and associations, to eliminate Lasix in all stakes races in 2021 and is consistent with the International Federation of Horse Racing Authorities (IFHA) standards.

Gulfstream Park will be the first racetrack in Florida to move to medication-free racing. The medication-free format for stakes races will apply to the $3-million GI Pegasus World Cup Invitational and the $1- million GI Pegasus World Cup Turf Invitational set to take place Jan. 23 as well as the GI Florida Derby and GII Fountain of Youth.

In 2020, the administration of race day Lasix was also banned for 2-year-old horses entered at any of 1/ST RACING’s racetracks, including at California’s Santa Anita Park and Golden Gate Fields and at Laurel Park and Pimlico Race Course in Maryland.

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MD Commission Pushes Back on Lasix-Free 2YOs, The Stronach Group Vows to Write No Juvenile Races

After the Maryland Racing Commission (MRC) on Thursday refused to vote or otherwise rule on a late agenda request to allow The Stronach Group (TSG) to card Lasix-free races for 2-year-olds, an attorney for the TSG-owned Maryland Jockey Club (MJC) told the commission that the MJC-owned Laurel Park wouldn’t be scheduling any juvenile races at all under the present rules that allow the use of the controversial anti-bleeding medication.

“We currently [don’t] have, and I don’t believe we will have, any intent of carding a 2-year-old race under the condition of the administration of Lasix,” said Alan Rifkin, the MJC’s lawyer. “Our position on Lasix isn’t going to change.”

With over 100 juveniles currently in training at Laurel and no races for 2-year-olds yet run or on the horizon in the state, Rifkin’s avowal prompted commissioner Thomas Bowman to predict a short-term “devastating effect on Maryland racing, because the horses are going to have to go out of state to run.”

Alan Foreman, the chairman/chief executive officer of the Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association (THA), whose members include Maryland owners and trainers, said TSG did not approach horsemen or breeders in advance of bringing the matter up before the commission June 25.

“We suspected something was up weeks ago because they weren’t carding 2-year-old races,” Foreman said, adding that the THA reached out to TSG officials for an explanation. “We couldn’t get an answer. We waited weeks to get an answer. We kept getting bounced around.”

Foreman continued: “So here we have, in the middle of the COVID pandemic, the horsemen with their backs up against the wall economically. We’ve got an industry we’re trying to rebuild. We’ve got barns full of 2-year-olds, and they come in this past week and tell the commission, ‘Oh, by the way, we’re not writing 2-year-old races with Lasix. Either you do it our way, or we’re not going to write those races.’ And we have to tell our horsemen now to take their horses out of state.”

Michael Algeo, the MRC chairperson, likened the way the MJC broached the no-Lasix topic as akin to trying to change the rules in the middle of a football game.

“And if you don’t agree with the change of the rules, we’re going to take our ball and go home,” Algeo added.

Algeo made it clear at the outset of the discussion of the agenda item that the June 18 request in the form of a letter from TSG technically came in too late to be considered for the monthly meeting, but he wanted to end up including it because the medication issue was of such importance.

Algeo said the letter, signed by Craig Fravel, TSG’s chief executive of racing operations, stated, “we intend to begin scheduling races for 2-year-olds [without Lasix] and hereby inform the commission that your action is required.”

Algeo said he was “somewhat taken aback” at receiving what appeared to be more of a written directive, rather than a request, from TSG. He noted the letter was accompanied by a press release about the 2-year-old Lasix ban that seemed to suggest the commission’s compliance was a foregone conclusion. Algeo said TSG then submitted a lengthy legal memorandum only 48 hours before the June 25 teleconference, meaning it came in too close to the meeting for commissioners to read and understand in a timely manner.

“That, sir, put us in a very difficult position,” Algeo told Rifkin. He then added in a curt tone that underscored his annoyance, “And it’s a position that I don’t like to be put in.”

Nonetheless, Rifkin was allowed nearly 18 minutes of uninterrupted testimony to state TSG/MJC’s case on not allowing 2-year-olds to race on Lasix.

“We are not asking the commission for a ban on race-day Lasix. We agree with you Mr. Chairman, that is a question for another day,” Rifkin said. “All MJC intends to do here is present the opportunity to owners or trainers who voluntarily wish to race their 2-year-olds drug-free of Lasix…without the competitive disadvantage of other horses using Lasix.”

Rifkin said no new regulation or law would be needed to approve the Lasix-free races for juveniles. He explained that’s because the current Lasix regulations hinge on the word “permissible” and not “mandatory” when describing how the drug is to be used.

“That regulation speaks to what owners and trainers may do. Not what the [MJC] must do,” Rifkin said. “That is, there is nothing in that regulation that requires MJC to run any races for horses using Lasix.”

Rifkin then pointed out that another section of the state’s regulations limit Lasix doses on race day to “not more than 100” nanograms.

“Quite obviously, carding a race with zero nanograms of Lasix as a voluntary condition of entrance is less than the maximum permitted 100 nanograms,” Rifkin said. “That’s entirely consistent with that regulation.”

As for the request coming in only a week before the meeting (and after an edition of the MRC agenda had already been publicly noticed), Rifkin said, “I know there is some concern that this has come upon you fast. But it really hasn’t in some respects. The debate over Lasix has been here for awhile.

“We submit that MJC has a legitimate business reason and absolute right to conduct drug-free races,” Rifkin continued. “There is no law, regulation, or condition that prohibits that action, [and that the 2-year-old Lasix ban] is in the best public interest of equine safety and the public’s general interest.

“While it may be permissible–in other words voluntary–for an owner or trainer to administer Lasix, it does not mean the track licensee is obligated to be an accomplice and run races for the benefit of those horses who have been administered the drug.

“The action we are taking here is modest,” Rifkin summed up. “The action we are taking here is a first step.”

Algeo replied that, “I understand what your argument is. I understand your interpretation. With all due respect, I just simply disagree with it.”

Algeo said that according to his interpretation, there is no statutory, case law, or regulatory authority that allows the commission to tell the MJC it can run certain races without Lasix.

“I happen to believe that…the best interests of Maryland racing would be to actually continue racing 2-year-olds with Lasix,” Algeo said.

After Algeo made his points, Rifkin asked for clarification: “Are you telling us we must run races for 2-year-olds with Lasix?”

“No sir,” was Algeo’s reply.

On the heels of that exchange was when Rifkin, in answer to another commissioner’s suggestion that Laurel try carding both Lasix-allowed and Lasix-free juvenile races to see what happens, stated his above-quoted desire by the MJC not to write any 2-year-old races at all under the current circumstances.

Algeo closed the discussion by saying that the commission’s official action on the item for Thursday would be to refer the no-Lasix proposal to the MRC’s newly formed safety and welfare committee, with the request that the issue be expedited so it can be taken up at a future meeting before the full commission.

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