NEWS
Congress hears testimony on racehorse drug testing
Posted: Wednesday, February 27, 2008 4:21 PM
ALEX WALDROP
Churchill Downs photo
by John Hay Rabb
Thoroughbred racing was under the congressional microscope on Wednesday in Washington, D.C., where the Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection discussed the use of steroids and other performance-enhancing substances in professional sports.
Representative Ed Whitfield (R-Kentucky) chastised the racing industry for falling behind other countries’ drug policies and referred to the sport of horse racing as one that needed cleaning up.
“The U.S. is viewed [by other countries] as a place where racing is about drugs,” Whitfield said. “Steroids have been banned in all professional sports except racing—isn’t it time to clean up the sport of horse racing?”
To that end, subcommittee Chairman Bobby Rush (R-Illinois) said, “Illegal painkillers are injected into racehorses.”
Alex Waldrop, chief executive officer of the National Thoroughbred Racing Association, testified before the subcommittee that is part of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
“In 2007, nearly 107,000 horses made 918,000 starts in 116,000 races,” Waldrop told the subcommittee. “Our industry tested at least one horse from every one of those races. We test every race, every day, screening for up to 200 drugs in one sample. … Racing spends between $30-million and $35-million annually on equine drug tests.”
The Subcommitee questioned Waldrop on racing’s model rules for medications, including one for steroids that the Racing Medication and Testing Consortium helped developed. Scot Waterman, D.V.M., a former NTRA employee who now works as executive director of the RMTC, advised Waldrop for the Subcommittee meeting.
There was considerable discussion during the hearing of possible Congressional legislation to ban performance-enhancing substances in Thoroughbred racing. However, there was no apparent consensus on the substance of such a bill, or a timetable for its introduction.
Thoroughbred racing was under the congressional microscope on Wednesday in Washington, D.C., where the Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection discussed the use of steroids and other performance-enhancing substances in professional sports.
For complete text of Waldrop's testimony, click here.
John Hay Rabb is a Washington, D.C., correspondent of Thoroughbred Times
