Jim Squires’s “Long History of Drug Use in the Derby”
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — By all accounts, the 90th Kentucky Derby in 1964 was the first to include a competitor running on the drug furosemide, then known as Lasix. The initial dose was given surreptitiously by Alex Harthill, known as the Derby Doc, to the winner, Northern Dancer.

The 138th Derby on Saturday could be the last to allow the drug, although all 20 starters will almost certainly be taking it.

Developed as a heart medication for humans, furosemide, a powerful diuretic now known as Salix, reduces the risk of exercise-induced pulmonary hemorrhage by reducing blood pressure from the heart and lungs and shifting blood and water to the renal glands. It was not legalized by any racing jurisdiction until Maryland did so 10 years later.

Kentucky never banned the drug, so presumably every Derby since Northern Dancer’s record-breaking performance — he was the first horse to complete the mile-and-a-quarter distance in two minutes — has included at least one furosemide-laced runner.

Until his death in 2005, Harthill was the veterinarian of choice for many trainers and owners, and he often attended to half the Derby field, presumably deciding which horses got the drug and which did not. New York was the last racing jurisdiction to legalize furosemide, holding out until 1995.

Now nearly a half century later, furosemide remains a divisive issue in the troubled sport of horse racing. And Kentucky, the first state to allow it, and New York, the last, probably the two most important and influential racing jurisdictions in the world, find themselves at the center of the controversy.

Last month, in an attempt to follow the lead of the Breeders’ Cup, the Kentucky Racing Commission failed by one vote to ban the use of Salix and the painkiller phenylbutazone, commonly called bute, to 2-year-olds running in the 2012 graded stakes races. These stakes provide a lot of the purse money necessary to land one of the 20 spots in the next year’s Derby.

Opponents of the ban, mostly trainers and veterinarians, swayed one of the commission members, the Breeders’ Cup chairman,Tom Ludt, whom the other commissioners had considered solidly committed to support it. But their victory is probably short-lived. The commission has a vacancy almost certainly to be filled quickly by someone who supports changes regarding Salix and bute.

When the commission meets later this month, it is likely that the rule change will have been modified to allay Ludt’s reservations and gain his vote as well.

That means Kentucky, for at least a short time, would be, as the trainers contend, an island in a sea of Salix users, and the prospective Kentucky Derby horses would run elsewhere in the graded stakes this fall. But New York is a racing jurisdiction never inclined to furosemide use anyway, and is now reeling under the weight of charges that the increased purses at Aqueduct contributed to the deaths of 30 horses at the recently completed meet.

A task force appointed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo is investigating track conditions as well as the role of drugs in those deaths. And the New York State Racing and Wagering Board has undertaken a re-evaluation of race-day drug rules, specifically the use of furosemide and the withdrawal times allowed for phenylbutazone.
The obvious correlation between purses swollen by contributions from the new Aqueduct casino and drug-related horse deaths has encouraged a small but persistent group of thoroughbred breeders and owners, including some members of the influential Jockey Club and a majority of the Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association members, who have long considered casino gambling and race-day medication as the sport’s mortal enemies. They believe that once Kentucky and New York, where most of the important graded stakes take place, ban race-day medication, the rest of the industry will have no choice but to follow. And they continue to mount pressure by pushing for federal legislation that would force tracks to insist on drug-free racing or lose their legal right to conduct parimutuel wagering across state lines via the telephone and the Internet, a privilege now denied to casinos and other forms of gambling.

Although trainers and veterinarians argue otherwise, there is little doubt that a dose of furosemide on race day improves a horse’s performance. Except for North America, every other racing jurisdiction in the world considers it such and prohibits its use.

And there is little doubt that Harthill believed so, or he wouldn’t have pioneered furosemide’s use. The only things he loved more than horses were winning horses. Most horses lose 35 to 100 pounds of fluids in the 24 hours after an injection, which in itself can be a short-term benefit. Studies suggest that less than 5 percent of racehorses bleed in the lungs significantly enough to impair performance; more than 95 percent of all horses race on it in the United States and Canada.

Few trainers are willing to compete without furosemide. Yet the long-term impact on a horse’s health is negative. A dose of Salix disrupts electrolyte balance, particularly affecting calcium, phosphorus and potassium. When the calcium level drops below normal in a horse, it leeches out of the bone. That is why many Salix injections are followed the next day by a calcium shot that is probably useless.The connection is clear between the onset of furosemide use and the increase in racetrack breakdowns and the reduction in the number of starts in the last four decades.

There is a consensus among critics that this drug’s powerful flushing washes out traces of other illegal drugs, particularly painkillers and bronchial dilators, masking them in postrace testing.

Alhough a shot of Salix costs only $20, its use most often generates a regimen of prerace and postrace medication than can cost $100 or more, providing an estimated $100 million annual revenue stream from owners to veterinarians. Influential breeders, among them Arthur Hancock of Kentucky and George Strawbridge of Pennsylvania, said the repeated use of diuretics and painkillers on young horses has resulted in a weaker strain of animals more prone to injury and is responsible for a general decline in the quality of American-bred animals.