A Sport That Embraces Steroid Use

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... 32Q5O1.DTL

<<Anabolic steroids are commonly used on racehorses, but there isn't the uproar other sports are experiencing. Not only are they legal in American racing, but they have become almost an economic necessity.

"It's always going to be necessary now because there are too many races, and you try to keep the horses going year-round,'' trainer Greg Gilchrist said.......>>

Re: A Sport That Embraces Steroid Use

This is the same reason why track atheletes use juice, if you train hard in the weight room and expect to hit the track in the evenings, even with 10 hours sleep there is no way you can do the hard wind sprints and expect your body not to break down after a few weeks of overtraining....

[steve]

Re: A Sport That Embraces Steroid Use

>This is the same reason why track atheletes use
>juice, if you train hard in the weight room and
>expect to hit the track in the evenings, even
>with 10 hours sleep there is no way you can do
>the hard wind sprints and expect your body not to
>break down after a few weeks of overtraining....

That is not the reason they use them. It may be one of the "beneficial" results of steroid use, but its pretty obvious they are using them to gain a competitive advantage (illeagally and unethically).

Re: A Sport That Embraces Steroid Use

The athletic advantages that steroids confer are way way way overrated.... they merely make your muscles stronger, which in itself does NOT translate into faster running

[michael lewis]

Re: A Sport That Embraces Steroid Use

"they merely make your muscles stronger, which in itself does NOT translate into faster running"

Help!!

[mrbowie]

Re: A Sport That Embraces Steroid Use

I own-manage a stable of 45 Thoroughbred racehorses.

The drug problems faced by those who play by the rules in horse racing have nothing to do with steroid use.

We have only 3 or 4 horses that are regularly given steroids--one is a filly that we bought who was already on them and we were afraid to change her routine.

The rest are geldings, who basically are given steroids as part of a hormone replacement therapy.

Steroids are vastly overrated when used for racehorses, because horses are natural athletes that are bred to run, unlike humans.

Cheating in racehorses basically falls into two categories, as follows:

1) Stimulants
2) Blood-doping and buffering of lactic acid

There is no current proof that stimulating of racehorses currently is taking place on a wide basis.

But blood-doping and lactic acid buffering has become the routines of choice among horsemen.

By delivering more oxygen through chemically enhanced blood and by buffering the build up of lactic acid in the muscles, horses have been able to run longer and get tired less quickly.

EPO-like drugs help in the delivery of more oxygen and "milkshaking" helps to keep the build up of lactic acid at bay.

Some racing jurisdictions are wise to these practices and are finally starting to do something about it.

[racewalker]

Re: A Sport That Embraces Steroid Use

Another view from the horse world:
My wife and I own/manage a small dressage horse facility. There is a racetrack here locally and, despite our advice not to, people often buy horses off the track for their kids to try and turn them into sport/dressage horse. (Trackies are relatively cheap but they usually require alot of work and time to make them suitable/safe.)We had a case where the one of the trackies,just done with racing, seemed fine for a short while and then got progressively more listless. One day it keeled over dead despite being about 5 or 6 years old. The vet was stunned when he did an autopsy and discovered that its internal organs had basically liquified due to the number of chemicals that it had been on. Doing that to a horse is disgusting, doing it to a human being is beyond words.