ARCADIA – There’s no detention barn and every horse is getting his oats cooked the way they like it.
This is the Breeders’ Cup for trainer Doug O’Neill, where he is a free man, unlike the Belmont Stakes, where his every move was watched and monitored by the New York State Racing and Wagering Board as he tried to train I’ll Have Another to a Triple Crown sweep that came up a day short when the horse was injured and retired with a tendon injury to his right front leg.
Gone is the beard that covered his face and disappointment when I’ll Have Another scratched, and it’s now replaced with a clean shaven look and a smile.
O’Neill now walks through the grandstand and barn area at Santa Anita saying or waving hello to anybody he recognizes.
“It was such an amazing run,” O’Neill recalled of the failed Triple Crown run. “I learned that racing is still very much a popular sport and horses are loved by so many people.”
O’Neill was under the watch of the Board and many others because of his past, which included four TCO2 violations, a practice allegedly associated with milkshaking a horse – when a horse’s blood sample exceeds the regulatory threshold of 37.0 mml/L for total carbon dioxide.
The theory behind the milkshake is that its ingredients delay lactic acid from forming in the muscles, preventing fatigue.
“Nothing good comes easy,” said the 44-year-old father of two. “I’ve said it all along that I’m far from perfect and I try to do better every day.”
O’Neill hasn’t had a milkshaking violation since 2010, but just recently returned to training after serving a 40-day suspension after giving up in his fight to deny the charge.
“It taught me how much I love the game,” he said. “The first few days you enjoy recharging the batteries if you will. But there’s no worse feeling than waking up in the morning with all the energy and have no place to go. I don’t ever want to feel that again. It was definitely a harsh penalty mentally for me but it’s good to be back. I’m glad and blessed it’s behind me. It dragged out for a couple of years.”
O’Neill claims he spent close to $300,000 fighting the case.
“It’s the rules,” he said. “You don’t always agree with the umpires call, but that’s part of the game. We’re glad to have it done and are better off for it and glad it’s behind me.”
O’Neill believes most of the drug positives in the sport, which are mainly overages of legal medications, could be avoided if racing had pre-race drug testing, rather than just the post-race test.
“Here we are in 2012 and I can’t believe with the technology we have we can’t do pre-race testing,” he said sitting in his office in barn 88 of the Santa Anita backside. “It blows me away.”
One problem with pre-race testing is that it is more costly than the current post-race test.
“To me it’s more costly not to do it,” O’Neill said. “If the leaders of this industry aren’t looking into this I think it’s a big mistake. We’re shooting ourselves in the foot. We are putting out a perception that horses may be tinkered with and horses that win might be cheating. If you had extensive pre-race test by the time they got to the paddock everyone would know they went through test and they are all clean. It would win back people who question that the game isn’t clean.”
O’Neill believes the post-race test is ineffective.
“For them to say they can’t afford it is a real poor cope out because I really think we can’t afford not to do it,” he said. “I think it’s only way to have clean transparent sport. Not after.
Whoever says it’s too time consuming or too expensive has never been put in situation where there accused of doing something that they swear they didn’t.”
The trainer will saddle seven Breeders’ Cup starters over Friday and Saturday and believes he’s got a live chance to win the Classic with either Richard’s Kid or Handsome Mike, but in the end he’s believes it was worth all the scrutiny of the Triple Crown.
“Life was good prior to the Triple Crown and fantastic since,” he said.
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/NydnRss/~3/fVBq8aFtTL8/story01.htm
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