“Leaders of the reform movement — including mainstays like Arthur Hancock, who has raised three Kentucky Derby winners, and Roy and Gretchen Jackson, who raced Barbaro — believe that American racing has no bigger problem than its image as a drug culture.” (Jim Squires, NY Times, 6/10/11)

“A horse that’s not feeling pain may keep on trying to the point where it has a catastrophic breakdown. Humans, in theory, at least can make a choice as to whether to go to work while using painkillers. Horses don’t have that choice; we make it for them.” (Steve Zorn, NY Times, 5/14/11)

This past May, the House and Senate saw the introduction of companion bills, H.R.1733 and S.886 (Interstate Horseracing Improvement Act of 2011), that seek to eliminate performance-enhancing drugs in horseracing. In advance of presenting their legislation, Senator Tom Udall and Representative Ed Whitfield penned an opinion piece calling for congressional action in the absence of a unified governing body. America, they say, stands virtually alone in allowing race-day anti-bleeding medications (Squires says 95-98% of racehorses receive treatment, even though the vast majority do not require it) like Lasix (“comments on past performance sheets highlight ‘first-time Lasix’ as a betting angle”). And, they find “the doping [anti-inflammatory pain killers] of sore horses appalling,” pointing out “that the U.S. horse fatality rate is more than three times higher than in comparable British flat racing.”

But even when the racing industry appears to be acquiring conscience, it cannot help but betray its true core. From the “Findings” section: “The use of performance-enhancing drugs in horseracing adversely affects interstate commerce, creates unfair competition, deceives horse buyers and the wagering public, weakens the breed of the American Thoroughbred, is detrimental to international sales of the American Thoroughbred, and threatens the safety and welfare of horses and jockeys.”

It is no accident that the welfare of horses is listed sixth, and last. Also: “The horseracing industry represents approximately $40,000,000,000 to the United States economy annually and generates nearly 400,000 domestic jobs.” Drugs, in truth, threaten to undermine the integrity of the sport with the only constituency who really matters, the gambler. Steve Zorn writes: (5/14/11) “The momentum, it seems, is building for a historic reversal of recent decades’ trend toward allowing more and more drug use. In principle, that’s a good thing…. First, the health of the racing industry depends on betting, and bettors are, understandably, not eager to pour their money into a game that they suspect is fixed.”

There is, of course, wonderful irony in all this: In the wake of the 1919 Black Sox Scandal, Baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis was compelled to act decisively, and harshly, in order to protect his sport from gamblers. Today, many in the racing establishment seek to act decisively, and harshly (the bill calls for escalating penalties, including three strikes and out), in order to protect their industry for gamblers.

So while I have no doubt that the congressmen are genuinely saddened when thoroughbreds like Eight Belles crumble, this bill, in the final analysis, is no more than a charade. As proof, one need only ask this simple question: Why, when detrimental effects on the horses’ health were (are) obvious to all with common sense, is this only now being seriously addressed after decades of turning the other way? Short answer, desperation from a shaky industry: Zorn says that national handle is down 25% over the last three years, and according to the Daily Racing Form, the NY Racing Association will lose $11 million this year. The NY Times reports that inflation-adjusted “New York racing handle is approximately 20 percent of what it was in 1974,” and unadjusted for inflation, the DRF says handle is on pace “to hit its lowest level since 1995.”

The essence of horseracing is no different than that of roulette, only the wheel isn’t whipped to perform (by the way, to those who would call horseracing a sport, the burden falls to cite any other sport where lashes provide the motivation), will not shatter bones, will not languish on retirement farms, and will not be shipped to horrific butchering houses in Canada and Mexico. If the good people involved in horseracing truly cared about the horses, they would cease and desist, making bills like H.R.1733 wholly unnecessary.