HOW DIRTY IS THIS GAME ??

please kye, your only dirty because you've been left out,

I'd prefer to lose that rely on cheating participants to win

you've obviously got no idea about the game kye, and you'l end up with the arse out your stides!

I can't argue with mug's, you admitted yourself that your clueless! "Because i'm honest i know nothing?" they're your words,
obviously another $5 mug punter, rorting and drugs will never end when ca$h is involved anywhere! you live in another world and i feel sorry for people like you!

correct, most trainers and drivers are desperate's!

So Aker if Kye makes a living without being dishonest or "in the know" that makes him a mug?
Nice world you live in there buddy.

Maybe cos the real aker is a outright ****

U may be on the money, Joel

Has a way with words, always controversial.....hmmmmm

they're legends that have made the sport what it is!

Thats right a sport that is without integrity.
that chews up the small honbest trainer and spits them out
where the minority of punters rob the majority.

Brownlow Medallist, I'll have you know

How Lance Armstrong's drug of choice has turned horse racing into a sport for cheats - and what must be done to fix it
Andrew Rule
Sunday Herald Sun
November 11, 201212:00AM
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Late trainer-driver Vinnie Knight. Source: Herald Sun

SUDDENLY bush horses become city stars and a good nag becomes a winged Pegasus. In an exclusive investigation, ANDREW RULE looks at the drug EPO and the dark shadow it is casting on Australia's racing industry.

NOT long before Vinnie Knight ended it all with a shotgun, his horse-trainer father dropped in on a racing industry figure he'd known a long time.

The two were professional associates more than friends but Bob Knight had a boastful streak.

He couldn't resist showing his hand.

The dark knight of harness racing pulled a small bottle from his pocket and showed it to his uneasy host, who didn't realise the significance until later. It was EPO, short for erythropoietin - an oxygen-boosting hormone.

It was the latest and best of the drugs and drenches that, among other race-fixing rorts, had guaranteed the Knights' spectacular success. The host realised something he would keep quiet until long after both Knights were dead: the knockers had been right all along.


Father and son were almost as bent as the money-laundering mobsters that gave them whatever they wanted in return for inside information on "sure things".

In Vinnie's case, the reward wasn't just cash, but sex and cocaine, says a former jockey who "did business" with the same gangster punters when he, too, was riding high and living hard.

Vinnie partied and gambled at cards as recklessly as he drove, the difference being he lost at cards. Afterwards, he would be remorseful, paranoid and depressed.

Harness racing still had fans then and Vinnie was the main drawcard. They called him the Ayrton Senna of the trotting track. But the bogan prince of reinsmen did not die as honourably as the great Brazilian.

Late one night in April, 1991, he parked his big Ford just off the Northern Highway at Kilmore, near the property where they'd prepared so many suspect winners. Then he blew his brains out.

The Knights were finished. But the wise guys soon found others who'd conspire to rob racing with needle, drench or dirty tactics. Now, some of racing's biggest names believe a circle of trainers have taken drug cheating to a new level - and not just on harness tracks.

They point to winning strike rates around Australia that seem almost as extraordinary as Lance Armstrong's cycling record. Which figures, because some winning trainers reputedly use the same drug as Armstrong did to steal seven Tours de France.

"Any sport with money involved, EPO's there," a giant of Australian cycling told the Herald Sun last week. "Horse racing has just got better at it."

In 1997, a European veterinarian new to Victorian racing was asked to treat a dying horse.

Its eyes and coat were dull and its blood count was so low it looked to have leukemia.

The vet was puzzled until the horse's trainer confided it had previously been "hit up" for months with EPO, a shortcut that mimics and multiplies the effect of altitude training for improved stamina.

SINCE then, the vet has heard of many similar cases: horses falling sick when turned out after racing as their bodies fail to replace red cells that the drug artificially augmented during training.

EPO was originally refined to treat anaemia, but opportunists grasped its potential to boost stamina after Finnish runner Lasse Viren legally used blood doping to smash Olympic distance records in the 1970s before returning to obscurity when the rules caught up with the laboratory rats.

European cyclists who took up the drug around 1990 were not all so skilful: some died when their blood turned to sludge and their hearts stopped.

But then science tuned the drug and the dosage so that Armstrong's generation of cyclists could get away with using it in both senses.


Late trainer-driver Vinnie Knight was known as the Ayrton Senna of the trotting track. Source: Herald Sun

The wonder is not that early forms of EPO infiltrated horse racing as well as cycling.

That was a racetrack certainty. The only question is when trainers started using it - and who still does?

That cloud still hangs over racing, and not only because of EPO and its synthetic equivalent darbepoetin alfa, known as DPO to its friends at the racetrack. Speed and stamina stimulants have been around almost as long as racing.

They range from the many opiate offshoots, such as oripavine and "elephant juice", to bizarre exotics, such as "frog juice" and cobra venom, to heirloom "tonics" such as caffeine or arsenic, the one that killed Phar Lap.

It's called getting "The Edge". It has nothing to do with U2's guitarist but it can let the unscrupulous earn like rock stars - while it lasts.

EPO is not the only illicit drug in racing, but it's probably been the best of the "gear" brought in, mostly from America, reputedly via Perth, the Dodge City of Australian racing.

It doesn't make slow horses fast but it makes them "brave": they gallop harder for longer in the run home and "hit the line" instead of "hitting the wall".

Best of all for trainers, it's hard to police.

BECAUSE the body produces EPO naturally in the kidney and liver to make red blood cells, its presence in test samples is not automatically suspect.

It is the level that counts - and because EPO breaks down rapidly, it is notoriously hard to detect an elevated level in horses.

Combined with the once-legal and still widespread practice of "milkshaking" - drenching with sodium bicarbonate to reduce lactic acid in tiring muscles - EPO can turn bush horses into city horses, and good horses into equine Lance Armstrongs.

That is, of course, if not everyone is using it. In every game, cheats rely on the honesty of others to get their edge. Otherwise, it becomes as chaotic as in some US "cowboy" states where drug use in racing is virtually unchecked and horse and jockey deaths have become a national disgrace.

Insiders privately believe NSW's scandal-plagued harness racing is little better than America's sleaziest tracks - and that both racing codes in Australia risk losing owners and punters' confidence if they don't clean out the stables before more rackets are exposed.

The public glimpsed the ugly underbelly of harness racing last year when NSW's new chief steward Bill Cable had his car firebombed outside his house for daring to move against the mobsters manipulating race results and betting.

Another steward's car was torched in western Sydney in 2007, and several horses have burned to death in deliberately-lit stable fires in NSW and Victoria.

A Hall of Fame racing identity is so ashamed of the sport he loves that he believes only radical surgery can save it.

He says so many criminals pumped "drug money" into harness racing that, after a police crackdown on some key players three years ago, horse prices crashed and breeding numbers have followed.


Harness Racing NSW chief steward Bill Cable has his car firebombed outside his house. Source: Herald Sun

He is disgusted so many harness trainers have got relatively light penalties for drugging horses and fixing races.

"One only got 18 months for giving a horse 'ice'," he told the Herald Sun.

Harness racing in NSW is the canary in the mineshaft for thoroughbred racing, he warns.

"We are our own worst enemies in both codes," he said last week.

"Why would you bet on it? Why would you buy a yearling?"

* * * *

IN 2007, one of Australia's best provincial trainers took over a team of horses from a smaller stable which had enjoyed an uncanny winning streak with a particular galloper before a falling-out with the owners.

The horse had won several city races in a row before losing all form.

Under the new trainer, the horse ran nowhere, despite appearing to be sound. The disappointed owners then sent it to an internationally known trainer. He could not coax a win from it, either.

THE horse was sold cheaply, but would win only one weak provincial race much later, and was then retired.

Meanwhile, the second trainer confirmed his suspicions about the reasons for such a talented galloper's sudden decline.

Despite the best feed and an expert exercise regimen, the horse's original stablemates all looked sickly, as if suffering a virus.

The trainer had them tested. Each horse had a weak blood count - and he couldn't reverse it with conventional feed or treatment.

Experts concluded they must have been treated with EPO. If so, nothing would improve them except putting them back on the drug. He wouldn't do that.

That trainer is one of three who have told the Herald Sun their horses are "randomly" blood tested for illegally high bicarbonate levels before almost every start. They believe this is because their horses are "flatliners" - that is, they never return positive or irregular results.

The trainer has lodged complaints that 80 per cent of his starters are "randomly" tested.

By contrast, he claims, some trainers' horses are tested far less often.

He believes honest trainers make "soft targets" to puff up test statistics because the industry fears getting a rash of "irregularities" from large stables with popular followings. It's hardly surprising that racing, like cycling and weightlifting, would rather wash its dirty linen in private - if at all.

"They are terrified to get the big names," says one northeast trainer.

"But if this has been in bike racing for 25 years, how long has it been in horse racing?"

Angry racing people believe drug-cheating has become entrenched in the last decade. They see it as a tumour that is outgrowing the host.

"It (using performance drugs) used to be ad hoc but now trainers don't think they can compete unless they get an edge," says one of the industry's best-known names.

"Senior administrators admit privately they can see anomalies that don't add up. They don't know what to do."

Many worried trainers say the same thing: drug cheating penalises honest owners. They all use the phrase, "It's not a level playing field".

They talk of top horses becoming unbeatable machines, of some stables dominating results in ways that defy logic and statistical probability. Just like the Knights did in their heyday.

One says of a champion stayer prepared by a top stable: "(The horse's name) went from a wonderful handicapper to a winged Pegasus."

In racing's dog-eat-dog world, loyalties change fast: a connection of the "winged Pegasus" now accuses others he believes have stolen an unfair edge with syringes and drenching.

He says a skilled mainstream trainer with plenty of horses can often maintain a strike rate of about one win in six or seven starts.

But any big stable that averages one win in four over a season should automatically be watched to eliminate suspicion.

Performance drugs are like Paterson's Curse, he says, referring to the purple-flowered noxious weed that infests thousands of hectares of farmland.

"You'll never get rid of all of it, but you have to keep hoeing it out or it takes over."

From the biggest stables to battling bush trainers, they can all name the names with extraordinary winning streaks in each state.

"There's a lot of monkeys and a few gorillas," growls one central Victorian trainer. "But talking about it in public will only take you two places - the cemetery or the hate list."

A TRAINER with an international profile says: "Two trainers are using the same track, using much the same feed and doing much the same work, then one suddenly starts winning everything. Can there really be that much difference between them?"

He says the industry ought to offer an amnesty and a standing reward to anyone who knows of someone doing the wrong thing.

"Then there would be a lot of people shaking in their boots."

Racing is a jealous industry underneath the camaraderie and "code of silence".

A handful of big trainers around Australia attract suspicion because they win most of the big races and dominate the little ones, too. But some small-timers also come under notice.

One Victorian trainer has raised eyebrows and set tongues wagging because of his remarkable success reviving old "cast-off" horses in ways that remind watchers of the "blue magic" harness racing caper in 2004.

And a hobby trainer has drawn comment by winning several races with a reject from a leading stable - itself, ironically, once a target of accusations after a remarkable run of success.

In such cases, cynics joke that the horses must have visited Lourdes, not the spelling paddock, before staging bigger form reversals than Rocky Balboa.

Of course, if such trainers are blameless, they wouldn't be the first to be unjustly accused for winning when others don't. But there's proof at least one lesser-known trainer has sinned.

Richard Laming was disqualified for three years in late 2010 after DPO was detected in a horse in his care.

Almost identical to EPO but a synthetic, DPO does not occur naturally and any trace in a horse is taken as a sign of human intervention.

But DPO is just one many "biosimilar" variants that mimic EPO's effects while leaving a slightly different "molecular fingerprint" that dodges detection.

Laming is no household name and his prosecution made few ripples. Some believe he is a scapegoat, a low-profile trainer sacrificed as a warning to others. Even if that's untrue and unfair, the perception is damaging.

So is the perception that some trainers are virtual untouchables because of the potential for publicity that worries administrators more than the present rumours and discontent.

Big trainers, say some, get warnings about "irregularities" so they can discreetly change their regimen without scandal.


Some in the racing industry believe Richard Laming was sacrificed as a warning to others. Source: Herald Sun

ONE northern trainer says he has seen an official letter warning a famous Sydney trainer to be careful with certain drug treatments - effectively a tip-off.

Another small trainer responded to the Herald Sun questions by investigating what "help" he could buy if he was prepared to risk the money and his licence.

He called back within 24 hours to say he had been offered a blood-doping service for $1400. If he supplied a racehorse's blood, it would go to Sydney and be "treated" then returned ready to inject into the same horse before race day. "Like the bike riders," he said.

* * * *

EVEN some of those who have some "form" on the dark side of training want their industry cleaned up so owners and punters don't shy away from it. But they know others are not so sentimental or farsighted.

As long as there have been races, people have found ways to beat the field and cheat the system.

Since the days when Gai Waterhouse's father, Tommy Smith, was one of many who built a career on anabolic steroids before they were banned, trainers with the best biochemists have stayed ahead of the game.

Privately, racing people know this is true. Publicly, many stay silent or deny it. Some are loyal to a fault - like cycling officials, riders, team managers and sponsors were before the Armstrong scandal was finally lanced after years of festering "rumours" that proved to be true.

The romantics among us, of course, would rather not know. Just like the nice folk in Texas who still can't believe good ol' Lance did more drugs on tour than the Rolling Stones.

And Melbourne supporters who think Jim Stynes' team wouldn't tank games.

Others just shrug and quote one of racing's oldest sayings: it's only a rort if you're not in on it. Maybe they should think about what happened to boxing.

LIke hong kong sent Munce straight home lol they don't put up with it , and he wasn't even betting on another horse all he did was give a tip lol.

I wonder what hong kong would be doing to oliver if he done it in their racing , maybe its just there system of honour or they have some how just always been tuff.

We don't all read the same paper, do we?



HTH

AKER
11 Nov 12 09:08
Beadman got 9 months for necking one there once too,

people make mistakes, ya don't just throw them in jail

Aker - yes people do make mistakes, and the punishment is well known to most before they commit the crime.

These morons trafficking drugs through Asia - they know they looking at the death penalty ffs so don't come crying to our government to bail you out if you get cautght. Whether the punishment fits the crime is completely irrelevant.

Should you get thrown in jail for stealing , Aker?

These jockeys and trainers are grown men stealing from the rest of the public. They should be thrown out of the game ffs.

some have been give life, some have lesser penalties, the stewards are doing their job,

police don't catch everyone that goes 2km/h over the speed limit on every road, but they do their job,

here we go,
can you read you poor simpleton, you just want to attack,

another keyboard WARRIOR ( the type that either get's bashed by his mrs, or recieves from his male partner)

I'm pretty sure Kye is not a communist. He's much worse than that. He's a Liberal voter.

And I'm pretty sure this isn't the same Aker who stuck a knife through my heart by kicking that goal late in the 2002 Grand Final.

Kye appears to have been pwned by a troll who likes to big-note himself by pretending to have jockeys in his pocket.

Hey, I got a tip from a jockey once. I was working as a strapper at the time and this apprentice borrowed $20 from me early in the week. On the Saturday he told me that a horse he was riding that day couldn't lose. So I had a tenner on it at 14/1 and it **** in. Naturally enough I told him not to worry about the $20.

Pretty harmless stuff really. I doubt if it was a boat race. It was a very heavy track that day and the kid knew that the horse was a swimmer.

I'm really not sure why it's such a big deal for jockeys to give tips. Owners and trainers give tips all the time. Sometimes they win, sometimes they lose.

T.J.Smith was a notorious tipper. He tipped just about every horse that he saddled up. If you followed his tips you would be on the bones of your arse. Gai is pretty much the same.

There's a big difference, in my opinion, between giving someone a tip or doing something dishonest to influence the outcome of a race. If a jockey is riding Horse A and he tells someone that he thinks Horse B will win, there's nothing wrong with that as long as he rides horse A on its merits. Of course, if he has $10,000 on Horse B then that's another matter.