How to save Racing!!!

January 27, 2008 -- Hall of Fame horseman Jack Van Berg doesn't need a Mitchell Report to know that drugs are a scourge on the "sport of kings." Van Berg, 71, the son of Hall of Famer Marion Van Berg, has won more races - 6,379 - than any living trainer, including the Kentucky Derby and Breeders' Cup Classic with the great Alysheba. He won the Eclipse Award as the nation's top trainer in 1984, and his 495 winners in 1976 stood as the single-season mark for 28 years.

But over the last decade, Van Berg, based in southern California, has dropped off the charts. With a little more than 30 horses in his barn, he won just 47 races in the last five years. Meanwhile, their vet bills skyrocketing, a new breed of so-called "super trainers" has been winning at percentages unheard of in the past.

Van Berg, from the old school, has seen enough. He finally decided to speak out against the rampant abuse of drugs. He says drugs ranging from legal medications like steroids and clenbuterol to prohibited substances like erythropoietin (EPO) are a blight on the game, punishing the owners who pay the bills, the bettors who play the races, and most of all, the horses themselves.

"These horses, they can't say no," Van Berg told The Post from his barn at Hollywood Park. "They're getting steroids from the time they are babies. They don't have time to grow and mature like they should.

"Just open your eyes and look around. You know how many trainers would still be winning races if they couldn't use medication? Some of them would starve to death. The veterinary bills are as big as the day money (training bills) for a lot of them. You watch and check how much these veterinarians are making on the backstretch now. They're becoming wealthy.

"I don't have that many horses, and people will say that's sore eggs with him. But I'm telling you facts. Any horseman will tell you. You couldn't get 10 percent of horses racing (in the U.S.) to pass a drug test in Hong Kong or Japan. We're a laughing stock. It's disgusting to think that the foreign countries don't allow that stuff, but here in the United States, we're supposed to be leaders, and they give them everything from soup to nuts.

"I think we should be racing with absolutely no medication whatsoever. Zero. Stop it all. If the horse ain't right, turn him out instead of running (him) until he breaks his leg off."

Noted West Coast attorney and racehorse owner Al Ross, an all-city high-school basketball player from New York's lower East Side who went on to become the high-powered agent for such professional athletes as Spencer Haywood, Elvin Hayes and Bob McAdoo, has had horses with Van Berg for more than 30 years. He, too, is sickened by the state of the game.

"If we don't clean up this business, it's going down the toilet," Ross told The Post. "It's not fun anymore. You got no shot if you don't juice them up, and Jack's not going to juice them. I said, 'Jack how are you going to beat those guys? You can't beat those guys. They're juicers.'

"Jack is a helluva horsemen. The problem is, no one wants to give him any horses. These other guys are drugging them, and he's not."

There is a solution, Van Berg says. Persuade the state racing authorities to pay for more sophisticated drug testing, and then hand down stiff penalties to the offenders instead of a slap on the wrist.

"I know damn well it can be solved," Van Berg said. "To keep the integrity of the sport, you've got to have sophisticated, high-tech testing. That's where you make them honest. If you had sophisticated testing, and no medication whatsoever, and you caught them and sent them down the road for a year, (you would see) a lot of difference in them.

"That's the sickening part of this business. It used to be if you had a bad test, you went down the road. Now you pay a little fine, they might take the purse away from you, and away they go. Some of them have six or seven bad tests, and they're still making deals where they don't get ruled off. They'll put their assistant down (as the trainer of record), and just keep going the same as they were.

"Walk down through the grandstand and listen to people. They know what's going on. You'll see a trainer going 90 miles an hour, win a lot of races, and then you find out he's had a couple of bad tests and (that's why he) hasn't done any good for two months.

"Some of these guys, all they do is study what they can get by with. I'm not going to name names. That's what the horseracing board is for. That's who needs to be called on the carpet."

Another old-school horseman, John Ward, who saddled Monarchos to win the Kentucky Derby, concurs.

"A light bulb needs to go on with the bureaucrats," said Ward, a former member of the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission and an outspoken proponent of more stringent medication rules. "I think we've lost the 'sport of kings' title, and there is a concern among people who've been in the business for a long time that it's not worth fighting for.

"(But) we see a light at the end of the tunnel (after) all the work we've done with the Model Rules Committee, trying to bring the game back to a level playing field. We're starting to correct problems that have been going on for 20-25 years. The new steroid rules, I think, will really help if we get it right."

In fact, several racing jurisdictions - Kentucky, California and the mid-Atlantic states - plan a partial ban on steroids. But not New York, not yet.

"It's a lengthy process," said Dr. George Maylin, director of the N.Y. State Racing and Wagering Board's Drug Testing Program at Cornell University. "Undoubtedly there will be a rule change. They certainly are abused. Why didn't we do it before? The answer is money."

There is, Maylin noted, "a trend is toward giving some significant penalties and fines" for trainers who break the rules. He cited Patrick Biancone, set down a year by the Kentucky HRC when several prohibited substances were found in his barn, including cobra venom; and Rick Dutrow Jr., banned 14 days and fined $25,000 by the NYSRWB for continuing to train his horses by phone while serving a previous suspension. He also cited Todd Pletcher, who won the Eclipse Award the past four years in a row, suspended 45 days last winter after one of his horses tested positive for mepivacaine, a local anesthetic. (Pletcher maintains his innocence.)

Another lengthy suspension went to 2007 Eclipse runner-up, Steve Asmussen, trainer of Horse of the Year Curlin, who served six months in 2006 for a mepivacaine positive in Louisiana.

Last Friday, Jeff Mullins was slapped with a 90-day ban for mepivacaine by the California Horse Racing Board. He will have to serve 20 days, however, followed by a year's probation. Mullins plans to appeal the ruling in court.