As Barry points out, there is a legitimate place for steroids and other drugs in a therapeutic capacity. Horses are athletes and as such are prone to aches, pains and minor injuries from time and it is sensible as well as humane to treat these and help the animals recover as quickly and safely as possible. It needs to be done sensibly and under veterinary supervision and ideally everyone would follow the instructions carefully and thoroughly.
Unfortunately we do not live in an ideal world.
Pain is part of the body’s natural protective and healing mechanism and serves to prevent one from exerting something that is damaged or not functioning correctly in order to prevent further injury. If you are injured, you experience pain and instinctively protect the vulnerable part of your body until the injury has healed. Once the injury has healed and the pain is gone, you revert to exerting yourself as normal.
The problem is that is that humans are (supposedly) rational, logical beings, who are able to make objective decisions regarding injury treatment. We can take pain killers and make an informed decision to use the medication purely for pain relief and not exert ourselves to the point where we might risk further injury. Horses do not have this choice. Once they've been administered drugs, they simply know that they are pain free. Their protective mechanisms therefore do not kick in and they are likely to re-injure themselves if not managed / protected appropriately.
So as you can see, where it gets sticky is when people use medications for the wrong reasons or at the wrong time (or both). While it would seem crazy to deliberately mask pain and work a horse that is injured or physically compromised in some way, it is unfortunately rather common. As an example, earlier this year a UK trainer had his license revoked for 4 years by the BHA for running a horse which had had a palmar neurectomy (severed nerves to the lower leg). The fact that the horse had had the procedure only came to light after the horse broke down during a race and had to be destroyed. The evidence of the neurectomy was discovered during the autopsy.
Not only is this sort of practice inhumane and highly immoral, it is ridiculously dangerous. Not only to the horse in question, but to its jockey as well as the rest of the runners and riders in any given field. This is obviously an extreme example, but is merely the extreme end of the spectrum of mis-using medication in order to get results.
Think I'm being overly dramatic ?
Half-ton racehorses travel at speeds of up to 36 miles per hour and strike the ground with incredible force. Considering that a galloping horse exerts a 12,000-pound load on the cannon bone alone, one starts to appreciate the value of good conformation, straight limbs and correct movement. You also start to appreciate what a remarkable piece of biomechanical machinery a horse’s leg really is.
Now imagine that same piece of machinery with an ever so slight defect such as, oh I don’t know, perhaps an undetected microfracture or two. Let’s say the owner of this mechanism (the horse we all so readily forget about), has been presenting with an ever-so-slight ‘mystery’ lameness. The vet has had a look, and decides to prescribe a conservative course of treatment - administer some anti-inflammatories and see what happens. After a few days, we stop the anti-inflammatories, the horse remains sound and we resume work (in fact, quite often horses are actually kept in work on anti-inflammatories and other drugs).
The tricky thing is that the healing process consists of 3 phases – the inflammatory phase (which can last up to 5 days), the proliferative phase (2 days – 3 weeks) and finally the remodeling phase (3 weeks – 2 years). And we have resumed work after phase 1. The horse may no longer be feeling discomfort because the inflammation is gone, but that microfracture has not healed. In fact, because that bit of the bone is now compromised, the stress of exercise may well cause one or two microfractures to appear in other parts of the bone.
Now imagine that same horse a few weeks later, exerting all that pressure on that unsound skeletal structure. In the middle of a group of other horses. All traveling at about 60km an hour. With vulnerable human beings on board. It's not a comfortable thought, is it?
WADA (the World Anti Doping Agency) is an IOC accredited body which monitors the use of drugs in human sports. They have compiled and issued a list of substances banned in human sport. This list is considered the International Standard in identifying substances and methods prohibited in-competition, out-of-competition and in particular sports, and it is reviewed and updated on an annual basis.
WADA has a policy which I think could be applicable to horses.
Because professional athletes will occasionally sustain injuries or contract conditions necessitating the therapeutic use of medication on the prohibited list, an athlete may apply for a ‘Therapeutic Use Exemption’ (TUE). There are obviously formal channels and protocols that need to be followed, but essentially, as long as the medication is not deemed to enhance performance significantly, is prescribed by a doctor and permission is applied for and granted by the correct authorities, an athlete is allowed to use a substance on the list. However, it goes without saying that TUE’s are granted for specific medications, with defined dosages and also only for specific and limited periods of time.
As far as the use of steroids for building muscle bulk, again I have to object. Our physiology dictates our basic shape and size and it does so for good reason. Any individual's body unfortunately comes with a number of limitations within which we have to function. We are built to take a certain amount of stress comfortably, after which something's got to give (stress could be defined as exercise, diet, alcohol, weight, etc). We can increase these limits slightly by conditioning our bodies to certain stressors, but basically our genetic make-up determines what we can and can't handle. Obviously some individuals are physically superior (or function more efficiently) than others and their bodies NATURALLY allow them to be bigger, faster, stronger, drink more, eat more than others.
Where an individual is naturally weaker, lighter boned, not particularly well-muscled (and I mean in cases where the horse is healthy, getting sufficient food, exercise, etc and still not responding), it is likely that their bodies cannot cope with much more (either because they are still too immature, their underlying skeletal structure is not robust enough, or any number of other possibilities). But of course humans are ambitious creatures and we like to meddle. We like to see big, bulky, strong looking horses, so we give the animal something to 'help it along'. What we forget is that those unnaturally strong, artificially enhanced muscles are attached to other things - usually bones, or alternatively other muscles, tendons or soft tissues. Unfortunately we've not addressed any of those structures and those are now being placed under a lot more stress than they are ready (or possibly even designed) for.
In the case of body builders, it's not really all that big a deal - spending an unnatural amount of time in a sun bed, covering yourself in oil and posing on a stage is not exactly physically taxing. However, pushing an unnaturally pumped up body to run as fast as it can down a race track - nerves, sensibilities and adrenalin up is quite a different story. Is it any wonder then that things occasionally go pop ?
Sorry - I simply can't agree with racing horses on drugs. It makes absolutely no sense, other than from a greedy, money-grabbing point of view. We're supposed to be trying to create a better horse and racing is supposed to be our means of testing them (although the money and prestige has sort of skewed the perspectives). We want the biggest, strongest, fastest. If an animal is not physically up to the job, then it should not be there and trying to force it to make the grade by other means is simply a waste of time for everyone concerned.
Topic Author
) Ben was the name.
