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No excuse for late scratch

Wallace Matthews

June 20, 2008

WASHINGTON

Just like his horse on Belmont Stakes Day, Rick Dutrow was a no-show in his big appearance before Congress yesterday. This despite his assurances that he was ready and willing to tell everything he knew about the use of steroids in thoroughbred racing.

It was not unlike his guarantee that Big Brown would run away from the Belmont field to become the first horse in 30 years to win the Triple Crown, but regrettably, just as empty. Instead, Dutrow ran away from the questions he promised he would answer.

"There is a nameplate up there, but somebody is missing," said subcommittee vice chairman Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), sounding very much like a schoolteacher who has just discovered her favorite whipping boy was playing hooky again. "We had expected Mr. Dutrow, but apparently Mr. Dutrow is too ill to travel to Washington, D.C. I'm very disappointed by his absence. Unfortunately, he never notified anyone on this committee that he wasn't coming."

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He didn't even send a note from his mother. However, Dutrow had informed The New York Times and The Washington Post, two of his favorite media outlets, that he would not be making the one-hour shuttle flight down to D.C., claiming that not only his horse, but he, too, was a victim of the Triple Crown grind.

"I have been under the weather since shortly after [the Belmont], and I am simply not feeling well enough to travel," Dutrow told the Times.

Funny, Dutrow sure seemed hale enough after the race, certainly healthy enough at least to kick his jockey around in the media for three days after Big Brown was pulled up before the finish.

But no matter. The show went on without him, even if the representatives, hoping to escape the gray anonymity of C-Span for one day in favor of the glitz of SportsCenter, had lost their very own Roger Clemens. Dutrow is exactly what these kind of hearings need, a guy with a big mouth who knows where the bodies are buried. A walking shot of Winstrol, if you will.

Then again, considering Dutrow's track record - numerous violations, plenty of bluster, but not much credibility - who knows how much they would have gotten out of him, anyway?

Compared to the mostly impressive presentations of the other members of the panel, which included Hall of Fame trainer Jack Van Berg, longtime breeder Arthur Hancock III and Jess Stonestreet Jackson, the owner not only of the Kendall-Jackson winery but also of Curlin, the reigning Horse of the Year - Dutrow's opening statement, a copy of which was provided to reporters, was laughably thin and his credentials indisputably suspect.

In his statement - which comprised all of two scant pages, double-spaced between the lines and triple-spaced between its 12 paragraphs - Dutrow reiterated his claim that Winstrol did nothing more for his horses than brighten their coats and increase their appetites.

"It is something we started a few years ago at the recommendation of one of our vets,"' he wrote. "If steroids are banned in the United States, we'll stop using them.'"

In those two sentences, Dutrow, even in absentia, summed up the recurring themes of the day: "Everybody else is using steroids, too," and "The vet made me do it."

The vet-as-villain motif was echoed by Van Berg, who said vet-administered drug use in racing "is like chemical warfare;" by Hancock, who said that in the past, vets came around when a horse was sick, but "now they're in the barns every single day," and by Jackson, who bemoaned veterinary fees of up to $2,000 a month per horse.

"They used to drive pickup trucks,'" he said. "Now they all drive BMWs and Cadillacs.'"

All agreed that widespread drug use was the biggest problem plaguing an industry that sees horses race about half as often as they did 40 years ago, and yet die or suffer career-ending injuries far more frequently. The reason, they agreed, was a reliance on steroids, painkillers and Lasix, once only allowed for use in horses who bled but now used by virtually all, probably as a masking agent. As a result, injured horses run until they literally drop.

"We got to go back to good old hay, oats and water," Van Berg said, as the others nodded. "If you need to do more than that, you probably shouldn't have a trainer's license."

All they lacked was a dissenting viewpoint, which Dutrow may well have provided. But as John McCain found out a decade ago when trying to run a similar hearing for the reform of professional boxing, the people who know the most about how to clean up a dirty game are the ones least interested in doing so.

Dutrow, among others, has profited handsomely from the system now in place. Congress eventually may succeed in changing it. If so, they'll do it in spite of men like Rick Dutrow, not because of them.