LEXINGTON, Ky. – Earlier this week, 70 2-year-old horses were entered into the five Breeders’ Cup races restricted to juveniles.According to their past performances, only five of them has ever received a raceday administration of Lasix, the diuretic used widely in North America to mitigate bleeding in the lungs. And not a single one will receive Lasix on the day the juvenile races will be held, Friday.To supporters of a ban on raceday Lasix, this is the new reality for racing. Following concerted efforts throughout the past 18 months from an overwhelming coalition of racing constituencies, raceday Lasix is on its way out, the supporters contend. Next year, if all goes as planned, no horse in the Breeders’ Cup will receive a raceday administration of the diuretic.“Our world is now accepting and even expecting that our horses should not run with raceday medication,” said Craig Fravel, the former Breeders’ Cup chief executive officer who is now the chief executive officer of The Stronach Group, a sprawling racing company that joined with other tracks to ban the drug in 2-year-old races this year. “We are in a new environment, a new world. And we will adapt.”In 2020, nearly every major racing jurisdiction in the United States or the racetracks within them banned the raceday administration of Lasix in 2-year-old races. The ban will be extended to graded stakes in 2021.This is not the first time that Breeders’ Cup runners will be prohibited from receiving raceday Lasix. In 2012 and 2013, Breeders’ Cup banned the use of Lasix within 24 hours of its juvenile races. But the policy was scrapped after only two years. At that time, a relatively small coalition of the willing found they could not muster the buy-in from other industry constituencies to extend the ban beyond the 2-year-old races.A lot has changed in seven years. While powerful industry groups and influential voices in the breeding community have been pushing for a ban on the raceday administration of Lasix for more than a decade, the effort had previously found few allies among racetracks, most of which were reluctant to impose unilateral bans for their races out of fear that they would lose horses to nearby jurisdictions that still allowed the practice. So when Breeders’ Cup put its brief ban in place eight years ago, the organization was largely acting on an island, without tangible support from most of the industry’s major players.But then came the spate of catastrophic injuries at Santa Anita in early 2019. As racing organizations scrambled to put in place policies that would reduce injuries and mollify the sport’s critics, Lasix use found itself back on the ledger. By the end of 2019, most major racing companies banded together to push for a 2-year-old ban in 2020, and they got what they wanted from racing commissions.“It was Santa Anita, that rash of deaths,” said Fravel, whose company owns and operates Santa Anita, and who was chief of the Breeders’ Cup during the time that Lasix was banned in 2-year-old races in 2012-2013. “That highlighted the need for reform.” For bettors, the ban in 2020 is not nearly as problematic as the ban in 2012 and 2013. In the 2012 and 2013 races, most of the entrants had been administered Lasix in races leading up to the Breeders’ Cup, injecting a layer of uncertainty into the handicapping process. For this year, due to the bans in most racing jurisdictions across the United States, bettors will, for the most part, not have to factor “off Lasix” into their analyses.That may not be the case next year. At the moment, even diehard supporters of a Lasix ban are not confident that the industry can push through rules that would prohibit Lasix on race day in all races in 2021. So at next year’s Breeders’ Cup, there may be a smattering of horses that have received the drug on race day in races throughout the year, as long as those races are not graded stakes.But the wheels are moving. In late September, the U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation that would install a national regulatory body for racing that would be in charge of devising policies involving medication use, drug testing, and safety protocols for the sport in every state in the country. The legislation, which is now supported by a critical mass of racing constituents, is likely to be brought up in the Senate next week, according to officials involved in the lobbying effort.If it passes this year, the national body will officially wield its power on Jan. 1, 2022. It is widely expected that the body will ban “all raceday medications,” aligning the United States and Canada with most of the rest of the racing world, where raceday Lasix has never been authorized despite North America’s widespread reliance on the drug.