Breeders' Cup to require Lasix ban in Win and You're In races

Breeders’ Cup will not award automatic entries to its races or qualifying points to horses in graded stakes this year if the races are not run with bans on the raceday administration of Lasix, the organization announced Wednesday.

The new policy dovetails with a raft of initiatives supported by many racetracks and racing organizations over the past two years to begin phasing out the use of Lasix on raceday in the United States. Last year, most major racing jurisdictions banned the raceday use of Lasix in 2-year-olds races, and that ban has been expanded to graded stakes this year in the same jurisdictions, including New York, California, and Kentucky, among other states.

Breeders’ Cup had already announced that its 2021 event, scheduled for Nov. 5-6 at Del Mar Thoroughbred Club near San Diego, would be run without raceday Lasix (although California’s regulations made the ban redundant). Last year, the five Breeders’ Cup races restricted to 2-year-olds were run with a ban on the drug, which is used to mitigate bleeding in the lungs. The other nine Breeders’ Cup races were run without the ban.

In a press release, Breeders’ Cup said that all races designated as Win and You’re In that are run in the lead-up to the event will be races in which raceday Lasix is banned. Last year, Breeders’ Cup designated 81 races for the WAYI series, at tracks around the world. The races award winners with free starting berths in designated Breeders’ Cup races.

In addition, Breeders’ Cup will not count points earned in non-WAYI graded stakes races unless the races were run with a ban on raceday Lasix, the organization said.

The specific races in this year's WAYI series will be announced “by late March,” according to Jim Gluckson, a spokesman for the organization.

In the release, Breeders’ Cup Chief Executive Officer Drew Fleming cited the passage of a federal law late last year creating a national regulatory framework for racing as providing guidance toward the organization’s decision. The national regulatory body, which has an effective start date of July 1, 2022, is expected to prohibit the raceday use of Lasix in at least 2-year-old races and graded stakes when it begins operations.

“Even before [the bill] was signed into law, running the World Championships Lasix-free was a goal of Breeders’ Cup,” Fleming said. “Extending this standard to all races associated with the Breeders’ Cup World Championships will hopefully set an example for other racetracks and stakeholders to embrace forthcoming safety and integrity measures, including the elimination of raceday medication, as a new, safer era for our storied sport approaches.”

A number of major racing organizations have been aggressively pushing for the elimination of raceday Lasix for nearly a decade, but those efforts have been resisted by many horsemen. In 2019, a group of racetracks and racing organizations, including Breeders’ Cup, banded together to push for the ban, and those efforts bore fruit last year when many regulatory agencies and tracks put the limited bans into place.

Raceday Lasix is banned in most major racing jurisdictions around the world. Nevertheless, horses based in foreign countries have nearly always been administered the drug on race day when running in Breeders’ Cup races in the past.

Earlier this year, Churchill Downs put in place a policy in which a horse will not earn points toward starting in the Kentucky Derby or Kentucky Oaks unless the horse competed without raceday Lasix in the race. The policy is being enforced on races that do not have a ban on Lasix in their conditions, forcing horsemen to choose whether or not to run on the drug even when regulations allow for it.