Horsemen's groups contributing funds to EPO study

The National Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association and its New York affiliate have approved a $50,000 contribution to a study designed to develop a test to detect so-called microdoses of blood-doping drugs, according to the organizations.

The National THA and the New York affiliate of the group will contribute $25,000 each to the study, according to the organizations, which will complete the round of funding sought by the study sponsors. The Kentucky Horse Racing Commission recently approved a $147,000 contribution to the study, which will cost approximately $200,000 over two years.

The effort to develop a test to detect microdoses of blood-doping drugs such as erythropoietin, widely referred to as EPO, is supported among wide swaths of the racing industry to address rumors that the drugs are bring abused. Although rumors of abuse have dogged the racing industry for years, out-of-competition testing and searches of barns and vet trucks have yet to turn up wide evidence of EPO abuse, leading some to speculate that the drug is being administered in small doses in order to evade detection by existing tests.

The study will be conducted by Dr. Heather Knych of the K. L. Maddy Equine Analytical Chemistry Laboratory at UC Davis. Knych is one of the leading researchers in the U.S. on equine drug pharmacology. The study has been endorsed by the Racing Medication and Testing Consortium, an industry-funded group.

Separately, the New York THA said that it would donate $120,000 to the drug-testing lab at Morrisville State College to purchase a new mass spectrometry machine that could better detect alkalinizing agents in the blood. Alkalinizing agents, such as baking soda, are used to prevent the build-up of lactic acid in the blood, and they are currently regulated in all racing jurisdictions through pre-race blood tests measuring the total amount of carbon dioxide in the blood.