LEXINGTON, Ky. – No raceday Lasix in Dubai, home of the $12 million Dubai World Cup? For U.S. trainers, no problem. Horses based in the United States that shipped over to Dubai for Saturday’s World Cup and the event’s undercard races will receive no special treatments – no new-age therapies, no special feed, no anything – to compensate for the inability to administer the horses a raceday injection of Lasix, according to trainers and veterinarians. A diuretic used to mitigate bleeding in the lungs, Lasix is legal in North American racing jurisdictions but banned for raceday use in most other racing countries. “We do nothing,” said Graham Motion, the U.S.-based trainer who is a native of England and who trained the 2013 Dubai World Cup winner, Animal Kingdom. “And I’m saying that as someone who has shipped overseas a lot.” The same answer was supplied by a half-dozen trainers who regularly ship overseas. And how have U.S.-based horses fared when travelling to Dubai? They’ve won 12 of the 23 runnings of the Dubai World Cup since the race was first held in 1996, against fields that usually draw the best of the best from around the world. Some of those wins have been among the most visually impressive of the horses’ careers. The success of U.S. horses when travelling abroad paradoxically undermines the arguments used by both sides of the raceday Lasix debate in the United States, where upward of 95 percent of horses are administered the drug on race day. If the drug is so necessary to keep horses running, as supporters of the raceday use of Lasix contend, then why do U.S. horses perform so well without it overseas? And if the drug deserves to be banned on race day because it is a performance enhancer, as opponents contend, then, well, to repeat a phrase, why do U.S. horses perform so well without it overseas? The arguments over raceday Lasix use are so familiar to U.S. racing constituents that trainers’ lack of concern over being deprived of it overseas should neither be surprising nor outrageous. The debate is only back in the spotlight because The Stronach Group, the owner of Santa Anita Park, abruptly announced on March 14 that it was banning the raceday use of the drug, ostensibly to address a recent spate of catastrophic injuries at the track (despite the lack of credible evidence that use of the drug has any correlation to breakdowns), thrusting the issue back on center stage. Met by a backlash from rank-and-file horsemen, TSG officials and representatives of the Thoroughbred Owners of California reached an agreement to phase in a ban on the raceday use of the drug, instead of implementing the immediate ban, effective with the crop of 2018, with all other horses grandfathered in under the old rules. TSG, which owns tracks in Florida, Maryland, and other states, has limited the phase-in to its California tracks, Santa Anita and Golden Gate Fields. Since the agreement was reached, organizations representing a panoply of constituencies within and outside of racing have weighed in once again on the debate, with veterinarians and horsemen’s groups pledging their allegiance to raceday use as a humane and necessary way to mitigate a troubling aspect of horse physiology, opposed by a variety of other constituencies, including animal-welfare and animal-rights groups, which have reiterated that the North American racing industry remains woefully out of step with the rest of the racing world and swimming against a current that will eventually wash it away. “It has been decided that appeasement of specific sectors of our society as well as a minority of stakeholders in our industry is more important than the prevention of exercise-induced pulmonary hemorrhage in our horses,” the North American Association of Racetrack Veterinarians said in a press release. “The message is that a tradition of the old world horse racing industry is more important than the health of the horse.” People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the animal-rights organization that wants to abolish racing, played an influential role in the initial announcement by TSG to ban the raceday use of the drug. PETA replied to the statement by the North American Association of Racetrack Veterinarians: “The ‘specific sectors’ that NAARV claims are influencing this decision are most of the people in the world who work in racing. Perhaps the veterinarians are nervous that required reduction in medication use across the board at Santa Anita will mean a drop in their incomes.” Trainers who said this week that they do not alter any aspect of their horses’ management in the absence of raceday Lasix did stress that horses that are shipped overseas are not typically bad bleeders. “Let’s be honest, the vast majority of horses aren’t bleeders,” said Ken McPeek, who routinely ships horses to Dubai and who is one of the few trainers in the United States who attempts to limit raceday Lasix administrations to his horses. “As part of our operation, we watch the feed tub really closely, and if the horse is going well and thriving, those are the horses you take over there. And if the horse has a history of bleeding bad, then you don’t go. But that’s not a horse that is thriving anyway. That’s a stressed horse that needs rest.” Dale Romans, who trains Promises Fulfilled, entered in the Golden Shaheen on the World Cup undercard, said that he has never come across a horse in his barn that he has refused to ship overseas because of a bleeding problem. “But you have to remember that these are the best of the best in my barn,” he said. “Those types of horses don’t have problems.” Romans, who is based in Kentucky, is a staunch advocate of raceday Lasix use in the United States. Todd Pletcher, who has shipped a dozen horses to Dubai since his first starter, Harlan’s Holiday, finished second in the 2003 Dubai World Cup, said that he at first administered Lasix to a few horses who were shipped over for the race when they worked there. But he stopped doing that “a long time ago,” he said. It remains legal in most racing jurisdictions worldwide to administer Lasix during training as long as the drug clears the system by race time. “We’ve had no problems with any horse we have sent over there,” Pletcher said. “For whatever reason, maybe it’s the dry climate, although it’s also been hot sometimes, you don’t get much of that” bleeding. Pletcher said that his shipped horses no longer work strenuously prior to Dubai races, with only routine gallops in the days leading up to them. Motion said that he also had administered Lasix to horses prior to works leading up to big races overseas, specifically mentioning the multiple graded stakes winner Better Talk Now, who he called a “bad bleeder.” Better Talk Now ran twice overseas, once in Dubai and once in Japan, and ran poorly in both starts, albeit against good competition. “With the bleeders, your biggest concern is that you don’t want them to bleed in the first place, because it gets worse if they do bleed,” Motion said, in reference to administering Lasix for workouts. “So that worries me a little bit.” But Motion, who supports a phase-out of the raceday use of the drug, echoed the thoughts of many U.S. trainers by saying the debate over the drug has become far too bloated by overblown statements on both sides. “I do think we tend to overreact over here” in the United States, he said. “At the end of the day, it’s more of a crutch than anything.”