Sprinter’s career threatened

Press, 16 August 1988, Page 34

Sprinter’s career threatened

NZPA-AAP Perth The cortico-steroid, Depo-Medrol, found in champion sprinter, Placid Ark, had been used on horses throughout Australia for “a long time,” Western Australian Turf Club chairman, Dr Neville Way, said However, scientists at the Chemistry Centre of WA discovered only within the last two weeks a way of detecting the anti-inflammatory drug, which like all other drugs is banned in racing.

A positive swab taken after Placid Ark’s record breaking win in the sAust2s,ooo Beaufine Quality Sprint at Belmont Park on July 27 is threatening the top sprinter’s career.

The W.A.T.C. said the 1986-87 “Australian Horse of the Year” was one of six horses which returned positive swabs to DepoMedrol after tests taken over a' two-week period between July 16 and July 27.

There are 71 swabs still pending. The five year-old’s trainer, Wally Mitchell, has been summoned to appear before a W.A.T.C. stewards’ inquiry in Perth on August 19.

The horse will race tomorrow in Melbourne.

Mitchell told the “Daily News” he had given

Placid Ark Depo-Medrol seven days before the Belmont race on the advice of a veterinary surgeon, thinking it would not be traceable after five days.

“I was negligent and that’s what I’ll be pleading,” he said from Melbourne.

Dr Way said he was “considerably worried” about the reputation of racing in Western Australia, w'here he said the industry was trying to get rid of the philosophy of drug use.

Previously difficult to detect, methylprednisolone, or Depo-Medrol, is a therapeutic drug used to treat inflamed joints and to mask pain and soreness.

However, Dr Way said that injected into muscle between two and four days before a race, there was no doubt DepoMedrol was not a stimulant.

He said its use as a therapeutic drug was "totally widespread” throughout Australia. A spokesman at the Chemistry Centre, which was also the first to detect fjtorphine, or “elephant juice”, said he would not describe the drug as a stimulant, but said it would help the performance of a horse coming back from injury.