The Meadowlands, Jeff Gural on doping (from HarnessRacingUpdate)

I read what I assume was an editorial in last Sunday’s HRU and you hit the nail on the head. Unfortunately, the reality is that nobody cares as the vast majority of tracks are owned by casino owners and almost all of the purse money is generated by slot machines. As a result, doing anything to increase handle at a track with slot machines makes little or no sense.

I do agree that my dispute with Faraldo hurts the sport and a few years ago I was on a panel with Joe in Saratoga and I went up to him afterwards and asked him if he wanted to bury the hatchet for the good of the sport and he made it clear that he had no interest. At least you should know I tried.

As far as performance enhancing drugs, all one has to do is read the transcripts of the trial of Lisa Gianelli formerly Lisa Ranger and Seth Fishman and you would see exactly how bad it is. Lisa was a [salesperson] for Fishman selling both therapeutic and performance enhancing drugs and receiving a commission of 17 per cent of sales. It is illegal for anyone to be buying any drugs from a veterinarian who has not examined your horse before they prescribe the medication. She would visit the training centers every two weeks and drop off the medications that were ordered by her customers. Since she was getting a commission, it was in her best interest to encourage the sale of these medications and to the best of my knowledge no one called the USTA hotline to report this illegal activity.

So far, we have only been able to view the customers that Gianelli was selling to and have not been able to obtain the records of who was buying drugs directly from Fishman. I was told there are an additional 200 names on that list, but so far we have not been able to obtain the information.

https://harnessracingupdate.com/2023...ping-and-more/