Horse track with no rules
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Topic: Horse track with no rules
Posted By: Tlazolteotl
Subject: Horse track with no rules
Date Posted: 06 Aug 2022 at 10:23am
On-track
drug injections, shock devices and a dead jockey: A “bush track” in
Georgia is one of dozens that profit outside the reach of regulation. https://www.washingtonpost.com/people/gus-garcia-roberts/" rel="nofollow - Gus Garcia-Roberts
MILNER,
Ga. — In this population-800 town in rural Georgia, where residents
along winding country roads fly the Stars and Stripes and Trump banners,
there’s a horse track on a pecan farm that raises only one flag: that
of Mexico. The
spectators show up for race days every couple of weeks, Latino cowboys
and their families arriving in late-model pickup trucks with license
plates from Georgia and Alabama, Guerrero and Monterrey. Admission at
the door is $100 per head in cash, collected before a cadre of armed
guards search vehicles. Inside, Norteño music blends with the scent of tacos, and an announcer calls the races in profane Spanish. But
the prerace routines at Rancho El Centenario are a little different —
or at least more transparent — than at a mainstream racehorse track. One muggy day in July, when
a young horse trainer in a patterned shirt and trucker hat sauntered
onto the track with a syringe in hand, fans crowded the rail to get a
glimpse. A jockey guided a quarter horse named Chiquibaby over to the
trainer, who jabbed the needle into the horse’s neck and pushed the
plunger before jumping away. “Bring
another for me!” cried out a Modelo-clutching railbird in Spanish,
referring to the syringe full of mystery substances, eliciting laughter
from the other fans and the trainer. When
asked about the injection following the race, the trainer said the
syringe didn’t contain performance-enhancing drugs but medicine to
prevent a horse from suffering a stroke or a heart attack. But
before another race that day, a reporter for The Washington Post
watched a different trainer inject a horse named El Mago near the end of
the 500-yard track. After that trainer tossed the syringe in the dirt,
the reporter collected it and later submitted it to Industrial
Laboratories, an accredited horse racing testing facility in Colorado.
Its findings: The syringe https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/22127103-industrial-labs" rel="nofollow - contained methamphetamine and methylphenidate , the stimulant sold as Ritalin. A
few hundred years ago, match races like Rancho El Centenario’s were
part of the genesis of the American quarter horse, a compact breed
developed for its intense speed on a short, straight track. After racing
commissions brought order to the sport in states where it was legal,
unregulated “bush tracks” remained the norm in Mexico, popular among
cowboys and narcos alike. In the United States, though, they existed
only as a https://vault.si.com/vault/1966/10/31/anything-goes-in-the-bush" rel="nofollow - wild but minor foil to the rulemakers. But
now, experts and horsemen say, the bush circuit is quietly in a boom
period, one in which animal abuse and doping go largely unchecked,
hinting at deeper criminality and posing a potentially serious threat to
the integrity of the breed. Since
a disbarred attorney named Arthur “Brutz” English IV had a red dirt
track pounded into the land of his fourth-generation family farm nine
years ago, Rancho El Centenario has showcased the chaos and the
profitability of such an operation. English’s
track is a scavenger of legitimate racing, in horses and personnel. A
champion quarter horse that sold at auction for nearly half a million
dollars regularly races at the track. A well-known jockey pushed out of
regulated racing because of his serial use of banned electric shock
devices also found refuge at Rancho El Centenario — until he died
following an accident while racing there. For years, there
have been hints that the horsemen of Rancho El Centenario are utilizing
practices that would incur serious discipline at a regulated track. For
instance: After deputies pulled over a horseman on his way to the track
in 2019, a police report shows, they discovered boxes of amphetamine
and anabolic steroids in the back of his Mazda. Other
times it’s more than a hint. On a visit to the races last month, during
which journalists for The Post witnessed horses being injected before
races, they also observed the day’s winningest jockey wearing a shock
device of the sort banned in mainstream racing. And
though betting on horses is illegal in Georgia, apparent bookies ambled
along the track, calling out bets before race Unbeknown
to English and his Mexican cowboy clientele, however, there has been
since last year a third party to the culture clash: animal rights
activists. Over
eight visits to Rancho El Centenario between June 2021 and April 2022,
undercover investigators for the People for the Ethical Treatment of
Animals collected https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoBG9oRynmE" rel="nofollow - hidden-camera footage of all of this conduct and more: gambling, injections, shock devices, repeated whipping and horses dying on the track. ... https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/05/bush-track-horse-racing-georgia/
s and distributing the
winnings from stacks of cash afterward.
------------- An honest politician is one who when he is bought will stay bought.
Simon Cameron
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Replies:
Posted By: Sister Dot
Date Posted: 06 Aug 2022 at 11:30am
Distressing, I hate what humans do to animals, when animals especially dogs and horses, are so good to us
------------- “Where in this wide world can man find nobility without pride, friendship without envy, or beauty without vanity? Here where grace is laced with muscle and strength by gentleness confined”
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