RACING FORUM

Posted: **Thu Jun 27, 2013 19:48 pm**

On Monday last, the B.H.A. in a statement said "Drug tests on hair samples from horses could be added to the weapons deployed against corruption in racing. The technique is of particular use in detecting the use of anabolic steroids, which have been at the centre of two separate drug-abuse scandals in recent months.

Anabolic steroids are a more pernicious threat to the integrity of racing than many other performance-enhancing substances such as bicarbonate "milkshakes" or painkillers, because the extra muscle growth and general wellbeing that their use promotes can continue to improve performance many weeks or even months after the steroid itself has left the horse's system.

The hair in a horse's mane or tail, however, can provide evidence of the substances in its body throughout the time that the hair has taken to grow. As a result, tests on hair samples could prove invaluable in detecting sustained use of steroids, such as that conducted by the disgraced former trainer Mahmood al-Zarooni at the Godolphin-owned Moulton Paddocks stable in Newmarket earlier this year.

"At HFL [Horseracing Forensic Laboratory] Sport Science there is a team whose role is to constantly research methods of improving our sampling techniques," Robin Mounsey, the BHA's media manager, said on Monday, "and, if it was deemed an effective method of testing and of benefit to achieving our objectives, then the introduction of hair samples is a possibility. It has been explored in the past and could be incorporated to our rules and procedures in the future."

Will they do it?