Much has already been said about Jeff ‘Milkshake’ Mullins getting caught in the detention barn with a syringe (it’s like horse-drugging Clue!) and while this time it isn’t entirely IEAH’s fault that they’re associated with another trainer with a long list of drug (and, let’s be honest, fashion) misdeeds, one hopes it may motivate them to change their hiring practices going forward.
While I’m no fan of the trainer or organization, it is a shame that I Want Revenge is associated by proxy with this mess after putting in the sort of performance in the Wood that could only have come from the horse and jockey working together – drugs can improve a performance, but they can’t create that sort of killer instinct that was very much in evidence on Saturday.
Oh man I just made the same joke, great minds maybe?
Sorry
After I Want Revenge’s incredible victory on Saturday – it is a damn shame that some his human connections are shady at best (and cheaters at worst). If Mullins hangs on as IWR’s trainer – it will be a yet another Triple Crown season where is racing in on the defensive.
I think hoping that IEAH rethinks their trainer decisions misses the point.
IEAH, which compares its approach to a hedge fund, is only interested in the bottom line. It isn’t by bad luck that they are associated with cheating trainers time and again (although there may be a component of it in this case), it’s because they only care about ROI, no matter how.
The only way to make them rethink are severe sanctions for trainers who get caught cheating and all horses in their stable.
How many owners would give their Derby contenders to Dutrow or Mullins if they knew that all horses in their stable would be suspended for 3 months following their next infraction. Now that would be a way to make trainers clean up their act, having them race their horses under an assistant’s name for all of next December sure isn’t.
Oh, I agree IEAH is only about the ROI (especially given that it looks as though they are shorter on cash than usual); I also couldn’t agree more that there needs to be some real penalty that hurts the owners in order to get rid of people like Mullins and his ilk.
Hate when these people become the face of racing to the general public.
Any chance Lanzman will move IWR? I imagine he must be getting pressure to do so, although who the horse would likely go to is hardly any more palatable. But then, if there is a Dutrow encore this spring, at least we’ve already hashed out of all his violations and personal failings. Maybe the horse would be the focus this year.
If the horse was really just getting Air Power, this is a non-incident. Air Power is really nothing, and as far as I know, legal. NY has different rules than California… no matter how you feel about the guy and what he may or may not have done in the past, this might really be an honest mistake and not cheating.
Aside from the fact that AirPower is not legal to give on race day in NY, the issue is where he gave it.
If a longtime professional trainer, who has had horses in the detention barn before, claims not only not to know what a detention barn is, but also finds it okay to administer substances to his horses without checking the legality of those substances, I very much find that an issue (and I don’t believe him, to me it’s as stupid an excuse as an MLB player claiming he didn’t know that he wasn’t allowed to use an aluminium bat).
If said trainer has the gall to blame racetrack security for not stopping him from violating rules he has to know, if he even declares he’ll boycott the racetrack operator that wouldn’t allow him to violate one of the most straightforward rules of the game, it is a scandal.
Mullins has repeatedly shown he’s unwilling to play by the rules, and he’s shown not a bit of remorse. Anywhere else in the world he would be booted out of the sport, in the US he might saddle the Derby winner in less than four weeks. And that is an issue.