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A movement is underway in horse racing to clean up the sport by enacting uniform safety standards that everyone in the industry would have to abide by.
An integrity and safety bill is being reviewed by the Senate that could put national standards in place by the start of 2022. In the meantime, different states and tracks are implementing rules to address concerns about doping, medication and optics.
The rules include eliminating performance-enhancing substances, restricting the use of an anti-bleeding medication and placing limits on the use of a bronchodilator that can enhance muscle development. There would also be restrictions on how — and how many times — a jockey can whip a horse consecutively during a race.
“At some point, we need to get those rules so that nationwide we have the same rules everywhere,” trainer Kenny McPeek said this week before saddling Preakness-winning filly Swiss Skydiver in the Distaff at the Breeders’ Cup world championships this weekend.
The U.S. government catching two prominent trainers involved in a widespread scheme to drug horses, and California’s Santa Anita racetrack getting through its fall season without a single racing fatality are examples of independent efforts to clean up the sport.
But without a national governing body, horse racing has long relied on jurisdictions making their own rules, which partially contributed to the suspicious success of indicted trainers Jason Servis and Jorge Navarro and the death of Grade 1 winner X Y Jet in Navarro’s care.
If the “Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act” that made its way through the U.S. House of Representatives is passed by the Senate and signed into law, as expected, those types of incidents would likely be prevented going forward because an independent authority would set regulations that the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency would then enforce.
“It will be a game changer, I think, for the industry when it comes time to protect the health and safety of the horses and the integrity and fairness of the competition,” said Travis T. Tygart, CEO of USADA, which already is getting calls to its anonymous tip line on horse racing. “It is going to be clearing out the bushel to get to, ‘All right, let’s clean this thing up and restore this sport to what it once was.’”
It will be up to the horse racing industry to figure out how to pay for new standardized testing and enforcement, but states already spend roughly $30 million annually in that department, which be streamlined for better effectiveness.
“We can’t afford not to do it,” National Thoroughbred Racing Association president and CEO Alex Waldrop said. 'It’s not as if we can just say, ‘Well, too bad, too expensive.’ The costs of not doing it are far greater than the cost of doing it.”
After a spike of horse deaths in 2019 into 2020, California put money and effort into improving track and safety conditions and got through the summer at Del Mar and fall meet at Santa Anita with just one fatal breakdown among 3,457 horses that left the starting gate. Aidan Butler, chief operating officer of 1/ST Racing that owns Santa Anita, and the California Horse Racing Board said they put worked with horsemen and the state government to institute “dozens of safety initiatives” that drastically reduced fatalities and set a new safety bar for the rest of the country.
One of those initiatives was a zero-tolerance policy on clenbuterol, a bronchodilator sometimes given to increase muscle mass instead of treating respiratory disease as intended.
“As far as safety goes, this is the No. 1,” said trainer Mark Casse, who has six horses in the 2020 Breeders’ Cup and has long been critical of clenbuterol as a potentially harmful stimulant. “It decreases bone strength, but it also leads to heart conditions. It’s very hard on the heart. There’s a lot of trainers out there that don’t want to subject their horses to that type of treatment, and they’re competing at an unlevel playing field.”
Two-time Triple Crown-winning trainer Bob Baffert on Wednesday vowed to “do better” after three positive tests for medication this year and said he's hiring outside oversight.
While Baffert horses tested positive for a corticosteroid and a local anesthetic, Lasix has become a focus in recent years for the race-day use of the medication that reduces pulmonary bleeding. Even though Lasix hasn’t been linked to any deaths, 2-year-olds cannot be given it on race days beginning this year, and that extends next year to all horses running in stakes races at the tracks that host the Triple Crown races.
McPeek supports Lasix restrictions for 2-year-olds and stakes horses but said “the average, everyday horse” often needs the medication. A common argument against Lasix is that it isn’t used in Europe, where racing is almost exclusively done on grass, not the dirt that is more prominent in North America.
“I can tell you this without a doubt, and I run more horses probably than anybody — dirt, synthetic and turf — that horses bleed more on dirt than anything else,” Casse said. “It’s more strenuous on them, and when it’s more strenuous, horses bleed.”
The most visible change is the use of the riding crop by jockeys. It's not considered a cause of breakdowns or injuries, but the whip has become a hot-button issue around a sport sensitive to the perception that fans are put off by a horse being struck repeatedly down the stretch.
New Jersey banned whipping a horse for any reason other than safety, California contains it to six times a race, Kentucky — where the Breeders’ Cup is being run — limits it to two in a row before pausing for a response and Toronto’s Woodbine Racetrack allows only underhanded motions.
“We can eliminate the perception of the whip harming the horse if you go to underhanded with some kind of restrictions and a lot of penalty when the rules are broken,” said retired jockey Jerry Bailey, now an NBC Sports analyst.
Fellow Hall of Fame riders John Velazquez and Mike Smith have cited safety in voicing criticism of whip restrictions, which are being debated nationwide. Spokesman Pat McKenna said the New York Racing Association supports changes to “strictly limit its use and add severe penalties for overuse” while acknowledging the crop is a way of communicating with horses.
“In fairness to riders, trainers, owners and the betting public, these rules should be consistent between states,” McKenna said.
That is the goal of the safety and integrity bill that could go into effect Jan. 1, 2022. And if it is passed, for the first time the industry would be able to set standard rules across the board that could preserve the long-term health of the sport.
Debunking the myth that motorsport drivers aren't worthy of being considered athletes
“There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games.” – Ernest Hemingway
Most racing fans know at least one person in their group of friends or family who believes auto racing isn’t a “real” sport. To them, something can only be considered a sport if it involves physical effort, and ideally no small amount of it; which is why they might also conclude that archery, shooting, and—god forbid—soccer are also not real sports, never mind the fact that all three of these will be played at the Olympics this summer.
Related:What’s the difference between Formula 1 and IndyCar racing?
Usually, the problem is that they compare the physical demands of auto racing to their own experience driving to the supermarket in a regular road car, which indeed requires no physical exertion whatsoever; but these two things have about as much in common as fishing by the lakeside and wrestling a crocodile in the Nile River.
I was appalled to find that 43% of people on Debate.org believe auto racing isn’t a sport, most of whom explain that it can’t be because “all they do is sit in a seat and don’t freaking move.” In other words, they believe athleticism requires movement, and thus that racing drivers are not athletes and that what they do can’t be a sport. Then you have people like Donovan McNabb, who flat-out claimed on TV that six-time Sprint Cup champion Jimmie Johnson wasn’t an athlete because “he sits in a car and he drives … what athletically is he doing?”
Unfortunately, people like McNabb are not very well-informed. There are many reasons something can be a sport without involving athleticism, but I’m not even going to get into that here—because anyone who knows anything about auto racing understands that a great deal of physical effort (and risk) is definitely involved, even if drivers “only” turn a steering wheel and push pedals.
There’s a reason Ernest Hemingway valued motor racing as one of the most extreme sports on the planet, and I’ll be exploring why it should still be viewed as such today. I’ll mostly use Formula 1 as a reference, but the reasons I give below should still apply to other forms of motorsports to varying degrees. So let’s get to it.
4 reasons auto racing is a “real” sport and racing drivers are athletes
Drivers sweat up to 9lb/4kg of their body weight
If you think sitting in a race car is a cozy job, think again. As part of the engineers’ efforts to strip as much weight from race cars as possible and to keep only the necessary parts, they feature few creature comforts. The seat’s only job is to ensure drivers don’t get tossed around in corners, and there’s no air conditioning, which they would surely wish for at races like the Malaysian Grand Prix, where humidity goes up to 80% and temperatures regularly exceed 104°F / 40°C.
Spending any amount of time in these conditions while wearing five-layer fireproof race overalls is not a happy time, and these guys do it for up to two hours or more depending on the racing series. It can be even worse for drivers racing in closed-cockpit cars, inside of which temperatures frequently surpass 120°F / 49°C.
That heat causes more than mere discomfort, as the average F1 driver sweats up to 8.8 lb / 4 kg of his body weight throughout a Grand Prix. Studies have shown losing that much body weight can cause a significant drop in reaction times and mental focus, which is one of the reasons drivers drink up to 2 gallons / 7.6 liters of water before hot races. But compared to the rest of the ordeal of auto racing, that’s the easy part.
Their heart rate goes up to 190 BPM
While driving around town, your heart rate probably doesn’t go up very much, if at all. And why would it? Short of getting into a collision or being new to driving, there’s little reason to get stressed behind the wheel. Yet an F1 driver’s heart rate averages around 170 beats per minute (BPM) throughout a race and regularly peaks at upward of 190 BPM, which approaches the maximum a human being can achieve without beginning to experience severe heart problems. We’ll explore why this happens when we get to g-forces, but for now let’s just look at what it means for the driver.
To maintain an average heart rate of 170 BPM over the course of a Grand Prix, F1 drivers must be extremely fit. They adhere to a very strict diet and exercise regime, as well as undergo intense cardiovascular training. As a result, they have a resting heart rate of around 40 BPM, down from 70 BPM for the average person. Just because they’re sitting down doesn’t mean they aren’t getting a workout. In fact, the cardio exercise of racing at a Grand Prix is akin to running a marathon.
The video above shows you what that sounds like. Yet some people would have you believe it’s as easy as taking a stroll through the park…
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The g-forces they withstand would knock you out
So let’s get to the meat of this: why do F1 drivers sweat so much and have such elevated heart rates during a race if all they do is sit in a car and turn a steering wheel? The answer is g-forces. Just because drivers don’t actively move in the traditional way that we expect athletes to move doesn’t mean they aren’t exercising. Perhaps what people like McNabb don’t understand is that unlike in most sports, F1 drivers don’t transfer their energy into something else, such as a ball, but rather resist the energy and stress that g-forces put on their bodies.
This is mostly due to the sheer acceleration, braking, and cornering performance of Formula 1 cars, but it’s hard to truly grasp this, or even the performance of less capable racing cars, without having experienced it oneself. However, comparing them to regular road cars can offer some perspective.
Most road cars can only generate about 0.8 g of force at the most. Even some supercars struggle to achieve 1 g in corners, and achieving this would require taking corners at speeds that would almost surely make your passenger accuse you of being a maniac. On the other hand, a Formula 1 car regularly produces 4 or 5 g in Grand Prix corners, which essentially makes everything feel 4-5 times heavier to the driver.
For example, the combined weight of a driver’s head and his helmet is around 16 lb / 7.25 kg—but at 5 g, that’s a whopping 80 lb / 36.3 kg of force being applied to the driver’s neck alone, which he must endure corner after corner, lap after lap, while keeping a clear head. Thanks to banked turns, even NASCARs are capable of taking corners at tremendous speeds, such as over 220 mph / 334 kph at Turn 1 of the Indy 500. When going through a corner like that, a driver who weighs 200 lb / 91 kg will feel like 1,000 lb / 454 kg. Not exactly a pleasant sensation.
Furthermore, it’s not uncommon to generate up to or even more than 5 g while braking in a Formula 1 car. In fact, while a regular car needs about 4 seconds to come to a complete stop from only 30 mph / 48 kph, an F1 car can go from 124 mph / 200 kph to a stop in just 2.9 seconds. Think about that next time you slam your brakes in the car and feel your whole body uncomfortably lurching forward.
Take a look at the onboard video below of Michael Schumacher‘s lap around the Suzuka Circuit in Japan. These kinds of forces can make it difficult to think and even breathe for untrained individuals (and they are one of the reasons drivers get so snappy at their engineers when they are radioed during corners). They are also why a driver’s heart rate rises as high as it does, and why F1 drivers have such absurdly strong necks.
If you could put Average Joe in a Formula 1 car as a passenger, he would become sick, dizzy, and probably pass out within a few laps.
A single lapse in focus can be life-ending
Let’s talk about that Hemingway quote for a moment. In a way, I shouldn’t be using it at all because the mentality behind it is exactly what leads people to say silly things like “X isn’t a real sport.” But it does highlight that for many years, auto racing was one of the riskiest sports in the world. Most Formula 1 drivers used to get in their car believing there was a 1-in-3 chance they wouldn’t survive to the finish line, and in fact 37 died between the 50s and 90s. Though auto racing is much safer today, accidents still happen, and death remains a very real possibility.
In most sports, a lapse in judgement, a brief loss of mental focus, or a simple mistake rarely carries a great deal of weight. At the worst, an athlete will miss out on scoring a goal, or perhaps in rare circumstances even cause themselves or their team to lose a tournament. In auto racing, a lapse in focus spanning just a fraction of a second can lead to a potentially career-ending crash. At 186 mph / 300 kph, the room for error is extraordinarily narrow and the penalty for making a mistake can be extreme. It is vital for F1 drivers to be in peak physical condition so that they can focus on the driving rather than on merely withstanding the g-forces and heat.
Conclusion
Driving a Formula 1 car exerts enormous stress on the driver, who must not only withstand the forces applied to his body but also maintain a clear head to actually race. It’s not enough to be able to merely survive the ordeal; drivers also need the reflexes to avoid crashing at speeds most would consider suicidal, all the while thinking about racing lines, overtaking strategies, and more.
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Next time a friend suggests racing drivers aren’t athletes or that auto racing isn’t a “real” sport, invite them to go karting with you. When they complain about being sore the next day, point out to them that the workout was insignificant compared to auto racing. Who knows, they might change their mind.
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Kurt Verlin was born in France and lives in the United States. Throughout his life he was always told French was the language of romance, but it was English he fell in love with. He likes cats, music, cars, 30 Rock, Formula 1, and pretending to be a race car driver in simulators; but most of all, he just likes to write about it all. See more articles by Kurt.