team valor curtails South African racing stable

Don , all team valors press releases start the same way,
With the 1st three sentences in bold black type and upper case .

insane.

A few comments:

1) What appeared was a commentary written by me to my racing partners in Team Valor International. Purpose of the commentary was to inform my partners of a new policy. It was so confidential that I did not even use it in our stable's twice-weekly newsletter. Unfortunately the list of recipients contained the name of a partner that was no longer active, somebody that lives in South Africa and obviously has a problem with the Cape sales outfit. Their reason for sending it to the ABC board was to take a poke at those people.

2) My intention was never to go public with this, because SA's horse industry is in enough trouble without me adding to it. I have always made my views known in SA, by speaking my mind to those people in a position of power that could change things. I did not want to do any harm by going public with my views.

3) I stand behind everything I wrote.

4) Flash Harry is right--the Ebony Flyer episode when she bled on a day that 7 horses bled from the nostrils was the last straw for me. Nowhere on the face of this planet has as many as 7 horses bled in one day's racing. And God only knows what a vet would find if others that day that coughed had been scoped. I read about blood baths on ABC in terms of punters losing bets. But this, a day where 7 horses bled from the nose, is the real blood bath.

5) I love South African racing and breeding and continue to do my part to upgrade both enterprises. However the challenges continue. This morning the first e-mail I read told me about one of my horses that was found dead in its stall. As they say in America, this game is not played in short pants.

Anonymous posters with temporary phony e-mail addresses act irresponsibly, which is exactly why I rarely read or post on message boards anymore.

Barry you are correct as regards SA horses bleeding...when you get a horse that DOESNT bleed you feel lucky as an owner

thanks for the clarification Barry, sorry to hear an ex-partner saw fit to do as he did.
With regards to the bleeding, and I stand under correction as this is heresay but would like to see more debate on the issue, I believe that if a horse is found after a race to have bled, they are 'suspended' - for 3 months. I suspect therefore, some people try not to have their horses see a vet after a race to avoid suspension...?

also, does SAF breed a high % of bleeders then?

Don, I don't know the answer to your first question, but you could be correct. I don't think SA breeds more bleeders than anyplace else. I think the conditions of racing may cause more bleeding.

do you mean the weather conditions = dry heat? (which Cape Town certainly has)

here is a study about bleeds in horses worth reading: www.ker.com/library/proceedings/04/EIPH_p95.pdf

.....I have a history of almost 4 generations of family involvement in the horse racing industry and unlike my father, his brother and their father and a great great uncle who were all racehorse trainers followed a career in chemicals and chemistry.....apart from all we have read about bleeding not many have made a corralation to the modern polutants that may also be a major factor and a trigger to an under lying fault.....we are training horses and leaving them locked up in areas right next to petrolium refineries like Milnerton, the Vaal race course(Sasolburg) Clairwood. The increase in human respriatory conditions have increased 10 fold in areas around refining plants as the older the plants get....the more prone they are to releasing highly dangerous polutants like toluene, xylene and benzene.

Even worse we are taking horses off farms and cramming them into makeshift wooden boxes at sales venues that are coated with petrolium based products that emitt the very same polutants. Some have a slight resistance to limited exposure but many others dont....makes one think.....:S

www.alechogg.com/index.php/featured-arti...-irwin-cuts-and-runs

Well well well.... Pretty sure I've said all this before, on the record... and tried in vein to balance the power at the competition commission. just a massive pity others like Barry didn't speak their minds when the time was right! well done Hibs for publishing and Alec for covering extensively