by Dean A. Hoffman

Dean Hoffman

Columbus, OH — Unlike most Americans, I wish the political season would go on forever.

I’m a political junkie and I love reading the opinions expressed by various journalists. I judge them by a simple standard: if the writer agrees with my opinions and my candidate, the writer is a genius with uncommon wisdom and insight; if the writer disagrees with my opinions and my candidate, he or she is a blooming idiot. Seems fair to me.

And where do I find these political articles? The same place you’re reading this column — on the Internet. I can devote hours to reading this stuff because I love politics.

I was reminded of this recently when I unlocked the “vault” of Sports Illustrated and found a treasure trove of old articles on harness racing. Wow — once again, I can devote hours to reading this stuff because I love harness racing.

I grew up reading my father’s copies of Sports Illustrated. He was a charter subscriber and my mother always kept that first Sports Illustrated issue, reminding us, “This’ll be worth a lot of money some day.”

Maybe so, but I loved reading the articles that regularly appeared about harness racing. Sports Illustrated and The Horseman & Fair World were two weeklies that gave me a link to what was happening in the sport.

Check it out at http://vault.sportsillustrated.cnn.com.

Coverage of harness racing in Sports Illustrated has greatly diminished and I haven’t subscribed to it for years. I get my sports news from — where else? — the Internet (and some TV coverage). I suspect many other people are the same. You can read articles on the web on every sport known to man and often browse through reader feedback and analysis — immediately.

There are many web sites devoted to horse racing, but the major sports web sites seldom devote a lot of attention to racing. One writer who does, of course, is Bill Finley. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, USA Today, and Sports Illustrated, but I read his column last week on www.espn.com.

Finley’s message is that once racing rids itself of the “scourges of steroids and other illegal drugs,” it should target Lasix.

Lasix, of course, is perfectly legal in North American racing jurisdictions but prohibited elsewhere in the racing world. Finley feels that should change. He says since Lasix was approved across the board, the number of starts per horse has declined dramatically.

I’ve always wondered about the diuretic impact of Lasix. My daughter runs on her high school track team and the coach is always emphasizing to the athletes, “Hydrate, hydrate, hydrate. Always have a water bottle. Always drink plenty of water. Drink before you get thirsty. Stay ahead of dehydration.”

Yet it seems we do the opposite with horses.

In his ESPN web column, Finley writes about the “very slow but somewhat steady progress” of the Racing Medication and Testing Consortium model rule to control steroid use. The RMTC is supported by HTA, USTA, and other racing organizations.

Some states have adopted the RMTC model rule while others are taking a wait-and-see attitude. I’ve heard horsemen complain about the fact that they could face an impossible situation with different rules on steroids in different states.

Congressman Ed Whitfield of Kentucky will probably seize on statements like that to push his plans for federal control of racing medication. He’s quite serious about this. Again, where did I get my information? On his web site. It’s all on the Internet. A press release on his site says that he was a lead player in the recent hearings on “Drugs In Sports: Compromising the Health of Athletes and Undermining the Integrity of Competition.”

This subject is close to Congressman Whitfield’s heart and I think he’d really like to see racing commissions take the necessary action, but if that isn’t done, I think he will spearhead a move toward federal control. Then the rules will be the same in all states and they’ll be made on the federal level.

It’s truly amazing what you can find on the web these days. On this USTA site alone, I’m sure you could spend countless hours gleaning knowledge about harness racing. Each link seems to open up more doors. The web has changed our world and will continue to do so in ways we probably can’t imagine.