from the Meadowlands Media Relations Department
East Rutherford, NJ — In response to horsemen’s concerns over the accuracy of blood gas testing being done at The Meadowlands, equipment was brought in from Tioga Downs and Meadowlands management, with the assistance of the New Jersey Racing Commission, conducted on-site TC02 testing over the weekend of March 16 and 17.
The concern was over the procedure in place for TC02 testing which required the samples be shipped to a lab in California, citing the possibility that there may be deterioration of those samples during the time spent in transportation.
After the onsite testing was done and results were returned to the NJRC from the California lab from that same weekend, those results were compared. That comparison of 35 samples yielded no significant difference and none of the tested samples came at all close to the threshold of what would be considered an overage.
“We continue to work with the NJRC to insure that to the best of our ability horses racing at the Meadowlands are racing on a level playing field,” said Meadowlands Chairman Jeff Gural. “After receiving questions about the possibility that shipping the samples to California may be producing inaccurate results we decided to bring our testing equipment down from Tioga to be certain that was not the case.”