I HAVE been overwhelmed in the past seven days with the response to last weekend’s health column. The subject matter is something that has been touched on before, but this time it generated a massive reaction, all of a positive nature.

Perhaps it was, to a small degree, the personalisation of the subject matter. If that is so, I am only glad that it resonated with people. I think that the overwhelming reason for the piece creating any wave is the fact that we are all, every one of us, in unchartered territory, and we are all looking for beacons of hope, light at the end of the tunnel.

The message is simple: we are all facing these uncertain times as one, and we all need to be there for each other. If we adhere to this simple principle we will emerge from this time stronger and well.

Sensitivity

The news this week that the Kentucky Oaks third, Gamine, has tested positive for a medication presence raises a number of questions. How did this news ‘leak’ into the public domain before all protocols have been exhausted? Could it be argued that this pre-emptive revelation means that a fair hearing on the matter is jeopardised in some way?

Given recent happenings in France, surely there needs to be an internationally-led review of thresholds for the discovery of certain substances, some of which may even at times be produced naturally by the horse. If we can have varying results in different countries due to the sensitivity of the testing equipment, this leads to confusion and is damaging for the image of the sport.

I say this as someone with a pass mark in science subjects at school. When I hear about billionths and zillionths of a particle being found, I am left scratching my head about its likely influence on an animal weighing half a ton or more. This sounds to me like finding a pebble, or maybe a grain of sand, on a beach. What I do know is that is reflects poorly on the sport when it is revealed in public. That is not a satisfactory situation.

I am certainly not advocating a relaxation of controls on medication which may affect, positively or negatively, a horse’s performance, but when you hear that 27 picograms are found in a sample, and a pictogram is one trillionth of a gram, I do wonder where one should reasonably draw the line.

At present even a zero tolerance policy is subject to the level of sensitivity a particular laboratory can produce. This is hardly acceptable in a sport that has a global playing field.