Sport

O'Brien to use Lasix

Aidan O'Brien's four horses engaged in tomorrow's Breeders' Cup at Gulfstream Park, Florida, will run with the aid of medication…

Fri Nov 05 1999 - 00:00

Aidan O'Brien's four horses engaged in tomorrow's Breeders' Cup at Gulfstream Park, Florida, will run with the aid of medication, the Ballydoyle trainer revealed yesterday. Earlier this week O'Brien admitted he was considering administering Lasix to Sprint candidate Stravinsky, as well as two-year-old challengers Mull of Kintyre, Brahms and Warrior Queen.

And yesterday he confirmed his team would join the Godolphin horses - and the vast majority of the Americans - on the blood coagulant.

"I would say we will probably run them all with medication - everybody does it here," said O'Brien.

"Almost every horse in America runs on Lasix and obviously it is well documented and well proven that it is not a disadvantage.

READ MORE

"What do they say? If you come to America you have to try and do what the Americans do."

Charged that "medication" is a dirty word for 51 weeks of the European racing year - until the first week of November - O'Brien countered: "Anadins and Panadol are not dirty words in human beings, are they?

"If we come over here, all everybody wants is a level playing field."

Michael Kinane partnered Stravinsky in a three-quarter-speed workout on the dirt course yesterday and afterwards expressed his satisfaction with the colt's draw for the Sprint, stall seven.

"I think the draw is perfect - I didn't want to be too low or too high - and it leaves us with good options," he said.

"If you're drawn down the inside and all the pace is on top of you, you are forced into one scenario, but this gives me the option of what to do down the back stretch."

The local morning line lists Stravinsky as a 15 to 1 shot - he is a 6 to 1 chance with Coral - and Kinane went on: "He is a very capable horse and if the race was run on grass, he wouldn't be 15 to 1.

"But he is doing well, has put his weight back on and I was very pleased with him this morning. He is a very content horse."

A measure of encouragement, however slight, would give O'Brien the appetite to return to America and seek the success he has achieved in his short career in Europe.