As we all need a dollop of weirdness ere now & again.
Sports Illustrated is reporting from the CNN website the Italian Mafia was attempting to fix races by doping horses with … Viagra. This unique application for the legal … um … ‘adult recreational’ drug of choice was – I think it safe to say – unforeseen by the developers and has not been through the standard clinical trials.
Money quote:
“It was not clear how Viagra affected the horses’ speed.”
Gosh. I am glad we have them professional journalists, with ethics & all that there stuff, to inform us lowly slobs that it is unknown how human sex drugs affect horses. Whodathunkit?
Second, what the devil? I mean. I mean. I mean. Who in the their right mind would even think there is a connection between running fast and – you know. As a researcher and, I hope, a member of the Reality Based Community I tend to support and encourage scientific investigation. But nude speed trials with some of the experimental subjects in a ‘certain condition’ (ipso phallic?) staggers even my warped imaginaton.
Certainly the Ancient Greeks perfected the Noble Art of running-around-in-the-all-
together-in-front-of-God-and-everybody but it is my understanding it was not with a rigorous (so to speak) requirement.
But then, perhaps, my education lacks completeness.
Bizarro.
Send this to PETA and HSUS.
I did a story a few years ago on how track personnel shove sponges up the noses of rival horses … their inability to breathe well slows them down. Nice, huh.
Sounds funny – but actually the class of drug that includes Viagra was invented to combat high altitude pulmonary edema. Imagine the surprise of the mountaineers who tested this. Something to do with oxygen flow.
Wonder what the horses make of the side effects – especially since fillies and colts run together.
Maybe it’s a novel twist on the idea of winning by a “nose” – wink, wink, nudge, nudge, say no more.
I liked Robin Williams line: ‘When Bush takes Viagra he gets taller’
perhaps even wierder is that the scandal was discovered on a mafia-owned RACECOURSE that was completely unknown to the authorities. Apparently this included the race track and grandstands!!