President of the Guyana Horse Racing Authority, Cecil Kennard said yesterday that the use of performance enhancing drugs in the Sport of Kings was cause for concern.
Kennard made the disclosure in the wake of the death of a horse on the track at Bush Lot’s race meet two weeks ago.
According to Kennard the resultant deaths of the animals after they would have been injected with performance enhancing drugs is a major worry for the GHRA so much so that doping was high on the agenda when the GHRA held its monthly meeting yesterday.
At the Ordinary General Meeting, which was held at the Grand Stand of the Kennard Memorial Turf Club, reviewing of this year’s race meets; the promotion and demotion of horses; unsportsmanlike conduct of one of the jockeys and the treasurer’s report were the main items on the agenda.
“Doping is one of the main topics we spoke about,” said Kennard during an interview with Stabroek Sport yesterday.
“Those kinds of things should not be encouraged. Doping is totally illegal and it is cruel to the animals,” he added, whilst making reference to the death of Serenity owned by the Jumbo Jet Stables
“It does not do anything good for the horse,” Kennard stated.
The GHRA president is of the opinion that appropriate legislation pertaining to the effective running of the sport is needed to deal with violators.
“We do have a registered body but we have limited power to deal with offenders,” Kennard bemoaned.
“Legislation would give us (GHRA) more authority to deal with infringements like doping because we will be authorized to penalize owners and trainers if they are found to be doping their horses and other violations.”
Kennard stated that he wrote President Donald Ramotar two weeks ago in order to have dialogue with him on setting up legislation for the GHRA.
“We requested to speak with the president so we can have a legislation tabled in parliament.
“He must have acted on it because this morning I got a call from the secretary of the Minister of Sport requesting a copy of the legislation so we can expect a meeting to be convened shortly to discuss the legislation among other things in horse racing,” said the former Chief Justice.
At Sunday’s Ordinary General Meeting, seven clubs were present.
