Tom , beta blockers ,1 st discovered around the early 70's or late 60's [ I was a young med student then ] and useful for treatment of people with hypertension and coronary problem .It is essentially a chemical that block the beta-receptor sites of the sympathethic neuron[ nerve cell] endings in the large and small blood vessels of man and mammals [ horse included !] , and also the heart muscles .A final 'fight and flight 'connection between the automatic transmission part of the brain and the effector organs so to speak .You see a tiger ,your transmission go on overdrive and all your neuronal cascade let loose all the signal and you fly !When this is relatively blocked ,you just walk by so to speak . A great way to present your horse at 2 minite during vetgate time and beat your much faster opponents who breeze thru you 10 minutes earlier .Does not add an iota to performance and may be even dangerous from the view point of possibly camouflaging a potentially cardiovascular collapse in a tired horse.
Truman Prevatt alluded to earlier about doping with anabolic steroids during the training phase of cyclists amongst Tour de france .I do not believe in the distance event such drugs contribute significantly to enhancing performance per se during event but there is a fine line and argument here ,very fine :Anabolics do help in enhancing faster repair of tissues .If one look at exercise , basically it is in essense ,a series of micro damage and micro repair as Ivers [ always quote this chap because I miss his discussion s and 'rough' ways ] put it to micro damage and super compensation .Anabolics enhance further the super compensation so to speak .This helps a lot in Ben Johnson and Marion's case ,I doubt it does substantively [ the accent is in' substantive '] in long distance event. Does not mean people do not use it .But probably more substantively if you are in the 'injury zone , helps faster repair .More substantively I think for the longer events it work in the minds and souls of the trainers and competitors. You hardly hear the Kenyans get caught in this kind of scandals except for incidences where they binadvertantly took some cough mixtures etc etc before and event so on and so forth . .But yes if we are looking at the nitty gritty of abolising all doubts then we do have to test all high ranking competitors in any big meet months prior to the actual event .We would be putting a lot of 'spanners' there .because one do get injured and anabolics as far as I know is one of the modality of treatment .When treatment become coming usage can become blurred .
How I wish your Valarie Kanavy is currently 15 years younger ,she could beat the hell of Al Beloushi et Al , and Truman will finally believe me that drugs does not work in a long distance event .It is still back to hard work ,work and work .You have to give credit where it belong my freinds !
