Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Air Power and Performance?


Sorry for the lack of recent posts, been busy at my 'day' job and traveling a bit.

Mr. Mullins busted administering the above to his horse pre-race at Aqueduct. Of course he is also the trainer of the superstar I Want Revenge, who I think we can assume gets the same pre-race treatment - although it would never be admitted to.

Forget for the moment that pre-race administration of anything other than Lasix is forbidden. Clowns like myself even know those rules that Mullins pleads ignorance of. When asked "Why give cough medicine to a horse without a cough?" he replied with the gem: "Why put socks on your feet?" Whatever the hell that means. 

This reminds me of a discussion I had in Lexington over the wintertime with 2 famous vets. We were discussing bronchodilation, or opening up of the small airwaves in the lungs, and its positive effect on performance. Both of these guys mentioned a product being used that was accomplishing this effect, but neither would mention the name of said product. 

Could this be it? Administered so close to race time for a horse with no cough seems suspicious to me.

The company that makes Air Power calls itself Finish Line products, which insinuates you take the stuff and win races, right? To be fair it's labelled as all natural, and if that proves to be the case they are cool in my book. But on the human side, which is probably more highly regulated by the FDA, many supplements marketed as natural at GNC have since been banned by the major sports leagues after more detailed testing. 

Stay tuned on this one...

2 comments:

  1. Would be interesting to put one a consistent worker on Air Power for a work and see if you can actually see anything in the recovery HR data or somewhere else. I suspect you wouldn't but it would be interesting.

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  2. If it truly helps to open the bronchiole branches in the lungs, we should see the same amount of work at a lower heart rate as well as improved recovery.

    I think the key is that it has to be administered really close to the effort, i.e. within an hour of post time.

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