The Racing Medication and Testing Consortium will hold its spring board of directors meeting March 25 in conjunction with the Association of Racing Commissioners International annual convention in Austin, Texas.
The RMTC will receive an update on regulation of anabolic steroids from its Scientific Advisory Committee, and also participate in a medication roundtable moderated by RMTC chairman Dr. Robert Lewis. The RMTC board also will discuss research projects, workshops, and penalty guidelines for medication positives in racehorses.
The National Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Association executive committee and the Association of Official Racing Chemists also will hold meetings in Austin the week of March 23.
The RMTC also announced it’s working with the University of California-Davis Ken Maddy Laboratory in sponsoring a workshop on the detection of androgenic and anabolic steroids in horses. The workshop is scheduled for April 27 -30 at UC-Davis.
Representatives from Brazil, Chile, England, Greece, Belgium, Canada, Jamaica, and almost every United States testing lab will be among those in attendance. The keynote speakers will be Dr. Don Catlin, director of the Anti-Doping Research Institute and former director of the UCLA Olympic Laboratory, and Dr. Ed Houghton, formerly of Horseracing Forensic Laboratory in Newmarket, England. Additional presentations will be conducted by Drs. Rick Arthur, Rohan Thakur, Rick Sams, Heather Knych, and Scott Stanley.
The lecture portion will be held Apr. 28, with the wet-lab portion of the workshop Apr. 29-30.
The RMTC consists of 23 racing industry stakeholders and organizations that represent Thoroughbred, Standardbred, and Quarter Horse racing.