Jockey Club executive vice president and executive director Dan Fick was elected chairman of the Racing Medication and Testing Consortium.
Dan Fick, executive vice president and executive director of The Jockey Club, was elected chairman of the Racing Medication and Testing Consortium at its quarterly meeting Sept. 9. The consortium also approved a per-start fee for horse owners to help fund initiatives.Fick succeeds Breeders' Cup president D.G. Van Clief Jr., who has served as chairman of the consortium since February 2003. Van Clief recently was named interim commissioner of the National Thoroughbred Racing Association.The consortium approved a recommendation for a $5 per-start fee paid by owners to fund research programs to develop threshold levels and withdrawal times for therapeutic medications, new tests for prohibited and currently unknown substances, laboratory accreditation, and quality assurance programs.Executive director Dr. Scot Waterman said 60% of the jurisdictions had either adopted or were in the process of adopting consortium language in the model rules approved in April by the Association of Racing Commissioners International and North American Pari-Mutuel Regulators Association.The consortium also formed a scientific subcommittee to prepare policy language to address the issue of "milkshaking," or bicarbonate loading in Thoroughbreds, and approved development of a request for proposal for backstretch and training center security programs.
