Dancer’s Image finished first in the 1968 running of the Kentucky Derby. Then, he had the dubious distinction of being the only winner in America’s most famous horse race to be disqualified. Traces of Butazolidin (phenylbutazone), better known in racing circles as Bute, were found in the mandatory post-race urine test.
Six days before the race, the three-year-old stallion had, in fact, been given a Bute tablet to relieve the pain and inflammation in Dancer’s sore ankles. The Kentucky Racing Commission ruled that the favored second-place horse, Forward Pass, be officially declared the winner of the 1968 Derby. While controversial to all racing devotees, to some the decision was viewed a travesty, and Sports Illustrated named it the sports story of the year.
Had the race been run at many other tracks throughout the United States, this drug’s use would have been legal, but at Churchill Downs, it had not yet been sanctioned. The rules were to change, and in 1986, thirteen of the sixteen horses running were taking Bute. The doping of racehorses is not limited to those with swollen ankles; horses are commonly given painkillers to mask pre-race injuries. Many such horses have stumbled during the race, throwing their jockeys to the ground, with severe injury to both as an occasional consequence.
The first recipients of Butazolidin were not horses, but rather humans. In 1949, the Swiss pharmaceutical company Geigy (now Novartis) introduced this aspirin-like, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID). In addition to its anti-inflammatory and pain-relieving effects, it also promotes the excretion of uric acid and has been used for the treatment of gout. However, its many adverse effects have more than undermined these desirable properties, including bleeding peptic ulcers and life-threatening blood disorders. More than one-half century and thousands of drug-associated deaths later, and notwithstanding the availability of dozens of safer drugs, generic phenylbutazone is still on the market, bearing the warning that it should be used for the “shortest time possible.”
SEE ALSO Colchicine (c. 70), Aspirin (1899), Benemid (1951), Celebrex and Vioxx (1998).
Horses are not raised as food animals in the United States, but horsemeat derived from American horses—including thoroughbred horses—is exported to various countries for human consumption. Some of these thoroughbreds have likely received phenylbutazone to relieve inflammation, and ingestion of their meat exposes humans to the drug’s potentially dangerous adverse effects.