No Private Zone -- What’s the Rumpus with Cannabis?

No question about it, the highlight of the big Belmont Stakes eve card will be the $250,000, Grade 2 True North Stakes. When top older sprinters go at it in a six-furlong battle royal, it’s always fun, but factor in the long awaited return of Private Zone, and you’ve got yourself a can’t miss race.

What’s that? Private Zone is scratched??? Well, he must have a bruised hoof, or a little illness. Wrong again? Private Zone is as healthy as can be and raring to go, you say? What could possibly keep one of America’s more popular horses from making his grand return on one of American racing’s biggest weekends?

Oh, his trainer inhaled.

Didn’t President Clinton smoke pot? Good thing he didn’t train horses in New York.

OK, so Private Zone’s trainer, Brian Lynch was nabbed in a random drug test with a little more THC in his system than zero. Apparently, the New York State Gaming Commission frowns on that. Who knew? I know what you are thinking -- the guys from the NYSGC sound like a fun bunch of fellas.

Seriously though, the fact that Lynch took a drag or two from a buddie’s doobie, or toked off his one-hitter, or even enjoyed a few rips from his Jon Bong Jovi, could well make this the biggest drug infraction horse racing has known in the modern era.

As such, it goes without saying that Lynch is not permitted to enter horses in races at the New York Racing Association’s tracks indefinitely.

So for all those fans out there who could not wait to see one of the best sprinters in the world make his first start since the Breeders’ Cup for Good Friends Stable, you can take solace in the fact that horse racing as an industry has stepped up in a big way to keep the sport free of infestation from the true criminals of the game.

Stay in school kids -- don’t do drugs.