It's been a long time since I posted, but I have some experience with professional human sports doping, so I thought I might contribute a little.
Regarding Justify, I've been convinced he's on a regimen since the foot problem. Most dopers shoot up in between their toes to hide the bruises. I imagine shooting up in a hoof is no different. If you shoot up into the most obvious places--sholders, flanks, withers--the tenderness is exposed just by rubbing your hands along the animal, even if you can't see the bruise for the hair.
If you shoot up in a hoof you'd want the hind on the horse's less dominant side. Like humans, most animals are righthanded, Justify's lameness was in his rear, left hoof. Injection site tenderness is very short lived (think of when you've gotten a vaccination). The horse was reshod with an ordinary shoe.
For EPO, you want to shoot up no later and no earlier than 3 weeks out to evade testing and still have a full tank. You also want to avoid any serious physical exertion during that time period, because not only is the EPO itself being metabolized naturally, exertion accelerates this. Between the KY Derby and the SA Derby the horse loped around in 1:13s, between the KY Derby and the Preakness the horse didn't do much of anything. The best time to dope is immediately after your last test, like the day after the KY Derby or SA Derby.
Two weeks out the EPO tank is maybe still 3/4 to 2/3 full. Running in the Preakness could have knocked another 1/4 to 1/3 off or more. The longer an athlete is on EPO, the less EPO their own bodies produce, sort of like how chapstick use over time ruins your lips' ability to fight chapness on their own, so the amount lost varies with use. In the Tour de France, the mid-Tour rest day was the re-up day, 1.5 weeks in. With the Preakness and the Belmont testing, the horse is likely unable to re-up due to testing. Last week, both Baffert and Barnes said repeatedly they wished they could run him last week, which seems counterintuitive given the need for the freshest horse possible for the Belmont.
The next step is recovery, which is the purpose of steriods. The steriod of choice with humans is testosterone, because like EPO, it occurs naturally and is difficult to test for. The key indicators of testosterone use is muscle sculpting and aggression. In fact, if you give a girl a short boost of testosterone, she can svelt up very nicely, very quickly, no dieting required. You pointed out the horse's current appearance, but the more telling sign to me is how keyed up and aggressive the horse is behaving: bucking and kicking under tack and rider, biting everyone, getting incensed by other horses, running off in 46.80, fighting when forced to run slower. Their chosing not to school is also a red flag for me, it suggests fear that doing so could make the horse go full on roid rage. Likewise, schooling by sitting a long time in the gate suggests to me a fear of him freaking out in the gate, something he's never shown a propensity for doing, but a horse hopped up with testerone might just.
This a horse, who had trained up to the Derby loping around in company in 1:13s, now has the other horses yelling at him. Stallions typically scream at other stallions they find threatening triggered by pheromones released by testosterone.
FWIW, the horse was also keyed up in the Preakness post parade, whereas he had been calm in the KY Derby post-parade.
I do not work at and am not associated with TG. These opinions are strictly my own and should not be interpretted as being those of TG or any poster here.
