Amino Acid Supplements - the important element of protein

Horses in training are traditionally fed a diet that is high in protein, but it is the amino acid content of the protein-rich ingredients that is the important component, as horses have a requirement for amino acids and not intact protein per se.

Dr Catherine Dunnett
 (20 January 2009 - Issue Number: 11)

Amino Acid Supplements - the important element of protein

Horses in training are traditionally fed a diet that is high in protein, but it is the amino acid content of the protein-rich ingredients that is the important component.

Dr Catherine Dunnett (European Trainer - issue 24 - Winter 2008)

Andrew Lakeman - life after being paralyzed

By Bill Heller

Andrew Lakeman was paralyzed from the waist down in a racing accident at Belmont Park. Originally from England, Lakeman came to the United States in the mid-1990s and worked for Michael Dickinson, Hall of Famers Nick Zito and D. Wayne Lukas, Barclay Tagg and Tom Skiffington before finding a home with Hall of Fame trainer Allen Jerkens. Jerkens, who used Lakeman extensively in the mornings and afternoons, said, "Naturally, it's tough. He has better days than others. It's got to be an awful thing to get used to." It is.
"In the beginning, sometimes I thought, 'Why me?'," said the 33-year-old Lakeman. "Now I'm handling it better."

He proved that by attending "Simply the BEST," a dinner benefitting the Backstretch Employee Service Team of New York, Inc. and honoring Jerkens with a special award as Lifetime Outstanding Trainer.

At the dinner, Lakeman was treated like a rock star. "I thought it was really cool," he said. "I haven't been in contact with many people at all. There were so many people who came over and said, 'Hi, how are you doing?' Allen spent a lot of time at my table. He's very emotional. I'll never forget one time I won a stakes for him, he cried. He said, 'Way to go Andrew.' He was crying in the winner's circle. He's amazing. He not only helps people out, he changes lives. He changed my life."



Lakeman thought he had already endured the greatest challenge of his life when he overcame substance abuse problems with the help of BEST. "I went to them for help," he said. "The Racing and Wagering Board was going to take my license away because I had problems the previous two years with drugs and alcohol."



Lakeman earned his stripes working and/or riding four of Jerkens' top horses: Political Force, Miss Shop, Swap Fliparoo and Teammate. Lakeman is especially proud of his work with Political Force.

Though he never rode him in a race, Political Force might never have finished second in the Grade 1 Met Mile, won the Grade 1 Suburban Handicap and finished third in the Grade 1 Jockey Club Gold Cup without Lakeman's intervention. 

"I always had a connection with horses, just a real good connection," he said. "They're like a mirror to your soul. Because they can't speak, but they feel you."
With other stronger exercise riders, Political Force was uncontrollable. "This is when I'd just come back from rehab," Lakeman said. "One of the exercise riders, a big guy, 170 pounds, he dumped him. And two other guys. He'd rear up and they hit him."

Lakeman eventually convinced Jerkens to give him a shot with Political Force. "He said, 'What the hell are you going to do with him? You weigh 110 pounds,'" Lakeman recalled. Jerkens told him to go ahead.

 "What happened was the guy would pull the reins before hitting him," Lakeman said. "So what I did was put some spurs on and a pair of blinkers on him. When he got to the point where he'd begin acting up, I hit him. And he went good. Then I took the blinkers off. Then he really liked me. He used to go to the track and wheel. I got him on the track and gave him peppermints."

 "The Chief said, 'Now we have to work on him in the gate.'

The gate crew didn't want anything to do with him. I said, 'Don't worry about it.' I walked him toward the gate. He sniffed the gate. I gave him a candy. And he walked straight in. He left the gate awesome."

But the owners of Political Force, as well as the owners of Teammate, insisted Jerkens use a more experienced jockey in races.


However, Lakeman rode eventual Grade 1 stakes winner Miss Shop in her first two races, winning her maiden debut on a sloppy track at Delaware Park by 4 ½ lengths before finishing fifth in an allowance race. He also rode the eventual Grade 1 stakes winner Swap Fliparoo 10 times, winning a maiden and allowance race and finishing third in the Grade 2 Nassau County and second in an ungraded stakes.

In the fourth race at Belmont Park, May 25th, 2007, Lakeman's mount, Our Montana Dream, clipped heels and fell, throwing him hard to the turf. He was paralyzed.
From his hospital bed three days later, he watched on TV as Political Force finished second by three-quarters of a length to Corinthian in the Met Mile at 24-1. "He was awesome," Lakeman said. "That was my favorite thing: difficult horses. They want to run.

Allen is very good at that. He trains them as individuals. He really gets into their heads and gets the best out of them."

Lakeman is rebuilding his life with the help of rehabilitation and therapy. "At first it went really slow and I wasn't getting anywhere," he said. "I wasn't improving. But today I'm doing very good. I worked hard in therapy. I can transfer from my chair to the bed. I can shower on my own. I've become more self-dependent."

In January, he told his therapist he wanted to drive a car. "I took the lessons, 12 lessons," he said. "I did the course on a computer and the driving course right at St. Charles Rehabilitation. I got a car with hand control. Now that I'm driving again, I'll go by the track.

Allen said he wanted me to come with him and stay by him. I really want to train horses."

He knows other trainers and owners will help him, because dozens of them have already helped him get through the roughest part of his ordeal. And he takes heart in the continuing career of Dan Hendricks, the top California trainer who didn't let paralysis from the waist down suffered in a 2004 motocross accident end his career. He was back training in less than two months and developed Brother Derek, one of the top three-year-olds of 2006 who won the Santa Anita Derby.
Lakeman said, "There's no reason I can't do it, because it's already been done."

First time on turf - how to prepare a horse

By Bill Heller

Preparing a horse for his first start on turf is trickier than most people realize. Most tracks ban maidens from their grass courses, and many allow only grass stakes-nominated horses who have not made their last start against maidens or claimers to work on the turf course.

On Saturday, June 14th, 14 first-time turfers were entered at Belmont Park; one at Monmouth Park; one at Churchill Downs; nine at Delaware, eight at Philadelphia and three at Hollywood Park. On Colonial Downs' all-turf card, 35 starters were making their grass debuts. Of the 71 first-time turfers across America, only two had a workout on grass.
 

"I don't think it's very important," said California based Hall of Fame trainer Richard Mandella "If they like it, they like it right away. If they don't, they don't."
When asked if he's ever trained any grass stars who hadn't even galloped on turf before racing on it, Mandella said, "The Tin Man. His first start ever was on grass."


Mandella paused a second. "But he had about a year and a half in Kentucky in a big paddock," Mandella laughed. "I said that as a joke, but it's something they grow up doing. It's pretty natural for them.

"

It sure was for The Tin Man, whose sire, Affirmed, had never raced on turf. After overcoming two bowed tendons which required surgery when he was two years old, The Tin Man became one of America's outstanding grass horses, capturing the Clement L. Hirsch Memorial and the American Handicap twice, the San Louis Obispo Handicap, the Arlington Million, the San Marcos, and, at the age of nine, the Grade 1 Shoemaker Mile. He finished his career with 13 victories, seven seconds and two thirds from 30 starts and earnings of more than $3.6 million.



New York trainer Rick Violette, Jr., also trained a Grade 1 grass stakes winner who had never worked on it before winning a race, Man From Wicklow. "He was very disappointing on dirt," Violette said June 7th. "And, actually, he was disappointing on the grass the first few times as well. We finally put blinkers on him and he sprouted wings.

" 
In his first two starts on dirt in 1999, Man From Wicklow, finished fifth in an allowance race and 11th against maidens. Switched to grass, he was seventh, eleventh and eleventh (which could be thought of as a work on grass). When Violette added blinkers, the horse still didn't win, checking in fifth in a maiden race at The Meadowlands. But in his seventh lifetime start, a maiden race at Belmont Park, he finally clicked, winning by three-quarters of a length.



In the winter of 2002-2003, Man From Wicklow won the Grade 2 W.L. McKnight Handicap at Calder and the Grade 1 Gulfstream Park Breeders' Cup Handicap by 4 ¾ lengths, easily the best performance of his life. Not bad for a horse who finished 11th three times before breaking his maiden.

"It can happen," Violette said. "Marquette, who got beat 40 lengths on the dirt, I ran him as a maiden against winners at Gulfstream and he broke his maiden.It can be a dramatic reversal of form."



Both ways. Cigar was an ordinary horse on grass and an extraordinary champion on dirt.Most trainers never get to train such stars, but all trainers have maidens and young horses. Some of them are better on grass; others on dirt. Finding out which they prefer may not happen until later in their career. In the beginning, it's easy to see how inexperienced horses perform on dirt or on a synthetic track simply by working them on it. That's an option not available to maiden grass runners unless they're stabled at training centers with turf courses.
 


Barclay Tagg, who is having a phenomenal spring/summer meet at Belmont Park, says most of his maiden grass winners never worked on turf first. "Absolutely, mostly all of them I had for the last 30 years I trained," he said. "Because I didn't have anywhere to work them on the grass. They don't usually let you have a grass work unless you're down at Palm Meadows Training Center (in South Florida) for the winter. Nowadays, I try to get them all a grass work down there. I don't really think you need a grass work for them, but if you can do it, fine. But at most racetracks you can't do it. They won't let you on it with a maiden.

"

Hall of Fame trainer Shug McGaughey wasn't sure whether his first-time starter Tourism would handle grass or not when she made her debut in the sixth race at Belmont Park, June 6th. The three-year-old filly is by Seeking the Gold out of the Pleasant Colony mare Resort, and she had never even galloped on grass. "This filly here, we couldn't have her on the turf at Belmont; maidens can't go on grass," he said. "So she had never been on it before. But there was a race going seven-eighths the other day, and I had another filly I wanted to run there. So I knew this race was coming up. So I said, `Well, let's go on and give it a try'. Being by Seeking the Gold, she probably should like it."



Just like all of McGaughey's young horses, Tourism had been thoroughly prepared for her debut. She showed workouts in the Daily Racing Form from mid-February through late March at Payson Park in Florida, then seven workouts at Belmont Park. McGaughey rarely works first-time starters quickly, but Tourism's final work was a sharp one, four furlongs breezing in :48 3/5, the 19th fastest of 50 horses working that morning at that distance on Belmont's main track.



Tourism loved the turf. Breaking from the rail and benefiting from an excellent ride by new Hall of Famer Edgar Prado, Tourism got through on the inside and won her debut narrowly.



If Tourism had made her debut at Saratoga, she might have had a grass work first. In New York, maidens are barred from working on grass at Belmont Park, but that's not true at Saratoga Race Course, thanks to the Oklahoma Training Track turf course. "Saratoga is a little different because of the training track," Race Secretary P.J. Campo said. "Maidens can work on it any time. On the main course, maidens are not allowed during the meet. We don't want 100 horses to go over there every week. We work Monday, Wednesday and Friday."



During the six-week Saratoga meet from July 23rd through September 1st, McGaughey will work his first-time turf maidens on grass. "At Saratoga, I will, just to see," he said. "Sometimes, a change in atmosphere helps them."



The day after Tourism scored for McGaughey, George Weaver and Keith O'Brien sent out first-time turfers in a $57,000 New York-bred maiden grass race at a mile and an eighth at Belmont. Weaver's Beyond Challenge had been beaten badly in three dirt starts. O'Brien's Imperial Way had a pair of thirds, a sixth and a fifth in four dirt starts.


Because Beyond Challenge was stabled at the Oklahoma Training Track, Weaver was able to give him a grass work, and he went four furlongs around dogs (pylons) in :50 1/5, 11th best of 16 at that distance on the grass course that morning. Imperial Way had not worked since finishing fifth in his last start.
Neither excelled on grass. Beyond Challenge finished eighth and Imperial Way 10th.



Like Weaver, trainer Tom Bush is more inclined to work first-time turfers on grass at Saratoga. "Every trainer at Saratoga utilizes that option," he said. "Some horses, you like to see them on the turf before you run them."



He wanted that look at Belmont for A Zero Trap, a three-year-old New York-bred colt by Quiet American out of Gold 'n Sugar by Java Gold, who had won his debut by a neck, then finished third and fourth in three dirt starts.
 


Bush gave A Zero Trap a grass work at Belmont before he made his grass debut in a $49,000 non-winners of two allowance race for New York-breds at Belmont Park, June 12th. A Zero Trap breezed four furlongs around dogs in :50 4/5 on a good Belmont turf course, 15th best of 20 that day. Then Bush breezed him on dirt, and A Zero Trap went four furlongs in :49 4/5, 14th fastest of 21.



"I had nominated him to a turf stakes, probably one I won't run in, so I could work him on grass," Bush said the morning of the race. "He hits the ground pretty hard, this horse. He's kind of big and chunky, a heavy, thick kind of horse. My hope is that he can stay sounder on turf if he likes it."
He didn't. The grass work didn't help. A Zero Trap finished 10th.



Regardless, Bush said, "I've actually had a few surprises recently, horses that did well on turf. Sweet Madness, who is by Freud, she fit the profile. She's kind of long and has big feet, too."



Gary Contessa, New York's leading trainer and the country's sixth leading trainer in earnings halfway through 2008, is less enthusiastic about turf works for first-time turfers. "If the turn is open on the day that I was planning to breeze them at Saratoga, I will," he said. "But I don't have to. It's not a prerequisite. The ones that I think are going to run well on the turf generally do anyway. I think horses are either naturals on it or not."



Violette voiced a similar opinion: "Sometimes, it can give you a little bit better educated opinion on whether they're going to adapt to turf or not, but it's not necessary to work them out there. I don't really know that it's an edge. I think, a lot of times, pedigree and the way they look and their running style is more important than works on the grass, because I really do think they either like it or they don't. I really think it goes to, a lot of times, just the female family. If they have some turf there, you might have a good shot they'll like it."



Racing principally in Florida and New York, Violette's horses work mostly on dirt, even those about to make their grass debut. How first-time turfers who have been racing on a synthetic course will fare in their grass debuts is still conjecture. Will they do better than first-time turfers who have raced on dirt? "Well, it seems like more grass horses like the synthetic; I'm not sure about the reverse," Violette said. "You would think it would be true."

There's only one way to find out.

Hong Kong - Far Eastern racing run by an American

The view in one direction frames an expanse of the endless Hong Kong skyline, in another the emerald Happy Valley Racecourse, but this is unmistakably the working domain of an American. Portraits of Man o' War, Spectacular Bid and presentation photos made after races at Belmont Park, Aqueduct and Saratoga decorate the walls, the occupant standing beside Orientate, Sulamani and Funny Cide.

 In the early years of the Breeders' Cup, which remains a young event when considered within racing's historical context, Bill Nader would leave his various duties at Rockingham Park in New Hampshire, where he took his first racetrack job as a press box aide while still a student, for an assignment on the event's notes team, which gathers information concerning the participants for dissemination in the media. The world looks much different from the corner office on the top floor of the Hong Kong Jockey Club headquarters.

The executive director of racing in Hong Kong - the first American ever appointed to a position of such influence in what is a unique racing and gambling enterprise that has for more than a century impacted on the life of almost every citizen of the former British colony (returned to Chinese control in 1999) – is less than a year removed from New York, where at times it appeared that Nader was single-handedly guiding the daily business of a listing ship that has for years been imperiled.

Nader was the face of the New York Racing Association and its most reliable voice at a time when every day, it seemed, brought new crisis. Five years of tumult began with the turn of the century and a scandal spawned among betting clerks that progressed upward through what most consider the most important of American racing organizations. The guilty clerks were imprisoned on various tax fraud and money laundering changes as were two mid-level executives. Key people left the association, retired or resigned voluntarily, some on the day they qualified for a pension. Highly placed executives were forced to resign. Barry Schwartz, the outspoken and sometimes controversial chairman of the board, stepped down in frustration. The state's politicians and media turned the association's troubles and the question of franchise renewal into a public circus. Nader was left, usually alone, in the storm's eye.

The Association faced an array of threatened federal indictments avoided only by a long period of operation under the thumb of a court-appointed monitor and eventually filed the papers necessary for reorganization within the framework of bankruptcy law. Nader, originally hired to head the simulcasting network, watched the New York Racing Association's workforce shrivel and took up the slack left by manpower and expertise that once departed was not replaced. As the morass thickened, Nader rose to the position of senior vice president and chief operating officer calling on experience and skills honed in the heat of political, legal and financial battle for survival learned in New Hampshire.

Thoroughbreds no longer have a home at Rockingham Park, which now conducts only harness racing.

 It was always a bootstrap operation, a fine place for the education of a young person with designs on a career in racing, and Nader steeped himself in a curriculum impossible to duplicate in the traditional halls of academia. He worked in the publicity department, developing relationships with the media; sharpened handicapping skills when charged with assigning morning-line odds; developed relationships with horsemen while working in the racing office, gained an understanding of their concerns and needs; couriered videotape to the local television station for the evening replay programs; negotiated simulcast contracts; learned to call races when the principal announcer was absent. It is also the place in which the direction of his life first took shape and form.

"I lived a bicycle ride away from Rockingham and worked in the press box as a summer job while attending the University of New Hampshire," Nader said. "When I was 21, I became the track oddsmaker. In that role, I further developed my handicapping skills and also my strong interest in the sport.

"I first became interested in racing through one of my best friends, my father, and we would go racing once a week. Racing helped our father-and-son bond and we spent a lot of time together discussing and enjoying the sport, especially in his later years of life and that is something I will always treasure. I had always turned him down when he asked me to go to the racetrack because I was active playing sports and being a horse racing spectator had no appeal to me. It took Secretariat to open my eyes in the 1973 Belmont Stakes. I watched on network television and that was the turning point.

"Rockingham provided a foundation because out of necessity you got an idea of how every department at the racetrack should work.  And we had some good races there – the New Hampshire Sweepstakes and the Spicy Living Handicap, races that New York trainers and others would send horses to, so I was exposed to what was at the time a higher level of racing. Still, the move to New York was an awfully big step.
"When I was first offered the job in New York, I turned it down. I didn't feel as though I could leave Rockingham in the middle of a meeting. But when the meeting was over, the job was still open and I moved to New York at the beginning of the fall meeting at Belmont in 1994. Luck. If they'd found someone else during that time, I may never have had the opportunity in New York. The people at Rockingham didn't believe I was going to a place that big, but if you love racing and the New York Racing Association calls, that was it."

New York, however, besieged by posturing politicians and those who sought to take over the racing franchise upon expiration at the end of 2007 quickly became Kafkaesque, far from the utopian professional environment Nader envisioned.

"The problems and politics surrounding NYRA and its franchise were personally challenging and incredibly frustrating at times," Nader said, "but, in all honesty, I could fight the fight with the best of them. I came from a humble racing background and the privilege of being intimately involved with the high quality of racing in New York was a great equalizer. I could take the punishment as long as I knew there was a Grade 1 on Saturday and that Saratoga was only a few months away. With all of the personnel changes over my 14 years at NYRA, I knew there were many people in that organization that looked to me for leadership and for someone they could identify with. There was no chance of my leaving NYRA or so I thought, until the Hong Kong Jockey Club called. I had long admired the HKJC from a distance and I knew I would not get a second chance at the opportunity of a lifetime."

The move from New York to Hong Kong was for Nader like walking through a looking glass. He left pathos, which continues in his absence, for an organization unlike any in the world. In a city of seven million people among whom gambling is central to the culture, racing is not the sport of kings but the king of sports and membership in the Jockey Club, a requirement for those who aspire to ownership of racehorses, is a symbol of status considered almost priceless.

With the possible exception of the Japan Racing Association, the Hong Kong Jockey Club is easily the world's most prosperous racing enterprise, made more so by a gambling monopoly that includes the lottery and wagering on international soccer matches. Originally established as the Royal Hong Kong Jockey Club after the introduction of racing in the region by the British, who constructed a racecourse in 1845 on the only suitably flat land on the island –f a drained malarial swamp with the whimsical name, Happy Valley – the Jockey Club, after the Chinese government, is the region's most important organization and in real terms perhaps the most important based on its impact upon the lives of Hong Kong's citizens.

Though the British first brought racing to the island, the native Chinese have taken the sport to heart in a way that has no frame of reference outside Asia, participating with a fiscal enthusiasm unprecedented elsewhere. In 2006, Hong Kong bettors wagered $63.86 billion – $8.2 billion in U.S. funds – though the Jockey Club holds just two days of racing, or 16 races, per week, from September through June. This is more than half the $15.6 billion wagered on 58,851 races run in the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico – population 338.5 million – during the same year

The people of Hong Kong, only an hour by ferry from the explosion of opulent casinos in Macau, wagered another $30.2 billion -- $3.9 billion U.S. – on soccer matches and $6.6 billion – more than $848 million U.S. – on the lottery. The Club, conduit for all money wagered legally in Hong Kong, is the region's largest taxpayer and supports the majority of charitable institutions, research organizations, medical facilities and recreational programs. It is impossible to travel far in Hong Kong without seeing the Jockey Club logo on everything from hospitals and schools to parks and animal shelters.

The two Hong Kong racetracks are pristine and in almost perpetual renovation. The management, a multinational team of highly experienced executives imported by the Jockey Club, is progressive, deeply interested in maintaining an atmosphere in which the integrity of racing is beyond question. It meets challenge with action, as it did last year when in response to the migration of high-level bettors to offshore bookmakers offering rebates, the Club responded with its own rebate program, which effectively reversed the trend.

The Club takes virtually every facet of racing into its own hands and employs everyone required for the conduct of racing except trainers, who under the circumstances suffer no burden of payroll or slow-paying owners. The Club maintains testing laboratories and veterinary hospital, pays for feed and medication and though only eight percent of bets are placed on-course, when the gates open at Happy Valley or Sha Tin, the tracks are animated by huge crowds of people with a collective focus – betting, which is in turned shared in the most remote corner of Hong Kong, where the speculators and the tote are joined by wireless device.

In the 16 hours of flight time between New York and Hong Kong, Nader went from holding a finger in a crumbling dike to occupying one of the highest positions of authority in a racing organization that is boundlessly successful, astoundingly affluent and held in a position of almost reverent esteem by the members of the community it serves.

"The thing that impressed me immediately was the attention to detail and the commitment of the people," Nader said. "There is a refusal to settle for second best. Everything is first-class. Then came an appreciation for Asian racing and its structure, which I found fascinating, much more so than I ever expected."

Eight months after arriving in Hong Kong, Nader celebrated his 50th birthday on the day of the Cathay Pacific-sponsored International Races, four Group I events run at the end of a week of lavish parties at the expansive and electric Sha Tin. "Before I moved here, the man I replaced (Winfried Engelbrecht-Bresges, who was promoted to chief executive officer) told me that it would take two years before I really had a handle on job. I don't think it will take two years, but this has been an eye-opening experience. For instance, the betting on the international races will be less than you would expect because the bettors don't know the foreign horses. But we're running two races after the Hong Kong Cup and the last race of the day has the potential to generate more betting handle than the total for the day at Aqueduct and Hollywood Park combined."

The superficies run deep in Hong Kong.

"This is a place of great wealth. The economy is strong, the stock market is strong and many people are able to afford horse ownership," Nader said. The equine population of horses in training is just 1,200 and no owner is permitted interest in more than four. There is currently a 16-month waiting list of those who have applied for membership in the Jockey Club on a level that permits horse ownership. Those eventually admitted to what may be Hong Kong's most exclusive circle will have survived an exhaustive background check and examination of financial resources and paid a $250,000 (HK) initial fee.

The inevitable and enviable denouement is a model for the world that is impossible to duplicate. "The resources here allow you to do things you'd never consider anywhere else," Nader said, "but other things done here are possible to reproduce anywhere. If you can knock down the barriers and wipe the slate clean, these are things that can be done anywhere."

Foremost, Nader said, is attention to the concerns of every segment involved – from owners, trainers and non-owner members to bettors. "We maintain a customer-friendly racing environment and the state-of-the art drug testing is one thing, but the way the racing is governed is a key element. The jockeys and trainers may complain that fines are too stiff, but safety is a key element in the decision making process and the club demands respect for the rules. What separates racing here from virtually everywhere else is the transparency."

At the end of the day, the unfolding international races, with sprinter Sacred Kingdom and miler Good Ba Ba impressive in victory, only strengthened the upwardly mobile position of Hong Kong-trained horses on the global stage upon which the membership of the Jockey Club aspires to excel in the mold of their British mentors.
If Hong Kong will not be duplicated, it can at least be emulated.

"We have great expertise in specific areas that we are willing to share," Nader said. "The Club has brought great talent here from a number of countries.  There is also great expertise here in the construction, drainage and maintenance of turf courses, which is important to all the stakeholders, including the public. European horsemen come here knowing that the ground will always be good to firm, no matter what the weather. There are things that can be learned here and people come here from other parts of the world to observe. We're very interested in doing whatever we can to assist those in the industry from other countries."

There is much to be learned in Hong Kong, but it is first necessary to make the trip.

Breaking In - laying the groundwork with the racehorses of the future

By Frances Karon

While the Thoroughbred racehorse has evolved through methods of breeding, raising, feeding, vaccinating and training, one thing that has remained fairly constant is that they must be broken in with great care and patience if they stand any chance of doing what they were born to do."

We can breed for speed or distance, to race or sell commercially, or to zero in on superior ancestors, but whatever the sire’s covering fee is, it’s like that down-to-earth reminder that our shoes, be they Armani or knockoffs – go on the same way. All horses must be taught to carry a rider on their back and to respond to a bit in their mouth. Someone figured out a long time ago that Thoroughbreds do not react positively to the American cowboy way of “breaking” a horse – literally, breaking its spirit – leading the way for a gentler, more personalized breaking in process. There are subtle differences in the approach but the desired ending is to produce a horse who accepts a rider with the confidence that only good early experiences will give it.

 
In Camden, South Carolina, Mickey Preger Jr. has been breaking young racehorses-to-be for 15 years, though his education began long before. The son of the trainer of 1983 Eclipse Award-winning older mare Ambassador of Luck, Preger grew up on the backstretch of Belmont Park, where his father shared a barn with Northern Dancer’s trainer Horatio Luro for 20 years. Preger later spent years working for Ruffian and Forego’s trainer Frank Whiteley Jr. During Preger’s tenure, Whiteley broke Rhythm, Seeking the Gold and Preach.
 
Preger is based at the Camden Training Center, which used to be the place of choice for many trainers to winter their racehorses. Now, it caters more towards young horses learning the ropes but it has what Preger calls a “racetrack atmosphere in the country. There are enough horses here that they’re acclimated to everything when they leave here – the traffic of the track, horses jogging the wrong way.”
 
Preger circles October 1 on his calendar every year as his target date to begin the breaking in his new stock. The process itself is rudimentary and painstaking. He says, “I would say the way we break them is still very old school.” It is a matter of tackling one idea at a time and giving them three or four days to acclimate to it. Slowly, in this way his horses get used to a bit, lunging, lunging with a surcingle, with a saddle and with stirrups, each as an individual step. At this point they are well into their lessons and Preger will line drive them “until we put a good mouth on them, probably around four or five days. We take our time, and if a horse needs a couple more days we just give them a couple more days of whatever they need.”
 
The horses have already been introduced to a rider jumping on and off both sides, first in the stalls before graduating to the shedrow, jogging figure eights in small paddocks and learning directional changes in larger paddocks. Preger drills the same thing into their heads repetitively, stepping it up a level every few days as they become mentally prepared. In this fashion, the horses reach the stage where they begin jogging over a gallop in the woods before cantering on a polo field to try out lead changes.
 
The babies move on to gallop over a half-mile track, where they will generally remain until just after January 1, after which it is on to the more serious business conducted on the mile training track. When the horses ship out to racetracks around the country, most will be advanced enough to where their new trainers can breeze them three-eighths out of the gate at the end of their first week.
 
The majority of Preger’s clientele sends him homebred horses they intend to race, such as Grade 1 winner Mossflower and multiple graded winner Distorted Humor, but he does occasionally prep one that is earmarked for a late two-year-olds in training sale. His attitude toward the end use of both types is the same. “We don’t really do learning stages any differently, though we might have to speed up the process over the open gallops. You just probably have to kick on a little earlier to make the sales.” The season at the training center ends in mid-May, so the average horse in his care receives seven months of pre-track schooling.
 
An expansive ocean away, near Marlborough, England, ex-jockey Malcolm Bastard performs the same basic service as Preger with some slight distinctions. Bastard deals in a greater number of sales horses than his American counterpart, but also has plenty of horses going directly to trainers. Many of his influx have come out of yearling sales and he begins work as each comes into him and sends them out when they are properly broken, meaning he deals in cycles and can handle a greater volume than Preger’s 20.
 
“They’re pretty easy to break these days, especially if they’re sales prepped, then they’re half done.” Half done perhaps, but far from ready for the racecourse. In the case of a homebred, who will not have been handled to the same extent as a sales horse, Bastard commences at square one. “It goes in the horsewalker and we get it used to that for a few days, and then we put a rug on it.” These stages take a few days each, and once the horse is compliant with the rug Bastard introduces it to breaking tack, consisting of a bit, side reins, a bib martingale and a saddle, in one session. “We are looking after two things. The side rein stops them getting their head too far down and makes them carry it in the right place, and the martingale stops them getting their head up too far.” The ultimate goal, he says, is for the horses “to carry themselves in a nice position.”
 
Fully tacked, the yearlings spend 25 minutes on the horsewalker followed by a short spell of four or five minutes being lunged, with an additional 10 to 15 minutes of line driving in the indoor school adjacent to the lunge area. The duration of this phase “depends on the character of the horse.” This is the key to any good horsebreaker’s program, the point which Bastard is continually stressing, that no step is complete until the horse is fully accepting of what he is being asked to do. “As long as you know what you are doing with them, you gain their confidence while being firm but kind. They’ve got to trust you and you’ve got to trust them, and if you get a good relationship then they come a lot quicker.” Two current three-year-olds Bastard broke in for George Strawbridge as yearlings that attest to Bastard’s ability to establish that trust between man and animal are Group 1 winners Lucarno (by Dynaformer) and Mrs Lindsay (Theatrical), each by sires whose progeny are known to be difficult. Yet Bastard modestly brushes off his skills as “just very straightforward, basic common horse sense. I think everybody finds it straightforward, just hard work.”
 
Their “hard work” sees Bastard and his crew go from line-driving to riding their horses in the pen for 10 or so days, with a second person stationed at the horse’s head for its comfort and the safety of everyone involved. Having already proven themselves agreeable to someone jumping on and off them in the stable, once emotionally stable over a matter of days the horses move out to the indoor arena. As with Preger, regardless of where the horses are supposed to go after they leave Bastard’s stables, “they all get treated the same. With the breeze-up horses we don’t do anything different with them but start to sharpen them up a little bit more.”
 
Bastard retired from race riding in 1990, having ridden primarily for his boss of 14 years, Fred Winter, and began to pinhook his own horses, which eventually spiraled into breaking in other people’s horses. As a young boy, Bastard worked for showjumper Ted Williams, who Bastard credits as “an absolute genius of a horseman” from whom he learned to do things what he calls “the uncomplicated way. A lot of people try to make things complicated but that’s not the way we do it.” The main focus for Bastard is to “try to make things very simple, and the horses get into a routine and they enjoy that routine.”
 
One man who has been innovative in dealing with unbroken or even wild animals is Buck Wheeler. He uses his patented Stableizer to facilitate the breaking process. On a beautiful morning in Kentucky, Wheeler demonstrates on an unbroken yearling at Ramsey Farm. Wheeler joins the colt in the round pen with his gear, consisting in part of a long whip with a plastic bag fastened to the tip and a lasso that elicits a raised brow from the observer, not to mention the nervous colt eyeing him apprehensively. Wheeler secures the Stableizer under the colt’s lip and tightens it above his ears, hitting acupressure points that quickly begin to relax the horse. Wheeler inserts a chifney bit in the mouth because with a chifney, as opposed to a more traditional bit, “it all falls into place, all right in line” where the horse turns with his entire body as one instead of turning with his head with the rest to follow. He begins to lunge the yearling.
 
With every step, the colt is allowed to sniff the new equipment, and Wheeler reassures him with a rub on the forehead and by blowing in his nose that everything is okay. The two become fast friends, the colt recognizing Wheeler as the alpha leader, and whenever the colt is turned loose he trails as Wheeler zigzags around the pen with his back to the animal.
 
Wheeler, a member of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation through his mother, was raised on 8,000 acres of Indian territory, with some 80 horses at his disposal. “I learned from the Indians – they weren’t called trainers then, they were just horsemen.” His father put him on a horse and said, “You’re going to learn to ride like the Indians before I buy you a saddle.” Wheeler laughs and fills in his adult interpretation of his father’s philosophy: “I think he was just too tight to buy the saddle. But one thing I realized later on in life was that he was absolutely correct because it learns you to be part of that animal. You are literally part of the horse. You can feel things that happen before they ever happen. You learn to watch their eyes, you learn to watch their ears, because those are their telegraphs.”
 
Perhaps most spectacular is what Wheeler does to close out the training period. To show how relaxed and desensitized the yearling is, Wheeler stands in the middle of the pen with the horse turned loose against the fence, and he twirls the lasso over his head and ropes the colt around his neck. The colt shies backward at first and Wheeler flicks it around his neck a second, third and fourth time. After the second, the colt stops flinching and simply watches with interest as Wheeler reverses the steps and untangles the rope from some 15 feet away.
 
“Because of the euphoria that’s induced by the endorphins he’s remembering this as a pleasurable experience instead of something that he’s being forced into, or having a bad attitude.”
 
The premise is elementary. The endorphins released by the pressure points on which the Stableizer rests enable Wheeler to handle the horse from all sides, getting him comfortable with having a rope tangled around his back legs or the plastic bag on the whip blowing in his face and over his body. When it is time for the saddle, Wheeler encourages the gray colt to satisfy his curiosity before he puts it on his back and cinches the girth by himself and with little effort. The stirrups dangle well below the horses belly; Wheeler threads his lines through them and drives the horse around in a circle. The yearling is frightened by the strange sensations and noises for the first two or three turns around the pen before he puts his head down and trots calmly and with a straight head as Wheeler steers him from behind with his fingertips.
 
The Stableizer is a shortcut to dealing with horses of all ages and in any capacity but is best described as an aid to promote good experiences for the animals. “You don’t have to go out there and jerk and holler and scream and fuss around. It’s the physiological aspect of what it does” with the endorphins. “If you hurt a horse in their training process – and it doesn’t matter if they’re little or big – they remember that, and sometimes it’s ten times tougher to go back in and try to break that fear.”
 
Trainers of the caliber of Clive Brittain and Carl Nafzger have observed Wheeler in action and are proponents of his Stableizer. Street Sense is Wheeler’s current poster boy, though Nafzger’s Unbridled and Lady Joanne and Wayne Lukas’ classic winners Grindstone and Editor’s Note have modeled the Stableizer as well. This is a successful tool that honors Wheeler’s Native American teachers by inventing a new way to emulate their old approach. His method is not necessarily different than the ways in which other people break horses, but assisted by the Stableizer he is able to accomplish the successful introduction of a rider within an hour of working with an unschooled horse. Or mule, zebra, llama – all of which on whom Wheeler has used the Stableizer.
 
Preger sums up his opinion of the breaker’s role in the racehorse’s career: “If a horse is going to perform well he’s got to be happy and healthy, right? I like to give credit to the people that train horses at the track. We work as a team, put it that way. It all has to work together.”
 
Although there are variants among people who break horses on global and even local levels, the certainty on which all will agree is that the horse’s emotional wellbeing during the learning stages is tantamount to its ability to perform to the best of its capacity.

The future structure of New York racing

By Bill Heller

The New York Racing Association’s 51-year reign on Thoroughbred racing at Aqueduct Racetrack in Queens, Belmont Park in Elmont, Long Island, and Saratoga Race Course is nearing an end.
Maybe.

Though billions of dollars, tens of thousands of jobs and the future of a vibrant racing and breeding industry are at stake, the process of choosing a successor when NYRA’s current franchise expires on Dec. 31, 2007, has been playing out like an unending circus, one which did not end on Nov. 21 when the Ad-Hoc Committee on the Future of Racing in New York recommended Excelsior Racing Associates, not the non-profit NYRA, be granted the franchise to operate NYRA’s three tracks, Aqueduct in Queens, Belmont Park in Elmont, Long Island, and Saratoga Race Course, beginning Jan. 1, 2008.

That recommendation was made by members of a lame-duck Legislature for a lame-duck Governor, and everything changes on Jan. 1, 2007. That’s when current Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, a Democrat who was elected Governor by an overwhelming margin on Nov. 7, assumes office, accompanied by a newly-elected Legislature. Spitzer replaces Republican George Pataki, who had been in office for 12 years.
Ultimately, the future of racing in New York will be decided by Spitzer and the Legislature and it is unclear whether or not they will follow the Ad-Hoc Committee’s recommendation.

That is not their only difficult decision, for we do not know whether NYRA or the state of New York owns the three tracks and the incredibly valuable real estate they occupy, or whether or not the archaic state racing law will be rewritten to allow a for-profit entity to operate the three tracks.

Excelsior, headed by New York Yankees General Partner Steve Swindal, owner George Steinbrenner’s son-in-law, and casino-hotel developer Richard Fields, plans to run racing at the three tracks as a non-profit entity and video lottery terminals at Aqueduct and Belmont, if approved by the new Legislature, on a for-profit basis.
VLTs at Aqueduct were approved in October, 2001, a month following the tragedy of 9-11, but construction has still yet to start more than five years later despite the fact that Aqueduct signed a contract to partner with MGM Grand more than two years ago. The State’s Division of the Lottery, which oversees VLT casino’s at the state’s other racetracks, has yet to give final approval to the contract, propelling NYRA into bankruptcy.

Welcome to New York.

THE HISTORY

The four privately-owned racetracks in New York in the early 1950s, Aqueduct, Belmont Park, Jamaica and Saratoga Race Course, lacked sufficient capital to fund much needed renovations at their facilities. So Ashley T. Cole, the Chairman of the New York State Racing Commission, suggested that the Jockey Club come up with a solution. The Jockey Club appointed a committee to study the issue: Christopher T. Chenery (who would own Secretariat two decades later), Harry F. Guggenheim and John W. Hanes. The trio presented a plan of action in September, 1954: create a not-for-profit racing association to acquire the existing tracks and operate them under a long-term franchise granted by the state of New York.

The New York State Legislature complied, and on June 22nd, 1955, the New York Racing Association, originally called the Greater New York Association, was created under a 25-year franchise grant which guaranteed the association a minimum four percent of pari-mutuel handle at downstate tracks and five percent at Saratoga to be used for capital improvements. This allowed the association to borrow $47 million on a 10-year loan from a consortium of 13 banks headed by the Morgan Guaranty Trust Company in the fall of 1955.

Approximately $24.5 million was used to purchase New York’s four tracks, and the remainder went into rebuilding Belmont Park and making major improvements at Aqueduct and Saratoga.

On April 8th, 1958, the Greater New York Association was renamed NYRA, and on August 1st, 1959, Jamaica closed. The property was sold for $6.5 million on July 15th, 1960.

NYRA’s first problem had surfaced years earlier. After just one year of operation, NYRA needed more money to pay its debt service, so the legislature increased NYRA’s take of pari-mutuel handle by one percent at all its tracks. The takeout rate would be raised and lowered many times over the years. But as the franchise neared its sunset date of 1980, NYRA encountered what would become a familiar, troubling scenario. Banks were reluctant to lend money to NYRA for any period beyond the end of the franchise. So NYRA’s franchise was extended through 1985.

In October, 1983. The franchise was extended through December 31st, 2000, with an important provision: if the franchise had not been extended by September 1st, 1997, the governor was mandated to create a nine-person committee to solicit proposals from any interested parties for a new 10-year franchise beginning January 1st, 2001.

Nine days before that deadline would have kicked in, allowing open bidding on New York racing for the first time, Governor Pataki ignored damning investigations of NYRA by the State Attorney General and Comptroller and extended NYRA’s franchise through its present expiration date, Dec. 31, 2007. To minimize media coverage of such a controversial decision, Pataki’s office issued a press release half an hour before post time for the 1997 Travers Stakes.

This time, nine years later, NYRA, which weathered a new scandal involving money laundering by its tellers that resulted in a deferred prosecution agreement, has not been saved at the bell. At least not yet.

THE POLITICS OF NEW YORK

For the past 12 years, the course of New York State has been dictated by three powerful politicians, two Republicans, Governor Pataki and Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, and one Democrat, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. Year after year, Pataki and the State Legislature fail to get a state budget completed by the mandated deadline of April 1, leaving key issues to be resolved in a swap meet in the late morning hours preceding a summer recess. Of the trio, only Bruno has a real concern for racing. He once was NYRA’s staunchest backer, but that support dissipated in the past year.

Faced with the opportunity of forging a new future for racing in New York through open bidding - the same opportunity they ignored in 1997 - Pataki, Bruno and Silver instead demonstrated how little they truly are concerned with horse racing. The extension of the NYRA franchise in 1997 mandated that open bidding begin in 2005 if NYRA’s franchise had not been extended past 2007, and Pataki, Bruno and Silver were each given three appointments to a nine-member ad-hoc committee charged with publishing a request for proposals for a new franchise beginning in 2008, sorting those bidders out and recommending a winner to the state legislature by September 29th, 2006.

On Nov. 18th, 2005, six of the nine members of the Committee on the Future of Racing met for the first time - Silver hadn’t even bothered to make his three appointments - in Saratoga Springs at a public meeting. Three of the six had no experience in racing. The collective lack of racing knowledge of the six was stunning, and much of the initial meeting was spent deciding whether or not a meeting of six of the nine members constituted the establishment of the committee. If Rob Williams, a lawyer from the State Racing and Wagering Board who was ultimately chosen as the committee’s executive director, hadn’t been in attendance to hand-walk the members through their first meeting, their first session would have been even more embarrassing. The six decided to subscribe to trade publications to increase their knowledge of racing, then went into executive session.
 
Fast-forward to the committee’s first public hearing in Albany last January 24th. Silver still had not appointed his three members, so three of the nine chairs on the podium were empty. Regardless, an entire entourage from Magna Entertainment Corporation, including founder and chairman Frank Stronach, attended to weigh in on the future of New York racing. A similar hearing was held the next day in New York City. Charlie Hayward, NYRA’s President and CEO, testified at both hearings.

All the testimony in the world, however, would not resolve the thorny question of track ownership.

THE ISSUE

Deciding the future of New York racing would be easier if one could determine the past or present. Doesn’t anyone know whether the New York Racing Association or the state of New York owns Aqueduct, Belmont Park and Saratoga Race Course? It’s only been 51 years since NYRA took over the racetracks, yet that principal issue has yet to be resolved, and could ultimately drag racing in New York into an interminable series of lawsuits taking years to resolve.
NYRA, which has trademarked some of its stakes races such as the Travers, contends quite accurately that it actually purchased the three tracks; has been paying property taxes on them for decades and actually holds deeds to at least two of the properties.

The state maintains that it created NYRA and that if NYRA’s franchise expires, the tracks and the land they occupy revert to the state, and that NYRA, in exchange for one of its franchise extensions, agreed to that. Yet if such claims can be documented, why hasn’t the matter been resolved?

Confusing the issue even more is that, even if the state is right, it may be unconstitutional to take a tangible asset, the tracks and the land, from NYRA without compensating NYRA adequately. And if that wasn’t confounding enough, consider that NYRA’s contention that it owns the track and lands has a far greater chance of being supported in a federal court than in a state court. That may explain why the state of New York bailed NYRA out of impending bankruptcy in December, 2005, with a $30 million loan. But the state only released $11 million of the $30 million to NYRA through late-October, 2006, explaining that the delay was because the state’s Division of the Lottery had not given final approval to NYRA’s VLT casino contract with MGM Grand, even though it was signed more than two years earlier.

That prompted NYRA to threaten to declare bankruptcy again. The state then offered the remaining $19 million to NYRA if NYRA guaranteed that it would not file for bankruptcy through the first six months of 2007. Instead, NYRA, on November 3, filed a voluntary petition under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code. “We always viewed filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as a last option, and regrettably, NYRA’s Board of Trustees felt that we were required to take this action to protect New York’s Thoroughbred racing industry,” NYRA’s Hayward said. “The goal of the filing is to maintain the current schedule of racing and dates, purse structure, stakes program and all other racing operations.”

Of course, video lottery terminals at Aqueduct could reverse NYRA’s finances drastically and immediately, but VLTs there have been on hold for more than five years. Since it will take 12 to 14 months to install them once there is final approval by the state Division of the Lottery, there is virtually no chance that they could be up and running before NYRA’s franchise literally expires. That could all change when Spitzer and the new State Legislature take office in January. Or it could stay the same for months.

Now that we’ve got that settled, let’s move on.

THE BIDDERS

Early in the bidding process, NYRA’s management made it clear that it, too, would bid on the new franchise. In doing so, it would be the only not-for-profit entity doing so. One can only conjecture how strong that bid would have been if NYRA had enlisted the support of the 5,000-member New York Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association.
Instead, the NYTHA threw its unconditional support to the Empire Racing Association, a group baring a more-than-passing resemblance to a not-for-profit think-tank called Friends of New York Racing (nobody was thinking ahead here, the acronym is FONY or FONYR) headed by Tim Smith, the former head of the National Thoroughbred Racing Association who had been chosen to become the new president of NYRA only to withdraw at the last minute to create Friends, whose members included many entities who would bid on the NYRA franchise including bitter enemies Magna and Churchill Downs, Inc.

At a private meeting with NYTHA’s leadership in December, 2005, Smith, who said he had no ties to the Empire Racing Association, spoke on behalf of the group, which soon afterwards announced it had the NYTHA’s support for its bid on the new franchise. NYRA understandably felt undercut, and in August, 2006, Smith finally admitted that he, indeed, had a stake in Empire. But not everyone in the NYTHA is comfortable with the decision to back Empire. In a mid-October, 2006, story in the Daily Racing Form, many prominent New York trainers went on record saying that the NYTHA membership was not polled before the decision was made to support Empire and that the NYTHA should not be backing any bidder at this time.

Regardless, citing the backing of New York’s horsemen, Empire argued that New York racing should be operated by New York people, a position which quickly lost credibility when Empire added not only Magna and Churchill Downs, but also Delaware North, which operates Finger Lakes, the only non-NYRA Thoroughbred track in New York, and two harness tracks in the state, and Woodbine Entertainment from Canada in an all-out assault to land the bid.

Two other groups emerged as final four bidders for the franchise: Excelsior Racing Associates, whose backers include retired Hall of Fame jockey Jerry Bailey, and Capital Play, an Australian bookmaking operation given little chance to succeed and indeed was ruled out before the final decision was made. The Committee on the Future of Racing was mandated to announce the winner of the bidding process by September 29th, but postponed that announcement to Nov. 21, when it announced that Excelsior was a narrow winner over Empire and NYRA a distant third. The Committee cited Excelsior’s offer to pay off NYRA’s $50 million pension fund debts as a major factor in its selection.

Does the Committee’s decision matter? It is hard to imagine a new governor from a new party and a new legislature not wanting to make its own determination. And the new governor and new legislature do not take office until January.

There is another important issue, one which cannot be overstated. The archaic state racing law in place allows only for a non-profit entity to operate the tracks. Unless that law is amended, nobody but NYRA can have the franchise. Excelsior’s desire to separate the tracks as a non-profit business and the VLTs as for-profit might not be constitutional the way the existing racing law reads. Throw in yet another variable.

Since we still do not know whether the state of New York or the New York Racing Association owns the track and the land they occupy, perhaps NYRA can use the ownership issue for leverage to cut a franchise extension with a new governor and new legislature. If not, the issue will be resolved in court. 
That may take years.
If a new franchise holder is not in place when NYRA’s current franchise expires December 31st, 2007, then the separate NYRA Oversight Committee will be asked to conduct racing the following day. That committee’s members - all of them without any experience in racing - is headed by a chairwoman who, when asked last summer what will happen when NYRA’s franchise expires, thought the franchise ended December 31st, 2006. She was only one year off.

Racing has continued at Aqueduct despite NYRA’s bankruptcy, though one of the track’s main parking lots has been shuttered by the Port Authority, which had purchased the land from NYRA earlier, suggesting that NYRA does indeed own the track and its property. On Wednesday, November 8th, a crowd of 1,239 braved a raw, wet afternoon to watch nine races at Aqueduct.

Say a prayer for racing in New York.