How will new HISA regulations affect Europeans sending horses to the US this autumn?

Article by Annie Lambert

Breeders’ Cup contestants travelling to Kentucky this fall will have more to worry about than flight delays and shipping reservations. Owners, trainers and jockeys will need to bone up on new racing regulations now enforced across America. It appears they are well into that task.

The new rules and regulations became United States federal law in December 2020. The Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority (HISA) is responsible for drafting and enforcing safety and integrity rules in thoroughbred racing across the U.S. Overseen by the government’s Federal Trade Commission (FTC), HISA is implementing a national, uniform set of rules applicable to all thoroughbred racing participants and racetrack facilities.

HISA comprises the Racetrack Safety Program, which went into effect 1 July 2022, as well as the Anti-Doping and Medication Control (ADMC) program, which will be implemented in January 2023. The ADMC will impact next year’s Breeders’ Cup.

According to Lisa Lazarus, chief executive officer of HISA, the Racetrack Safety Program includes operational safety rules and national racetrack accreditation standards, seeking to enhance equine welfare and minimise horse and jockey injuries. This program expands veterinary oversight and imposes track surface maintenance and testing requirements. It also enhances jockey (and exercise rider) safety, regulates riding crop use and implements voided claim rules, in addition to other measures.

The ADMC program will create a centralised testing and results management process while applying uniform penalties for integrity violations across the country. The rules and enforcement protocols will be administered by a new independent agency, the Horseracing Integrity and Welfare Unit (HIWU), which was established by Drug Free Sport International (DFS).

HIWU will oversee testing, educate stakeholders on the new system, accredit laboratories, investigate potential integrity violations and prosecute those breaking rules and protocols.

HISA completed and pending rules and regulations can be found at https://www.hisaus.org/.

Shifting protocols

Not everyone required to opt into the Horseracing Integrity & Safety Act is pleased to oblige. The confusing regulations have left many with less than a clear understanding of what the new rules actually mean. Those details have constantly been modified and most likely will continue to fluctuate as flaws in the statute are arbitrated. 

The legislation timeline—a very rapid implementation—did not leave an abundance of time for the busy and independent members of the racing community to thoroughly digest the new rules and oversights: In a hurry, they are being asked/required to become obligated by registering themselves and their horses. Horsemen felt left in the dust.

HISA is now, however, in the process of adding a means for horsemen to have a bigger voice in forming regulations and protocols—a complaint horsemen have had since the onset is being excluded from the process. Lazarus announced her executive team would be selecting 10–12 horsemen to participate on the Horsemen’s Advisory Group.

Barry Irwin, founder and chief executive officer of Team Valor International, has been promoting additional integrity in the racing industry for two decades or longer. As a turf writer, breeder, owner and bloodstock agent for over 50 years, Irwin looks forward to implementation of the ADMC. He might have hoped for a smoother execution of HISA, but he is glad things are progressing.

“The safety element is so big and all encompassing, some people may think overreaching, that it stalled the implementation of the integrity piece,” Irwin opined. “There is a lot of good in it; there is a lot of confusion in it. Part of the confusion stems from the perceived lack of input and influence of the people to whom these rules apply.

“A lot of trainers are [unhappy] because there are a bunch of [changed] procedures that they have been using for years, such as blistering horses, pin-firing horses—things like that. There are growing pains, so they have invited horsemen to join an advisory committee for input now and in the future, which I found to be a good thing. It’s just a little late.”  

People responsible for registering horses, usually the trainer, are required to keep precise records for each animal. Most horsemen have a vivid aversion to bookkeeping; they’d much rather concentrate on training horses and keeping owners happy and informed.

Most countries require medical and procedural records be kept on their equine competitors. HISA also requires trainers and veterinarians to maintain detailed, daily health and treatment records for equines in their care. This also applies to international trainers temporarily in town for major races. Those records must be made available to regulatory veterinarians, stewards and HISA upon request. Imagine the daily hours to keep up with a barn full of trainees. There is a solution—a software program—to ease the struggle.

Solution for keeping records

Equine MediRecord became operational in 2018. It was the brainstorm of Pierce Dargan in County Kildare, Ireland. Dargan, a fifth generation horseman, is the company’s CEO. Dargan’s system was created for his family’s training operation in Ireland, to help keep current with racing regulations they faced at the time. 

Trainers can sign up for Dargan’s company platform, which allows them to keep the tedious records required by HISA. Those with multiple stables and facilities can add assistant trainers and veterinarians to assist with inputting information.

“What our system then does is notify the trainer when a record has been put in by someone else for them to sign off, ensuring they know at all times what is being given to their horses,” Dargan explained. “Any horse with an open treatment on our system will [be marked] to remind the trainer to check this horse before entering into any races, as there is still a treatment in the horse’s profile; this ensures the withdrawal period is completed before they race.”

Presently, the cost is $1.50 per horse, per month for the initial year, increasing to $3.00 per horse/month the second year. “We wanted to make sure this was a tool that all trainers, big and small, could afford,” Dargan said. “One of the benefits of having clients globally is we can spread the costs, making it cheaper for all.”

 “We have done the Breeders’ Cup World Championships for the last two years, as well as the Pegasus World Cup, Saudi Cup and Preakness in 2022,” Dargan pointed out.                    

Coming to America

International Breeders’ Cup entries and connections appear prepared to take on HISA, although there could be a few speed bumps on the road to America.

Not registering for HISA—no matter what continent you hail from—means a person or horse may not participate in U.S. racing. Once signed up, however, being misinformed or not following the rules can land people and equines severe punishments, large monetary fines and/or disqualification from industry participation.

Early in the process, HISA’s website was not particularly user friendly, but those issues have been worked out for the most part. International connections preparing to run in major U.S. races initially registered with HISA prior to entering or declaring to run. However, to register for HISA, one needs to be licensed in the state where they will be running. Some states, like New York, require digital fingerprinting of the licensee by track personnel, causing problems for horsemen in far away corners of the world.
“HISA has made it impossible to do things on race day,” explained Adrian Beaumont, director of Racecourse Services for the International Racing Bureau in Newmarket, England. “Therefore, we had to be proactive and get connections licensed beforehand. This often means having to get connections fingerprinted in advance of the meeting. This was especially true of connections, like owners, who would not be going to the races but still needed a HISA registration. New York Racing Association made their cut-off time for HISA as 10 a.m., scratch time, on the day of the race.”

According to Beaumont, HISA’s Lisa Lazarus organised a Zoom call, for Breeders’ Cup principles, including Japan, on 16 September. “I will be interested to know the timeframe they will require all HISA registrations to be completed by, especially as declarations to run are due on Monday, October 31,” added Beaumont.

While the Lazarus Zoom call may flatten some organisational speed bumps, the initial dismay for HISA created a flurry of ongoing legal actions by several state racing commissions, jockey organisations, different Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective associations and other groups. North American Trainer magazine contributor and equine attorney Peter J. Sacopulos expressed the issue in the magazine’s Issue #65 - Summer 2022, on page 48. In the article, Sacopulos questions how HISA affects international trainers and owners.

“In registering, the foreign national trainer is responsible for and obligated to fully and completely understand and comply with all HISA requirements. Once properly registered and deemed a ‘covered person,’ the foreign national trainer has certain ongoing obligations. For example, Thoroughbred trainers are required to complete four (4) hours of training annually pursuant to Section 2182(b)(5) of the rules governing the Racetrack Safety Program. Additionally, there are requirements for filing records relative to the medical care and treatment of horses. Also, the licensing and ongoing requirements for covered persons apply to owners of Thoroughbred horses. Therefore, it is recommended that the Thoroughbred trainer who is going through the registration process informs his or her owner of those requirements and sees that the owner(s) are properly registered as covered persons.”

It gets complicated.

Riders, whips, rules & penalties 

Beaumont was somewhat surprised by the requirement for jockeys to have an annual baseline concussion test as part of the HISA registration. Riders in England and Ireland have concussion baselines done every two years. French jockeys are not required to have annual baseline concussion tests.

The chief medical officers at the main European Jockey Clubs and the Jockeys’ Associations are now aware of this test requirement. Beaumont recommended their website as informative and helpful. 

https://jockeyclub.com/pdfs/HISA/HISA_Jockey.pdf

“It is the jockeys [who] require the extra briefing about all the rules,” Beaumont said, “but we will do that with them all before race day. “At the last two Breeders’ Cups, the stewards have also briefed all the jockeys about their rules on the mornings of the races. This will obviously now include any extra regulations brought in by HISA.”

Jockeys with Breeders’ Cup mounts will need to study HISA restrictions for use of the whip, which in some cases are similar to, yet vary from, European rules.

Until the limitations on use of the whip become muscle memory, riders are finding themselves punished for extra strikes or improper handling of the whip. Numerous penalties have been dished out to even the best of the American riding colony thus far. One costly example occurred last month.

Jockey Luis Rodriguez-Castro was fined $500 and suspended three days for his ride on Drafted (Field Commission) while finishing fifth in the Forego (Gr. 1) at Saratoga in New York. The rider’s violation was striking Drafted with the whip ten times during the race. HISA rules allow only six strikes during a race; Rodriguez-Castro’s four strike overage cost the horse’s connections $26,000 in purse money.

But Germany and other European nations are also inflicting stringent rules on riders who are overly aggressive with crop use. 

German-bred Torquator Tasso, winner of last year’s Qatar Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe (Gp. 1), finished a near second to Mendocino in Baden-Baden, Germany. Jockey Frankie Dettori felt the sting of striking his mount one time too many with a 14-day suspension.

Strict German whip rules permit for the crop to be used only five times during a race, with the use of it down the shoulder with hands on the reins still considered as one strike.

Team Valor International races horses in Germany, and Barry Irwin voiced respect for their programs in general and regard for their accomplishments with smaller thoroughbred crops of 750 to 800 foals; Torquator Tasso is an example.

“[Germany] has a lot of rules, and they are different from England, Ireland and France,” Irwin said. “You can’t use a tongue tie, for example. I don’t know any other jurisdiction that does that. They are very good at testing, and they have a lot of rules about bleeders.”

Handling and properly holding the whip have become strict and exacting in many racing nations. A BHA steering group has proposed 20 changes to their current whip rules in four areas—how the whip is used, changes to regulation, changes to enforcement, plus other recommendations. (See sidebar)

“Most of our jurisdictions are run as tightly, if not more tightly, than your new HISA rules over in the states,” Beaumont pointed out. In some countries, such as Denmark, Norway and Sweden, whips are banned. Most other countries have strict rules on the use of the whip in terms of how many times a horse can be hit and where they can be hit.”

“The new rules, which are likely to come into force with BHA, include using [the whip] in the backhand position only,” he added. “There are examples every week of jockeys getting fined and banned for use of the whip, and generally longer suspensions than in the states.”

Nation-to-nation compatibility?

HISA regulations overall are not so dissimilar from other international edicts. There are so many variables, geographically for one, that synchronising worldwide regulations may never come to fruition. But, it’s a thought for the future.

When the ADMC portion of HISA kicks into gear the first of next year, there will likely be even more details to be digested by horsemen and other stakeholders. After all, that was the initial consideration when seeking reforms.

Irwin has “great hope” that those marring the integrity of thoroughbred racing will be prosecuted and severely penalised, and that the punishments will be severe enough to stop the cheating.

“As for the Anti-Doping and Medication Control regulations for 2023, I await their details,” said Beaumont. “Of course, we are already subject to strict restrictions over here, so this should not be an issue. Every horse shipping to run at Breeders’ Cup, for example, will already have done an out-of-competition test sanctioned by the state governing body and carried out by the likes of BHA on their behalf.

“They have a tough task,” Irwin said of HISA. “There are so many elements, groups to try to appeal to—it is a tough job.”

HOW THE WHIP SHOULD BE USED

1. Use of the whip for safety purposes should continue to be a fundamental principle of regulation.

2. The Rule requiring the whip to be carried (though not necessarily used) should be retained.

3. Use of the ProCush whip should continue to be permitted for encouragement, with strong and appropriate regulation for its use.

4. The whip rules will be amended to restrict use for encouragement to the backhand position only.

5. Harmonisation of whip rules and penalties is a positive aspiration. The BHA should continue to play a leading role in discussions about harmonisation with its international counterparts, particularly Ireland and France.

CHANGES TO REGULATION

1. The regulatory approach to the whip should be reframed to drive continuous improvement, both in standards of whip use and in the consistency of stewarding.

2. Official guidance notes relating to some aspects of the whip rules should be refined and improved, so they are less ambiguous and open to interpretation, and to ensure greater consistency in the enforcement of the rules.

3. A review panel will be established, which will assess all potential whip offences and apply sanctions or remedial actions where appropriate. The panel will deal with referrals from the Stewards, as well as having the power to initiate its own review.

CHANGES TO ENFORCEMENT

1. The threshold for the application of some whip penalties will be lowered, to increase the deterrent effect and ensure earlier intervention.

2. Penalties will be increased for some specific offences where the current penalty is considered inadequate.

3. Financial penalties applied to amateur riders for whip offences will be increased.

4. The penalty structure for use of the whip above the permitted level, which are the most frequently committed offences, will be revised to increase the deterrent effect.

5. Penalty structure for use of the whip above the permitted level in major races to be revised as a doubling of the suspensions for the same offence in standard races.

6. Repeat whip offences should be addressed at an earlier stage, and the penalties for repeat offences increased to deter further repetition.

7. Disqualification of the horse will be introduced into the penalty framework for particularly serious use of the whip above the permitted level, where there has been a clear and flagrant disregard for the rules.

OTHER RECOMMENDATIONS

1. The BHA, on behalf of the racing industry, should commission and support further objective research into the effects of the whip, using any relevant scientific advances to inform policy.

2. The BHA should regularly consider the design and specifications of the approved whip, with a view to incorporating any technological innovations or advances that could further improve equine welfare and safety.

3. Reasonable efforts should be made by British racing to explain the design, use and regulation of the whip to key audiences.

4. While changing the name of the whip is not a direct, formal proposal, racing participants and media should be encouraged and supported to speak about the whip using appropriate and responsible language.

5. The BHA and racecourses should agree a standard rider contract for charity and legends races, to ensure riders in such races are clear on their obligations in relation to use of the whip.

Global Superbet - Can it take horseracing to a bigger stage?

Twenty-five years ago John R. Gaines in Kentucky came up with an idea, the Breeders’ Cup series. Gaines felt that Thoroughbred racing needed a high profile day, which would make it possible for the sport to compete with NFL, NHL and NBA in the media picture. Everyone involved in racing agreed, just as much as they agreed that Thoroughbred breeding and racing needed new innovations, offering opportunities for more international competition with chances of winning bigger purses.

Has it worked? Partly, and the Breeders’ Cup has most certainly been more a star actor than just another face to the stage. This year, the International Federation of Horseracing has been working on another new idea, of a totally different nature. Again, the reason for exploring new products for the sport is that we are badly in need of legs to stand on in the increasingly competitive betting market. While turnover on horseracing, according to figures released by the bookmaking industry, has levelled out, it has increased markedly in other sports. In Europe, football is the sport attracting the biggest betting figures.

One big difference between the two sports, as far as betting is concerned, is how international football has become. The Champions League, the UEFA Cup, World Cup Finals, European Cup Finals and their qualifying rounds, and the Copa America, combine for a huge, huge betting market – just in Europe. Add in markets like Hong Kong and Australia and the total figures are truly staggering. With football fans from all over the world logging on to bet on and tuning in to watch these big international matches on a weekly basis, it is almost unbelievable that no betting firm has come up with a weekly “Football Superbet.” For instance, a multi-leg wager where you need to predict home win, draw or away win in, say, ten or twelve high profile games. With a global, massive pool, it would become a lottery for the thinking fan.

Strange as it may seem, quite a few in this world still prefer to use their brain, their own knowledge, when betting. They do not want to bet on numbers games where the odds are stacked heavily against them. Without products to stimulate them, these brains will soon no longer be potential players, not when it comes to horseracing betting, that’s for sure. They will either turn their backs on betting altogether or they will look for other challenges. There is no longer a shortage of alternatives. Poker and bridge, to name but two card games, are tailor made for internet wagering involving thinking players. And these products are considerably cheaper to produce, and run, than horseracing. There is no comparison.

Let’s get back to the idea of a superbet. While other sports do not seem to have grasped such an idea, horseracing is, for a change, a couple of lengths ahead. This year, the International Federation of Horseracing began developing and testing a new bet, called the “Global Trifecta.” This wager is very much in its infancy, and it has been a complicated baby to conceive, but it is an excellent idea that ought to be given all the backing it can get. It has already been tested with international pools on a small number of flat races this season, but with a “soft launch approach,” according to Totesport’s (Pari-Mutuel operator in the UK) PR manager Damian Walker. If it can be refined, and marketed, in the right way, it has every chance of becoming a big success. Not just as a betting product, but also as a tool to promote the sport of horseracing worldwide. “Mauritz Burggink, at the IFH in Paris, is the man behind the idea of a superbet,” Damian Walker explains, “it is all quite simple. With bigger liquidity in the pool, there will be bigger dividends, and a bet like this can compete with all the lotteries. A lot of work has been done already, and the ultimate aim is to have a Global Superbet every week. We have tested it, but I must stress that the betting on a few races in 2007 has been nothing more than ‘dipping a toe in the water’ as there are various complications to overcome. Not least the fact that different countries have different IT-systems, and local laws also affect what we can and cannot do.”

Walker explains how punters in big markets like Australia, Hong Hong, USA, South Africa, Singapore and Europe were this year given the opportunity of betting into a global trifecta pool on some Group One events. “The product cannot be properly tested without real bets, though testing such a product must begin on a relatively small scale,” he says, “and that is why we have given this a quiet launch. I am convinced that this will be a big success, and it can change the world of betting on horseracing dramatically.

The progress of this project will be high on the agenda when representatives meet in Tucson, Arizona this December.” The global trifecta - where one has to select the first three home in the exact order - was opened for betting on the Prix de Diane at Chantilly in June. This is not a high profile race internationally, my guess is that a large proportion of racing fans in Australia, Hong Kong and USA have never heard of the race. Walker agrees, but a guinea pig is a guinea pig, and he has some interesting figures from this race. “The turnover was 60,000 euros,” he tells us, “and the dividend was 1,767-1. If the bet had been settled on the UK pool alone, the dividend would have been just 929-1. This shows what a difference a bigger pool can make.” That may be, but the pool was nowhere near what it will, hopefully, be one day, and it was too small to provide the operators any sort of hard conclusions. To the customers, however - the punters - a 60,000-euro pool is big enough to enable them to assess the value of the product.

Did this trifecta pay over the odds, under the odds, or just about normal? Well, UK punters probably would not have a clue, as they are absolute beginners when it comes to trifecta betting, most of them not even that. Most gamblers in the USA, on the other hand, would have been able to take a quick glance at the result, the odds for the first three home, the number of runners, and say whether a 1,768-1 return was good or bad value. The Diane had 14 runners and was won by West Wind, who returned 9-2. She beat Mrs Lindsay (14-1), with Diyakalanie (40-1) third. Almost as a rule of thumb, a North American exacta, on a race like this, will return at least the product of multiplying the tote win odds on the two horses involved. Plus some if the shortest priced horse is second, minus some if the shortest priced horse in the winner. In this case that would be 5.50 (9-2) multiplied by 15 (14-1), which is 82.50.

So, with a 40-1 shot finishing third, was 1,767-1 good value? Finding a race to compare this to in the USA is not at all difficult. The Breeders’ Cup Mile has a habit of returning trifectas that include both a winner at a fair price and a real longshot, and also excludes the favourite. And it is a race with a pool made up of punters from all kinds of corners of the world. The 2003 edition of the BC Mile produced an almost identical trifecta to the one seen in this year’s Diane. Six Perfections (5-1) beat Touch of The Blues (12-1) and Century City (39-1). The race had 13 runners. The trifecta returned 2,627-1. Which is a whopping 48% higher than this year’s global trifecta on the Diane. Although interesting enough, this is not at all a fair comparison, as the trifectas on the Breeders’ Cup races nearly always pay well over the odds, simply because the majority of the pool is made up of punters with little or no knowledge of racing. The pool on the Diane was almost certainly made up of punters who knew racing well, and also knew enough about the sport to know that the bet existed. 1,767-1 was therefore a very good return, indicating that it could easily have paid 2,600-1 with a bigger pool. For the record; the trifecta pool on the 2003 BC Mile was $2.3 million. A whole different ballgame, and also where one is aiming to take the global superbet.

NOT NECESSARILY A TRIFECTA

“The global superbet does not necessarily have to be a trifecta,” Walker continues. “There is a good chance that it will be a carbon copy of the Triple Trio, a highly successful bet in Hong Kong.” The Triple Trio is a multi leg bet where one has to select the first three finishers, in any order, in three consecutive races. At last year’s Hong Kong International day, when the bet was made up of two handicaps and the Hong Kong Sprint, the dividend was 301,707-1 No space here to take an analytical look at the combined odds of all the nine horses involved, but it makes sense to mention that the three winners paid 14-1, 5-1 and 3-1. A win treble at these odds would return 359-1.

It may be a pure coincidence but it is interesting to note that the Triple Trio returned 840 times the win treble, which is not at all 840 times easier to predict. We can understand why a bet like this is a real alternative to playing the lotteries. On the other hand, offering a global triple trio may have its disadvantages, as one is then asking punters to analyse three races, possibly staged in three different countries. Nobody, nowhere, will be confidently familiar with the form of all the horses. Thus, perhaps a trifecta on one race is a better way to go. “Another issue we need to address is the cases when the bet is not won, and creates a rollover, or jackpot if you will,” Walker comments. “Punters in one country may not be too happy about their money moving on to a different jurisdiction, where they will be at a disadvantage when getting involved.”

When betting on horseracing, local knowledge does count for a lot, but these are changing times, and he or she who can find the right angles on and the right understanding of international racing will stand the best chance of collecting on a global superbet. Nevertheless, without the local customers - the two-pound, two-euro or two-dollar punters joining in - the pool will never be massive enough to compete with the lotteries. Perhaps there is a simple solution to this problem. The weekly races will probably have to be scheduled in advance, but “reserve races” could be assigned the following week in the country where the race or races take place, meaning that, when there is a rollover, the global bet stays in one place until it is won. Of course, this could take weeks, especially if the bet is a triple trio, though perhaps not if it is a one-race trifecta.

Has an American style superfecta been discussed at all? “Yes, it has,” Walker replies. “The global trifectas we have had this year have mainly been like lab testing, and various models will be discussed and analysed before we land on one model. We are testing technical solutions just as much as we are testing the nature of the bet.”

COMPETITORS WILL EMERGE

I love the idea of a global superbet, but wonder, will it really happen? Will it be a success? This is early days, but, please, make sure that those two words are not too easily swallowed too often within horseracing, in particular when it comes to creating and promoting new products. We have heard them so many times before. Sometimes those ‘early days’ become ‘all time.’ Horseracing authorities and regulators, in Europe in particular, so often come across as so incredibly conservative and as such a stubborn bunch, that the one word that springs to mind is ‘immature.’

Racing still seems to be run from offices that are, if not totally then at least seriously partly, lagging behind the rest of the world. I would be delighted to be convinced that I am wrong about this, as I also fear that this state of affairs will be one of the biggest stumbling blocks for a new global superbet. Things are simply moving way, way too slowly. Take the lack of European racing rules, a topic that came to the fore after this year’s Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe. Of course, this has been discussed before, but nothing seems to happen. Why not make a couple of quick moves, why not just do it? Make those changes. Toss a couple of coins if need be to settle a couple of disagreements between the English and the French, and get on with it.

Bookmakers taking more and more and more bets on football, and fewer and fewer on racing, do not care about the lack of a sensible set of international racing rules. They are busy making money, and giving the gambling market new, lucrative products, which is precisely why the development of a new global bet must be speeded up. Why? I’ll tell you why. Because as soon as this concept becomes more high profile, through proper marketing and media coverage, bookmakers will grab the idea, adapt it to some other sport, maybe even other sports, and create a new product within a matter of weeks. All of a sudden, racing will be behind, again.

The International Federation of Horseracing may be a couple of lengths ahead with their development of a global pool bet at the moment. A couple of lengths, however, is not exactly a comfortable and commanding lead on a playing ground which is changing so fast, and is so volatile, as the betting market. Not when you are involved in the race for the betting dollar, euro, or pound. Unless you are by far the biggest, financially strongest player, it can actually be a disadvantage to lead the way. It is only an advantage if you are smarter, considerably smarter. Let’s hope we are.

Meet the Cauthens - a horseracing dynasty

By Frances Karon

At the end of a shady road in Walton, Kentucky, in the land that time is just beginning to remember, sits the farmhouse that saw the scraped knees of Tex and Myra Cauthen’s three children: Steve, Doug and Kerry. As his nickname suggests, Tex is a transplant from Texas, while Myra was raised on a horse farm in Kentucky.

He was a very good blacksmith, and she was a successful racehorse trainer. On paper, the boys’ parents are as unflashy as Storm Cat is flashy, but their simplicity stops short of their minds. Those gears are always turning. Any pedigree expert will tell you that theirs is an A++ nick.

It has been 30 years since Steve garnered three Eclipse Awards in the U.S. as the first $6-million dollar man when he was still a boy and nearly that long since he rode Affirmed to win the 1978 Triple Crown. In the interim, Steve won classic after classic in Europe and was champion jockey in England on three occasions. These days, Steve owns Dreamfields Farm, a breeding and training facility in Northern Kentucky, living in removed harmony but frequently appearing to lend his support to a good cause. Doug, three years younger than Steve, is President and CEO of WinStar Farm. Kerry is the managing partner of Four Star Sales and Doug’s junior by six years. Doug and Kerry, both attorneys, also have high-profile roles in organizations aimed at improving and uniting the Thoroughbred industry.

The Cauthens are remarkably approachable, and you never would guess there was anything out of the ordinary about them from their demeanor. Walk around England with Steve, however, and you can get an idea of what it must have been like for this private family thrust into the eddy of rock star fame. Shameless bragging is not a Cauthen trait and they are reluctant to discuss their own accomplishments, but talking about each other’s successes is okay.

What are your first memories of each other?
Doug: When Kerry was first born, Dad got Steve and I cigars and said, “Smoke it.” It took three days to smoke and I’ve never had any interest in a cigarette since. That’s my first Kerry memory! I was six.
Steve: My first memory of Kerry was when Mom told us that she was pregnant. Remember when Mom said, “I’m having a baby?” And we wheeled her around in the wagon. That lasted a day.
Myra: They were going to take really good care of me, yeah. For one day! Then they forgot all about it.
Tex: The day before she had Kerry she was out in the barn up on the ladder putting up boards on the wall. We had an old boy working here and he just couldn’t understand how anybody could do it.
Myra: We finished the last stall.
Tex:  And then he was born.
Myra: It was like I couldn’t have him until I was done.
Doug: One of my great memories of Steve is…
Steve: You can’t tell the giraffe story!
Doug: This was one of many educational experiences that I got.
Steve: That’s why he went to law school!
Doug: I had gone to the zoo when I was in like kindergarten and I was all about giraffes and rhinos. So something got broken in the house and Dad’s method was, “Hey, who did this?” Steve broke it – of course!
Steve: Dad said, “I’m coming back in a few minutes. You guys decide, I want you to tell me what happened when I get back here.”
Doug: Nobody fessed up the first time and he gave us five or ten minutes to decide.
Steve: He left us down there so I said to Doug, I said, “Look, there’s no point in both of us getting whipped. Why don’t you take this one and it’ll be my turn next time?”
Doug: I didn’t want to do it, so he said, “Well I’ll give you a giraffe.” He figured that was my soft spot. I said, “Are you sure you have a giraffe?” and he said, “Yeah, yeah I’ll get a giraffe.” I said, “Okay, I’ll do it.”
Steve: He took the fall.
Doug: I took the fall and I went out to look for my giraffe. I was like, “Where is it, which barn is it in?” and he says, “Oh wait, I have to go get it.” He comes back with a little stir stick…a plastic cocktail stir stick.
Steve: It’s been a great thing for us all these years. Memories…
What’s the most important thing that your parents have taught you, that’s stuck in your mind all these years?
Steve: For me, it was just to find something that you like to do and to work hard at it. They taught us not to be afraid of work.
Kerry: That’s a good one.
Doug: That’s pretty good.
Kerry: Can we all adopt that one? They gave us the best examples of how to live a good, honest life.
Steve: And to treat people like you want to be treated.
Kerry: No matter who they were, they always treated everybody equally.
Steve: To this day, when you run into people everybody knows my mom and dad. And they have nothing but good stuff to say about them.
Doug: It ties into what you said, but Dad and Mom always told us to keep busy and work hard. When things aren’t going right, when you’re down in the dumps, things aren’t going exactly like you wanted, get up and get doing something.
Steve: The other good thing is, too, that we always knew we had a home, we had a place to come back to, to heal our wounds. That’s part of growing up, things going wrong, but you always knew you had people you could talk to that would love you no matter what. One of the things that I think helped me in the Triple Crown, especially going into the last race, was that I knew whatever happened I had support from my family, whether I won or lost or even if I screwed up and lost it wouldn’t have mattered. That’s a very comforting thing, to know you’ve got a good support system behind you.
Steve talks about having a home to come back to. You still live in the farmhouse in which you raised your boys.
Myra: It was a good place to grow up. That’s why we moved here. Been here 42 years, and we’ve been working on it ever since we bought it. Tex is fixing the cellar door right now, I’m working on the flowers. We’ve still got a couple of horses.
Tex: The boys used to build these forts up there in the barn with tunnels through the hay.
Doug: And Steve fell out of a hayloft.
Kerry: Right into a wheelbarrow full of manure.
Steve: Luckily.
Kerry: So you can call him lucky. Mom didn’t miss stride, she launched herself out of a window to get to Steve.
Myra: Doug came in screaming, so it was the logical thing. That was funny, he landed in the wheelbarrow. He must have been walking on the board across the loft. He was probably about 10 or 11.
How were your life experiences different?
Doug: Steve was truly a big brother and unfortunately I lost him when he went away and started riding.
Myra: When he started going away, it was more difficult. It was…stressful. But it also was wonderful. It was good, it was very good, just a totally different life than the peaceful life here. Which was fine with me – peaceful, that is. It was a great thing, Steve enjoyed it and it was certainly nothing I ever thought was going to happen. I thought he would be a good rider, but…
Steve: When I went to New York, Dad went up with me. Of course, he still had to make a living, these guys were still growing up, he had to run the farm. So after four or five days he dumped my ass in a hotel room and said, “Bert Sonnier will take care of you.” For a month I was living like that. Then luckily Chuck Taliaferro sent his stable up there, because it’s no fun living there by yourself that far away when you’re that young. You have to grow into what comes your way. And as it was in my career things just fell the right way for me. I was lucky when I went to England; the first people that I rode for were Barry and Penny Hills and they were fantastic, they basically treated me like I was their son. Whenever you have success there is a ton of people that are involved. There’s always a lot more than one person, for sure.
Myra: Steve would get homesick for a long time but we were always going over to see him.
Doug: We’re really lucky we don’t hate him because if we did, because, “Hey, how’s Steve?” is the first question anybody asks. I think it just broadened our experiences, to get to go to England and South Africa and all different places. When I was 15 I worked in New York, we lived together one summer. I wouldn’t have gone and worked there if it hadn’t been for Steve. I’d have worked at River Downs, which I’d already done, but to get to go to Belmont Park and work for Dr. Jim Prendergast and trainers like P.G. Johnson and Laz Barrera was great. Later in England, Clive Brittain.
Kerry: This was a problem, being six years younger, they used to go on all these fun trips. They’re over in South Africa and we had the coldest wind chill in Kentucky in the last recorded 75 years. I think the wind chill was thirty below. Mom and I would go out and muck one stall then come inside and warm up for half an hour. Then we’d go back outside and muck one more stall, come back inside and warm up for half an hour.
It must have been difficult to see your oldest child leave home so young.
Tex: That was one of the hard things I had to do, trying to decide whether he should ride or go to school. It looked like he could ride some so we took a whack at that. We took some time off and spent some time with Steve and there’s many questions in choices but I stayed here and kept doing what I was doing and helped him and helped Doug and Kerry when I had the opportunity, still do. Because you can always use help, regardless of whether you’ve got a good job or a bad job.
Myra: It was hard. It was really hard. But we did go up and see him. And we talked to him nearly every day. The whole thing was hard for me. It was just, trying to keep your balance. It was unbelievable…

It’s well documented that you slept in a sleeping bag the night before Affirmed’s Kentucky Derby, Steve. How did that happen?
Steve: I don’t even think it was a sleeping bag. I just slept on the floor. I might have had a blanket.
Tex: There were two beds. Mom and I had one, Doug and Kerry had the other.
Steve: If I had wanted to sleep in the bed I think they probably would have let me but I just wanted to get a good night’s sleep. I don’t really even remember but I think it was self-inflicted.
Now, I love this, the Derby winners’ circle photo with 9-year-old Kerry in the way, taking his own picture!
Myra: That was a great day. Kerry and the camera… We had to kneel down because of the photographers and I thought, “Boy this is weird! Are we kneeling down for the horse?”
So then Kerry just walked out there and started directing everybody?
Myra: Probably!
Tex: He told Steve, he said, “Smile.”
Steve: That was Kerry back then, he was already running things. That night at the Wolfson’s dinner party, Kerry walked up to Mr. Wolfson who told him, “Kerry, we’re really proud of your brother. He sure did ride a great race for us.” And Kerry said, “Mr. Wolfson, anybody could have won on your horse.”
Kerry, I remember you telling me about Mom visiting Steve in England and Tex having to cook beans for you and Doug every night.
Kerry: What do you mean, having to cook beans every night? That was all he could cook.
Doug: Beans, or stir-fry or sardines and crackers.
Kerry: And the response, if the beans were too salty, was, “Well fine, then go cook your own.”
Doug: “If the beans are too salty, you’re the new chef!”
Do you eat beans anymore?
Kerry: About once a year or so.
Doug: But not sardines.
So Doug and Kerry, what made you go to law school?
Doug: I did a lot of the groundwork and made my mistakes – all the mistakes I made, I short-circuited so he didn’t make them.
Kerry: He wants that in print so bad! That’s what he’s been telling everybody.
Doug: I took all these different paths to make it back to the horses. The main reason that I went to law school was that I’d seen a lot of people that did other things in life but had law degrees and thought I could add a skill set to separate myself from other people that were in management, then as a safety net if the horse business went to hell it was something that I could do. Thankfully, it’s been a great training because in the horse industry you’re doing tons of deals, tons of contracts and above all else you’re trying to avoid problems. I think law school teaches you to think of the possibilities and maybe avoid deals going wrong because you’ve thought about it in advance and worked it out.
Kerry: And I followed the path of the mighty and the righteous! One of the reasons why I went to law school is, see Dad had a basic theory that he taught us all from about age 2 on probably – as soon as we could understand English he was teaching us, now, if I teach you how to muck a stall, at the very least you could earn a minimum wage and be a stall mucker all your life. So when I went to law school I figured alright, I’m raising the bar, at least I won’t have to muck stalls.
Steve: He only paid five bucks a week, too!
Doug: Four bucks!
Steve: Four bucks, that’s right.
Doug: You gave me a dollar to do yours.
Steve: I guess I had a lot of law qualities myself!
Tex: People go through the normal problems in life. Early in life people tend to start making their own choices. And they might listen to you if you say this is a terrible choice, but basically they figure it out. Doug figured out about going to law school and so Kerry followed him, and that got them to where they’re at. The getting there wasn’t as forthcoming quite as quickly as Doug thought it might be.

What do you think about where the industry has been going?
Myra: Steve’s success is a gift that was given and at the time, thank God, it did lift racing somewhat. Now it needs another lift. It needs something else. But there’s always exciting things happening in racing. I just don’t think people love their horses the way they did then. It’s so much more commercial.
Tex: I think it’s changed an awful lot, because of government, primarily, and more money that’s gotten into the business. Like always, good horses will have value and I think it’ll unfold as it should. All you have to do is realize where it is unfolding and go with it. Real good horses are hard to find. It’s a lot of fun if you get one. I think you’ve got to work out some way of what you’re going to do with the horses that don’t fit what they were bred for. And certainly some of them’d make good riding horses, jumping horses, they have a place but what could you do with the ones that don’t have a place? So I don’t know. Those things concern me but I’m convinced that it’ll turn out alright at the end of the day when they get all these brains figuring out what to do.
Steve: It changes every day. This is a tough business. I was a jockey obviously, and now I’m into the breeding side and I’ve been doing this now for almost ten years. It’s given me a great appreciation for owners and breeders, because unlike the jockey who gets off one horse and gets on the next you rely on what the mare does, you breed, you produce, and you have to try to make a living out of what you produce. I’m one of the lucky ones because I’ve got these guys, they’re both really closely involved. Doug looks at zillions of horses, and Kerry does, and they help me try to make a better decision about what to breed to and different things. But even so, you can have the greatest breeding in mind and it doesn’t work like you think it will. Obviously on the grander scale of where racing is going it’s like everything, when you get overproduction, too much supply and not enough demand, it’s tough for it to work. I’ve still got a lot of optimism that things are going to hopefully get better. I think that Kentucky racing should be the best in the country. Seems to me that the government could help try to boost up an industry that’s so vitally important to the state.
Doug: I have a lot of optimism for it to actually become a very viable business across the board if certain things happen. We have to have Magna and Churchill get together like they are at least starting to do with the TV programs and you’re going to have to be able to bet from your phone, from your computer, from wherever – you’ve got to get the product everywhere. Every person whose kid’s name is Alex should have been betting on Afleet Alex, just for the fun of it during the Triple Crown.
Kerry: There’s a lot of people out there trying to do positive things, but every time you try to make a positive step there’s 20 people who want to say you should have done it a different way. I worked on the Breeders’ Incentive Fund and you couldn’t imagine the number of fights. A lot of times people don’t realize that what they have in common is far greater than what’s not in common. It’s much easier to focus on the differences.
Doug: I’ll brag on Kerry a little bit. The Breeders’ Incentive Fund would not have happened in a positive way, I don’t think, without all the work that he put in, hundreds of hours understanding it, getting the records, creating his own database to understand how the money could and would be split up and then bringing the people together to get the solution, and there’s also his involvement in CBA (Consignors and Commercial Breeders Association) and KEEP (Kentucky Equine Education Partnership), probably the two most important organizations that have been formed in the last couple of years to get people to the table so disagreeing opinions can come up with a direction instead of just throwing arrows. He’s also on the Kentucky Racing Authority and has had to deal with all kinds of different dilemmas there. Kerry’s people skills and his ability to mediate and negotiate have been great. I’m proud of what he’s doing. A lot of it’s behind the scenes. People see him at the sales but with the workload that he’s taken on, he’s owed a huge debt because that’s a pain in the ass, especially the political side. It’s nice to be proud of your brothers. And your parents. But overall, we’re fighting so hard so we’ve got to improve our platform. It appears people that have the power to do that are trying to and if that doesn’t happen we’re in position for a real correction because there is overproduction, there is too much.
Steve: More than that is the steady decline of the whole business. You’ve got to be able to compete.
Doug: The product has to be fun and exciting. At Keeneland the product’s great. I’m happy to see the ten cent bet, I’m happy to see Trakus; Keeneland’s becoming a test market for a lot of good things and I hope they keep doing it. But even there, I’d like to see continued, different and simpler betting opportunities. In Australia, if you’ve got $20 you can bet the trifecta with that $20 split between eight horses, it’ll fractionalize the bet instead of having to have it exactly. Simple things like that are smart moves.
Tex has his own brand of sayings, or Texisms as we call them. What are your favorites?
Doug: When someone comes up and says, “Hey Tex, you are looking good,” his kidding response is, “You can’t kill bad grass.” Translation: “I’m lucky to be here.” It’s all self-deprecation, which I like about Dad. He’s done a lot, but he’s always humble, in a humorous way. A lot of his Texisms are like Yogi Berra’s – they are so obvious or even sometimes conflicting that we have to laugh about it. Like Yogi would say “It ain’t over till it’s over,” Dad comes up with similar ones, unintentionally of course which makes it a bit fun for the rest of us to tease him about!
Tex: They’re always giving me stick about the way I talk.
Kerry: I like, “You’d complain if they hung you with a new rope.” No translation needed!
Doug: If we are working on a project, let’s say raking up leaves in the yard, one of us might say, “Boy, this is taking a long time to do all this work.” Dad would respond, “It’s taking long enough to finish,” or something like that. And when someone says, “How are you, Tex?” he’ll say, “I’m on the right side of the grass!” Translation: “I’m alive and well, good to see you, too.” A lot of Dad’s phrases are really interpretable to a common theme: “I’m so lucky to be here, and I’m thankful to God.” He’s always instilled that in us. We didn’t always hear it or listen as we grew up, but we come back to it and realize how right he is. He’s a very spiritual person, really. And he’s a great role model. We are all lucky to have him, and we are thankful to God for every day he’s with us.
Of what are you most proud?
Tex: Being able to raise a good family and make a living shoeing horses, doing something that I like. I enjoyed it. And doing what I thought was the honorable thing. I’m feeling very fortunate because we’ve built a family together that works relatively well. Some of it’s from effort but sometimes you put a lot of effort into something and it doesn’t happen.

Myra: Our life has been a good life. I’m grateful. From the bottom of my toes! I am.

Jockey School - we spend a day at the North American Racing Academy

​By Frances Karon

Standing in the classroom of the North American Racing Academy (NARA) at the Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington, Kentucky is a sensory thrill. The smell of leather, the sharp crack of reins slapping against outstretched necks as seven jockeys scrub hard on their mounts. If you close your eyes and listen to the strained breathing of the riders you can almost hear the cadence of the hooves. The only thing that isn’t real are the horses, but with names like John Henry, Alysheba and Sunday Silence, they are all but real.

Chris McCarron’s voice rises above the din, all at once coaxing, encouraging, taunting and unrelenting. Looking at the red-faced students you can pick out the ones who want it the most, their attention focused forward between their horses ears with intensity. Stopwatch in hand, McCarron counts down from ten and gets stuck on four amid a chorus of pained protests. “Four…four…four…three…two…one. To the victor go the spoils!” The riders nearly collapse from the exertion. “Yeaaah, look at the grimace in her face!” He’s given them quite a workout.
Welcome to a typical day at NARA, the first program of its kind in the United States and Canada, where McCarron, retired from the jockey colony but far from retired, is whittling his inaugural class of 11 aspiring students into the jockeys of tomorrow. After this particular drill, McCarron explains to them that they’ve just ridden their mechanical Equicizer horses for a minute and nine seconds, the equivalent of a six-furlong sprint. They can hardly believe it. They might have guessed they were competing in the 1½-mile Belmont Stakes.
NARA only opened its doors in 2006 but the concept is older than many of its students, dating back to the time McCarron spoke to young jockeys at a racing school in Japan in 1988. “I was very impressed with the program. That’s actually what planted the seed in my head about establishing a program here in this country.” He has since been to almost every riding school on offer and has put together a curriculum that borrows from his research. The end result is a combination of what he calls “the way I was taught to ride and the sort of European style, whereby the students have to take care of the horses as well as getting on them.” This way, he says, “they’re learning a respect for the animal, respect for the people who actually get the horses prepared for them to ride. It gives them a much greater appreciation of all the hard work that goes into getting a horse to the races.”

Prior to earning multiple Eclipse Awards and a Hall of Fame induction, McCarron was fortunate enough to find a mentor in trainer Odie Clelland, who had helped launch a fledgling Eddie Arcaro into his successful career. He recalls his first time on a Thoroughbred, working as a 16-year-old hotwalker for Clelland. “I was scared to death. I’d just been riding the pony around, so knowing what a Thoroughbred is capable of doing I was terrified. When he saw the fear in my face he told me to jump off and I just froze. He reached up and pulled me off. It was a good while before I was back on a Thoroughbred.” But eventually he conquered his “fear of the unknown” and tried again. One of his goals at NARA is to take away that fear and give his students all the tools they need to be confident, conscientious riders with an ingrained understanding of horsemanship.
McCarron says the jockey system in place in this country is like putting “somebody behind the wheel of a NASCAR automobile without having been formally trained. It’s crazy, considering the amount of investment that is in this thing called the Thoroughbred horse. You’ve got the breeders, the owners, the trainers, all the stable help, the farm help, and then when you involve the betting public, you have thousands of people that have an interest in this horse. And, a jockey walks into a paddock having received no formal training whatsoever, gets a leg up from a trainer and is expected to go out there and perform like a professional. It’s wacko, it’s wacko.”

The picture he paints of the uneducated young jockey in the driver’s seat for the Indy 500 brings the lack of training many of today’s riders receive into frightening perspective. It is almost inconceivable that NARA is the first of its kind in these parts, where the Thoroughbred industry is a lucrative business. Steve Cauthen, like fellow retired Hall of Famers Laffit Pincay Jr. and Eddie Delahoussaye, is on the academy’s board. “It’s a great thing,” says Cauthen, “something that has been needed here for a long time. It’s amazing that there’s never been a jockey school in America.” Everyone seems to agree that the racing school is long overdue and that McCarron is the perfect fit at the helm. He is patient, intelligent, articulate, and totally committed to the endeavor. Spend some time with Chris McCarron and you quickly understand that he does not accept failure lightly.

NARA is intertwined with the Kentucky Community and Technical College System (KCTCS), meaning that the students, all of whom have obtained either a high school diploma or a GED equivalent and who pay a tuition to the college based on the number of credit hours they take, can opt to take additional courses in English, math and science to graduate with an Associate’s Degree in Equine Science. NARA’s organizational framework under the KCTCS banner reveals a futuristic blueprint extending beyond the Professional Jockey Certificate. Soon, individuals who are interested in other careers in the horse industry will be able to go after a Professional Horsemen’s Certificate or a Racing Office Professional’s Certificate.

NARA has some other exciting plans, including a top-notch facility with its own track and dorm at the Horse Park. Besides what it has attracted from donors, the program received sizeable state funding in 2006 but has a long way to go before it raises the $15-million required to convert an artist’s rendering into their actual campus. In the meantime, students and instructors split time between their headquarters at the Horse Park and The Thoroughbred Center. McCarron hopes to go before the General Assembly to request financial assistance for NARA, and, if all else fails, “get on my knees and beg.”

NARA is providing a win-win situation for its students and consequently, in a few years’ time, for racing. McCarron cites the specialized coaching and instruction other professional athletes receive. “What that demonstrates is there’s a greater need for that teaching, that tutoring, in order to help a person reach his or her full potential as an athlete.” With jockeys, “not only do we not have someone formally teaching us ahead of time, after we begin our careers we have to learn our trade from our competitors. How much is someone going to help me when I go out there and beat him three times in an afternoon? When you first start out, it’s easy to go to a veteran and say, can you teach me how to switch my sticks faster, can you teach me how to make a horse change leads better, how to break out of the gate more quickly, how to talk to a trainer about his horse being sore – those kinds of things. And the veterans will help you only to a degree, and then when you go out there and start winning races on a daily basis, those good lessons start slowing down and so it creates a pretty steep learning curve. I just think it really stunts someone’s growth when they don’t have someone mentoring them, telling them when they’ve done something right and when they’ve done something wrong.” McCarron does not hesitate on either count.

Recruiting last year was a bit rushed and applicants chiefly found their way to the racing academy through word of mouth. Before accepting students for classes beginning in the fall of 2007, NARA “will be sending a letter along with a flyer to all the jocks rooms around the country, every racecourse around the country and have it posted in the jocks room and try to do something that way. But eventually, long term, what I plan to do is use the resources at KCTCS and be able to get into the high schools and get word to them and start actively recruiting potential students that way,” McCarron says. He anticipates having more applicants to the program this year and refers to the initial interest from freshmen, sophomores and juniors in high school who requested information packets last year.

During the screening process, the students have to demonstrate that they are “serious about pursuing a career as a rider.” They must have the natural physique to keep light without putting their bodies at risk. In addition, NARA is “looking for someone who is at least going to express some passion about being a jockey. Not someone that is like, well, you know, maybe I’ll try this, and if it works, fine, if not…”
Chris McCarron is all about the passion. When he says that the apprentices “can expect a lot of hard work from me, a lot of dedication from me to help them become the best riders they can be under my watch,” he means it. He also means it when he says, “what they can expect is to be involved in a very tough program. It’s a lot of hard work, takes a lot of discipline. I’m a taskmaster. Very fair, but by the same token, if you’re not carrying your load you’re not going to go as far in this program as you would compared to someone who goes even further than carrying their load.” Passion, it seems, is a prerequisite for his pupils. This is a seven-day-a-week labor of love for the jockey-turned-mentor and it goes beyond the horse-and-rider relationships he’s nurturing.
There have been some surprises along the way for McCarron. “What I didn’t know was that I was going to have to be somewhat of a psychologist, psychiatrist and have to deal with different types of personalities and different work ethics and so forth. I’ve always been a hard worker and I try to instill that same type of work ethic in those that I’m surrounded by. Especially with the students. I’m going to try to work hard at developing an interview process that will expose the ones that have THE best work ethics and the most dedication.”

Ideally, McCarron is looking for people “with a certain degree of talent to communicate with horses. Also, a certain amount of athletic talent. You have to be born with those two things first, and then I think you can certainly hone those skills. I think that there are some that have to work harder at becoming a better athlete.” McCarron himself has had to “really work hard at honing my style and figuring out exactly what was going to make me less of a hindrance on a horse. You hear the term, oh yeah, that rider moved that horse up. Well, we don’t move horses up so to speak, we slow them down less. The best riders have the greatest ability to stay out of a horse’s way.” Not to say that a good rider doesn’t help his horse, which is what “separates the better riders from the rest of them, figuring out exactly what that little quality is, what that talent is. Not all the riders ever figure out exactly what theirs is. The best riders are the ones that first of all have the skill, have the talent and then figure out what buttons to push, how to use that talent.” McCarron is here to help them find and fine-tune both types of talent.

Back on the Equicizers – the horse simulators developed by jockey Frank Lovato Jr. – McCarron notices that some of the riders ease up as he takes a phone call. He interrupts his conversation. “Hold on one second, my students are cheating on me. Come on, pump, let’s go! Pump! Quick!” He has an extraordinary ability to focus on everyone at the same time as though there are just the two of them in the room; he is fully aware of what they’re all doing, at all times. It’s not difficult to image how natural it must have been for him to weave his way through a tight throng of galloping horses, anticipating all the right openings before they happened. He could probably have done it while reciting the alphabet – backwards.

One of the boys gets a leg cramp during the grueling calf raises they are required to do in the stirrups before they get into riding stance. “We’ve got a Charley horse going on over here.” McCarron continues to call out directions, barely breaking his rhythm with the other six as the rider gets down from the horse. “Push up…somebody call an ambulance…down…up…down.”

As they settle down to race ride again, two of them stage an impromptu recreation of the 1933 Kentucky Derby, taking on the roles of Don Meade on Brokers Tip and Herb Fisher on Head Play, playfully grabbing at each other’s legs. The girl on Flawlessly manages to pull Alysheba’s rider out of his saddle. McCarron: “Another one bites the dust! What chance do they have of riding a real horse if they can’t stay on an Equicizer?” He is only partially teasing.

There is a lot of good-natured ribbing, but underneath it all you sense McCarron’s frustration that some of them aren’t a little more serious, that they don’t have a keener awareness of the opportunity they’re getting. “I’ve got a few students that kind of just go through the motions. I don’t want to do that with them, because that’s not what I’m paid to do. I’m paid to give them my best, which I continue to do. There are times when I say to myself, ah, he’s just going through the motions, so maybe I’ll go through the motions. You know, with everybody else, I’ll give them their due. But that’s not fair. I can’t slight anybody even though they’re slighting themselves.”

Jessica Oldham, whose parents are retired jockeys – Robbie Davis’ daughter Jackie is also enrolled in the program – is the veteran of the group, with roughly ten years of riding time. Still, she says, “this is different because learning how to ride is actually structured here, whereas when I went to gallop on the track for the first time I just kind of got thrown up on a horse and basically hung on.” As a high school student, she got some tips mock-exercising the pony sandwiched between two exercise riders. Outside of that, she picked up “bits and pieces” of advice along the way.

The majority of the students – seven of them – had little or no horse experience before enrolling at NARA. Jason Truett is so small in stature that “everybody used to always tell me I should be a jock.” He informs McCarron that he has “hit triple digits today,” meaning that he now weighs 100 pounds. Before being allowed on the Thoroughbreds, all of whom are retired racehorses that have been donated, Truett and the other novices had to get their balance on mustangs, or “Thoroughbred simulators,” until the instructors felt they could handle the more hot-blooded racehorses. This is one of many steps to prepare students for safe learning in a comfortable, controlled environment.

They have a rigorous daily routine, meeting up for 7.30am classes. Students spend three hours a day in class; one hour riding the horses and three hours taking care of them; and one hour on the Equicizer. They look after their horses six or seven days a week, depending on the rotation for their on-duty Sunday. Before they complete the two-year, six-semester program, of which the last two semesters will be spent as interns for trainers, the NARA trainees will have had extensive and invaluable hands-on studies on racehorse care, equine physiology, commercial breeding, the racing industry, lameness, racing stable operations, riding principles, finance and life skills. A nutritionist has been teaching them how to eat so that they can be healthy and still maintain their weight and a proper diet. In this environment, they’re not only learning the basics of riding; they’re learning the fundamentals of how to live.

Although McCarron’s name is the one most publicly associated with NARA, the academy draws on the support of a strong team. Jennifer Voss-Franco, who is the project facilitator, shares an office with McCarron. Dr. Reid “Doc” McLellan is the instructional specialist who, among other things, oversees their racehorse care lessons. Barn manager Aimee Knarr, the Horse Park’s director of education Margi Stickney and even McCarron’s daughter Stephanie – they have all, says one of the students, “pitched in to help everyone excel really quickly.”

As of January, the students are up to galloping at The Thoroughbred Center. Of the program’s 12 horses, Oldham says, “they’re all working out great and it’s nice because there’s one for every level of rider, and you do have to get used to galloping the tough horses as well as the easy horses.” It doesn’t take much for these ex-racehorses to remember their racing days. They get out on the track after training hours, and the outriders stick close to round up the horses when they run off with or throw the jocks. “They’ve caught a few of them,” says Oldham. “Us,” she corrects herself. McCarron has come off Toots, whose reputation for running off while he was in active training remains has followed him to his second career. In May, they will be ready to learn how to breeze their horses. It remains to be seen who will be on Toots that first day.

McCarron is no stranger to accidents of varying severity, and because racing is by nature tinged with danger he does not envision that having suitably educated jockeys will provide a needed boost to the insurance issues. “I would love to be able to sit here and tell you, oh yeah, my students are going to be so knowledgeable, so skilled and such great athletes when they leave my program it’s really going to make racing a lot safer. I think that’s a pipe dream. I think that’s a bit of a reach.” In 1986 he was involved in a five-horse pileup, eight lengths behind Encolure when that horse fell at Santa Anita. At first he was “livid” with himself, until he worked out that he had had merely one and three-fifths seconds to react and steer a 1,000 pound cannonball running at 40 miles per hour out of harm’s way. Still, he says, “I blame myself to the point where I try to figure out a way I could do it better next time.” His students are the beneficiaries of the mental edge that greater knowledge can give them. Every memory, good and bad, from 28 years in the saddle has its purpose.

This afternoon they are working their Equicizers alongside gate-to-wire replays of some of John Henry’s famed duels. As McCarron presses “play” on the VCR to start a third race, one of the girls grumbles, “oh no, not another one!” Though she may not think so at the moment, it is her good luck that McCarron was a regular rider of the great gelding who won 39 times, leaving them with plenty more to watch. And when those run out, McCarron has an abundance of wins – 7,141 of them, in fact – to refer to in guiding his students along.
“This,” says Truett, “is my dream, by far. Even riding right now, if I have a good day it’s so emotionally rewarding.” Oldham is quick to point out that “when you have a bad day it’s so emotionally toiling.” Truett smiles and says simply, “but, if it wasn’t for those days, the good days wouldn’t be as good.” Listening to them, you have no doubt that what McCarron is doing is a very, very good thing, even more so with the realization that for so many jockeys, this opportunity never existed.

Chris McCarron is hopeful that NARA will be a life-changing event for the industry, as it is proving to be for him. “It’s like the old saying. You get out of it what you put into it. I’m putting a lot into it as far as I’m concerned and consequently I’m getting a lot out of it. It’s been a great learning experience for me.”

Johnny Jones - we profile the legendary Kentucky horseman

When John T.L. Jones Jr. props his cowboy boots up on his desk, he leaves behind the mud accumulated from 72 years of being the Jones to keep up with. Unlike the speedy Quarter Horses that jump-started his livelihood by making a mad dash to the finish line, Jones’ ascent in the racing industry has taken him several circuits around the racecourse.

Jones spent nearly 30 years at the helm of Walmac International, presiding over the successful stallion careers of dual Arc winner Alleged and the great sire Nureyev before selling the farm to his son Johnny III and business partner Bobby Trussell. Retirement was short-lived as Jones soon fell back on his roots to train a small string of horses. In between running a couple of two-year-olds at the fall meet at Keeneland, he took some time to sit down and think back on his years in the business.

When you sold Walmac in 2004, you could have chosen to do anything, or nothing for that matter. What influenced your decision to train again?
My good friend R.D. Hubbard said to go buy some yearlings and I wanted to supervise them through at least their first year to know kind of what I got. I haven’t really supervised that kind of thing for 35 years. But I enjoy it. I guess I just have an addiction to horses. I like them! To be honest with you I don’t know how long I’m going to train.
Your father was in the insurance business. Did he want you to follow in his footsteps?
Not particularly. We’d had horses since I was a boy, I mean, as far back as I can remember. He got interested in Quarter Horses and registered his first horse in 1945, so I just grew up with it. He was a businessman, but still we always had a farm and had horses and so I had an interest. Then when I went to college, I played golf and got away a little bit from the horses because I was gone all the time. When my dad passed away in 1958 he had probably 25 or 30 head of Quarter Horses. So basically I started devoting all my time to horses right after my father died.
So how does one begin the journey from humble origins with Quarter Horses in Quanah, Texas to syndicate manager for some of the world’s most valuable Thoroughbred stallions?
I ended up joint venturing a deal on my farm in 1965 and when my partner got into a financial bind that carried me with him I lost everything I had. When you wake up one day with four children and no money, you’d better get your ass to work. I went to the track and started training for Walter Merrick in 1966.
Had you had any introduction, formal or otherwise, to training?
No.
So from the first day you started training horses you just went on instinct?
Well, Mr. Merrick was a legendary horseman but he never had much input. What he basically told me is that little things win races. In other words, that everybody knows to feed them, everybody knows to gallop them, everybody knows to work them, the details are what make the difference between the people that win and the others. Most of what I learned was trial and error. So I won races all the time, everywhere I went. First started off with match racing, and we won most of them.
Where was that, at bush league tracks?
You’d pull up in a trailer and a guy would say, what have you got and how far do you want to go? You’d bet $500 or $1000. I started doing that every weekend instead of playing golf.
I got into it because a cowboy was badgering me one time so I went down by the wheat field and grated off about 3/8’s of a mile, just turned around and let the horse run. We got to hauling down there to those little old straightaway tracks. Most of them were bred to run; well the horse I started out with was out of a half-Thoroughbred mare. Originally he was meant to be a parade horse for a friend of mine’s boy. That was in 1962 or ’63, first time that he’d ever been on an official – by that I mean pari-mutuel – track. His name was Gold Nugget Sims. The first time I’d ever been to an official track and he ran second and I was thrilled. I went and got them to give me a picture of him being second.
It was about a $300 purse. I was in the paddock that night and it was hotter than Hades up in Oklahoma, 240 miles from where I lived. So I was in the paddock and I was nervous and I’d never been in a paddock before like that. The paddock judge came out and said, “Rain’s over!” I said, huh? It was so hot and not a cloud in the sky... He said, “Reins over!” and I went oh! and threw the reins over the horse’s head.

I think you’ve learned a lot since then!
I’ve learned most of it by trial and error. Still making errors!
At this point your main focus was on Quarter Horses. Did you win any major races?
The biggest Quarter Horse race I won was the Kansas Futurity in 1967 with Jet Smooth for Mr. Merrick. I did train some cheaper, New Mexico Thoroughbreds for him, too.
How and when did you transition to Thoroughbreds?
I went to work for a fellow named Marvin Warner in Cincinnati. He gave me the freedom and the financial backing to do what I thought was the best in the horse business. In 10 years he never bought a horse and he never sold a horse. Now, had I not been producing, had I not been making money, I’d have been back in Texas chopping cotton. But he enabled me to accomplish something or use my knowledge to accomplish something where 99% of owners like that that don’t know anything about the business start thinking they know and it’s all an odds game anyway. He enjoyed the game, he enjoyed going to the races and never injected what he thought about the horses. I had pretty much a free rein and we were fortunate enough to do well. It just gives you an edge, it just gives you the advantage of over a period of time being right more times than you’re wrong. ‘Cause in the horse business you’re going to be wrong a lot of times. So, that’s really where I was lucky with Mr. Warner because he just gave me a free rein. He looked at the balance sheet and as long as that was good he allowed me to go to Europe, he allowed me to go anywhere I wanted to go. Not many people have that opportunity.
Training horses at River Downs in Ohio in the late 1970’s, you were in a good spot to observe the fledgling career of Steve Cauthen.
[Steve’s father] Tex was our horseshoer. I wasn’t paying much attention and I’d already made a deal with a jock at River Downs to ride our horses when Steve started riding and I couldn’t really get out of that commitment because I wanted to do what I’d said I’d do. I rode Steve some when he first started out. But then when he went to New York we’d sent horses to Chuck Taliaferro [for Marvin Warner] and since his family knew Chuck – we were all kind of family – well Steve went up and stayed with Chuck when he got really rolling.
Why did you leave training?
I figured out if I was ever going to be a factor in the industry it was going to be through stallions but I didn’t have any money; I had to get into something where I could use other people’s money. A man told me a long time ago that in the stallion business, people are calling you – you’re not having to call them. In other words, you can gather a lot of information in all facets of the industry by just picking people’s brain when they call asking about a stallion or something. I knew where I wanted to be but I didn’t know exactly how to get there. I thought with some of the older, established farms, I thought at that time there was a little spot for a younger farm. Brereton Jones had just got started and most of the other farms around here had just one stallion, except for Claiborne, Spendthrift and Gainesway. In all honesty, I’ve known a lot of people in my life that worked very hard and were good horsemen but never did have the break.
What is the most difficult part of being a trainer?
Training horses is somewhat of a mundane life. In other words, as Walter Merrick taught me, the little things win races. For example, there will be a few seconds, a few minutes of highs…the majority of what a trainer goes through are negatives. He’s got a horse that’s coming up a little off, or not doing what he expects of him, or enters it in a race but only one horse can win.
That’s probably less true of trainers at the top level with a barn full of stakes-quality horses. There is quite a dichotomy between the Todd Pletchers and everyone else.
For some of these fellows it’s somewhat of a system to run a business rather than training and teaching the individual horse. The horse adapts to a system and if he doesn’t they really don’t have time for him, especially when they’ve got horses at five different locations. That’s also different from the way I came up. Thirty, forty horses was the most anybody had. Most owners had their own personal trainer; the Whitneys had their trainer, Spendthrift had their trainer, Claiborne had their trainer. Very few have that now; they’ve either got their horses scattered or they’ve got them in a huge stable with somebody.
We’re talking about a very small minority of the trainers. But even in Europe, I think, most of the bigger stables are still geared towards the personal aspect and trainers are able to feel their horses’ legs every night and know about every little niggling problem as it happens.
With major trainers in America today, probably a lot of them know exactly what is going on but they have to hear it from somebody else. Their system is excellent, but the owners don’t have the personal touch. It used to be a much more social atmosphere, a personal atmosphere rather than all business. They have a very, very good system but they can’t possibly be as involved like the trainers of the old days. You used to see pictures of old Sunny Jim Fitzsimmons sitting on a stool running cold water on a horse’s legs. You don’t see much of that with your high-profile trainers anymore.
Sure you do, right after their horse has won the Kentucky Derby! But that makes for a great photo op.
That’s it.
What differences have you noticed between the horse of today and his ancestors?
The horses are much more fragile than they were 30 years ago. Horses that had stamina were more acceptable in American racing until the advent of the two-year-old sales. A huge part of our market is to pinhook into the two-year-old sales so that requires speed. With so many buyers looking for speed people are breeding for it. The faster horses run the more liable they are to break down so I think that probably we’re breeding less sound horses. Not many people want to buy a horse and wait for him to make his first start at three; they want it now.
Of course I have to ask, what do you think of the Polytrack?
Polytrack, well, nobody knows for sure but I do know one thing, it’s much easier on horses. I think it will probably in a number of years have an effect on how we breed horses. They say that grass horses like the Polytrack. I think to a certain extent – obviously there’s no absolute to this business – I do think it will give horses with stamina more opportunities and it’s safer for the horses. Everybody likes it. I give Rogers Beasley a lot of credit for pushing them [to install the Polytrack at Keeneland]. First of all, it’s safer. It’s just safer. Plus, you don’t have the days when your racetrack’s a soupy mess.
Is there anything you don’t like about artificial surfaces?
One thing I do think is that all the tracks going to that surface should use the same material. Not with any prejudices to any manufacturer but just to make everything the same. I haven’t experienced any of the others so I can’t say accurately but I would say it would have been better if they had been all the same. And they may be all so similar that it doesn’t make any difference.
And its overall effect?
It’s much easier on a horse. A horse has got to be a little fitter, there’s going to be a little more emphasis on recognizing stamina in pedigrees. Five furlong horses that could go 6 furlongs or even a mile and a sixteenth are not going to do that on these surfaces. I think you’ll see horses lasting longer, I think you’ll see fuller fields. Fuller fields mean more pari-mutuel wagering so I think it’s all positive. If horses last longer owners have more chances to recoup money and to make money and it’s positive all the way down the line.
Another positive of the artificial surfaces is that horses are getting a hold of it leaving the gate. I think a lot of horses hurt themselves when they stumble or the ground breaks out from under them leaving the gate, bam! and they’re hitting it wrong and then they run around there and break down. I just think a lot of injuries are caused at the starting gate and with the new surfaces they get a hold of it, they don’t slip, and they go.
The recent Welfare and Safety of the Racehorse Summit held at Keeneland included a presentation made by Wayne McIlwraith, D.V.M., in which he said that most breakdowns are due to pre-existing stress fractures or other such conditions. Would you like to see routine MRIs, CT scans and ultrasounds become mandatory?
I guess you could regulate yourself clear out of business.
But if you’re saving your horse you’re keeping yourself in business.
Well but it’s going to come down to an opinion. It’s just like the vets vetting these horses that have a little chip here or a stress fracture or something that they’re not particularly sore on, but it’s there. One vet says don’t run it, the next vet says it’s okay to run. If you want to just have a nightmare, try to do something like that.
What is your stance on the ever-controversial drug and medication policy in the U.S.?
Overall I think racing is good. I think we’ve gone overboard in not allowing some analgesic-type drugs to be used on horses. I imagine the people who are saying that horses should run on oats and hay are taking eight pills a day for themselves to get through the day. I don’t think it’s fair; analgesics are just comfort-type drugs. They’re athletes, just like baseball players or football players, and narcotics and steroids are not good but I think drugs like Lasix and Banamine and stuff like that are fine. It’s like someone getting up in the morning and taking an Advil for their headache. I don’t think they’ll ever solve the problem. We’ve got too many jurisdictions and everybody wants to be the hero. By the time they figure out what one guy’s using he’s going to come up with another [drug], and it’s almost impossible; they may know something’s in a test but they can’t tell you what it is.
How would you deal with this issue?
There are two things that could probably stop a huge part of it. Number one, the jurisdiction should know what’s in the truck of a veterinarian pulling in on the backside. No point in having certain drugs in your truck, or they could have a dispensary for specific drugs that could be signed out. I also think – I know it’d be expensive – but if they think people are doing something illegal – they take your picture most anywhere now, anytime you go to the bank to cash a check you get your picture taken, or go to the convenience store, everybody’s getting their picture taken. So, if they really want to do something about it they should just put some monitors in the barn. Then they’ll know who’s in the barn at all times.
But you can’t see what they’re giving them.
If you know what’s in their truck, you’d know that they don’t have any business with certain drugs. I just think you’ve got to try to stay away from anything that is going to endanger a horse’s health but analgesic medications, I don’t see anything wrong with that.
Let’s hear your thoughts on another sensitive subject, the horse slaughter ban bill awaiting Senate approval.
I think it is going to be a major problem in the logistics of it if they go ahead and pass this horse slaughter ban. There’s nobody that loves horses better than I love horses. And if I want to take care of my horse, turn him out and retire him and let him die of old age, that’s my business. If I want to support an organization that does that, that’s my business. I shouldn’t try to legislate what somebody else does with their property. Not just the Thoroughbred industry – there’s millions of horses. I don’t know what they think that they’re going to do with all of them because it’s just going to compound. That’d be like turning them out on the roadside only to get killed by people running over them. Which is worse, letting a horse go to slaughter or letting him starve to death? That has to do with the difference between being emotional and being realistic.
Either way, people are looking for absolution instead of taking responsibility. Slaughtering the horses just makes room for more and it creates a snowball effect. Stasis will only make things worse because people will feel encouraged to continue to breed as though there is no moral dilemma.
The government cannot take responsibility for what we do. We have to be responsible for our own morality and what we do with things. We can’t have the government telling us every move, whether it’s moral or immoral or what it is. I could argue both sides of the coin. It’s pretty silly to a certain extent to spend all that money they’re raising to save retired horses when the same guy walks down the backstretch and sees little kids in the tack rooms with no money and does very little for them.
John Gaines credited you with breaking down the dissension that threatened to keep the Breeders’ Cup from becoming a reality. Are you satisfied with how it has matured in these 23 years?
Give him credit, I thought Mr. Gaines was very innovative. And I think that once we got it organized and were able to appease the different factions, I think [the Breeders’ Cup has] been a tremendous success. If you went through the list of buyers at the Keeneland Summer Sale in like 1970, none of them were from Europe but I suspected that the game was going to get global in the early Seventies with global transportation and ease of getting horses over here. You could fly one over here from England about as quick as you can fly it to California – definitely faster than you can van it out there. So I thought it was going to be a global thing and I thought that it would put the spotlight on a special day, at least have another venue that the public could attach itself to rather than just the Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont if you happen to have something that might win the Triple Crown.
What improvements would you suggest?
We probably need to take a step further, which I think we’re doing, by creating venues leading to the Breeders’ Cup. It could be a venue in England or Ireland or France or anywhere. I don’t think you can really create any public excitement without events. People always follow crowds. People aren’t going to NASCAR just to see cars running around, they’re waiting on a wreck and to people-watch. The biggest thing about the Derby is, number one, it’s the Derby. Number two, people go to people-watch 150,000 people. People like crowds.
You don’t think that these additional venues will detract from the Breeders’ Cup?
No no no. Not if you start soon enough, it’s just like football and baseball and basketball, they all have playoffs.
Do you think you have any Breeders’ Cup-caliber horses in your barn?
I’ve got two or three of them working like they’re nice horses. A Chester House colt looks like a good one, the same for a Holy Bull colt and a Cat Thief colt who rapped a tendon – it’s minor but I’m giving him some time – I think he might be a good colt. The rest of them I think might be just ordinary.
How many horses do you have in training?
We’ve got about fifteen, all 2-year-olds.
Did you buy any yearlings at the sales this year?
No, but I’ve got three I bred that will go into training.
You’ve had a winner from only a handful of starters, but it didn’t run in your name! How did that happen?
I wasn’t licensed in Ohio so I just let my assistant trainer Ricky Castilleja get his license and he was down as the trainer. I had a filly run third at Saratoga but I’d sent her to Patrick Biancone for the meet and I’ve since sent her to Mike Doyle at Woodbine because she’s a Canadian-bred. I don’t care whether it’s in my name or somebody else’s. I was in San Antonio all winter every day just about and then Keeneland in April, and went to Turfway after that. I’ve got an excellent assistant, and I talk to him twice a day.
Will you continue to train for the foreseeable future?
If I don’t have three or four nice horses by the end of Churchill I’ll probably send them to another trainer.
And then what? Play golf? Go to Barbados?
I’ll just spend more time at my ranch in Oklahoma. I like the cattle. I’ve enjoyed this and I have no complaints. It’s just that I’ve been doing it for forty-something years.
You can only get so far even by being in the right place at the right time, so how do you explain your success?

In a nutshell, I’ve been lucky. But I was paying attention.