Transitions - tips for training on synthetic and racing on dirt

“He not busy being born is busy dying,” to borrow from a Bob Dylan song. It has application to Thoroughbred horse racing. 

Oh, there’s been dying—Arlington Park, Calder, Hialeah, Hollywood Park, Suffolk Downs and Golden Gate Fields to name but a few major tracks that have passed since the turn of the century.

But there’s rebirth, too. (The lyric above is from a song ironically entitled,  “It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding).”

The “bleeding” in racing, if not minimized, is way less than in the past. In its relative infancy HISA, the self-regulatory agency, has significantly impacted the use of illegal medication; racetrack fatalities are at a record low thanks to better track maintenance (along with med regulation); and still to be rebirthed in 2026 is a new Belmont Park. 

For traditionalists, that pesky synthetic surface is still around. If there hasn’t been a rebirth with synthetic surfaces, it is at least on its proverbial feet in horse racing despite Del Mar, Keeneland, and Santa Anita laying then lifting it to return to dirt.

 Belmont Park will include it with their dirt and turf courses with something vitally important: an infield tunnel enabling horses to reach all three surfaces with no interruption for horses crossing one track to get to another. 

Training on synthetic surfaces for dirt racing is standard practice for many trainers and inherently practical. One, it’s all-weather—impervious, precipitation-wise, to everything short of a monsoon. Two, with the exception of freezes, it is now “all-climate.” No longer is it “tight” during morning workouts in colder temperatures and loose and sticky in hot weather.  

Three, and maybe most critically, trainers have learned how to train on it for dirt races. 

 “Horses just skip across it,” said trainer Mark Casse, a proponent of synthetic surfaces. In fact, the ease with which they travel over it requires an adjustment from normal training on dirt. “When you train on dirt, the horses run in it. It's a solid where there is no rebound effect from the dirt. On the synthetic it actually bounces back a little bit.”  

Richard Budge, a former racetrack trainer on four continents who is now general manager at Margaux Farm, a training center in Midway Kentucky, elaborated on Casse’s observation. “Without the ‘bounce’ on synthetics a horse on a dirt surface feels impact straight up to their knees and shoulders, which tires them and adds bone stress.”

“You have to train them a little harder, a little quicker, more often, in my opinion,” he added.

Casse expressed it thusly: “When things take less effort, then you have to do more than get them right, get them fitter.”

Even with a more stringent training regimen on synthetics as opposed to dirt, there are benefits beyond fitness. Trainer Eoin Harty, a self-described fan of synthetic surfaces, points out the obvious: “If your horse is sounder longer, it runs more often, it has a lengthier career. 

“I think in general, dirt tracks certainly seem to have gotten better over the last four or five years, but in general, they take a toll on them.”

The bottom line is the synthetic surfaces of ten years ago are not what horses are training and running on now. Specifically, manufacturers of synthetic surfaces tweaked the composition of elements, reducing the slide that occurs when front hooves strike the racetrack surface. 

The reduction is much less than in the past and much less than what happens on a dirt track. This is why a term often heard is horses run “over it.” Front hooves essentially don’t penetrate deeply into a synthetic surface like they would on dirt. 

Also the surface needs minimal maintenance, far less than the frequent and necessary harrowing of dirt. It’s a flat base that doesn’t wash down toward the rail. There’s also minimal kickback so that track basically stays in place as opposed to dirt literally dug up and thrown back during races, producing a surface that is “cuppy” with divots. 

The benefits with maintenance are immense and economical for trainers.  “[On dirt] there's a break at six-thirty. There's a break at seven forty-five. And there's another break at eight-thirty,” said Harty. That’s an hour and a half of your daily training schedule that's lost.  

“You're forced to hire more help just in order to get your horses out. It makes things more expensive, whereas, if you're at Turfway Park and you've got thirty horses, you can pretty much get them out to exercise in two hours with two exercise riders.”

Mark Casse, who is Florida-based, offers a more extreme example of low maintenance required with synthetics. “In one day, with two year old sales--working at seven o'clock in the morning and breezing two-hundred horses into the middle of the afternoon--you won't see a whole lot of track change.

“That would never be the case in Florida on dirt. You'd have to be putting so much water on it, we'd be having breaks every forty-five minutes. “

Perhaps not surprisingly, most horses like synthetic surfaces, according to Mark Casse. It would stand to reason both for the feel of it as they run and also familiarity. They all grew up running on grass, Casse said. Synthetic surfaces are the closest approximation to it.  

“I would say that probably seventy-five or eighty percent of horses will move well over turf. You hardly find a horse that doesn't move better over the turf. I would say about the same number on synthetic, maybe eighty or ninety percent of horses will run on and like synthetics.” He estimated that probably only thirty to thirty-five percent of horses actually like running on dirt.

Richard Budge said the preference with most horses is immediately evident watching a horse travel over synthetic and how it differs from dirt. “You can tell the way that they move over the surface. Horses really spring over it.”

Budge, Casse, and Harty would tell you that while there are expectations in training, they should be confined to horse health. A horse race is still a horse race where anything can happen. The one hedge or angle that might possibly be a first timer to a dirt race who has trained on synthetics or better, raced over it before running on dirt. 

“On the synthetic side, there's not a whole lot of kickback. There's a little bit, but it seems to settle right back where it came from. On a dirt track, of course, you’re going over it at thirty-five or forty miles an hour. When a horse puts his hooves down and pushes off, there’s a clod of dirt that was under his hoof that is now twenty feet behind them,” said Harty.

“With all that sand kicked in their face it's overwhelming for a lot of horses, and they just don't like it,” he added. “With synthetic, any kick back kind of bounces off and it’s not really much of a bother. Horses can sit mid-pack or at the back before making a stretch run.

“Look at the spread from first to last in a synthetic race compared to a dirt race. In dirt racing it can be up to thirty lengths, but with a synthetic they're more bunched.” Harty believes the difference in kickback between dirt and synthetic is the reason also for how horses finish. 

Rarely will you see horses running five wide down the stretch like you will in races over a synthetic surface. The reason? They haven’t been deterred by heavy kickback.

One practice to familiarize a horse with kick back on dirt is to run them behind one or even two horses to feel and get cast-off to kickback. 

The synthetic surface at the new Belmont should garner a lot of attention for its novelty as well as its effect on racing as a whole. “You'll see a big influx of Canadian horses going there for the winter to run,” Casse believes.

He envisions a circuit of Belmont, Woodbine, and Turfway. So, too, does Richard Budge foresee it with something added: a synthetic Triple Crown.

Recently he looked at a Saturday card at Turfway and noticed nearly every race had overfilled. That is a handicapper’s delight. 

With the current Triple Crown, trainers like Casse and Harty aren’t shy about training at Turfway (a mere  94 miles away from Churchill Downs) on that track’s Tapeta surface. Rich Strike, the Kentucky Derby winner in 2022 trained at Turfway. Currently Eoin Harty has a Triple Crown series contender, Poster, training there. 

It seems as if the bias against synthetics has weakened considerably over the last decade. One piece of evidence comes from Mark Casse. 

“About twenty years ago NYRA had a special committee to look into synthetics. I think at the time, they probably would have done it, but they couldn't afford it.” 

Casse remembered a trainer telling him, “‘We can’t do it. We have to worry about tradition.” He responded, “You’re not going to have to worry about tradition because you’re going to be history.

“I want to say about two years ago he called me and said, ‘You were right.’” Tradition hasn’t blocked the synthetic surface going in at Belmont.

“If you stand still, you get run over,” said Casse.

Horses will keep running no matter if there are fewer racetracks or fewer races. And they’ll do so on the best surfaces in the history of the sport—synthetic or dirt.

“He not busy being born is busy dying.”

Conditioning for the Triple Crown series

Article by Bill Heller

The only constant in preparing a young horse for a shot in the Triple Crown is its difficulty. That hasn’t changed over the years.

“It’s just as difficult or more difficult now to have horses that come in healthy, and that’s your main goal: try to get them well-prepared and healthy,” trainer Todd Pletcher, a two-time Kentucky Derby winner with Super Saver (2010) and Always Dreaming (2017), said. “That’s always been a challenge, but probably more so now than ever.”

While the road to the Triple Crown was revamped with the Kentucky Derby point system beginning in 2013, the reality of the Triple Crown is the same: a horse is only going to succeed if he has a proper foundation.

“It’s like any athlete,” trainer Barclay Tagg said. “You have to get the bottom into them and bring them along slowly. It takes a while. You can’t go fast miles. They have to be slow miles. You’re building bones; you’re building tendons; you’re building ligaments all at the same time. You have to have a horse that can handle it, too. He’s got to be able to handle the effort of getting fit, just like a human athlete does. You have to have a hell of a horse to begin with. There’s a lot that goes into it.”

Tagg won the 2003 Kentucky Derby and Preakness with New York-bred Funny Cide. Seventeen years later, his New York-bred Tiz the Law won the Belmont Stakes and Travers Stakes and finished second in the Kentucky Derby. “You had to approach them differently,” Tagg said.

Both Funny Cide and Tiz the Law had three races as a two-year-old in much different company. Funny Cide won all three: a New York-bred maiden race and a pair of New York-bred stakes. Tiz the Law won a maiden race and the G. 1 Champagne before finishing third in the G. 2 Kentucky Jockey Clubs Stakes.  

Tagg’s life partner/assistant trainer and exercise rider Robin Smullen, rode both horses: “Funny Cide was impossible to gallop, and by the time I started galloping him, he had holes on both sides of his mouth which bled every day, two holes from trying to run off. The ring bit put holes in the corners of his mouth.”

Tagg originally spotted Funny Cide in a yearling sale and wasn’t impressed: “I didn’t pay attention to him. I took one glance at him and didn’t like him.”

A year later, Tagg was watching Tony Everard train his young two-year-olds: “Then this horse comes barreling by me. It sounds very stupid, but it was the best thing I’d ever seen a horse do. Unbelievably fast. I just fell in love with him right away. I thought this horse ought to be a Derby horse. I know that sounds like a bunch of bull, but it’s the truth.”

It was Funny Cide. “He was so tough to ride,” Tagg said. “Robin had a division for me down at Delaware. I said, `I need you to come ride this horse.’ I got Robin to do everything for him. The rest is history.”

Tiz the Law was much easier to ride. Smullen said, “Tiz the Law was not a Funny Cide. When we were getting him ready for his maiden, we never breezed the horse fast. He had standard breezes of :48 and :49. At Saratoga one day, Mike Welsh (of the Daily Racing Form) called me and asked, `Did you really gallop this horse two miles today?’ I said, `Yeah.’ He said, `Well, there’s not too many people who work a horse two miles.’ And I said, `He likes it. He was very able to do it.’”

Smullen believes strongly in the way she and Tagg develop their young horses: “You have to warm them up well. You should never even think about galloping a horse until you’ve jogged a mile. If he can jog a mile every day, then you turn around and gallop. Even in their yearling year when you’re breaking them. You have to work them up so you don’t mess them up before you get to a race. It’s very important for bones and ligaments and tendons and the whole muscular structure.” 

Once they’re fit, they begin an arduous journey. The road to the Kentucky Derby is full of potholes and detours. “The Derby is the only time when a good horse gets beat 35, 40 lengths,” trainer Bob Baffert said. “I’ve seen great horses and great trainers get beat, not win it. You have to break well, take the kickback and get into rhythm.”

You can’t win it when you’re not in it, and Baffert is returning to the Kentucky Derby after a three-year suspension at Churchill Downs following the disqualification of what would have been his historic seventh Derby winner, Medina Spirit, for a failed drug test in 2021. 

Medina Spirit died in December that year when he collapsed after a workout. That didn’t make the Derby suspension any easier to deal with for Baffert: “I just blocked everything out. I figured I can’t go. I just said, `Hey, it’s not going to happen.’ It was just weird. I just focus on what’s ahead. I don’t look in the past.”

Baffert’s past in California traces back to legendary trainer Charlie Whittingham: “I watched Charlie Whittingham. He’d put a foundation into his horses before he’d run them. I put a pretty good foundation into them. It’s the way you breeze them.”

Baffert’s first Derby starter, Cavonnier, had six starts as a two-year-old and four as a three-year-old before the Derby: “I didn’t have a program then. Cavonnier took me there.”

When Cavonnier got there, he was confronted in deep stretch by D. Wayne Lukas’ colt Grindstone, beginning a rivalry still going on 30 years later between two trainers who have combined to win 10 Kentucky Derbies.

It took several agonizing minutes before Grindstone, who had drifted to the middle of the track, was declared the winner of an incredibly tight photo. “I thought he won,” Baffert said. “How do you run a mile and a quarter and lose by a nose? That was probably my worst defeat ever. I didn’t think I’d ever get back.”

Wrong. He won the next two Kentucky Derbies and Preakness Stakes with Silver Charm and Real Quiet. If Cavonnier had won that photo, Baffert would have won three straight Kentucky Derbies.

Despite Cavonnier’s narrow loss, Baffert changed his outlook on the Triple Crown: “I said that was a lot of fun. I’m going to change my program to be like Wayne Lukas. Cavonnier got me started. And people started sending me horses. Once I got a taste of it, I made my whole program like Lukas and Pletcher.”

When told of Baffert’s comment, Lukas said, “That’s an ultimate compliment from a guy that’s probably won more often than anybody.”

  Baffert won two Triple Crowns with American Pharoah in 2015 and Justify, who did not race as a two-year-old, but is still the only undefeated Triple Crown winner, in 2018. “I usually put a good bottom in them before I run them,” Baffert said. “If you get a horse like Justify, he was a big, strong, heavy horse. I sort of ran him into shape. By the Derby he was at his best.”

Lukas has been at his best for decades, winning his first Triple Crown race- the 1980 Preakness Stakes, with Codex and his latest 44 years later with Seize the Gray. He’s won four Kentucky Derbies with Winning Colors (1988), Thunder Gulch (1995), Grindstone (1996) and Charismatic (1999).

There are many avenues available for trainers to prep for the Kentucky Derby: through California, Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, Kentucky and New York. Each route offers qualifying points mandatory to get into the Kentucky Derby. “You have to get somewhere to get your points,” Tagg said. “Now, you have to be ready for the races that get you there.”

In the 1995 ‘Run for the Roses’, Lukas saddled three horses, with Timber Country and the filly Serena’s Song joining Thunder Gulch. Timber Country, who would win the Preakness Stakes, was one of the favorites and Thunder Gulch, sent off at 24-1. “I thought Timber Country was our best chance,” Lukas said. “We worked them that Monday and Donna Barton Brothers worked all three horses. She was an excellent work rider and was doing work on a lot of horses for me. Thunder Gulch was last, and when I picked her up on Thunder Gulch, I just casually said, `Well, you just had the best seat in the house. Which one’s our best chance?’ She said, `This one.’ I said, `Are you kidding?’ She said, `I like him the best.’”

When asked if he had changed anything about training horses for the Triple Crown, Lukas said, “I haven’t changed my philosophy at all on it, but I’ve noticed that some of my colleagues, the younger people, are a lot more conservative about the approach they’re taking.

“Back in the ‘50s and the ‘60s, Calumet, with all their success, always used the Derby Trial, which was one week away, as a prep. I paid attention to that a lot. Remember, the old Blue Grass was two weeks in front of the Derby, and it was one of the major preps. Now they keep moving the stakes back, like the Arkansas Derby. It had always been three weeks, now it’s five weeks. They move it back, I think, to appease the mindset of a lot of the younger trainers now. I particularly have found that most of my horses run better, horses that I have had really good success with, not necessarily winning but were competitive, ran within a month of the Derby. I used the Lexington a couple of times, and they ran well, maybe 10 days before the race.

“One of the things that I find in watching it for 50 years is, if Bob Baffert worked a horse in 1:12, the press would come over and tell everybody. A lot of these younger trainers will think, `Geez, maybe I better work my horse in 1:12.”

Lukas doesn’t: “I just think if you put good, stout gallops into them and build them up to the race, you’re better off. The reality is, if the horse is dead fit, his pedigree will either get them there or not. Strong, solid works and strong morning gallops are more instrumental. I think you put a solid bottom in them and get them into a good work pattern. Reading the horse is the hardest thing for the Derby.”

Deciding which route to get there is challenging. New York has a surprising trend. From 1930 to 2000, 11 winners of the mile-and-an-eighth Wood Memorial, now a Gr.2 stakes, won the Kentucky Derby, the last being Fusaichi Pegasus in 2000. Triple Crown winners Gallant Fox, Count Fleet, Assault, Secretariat (who finished third to his stable-mate Angle Light in 1973), all ventured to Aqueduct to compete in the Wood. From 2001 through 2024, the Wood winners haven’t added the Kentucky Derby to their resumes, though Empire Maker, Vino Rosso, Tacitus and Mo Donegal won other Gr.1 stakes.

However, another New York-bred Derby prep race, the Gr.2 Remsen Stakes for two-year-olds, annually run at Aqueduct in November after the Gr.1 Breeders’ Cup, has become an important stepping stone to future success. 

Catholic Boy, the 2017 Remsen winner in a rout, returned at three to win the 2018 Travers by daylight. Mo Donegal (2021) won the 2022 Belmont Stakes. In the 2023 Remsen, Dornoch nosed Sierra Leone. Dornoch subsequently won the 2024 Belmont Stakes and the Haskell. Sierra Leone won the Blue Grass, finished second by a nose in the 2024 Kentucky Derby and won the Breeders’ Cup Classic.

Dornoch’s trainer, Danny Gargan, won the 2022 Remsen with Dubyuhnell, and chose the 2023 Remsen for Dornoch. He relished the Remsen distance of a mile-and-an-eighth: “That’s why we picked it. We always knew the further the distance the better for him. We wanted to get a two-turn race into him. You never knew going in that Sierra Leone was going to be in there. It became a key race. Both of them are multiple Grade 1 winners. One of them won the Breeders’ Cup Classic and the other won the Belmont. So it was a key race.”

Gargan appreciates the Aqueduct surface: “I’ve won the Remsen a couple of times. Aqueduct is a deep, demanding track, and it takes a fit, strong horse to be able to get that distance on that track. I think it’s beneficial if you want to get to the Derby to have a horse that can go that far. That’s the longest two-year-old race of the year. I think it helps them. There’s been some nice horses win the race the last few years. Everybody wants to say it’s not a key race, but it sure has been the last three or four years. People can say what they want, but it brings out the true distance horse. It’s all timing when you train these horses. You have to be lucky enough to have a horse that can go that far at that time.”

Though he trains in California, Eoin Harty thought the Remsen made a lot of sense for his two-year-old Poster last year. He’d won his first two starts on grass, a maiden race at Ellis Park and an allowance race at Keeneland in his first two career starts: “It was a good opportunity to see and find out whether he was capable of running on dirt. He’s a big angular horse. He’s been like that since Day One. That’s why I stretched him to a mile on the turf first time out.”

He said putting a bottom in a horse is important, but doesn’t guarantee success in longer races: “You could get an average horse, and you can put all the bottom in the world into him and he’d barely get a foot over six furlongs. It’s important, but by the time most trainers, myself included, get their hands on these horses, that baseline has been put up there. We all get these horses around the same time, usually May of the two-year-old year. And by then, it’s too late. It’s usually something I just don’t have to worry about.”

He didn’t worry about it in the 2024 Remsen. With Flavian Prat in the saddle for the first time, Poster won the Remsen by a nose. In his three-year-old debut in the mile and a sixteenth Sam F. Davis at Tampa Bay Downs, Poster got away last in the field of 10 and rallied wide to finish third by 2 ¾ lengths to John Hancock.

Harty thinks Poster will make the Derby’s mile-and-a-quarter distance if he’s given that opportunity: “I predict that he can make it, but he’s going to have to prove to me that he can make it. I mean, if, by the grace of God, I get into the starting gate on Derby Day, his ability to make a mile and a quarter won’t be a question for me. It’s up to me to have him fit to go a mile and a quarter. At some points, genetics take over. The horse will get home on his own. I think he’s the kind of horse that will go a mile and a quarter for sure.”

State Incentives 2025 - The different state incentives for owners and breeders across North America

Words - Ken Snyder

There’s an old saying, “the more things change, the more they are the same.”  “Same,” in the case of Thoroughbred breeding, might actually be desirable, as in a leveling off of declining foal crops and short fields not getting any shorter. 

“Change” is borderline cataclysmic. To wit, the possibility of decoupling racing at Gulfstream Park from the casino poses an existential threat to the racetrack, and dark clouds are beginning to loom over Santa Anita that’s not coming from the recent fires.

Still, the industry soldiers on. 

It’s ironic that Kentucky, the hub of the Thoroughbred industry in North America, prospers with record-high purses and full to overflowing fields. 

On the positive side for breeders and the industry as a whole, sale prices increased over 2023 in the weanling, yearling and broodmare divisions. 

Keeneland’s September Yearling Sale, one major barometer of industry health, broke a cumulative sales record on the 10-day mark with sales topping $405 million, beating the prior record set in 2022. 

Total yearling sales receipts across North America increased by just over 4% year on year with an average price also increasing just over 6% above ’23 averages. With an inflation rate of 2.89% at time of writing (down from the astronomical 9.06% in 2022) breeders could actually spend some of their sales revenues.

Naysayers, however, might snidely ask horse purchasers, “Where ya’ gonna’ race ‘em?”

The answer is states where racing venues operate with breeding incentives, thank you very much. For that matter, one of the states —New York– will boost state-bred incentives by 15% in 2027 in time for renovated Belmont Park. That would be 15% of $42.8 million (the total for 2024 New York-bred races) or a cool $6.4 million in 2027. 

It seems, by the way, New York breeders are ahead of NYRA. The state actually experienced a foal crop increase from 1,446 to 1,524 at time of writing with full results not yet in… one of the few states with a plus number last year.

Also in the plus column is Pennsylvania. Foals numbers are projected to remain the same through 2023 to 2024. But with ten new stallions to hit the breeding sheds this year, including 2022 Kentucky Derby-winner Rich Strike, that number will likely increase in years to come. Rich Strike is one of approximately 45 stallions standing in Pennsylvania, according to Brian Sanfrantello, executive secretary of the Pennsylvania Horse Breeders Association.

The Keystone State might be the best place for breeding awards east of Kentucky. Last year, Warriors Reward topped stallion standings with $199,664. Add breeder totals to that and you have $927,518. 

Speaking of Kentucky, there was $58.1 million last year in Owners’ Awards, but no stallion owners’ awards. But Kentucky has the Kentucky Thoroughbred Breeders’ Incentive Fund (KBIF). Awards since the fund’s inception in 2005 total over $200 million for winning eligible races. 

The KBIF also solves a mystery for most racegoers in the Commonwealth in racing programs. It is common to see purse money added to by the “Kentucky Thoroughbred Development Fund.” That money comes from a 6% sales tax on breeding to a Kentucky stallion.

Peripheral but important to many small breeders in Kentucky for the coming season has been both Spendthrift Farm and Taylor Made Stallions cutting fees for six stallions and seven stallions respectively. 

In total, fee reductions for thirteen damn good stallions went from a total of $205,000 last year to $124,750 in 2025. The cuts enable a wider market of breeders to pass through Spendthrift’s gates and might generate new blood in the sport.

In Florida the absence of a state income tax carries over to horse breeding. Unlike Kentucky, there is no tax on stallion seasons spending; horses purchased from an original breeder are sales-tax exempt; there is no personal state income or individual capital gains tax; and feed/animal health items are tax exempt. 

The incentives require a journey into the proverbial weeds with different awards for Gulfstream and Tampa Bay Downs--some bonuses for a maiden special weight and allowance races but not handicap races; a percentage of a gross purse for winning a Black-Type stakes race; and bonuses on open overnight races. 

The incentives vary between Gulfstream and Tampa. Suffice to say, according to the FTOBA’s website, Florida breeds - "Registered Florida Stallions”-- are eligible for “purse and race incentives plus the $1.2 million 2-year-old stakes series at Gulfstream Park.”

My guess is the trainer, jockey, and maybe even some owners just wait till they get their check from a track’s payroll clerk to know what they won.

Louisiana is much simpler. A horse sired by a Louisiana stallion and foaled in the state who finishes first, second or third at a Louisiana track earns a 25% award. (Purses with this award structure are capped at $200,000.) A horse sired out of state but foaled in Louisiana earns 20% for first, second, and third if the race is within the state. A “non-resident” filly or mare, can earn an award of 10% if sired by a Louisiana stallion and racing in the state. It’s win, place, and show for these horses, too. The smallest award is 9% to resident and non-resident mares sired by out-of-state stallions. This includes mares bred back to an out-of-state stallion.

Arkansas might be the easiest incentive program to understand. Stallion awards are to an owner of an Arkansas-bred stallion for first through fourth place for any race in North America. Awards are “calculated on the earnings of 1st through 4th place finishes.” 

California’s breeding awards are not complicated but vary by race condition and purse size. It’s pretty straightforward (unlike the Kentucky Thoroughbred Breeders’ Incentive Fund) and is available in the state-by-state breakdown of incentives.

Going Global

Words - Bill Heller

Finally, after American horses shed race-day medication in graded stakes, international racing is becoming a two-way street. Not only are horses from around the world testing our richest races, but American horses, who annually compete in Dubai and Saudi Arabia’s marquis races, are now earning entrance into Royal Ascot and Australia. Drew Fleming, the president and CEO of the Breeders’ Cup, said, “Racing, as a whole, is becoming more international by the second.”

Sure seemed that way this summer.

In the span of 18 days, Fleming addressed the 40th annual Asian Racing Conference; a British invader captured the richest race at Kentucky Downs to earn a spot in a $5 million stakes in Australia; Hong Kong simulcast three stakes from Del Mar; four massive purses at Kentucky Downs attracted horses bred in Japan, Ireland, Germany and France; two stakes winners in South Korea qualified for the Breeders’ Cup, and four Grade 1 stakes at Woodbine attracted seven horses bred in Ireland, and one each from England, France and Brazil.

“I think the opportunities are fantastic,” trainer Graham Motion said. “I love international racing. That’s what makes the Breeders’ Cup so special. It wouldn’t be so special if it wasn’t for the international participation. Whether it’s us going there or them coming here, it’s what makes racing interesting for a fan, for a bettor, for everybody.”

Speaking at the 40th annual Asian Racing Conference in Sapporo, Japan, August 28th, Fleming, who is also on the council of the International Federation of Horse Racing Authorities, said, “The more eyes we have on our sport, the better we all are.”

Back home a week later, Fleming told us, “The implementation of national uniform medication has brought U.S. racing in line with the international jurisdictions and standards, and that has significantly improved the global perception of our sport. Frankly, that improved perception and integrity is supported by increased participation. We’ve seen increased trust and interest among international participants and audiences.”

Just three days later, British trained, Bellum Justum won the Gr. 1 $3.1 million Nashville Derby Invitational at Kentucky Derby by 2 ¼ lengths to earn a qualifying spot in the Gr. 1 $5 million Ladbrokes Cox Plate on October 26th in Australia. 

“This is going to be a massive win back home,” said Adrian Beaumont, who recruits horses to run at Kentucky Downs and other tracks for the International Racing Bureau in Newmarket as well as helping U.S. horses when they ship to Europe. “Hopefully it will open the floodgates for more coming here next year with horses as good as this – or better.”

Beaumont, 62, has done everything he can to foster international racing. He’s been representing the IRB for 40 years. He’s been working with the Breeders’ Cup since its inception in 1984, the New York Racing Association since 1985, Colonial Downs and other tracks. 

          His job became infinitely easier when race-day medication was stopped in graded stakes in the U.S. four years ago. “America was the only country that allowed it,” Beaumont said. “It was out of step with racing around the world. We were always astounded by it, particularly in graded stakes, which were going to produce the breeding stock of the future. It puts all the international horses who come to America on level footing.”

He took great delight in Bellum Justum’s victory in the Nashville Derby Invitational, convincing his trainer, Andrew Balding, to make the trip: “I persuaded him to run the horse.”     

The horse who finished second in the Nashville Derby Invitational, Carson’s Run, had already earned a starting spot in the Cox Plate by winning the Saratoga Gold Cup in the second year of a partnership between the New York Racing Association and the Moonee Valley Racing Club in Melbourne.

The Saratoga Gold Cup was first run in 2019. In 2021, Joseph O’Brien became the first trainer to win both the Saratoga Gold Cup and the Cox Plate with Irish-bred State of Rest.

But Carson’s Run is staying state-side. “The reason we are passing on Australia is that there’s a major question mark on the shipping and a major question on the quarantine,” trainer Christophe Clement said. “There are too many things we can’t control. We do have good races here.”

Regardless, he is appreciative of the opportunity, one which only happened after race-day medication in graded stakes was eliminated: “We’re all competing in the world with the same rules or close to being the same rules, and that’s wonderful. That’s the way it should be.” 

Across the country from Kentucky Downs on August 31st, Hong Kong simulcast three Del Mar Stakes, the Pacific Classic, the Green Flash and the Del Mar Mile. 

           “That wouldn’t have been possible if North America hadn’t fallen in line with the international standard where graded stakes had to be medication-free,” Bill Nader, the president and CEO of Thoroughbred Owners of California said. Previously, Nader had been Hong Kong Executive Director of Racing from 2007 through 2022. 

          “It’s very unusual for Hong Kong to simulcast races from America. This is a breakthrough. When I arrived in Hong Kong in 2007, I soon realized the perception of American racing suffered from the permissible use of medication on race day. America was seen as a racing and breeding nation that fell short of the standards of Europe and Asia.”

Speaking at the September 3rd OwnerView Thoroughbred Owner Conference focusing on international buying and racing, Garrett O’Rourke, the general manager of Juddmonte Farms, said the playing field is more level around the world now. 

On September 7th, the massive purses of four turf stakes at Kentucky Downs attracted horses bred in Japan, Ireland, Germany and France, including two horses who made their last start in England and two more in Ireland.

The very next day a world away in Seoul, South Korea, two horses, Crown Pride and Remake, won the Gr.3 $1.2 million OBS Korea Cup and the Gr. 3 $1 million OBS Korea Sprint to earn berths in the Gr. 1 $1 million Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile and the $2 million Gr. 1 Breeders’ Cup Sprint as two of the Breeders’ Cup 82 “Win and You’re In” qualifiers. This was a first for Korea.

“We’ve had great success in Japan and the Japanese have been long supporters of the Breeders’ Cup,” Fleming said. “They’re very loyal nominators and supporters of running horses in our races and in wagering. The natural next step was Korea. They have a strong dirt program, and we thought it was a nice step to continue to grow the international brand.”

On September 14th at Woodbine, four Grade 1 stakes attracted horses bred in Ireland – seven of them – England, France and Brazil. There were three horses who made their previous start in England, three in France and two in Ireland.

It’s been 107 years since the English colt Omar Khayyam became the first international horse to win the Kentucky Derby. There haven’t been many. In 1971, Venezuelan sensation Canonero II won the Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes. Two other international Kentucky Derby winners were Canadian-bred Northern Dancer in 1964 and Sunny’s Halo in 1983.

In 2017, Kentucky Derby officials began offering point-earning qualifying races in Japan, Ireland, Great Britain and France. In 2023-24, there were four stakes in Japan and seven in Europe granting the winner with Derby points.

Forever Young nearly became the first Japanese horse to win the Kentucky Derby this year, beaten just two noses when third behind Mystik Dan and Sierra Leone, who bore into Forever Young throughout the stretch. The stewards did not make an inquiry and there was no jockey objection, but it was an obvious foul which should have moved Forever Young into second. If he hadn’t been bothered, Forever Young might have won. Forever Young will lead a group of 18 Japanese horses entered in this year’s Breeders’ Cup.

Four graded stakes on Kentucky Oaks Day and Derby Day offered their winners a trip to Europe to compete in Group 1 stakes. “We definitely want American horses over here,” Beaumont said. “There’s an appetite.”

On Oaks Day May 3rd, Dynamic Pricing, trained by Chad Brown, captured the Gr. 2 Edgewood Stakes, but his connections turned down a berth in The Oaks at Epsom Downs on May 31st. 

The following day, Trikari, a 47-1 longshot trained by Graham Motion, won the Gr. 2 American Turf Stakes, earning a spot in The Derby at Epsom Downs June 1st. “It just didn’t really work,” Motion said. “It was just too quick to wheel a somewhat lightly-raced three-year-old back in a month going a mile and a half at Epsom. It would have been a huge undertaking. But I admire the idea, and I think it's tremendous.”

A month and two days later, another Motion-trained horse, the five-year-old gelding The Grey Wizard, won the two-mile Gr. 2 Belmont Gold Cup Invitational in track-record time. That earned him a start in the Gr. 1 $5 million Melbourne Cup on November 5th. Before Motion and the horses owners, Albert Frassetto and Eclipse Thoroughbred Partners, decided whether or not to go to Australia, The Grey Wizard won the $200,000 Cape Henlopen Stakes at Delaware Handicap August 21st. He then finished second in the Nashville Gold Cup at Kentucky Downs on September 13th. 

“We strongly considered Australia, but there were no incentives,” Motion said. “It was purely a spot in the race. It’s an extremely expensive undertaking and I think had he won the race at Kentucky Downs, we might have tried. But it’s a huge ask to do that. He would have had to leave for England to quarantine the last week of September. That’s how hard it is to do that.”

Two more Derby Day stakes winners on May 4th also declined to go to Europe: Cogburn, winner of the Gr. 2 Twin Spires Turf Sprint Stakes for trainer Steve Asmussen, turned down a berth in the Gp.1 King Charles III Stakes at Royal Ascot. Program Trading, the winner of the Gr. 1 Turf Classic trained by Chad Brown, turned down a trip to Royal Ascot in either the Gp.1 Queen Anne Stakes or the Gp.1 Prince of Wales’s on June 18th and 19th, respectively.

Of course, trainers Wesley Ward, Mark Casse and George Weaver list victories at Royal Ascot as career highlights. Ward, who became the first American-based trainer to win at Royal Ascot when 33-1 Strike the Tiger captured the Windsor Castle Stakes in 2009. It was the first of Ward’s 12 victories at the famed meet, including Undrafted, whose score in the 2015 Gp. 1 Diamond Jubilee, made Ward the first American trainer to win a Gp. 1 stakes at the famed track, and two by Lady Aurelia, the 2016 Gp. 2 Queen Mary and the 2017 Gp.1 King’s Stand.

Casse’s Tepin took the 2016 Gp.1 Queen Anne at Royal Ascot on the way to her second consecutive Eclipse Award as Champion Female Turf Horse.

Weaver joined Ward and Casse as Royal Ascot stakes-winning American trainers.  

“Thanks to Wesley Ward, the word has spread about what a fabulous place it is to race,” Weaver said. “It is certainly in the highlight reel of my career.”

Weaver lost with his first Royal Ascot starter in 2015, but got a second chance thanks to the 2023 agreement between 1/ST Racing’s Gulfstream Park and Royal Ascot Racecourse to make two $100,000 Gulfstream Park stakes, the Royal Palm Juvenile and the Royal Palm Juvenile Fillies, qualifiers for two Royal Ascot Stakes including a $25,000 equine travel stipend. It was the first time U.S. horses earned automatic qualifiers for stakes races at Royal Ascot.

Weaver won both Royal Palm Stakes and didn’t hesitate to ship both, Crimson Advocate and No Nay Mets across the Atlantic. “There wasn’t a reason not to go,” Weaver said.

Crimson Advocate won the 2023 Gp.2 Queen Mary Stakes by a nose, a day before No Nay Mets finished ninth in the Gp.2 Norfolk Stakes. 

Weaver had travel experience earlier in his career when his Saratoga Country won the $2 million Golden Shaheen in Dubai in 2005. “To travel so far for a race, it’s exciting,” Weaver said. “You’re going to a new place. There are logistics. There are a lot of hoops to jump through. It’s worth it. It’s the experience of a lifetime, even if you get beat.”

Marsha Naify, Little Red Feather Racing and Sterling Stables’ Gold Phoenix won the Gr. 1 Charles Whittingham Stakes at Santa Anita May 4th, but declined to participate in the Gp.1 Coral Eclipse Stakes at Sandown Park, July 6th, instead focusing on his third trip to the Breeders’ Cup Turf. He was a troubled seventh in the Gr. 2 Eddie Read Handicap; gamely won the Gr. 2 Del Mar Handicap for the third consecutive year and finished fifth in the Gr. 2 John Henry Turf Classic.

On May 18th at Pimlico, Richard Santulli’s Colts Neck Stables LLC’s Grooms All Bizness took the Jim McKay Stakes for trainer Jorge Duarte, Jr., but declined a trip to the Gp.1 Darley July Cup at Newmarket July 13th.

American horses have been heavily involved in racing in Dubai and Saudi Arabia. In 1996, Allen Paulson’s brilliant two-time Horse of the Year Cigar held off Burt Bacharach’s Soul of the Matter by a half-length to capture the first World Cup in Dubai. Ten other American winners followed: Silver Charm, Captain Steve, Roses in May, Invasor (though he was bred in Argentina), Curlin, Animal Kingdom, California Chrome, Arrogate, Mystic Guide and Country Grammar.

Many American horses have won the $2 million Golden Shaheen in Dubai, including repeat winners Caller One and Mind Your Biscuits.

Next year’s $12 million Dubai World Cup is on April 5th.

The $20 million Saudi Cup will precede the Dubai World Cup on February 24th next year. American horses have thrived there. Maximum Security won the inaugural Saudi Cup in 2020, but was stripped of the victory four years later for drug infractions, moving up Midnight Bisou. Emblem Royal won the Saudi Cup in 2022 and Senor Buscador in 2024.  

Forty years ago, Robert Sangster’s Irish-bred Royal Heroine and HH Aga Khan’s British-bred Lashkari won the Breeders’ Cup Mile and the Turf, two of the seven races comprising the inaugural Breeders’ Cup in 1984 at Hollywood Park.

What a difference 40 years make. 

This year’s Breeders’ Cup offers 14 races with horses literally from all over the world competing, all without Lasix, which was banned from the Breeders’ Cup in 2021. Breeders’ Cup Win and You’re In qualifiers were offered in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, England, France, Ireland, Japan, Peru, South Africa and South Korea.

“One of the most important things of the Breeders’ Cup is internationalism,” Breeders’ Cup’s Fleming said. “We seek the best horses and also work with our global partners to promote the sport internationally and have strong international wagering.

“We had 42 international starters at Santa Anita last year, which shows none of this would be possible without our nominators from around the globe. We’re truly a global company and their support is most appreciated. With the Breeders’ Cup, it’s an honor to work with other racing jurisdictions around the globe to continue to move our sport forward. Last year, Japan wagered on four Breeders’ Cup races. Hong Kong wagered on two. We had an aggregate of approximately $25 million from those two countries alone. Our total handle over the two days was $210 million.

“So we continue to expand the Breeders’ Cup Challenge Series. It’s pretty simple: win and you’re in. It was introduced to enable and incentivize top-performing Thoroughbreds from around the world to qualify and compete in the World Championships and it also keeps fans engaged year-round. This year, we’re proud to offer 82 Challenge Series races.”

The perks of Win and You’re In are substantial, including covering entry fees and travel expenses of $10,000 for North American horses outside of California (because the 2024 Breeders’ Cup is in California), and $40,000 for horses outside North America. 

Last year, 42 Breeders’ Cup Win and You’re In horses raced in the Breeders’ Cup, and eight of them won: White Abarrio (Classic), Auguste Rodin (Turf), Idiomatic (Distaff), Cody’s Wish (Dirt Mile), Master of the Seas (Mile), Inspiral (Filly & Mare Turf), Just FYI (Juvenile Fillies) and Hard to Justify (Juvenile Fillies Turf). Auguste Rodin and Master of the Seas were bred in Ireland and Inspiral in England.

International racing indeed.

“We’re in a much better place than we were 15 years ago,” said Kentucky State Senate Majority Floor Leader Damon Thayer, a longtime advocate of horse racing who once worked for the Breeders’ Cup in marketing. “We’re seeing more horses and horsemen traveling internationally with the right kind of horses to try to win big purses in the States. Coolmore and Godolphin are just as aggressive as always, maybe more so. Coolmore had horses running at Kentucky Downs for the first time. We saw Charlie Appleby bring a whole string to Kentucky (and Saratoga) to attack, and he’s been very successful. He chose the right kind of horses.”

One of the most intriguing Europeans to race in America was Toast of New York, he was trained by former jockey Jamie Osborne. Bred in Kentucky and owned by a sporting Englishman in Michael Buckley. 

Toast of New York began his career in England. After two victories by 12 and 16 lengths, he won the Gr. 2 UAE Derby by 2 ¼ lengths. He made his next six starts in America, finishing sixth in the Gr. 1 Belmont Derby, second to Shared Belief in the Gr. 1 Pacific Classic and second by a nose to Bayern in the 2014 Gr. 1 Breeders’ Cup Classic in his first career start on dirt. An inquiry revealed that Bayern had made a left-hand turn out of the starting gate, wiping out three contenders including Shared Belief, but the stewards let the result stand. “A disqualification would have been nice, but I’m over it,” Osborne said. 

In preparation for a start in the 2015 Dubai World Cup, Toast of New York suffered a tear in a tendon. Though it was a slight tear, he was retired. More than two years later, he was un-retired. His tendon had healed. Sent back to Osborne, Toast of New York won an allowance race by one length at Lingfield in England as the 2-1 favorite though he hadn’t raced in more than three years.

Shipped back to the U.S., Toast of New York finished 12th in the Pegasus World Cup to Gun Runner. Toast of New York rebounded to finish second in the Grade 3 Lukas Classic and a distant fourth in the Grade 2 Marathon Stakes. Shipped back to England, he finished third by a neck in an allowance race and was retired for good.

“A big part of being a trainer is managing a horse’s career.” Osborne said.

If that means racing in America or in Dubai, go for it.

“We’ve been going to Dubai with a few good horses,” Osborne continued. “They have great prize money, and it’s a time of the year when UK racing isn’t very attractive.”

International racing has never been more attractive or more available. On opposite coasts September 28th, seven of the 11 starters in the Gr. 2 John Henry Turf Classic at Santa Anita were bred in foreign countries: three, including Gold Phoenix, from Ireland and one each from Argentina, Chile, France and Great Britain. In New York, undefeated Chilian Triple Crown winner Kay Army was entered in the Gr. 2 Woodward, but scratched. Five races later, Chilean-bred Mufasa made his third start in the U.S. a memorable one, capturing the Gr. 3 Vosburgh. 

           Traffic is flowing in both directions.   

TOC’s Bill Nader put it simply: “Doors that were closed for many years are now open.”

PA-Breds Shine on 23rd Annual Pennsylvania’s Day at the Races

The 23rd annual Pennsylvania’s Day at the Races took place at Parx Racing on Monday, August 26. Hundreds of breeders attended the luncheon and enjoyed a variety of raffles, including a John Deere Zero-Turn Mower donated by NTRA, and a card featuring some of the best Pennsylvania-breds in training. FanDuel was on site for the 11-race card, and race-calling icon Larry Collmus provided picks and interviews throughout the day.

Maiden special weights featured purses of $65,000, while allowances touted $70,000 and stakes events stood at $100,000, for a total of $870,000 in purses.

Two-year-old fillies kicked off the card in a 5½-furlong event. A field of 10 entered the gate, and the wagering landed on first-time starter Anabam as the 3-2 favorite. Shipping in from Penn National for trainer Todd Beattie, Anabam skipped to the front and never looked back, drawing away to a 6¾-length victory.

The daughter of Weigelia was bred by Dr. Stephen Morrone, Dan Kimball and John Spendolini out of the Disco Rico mare Moonstone Beach. Owned by Morrone and Kimball, she’s a half-sister to stakes-placed $246,546-earner Dr. Steve (by Jump Start). Hopeforgreatness and Vivi Rose completed the tri.

Eight maidens, 3 and up, lined up for the second race, restricted to PA-Sired, PA-Bred runners. Traveling 6 furlongs, 14-1 longshot Uncle Winchester took over approaching the quarter pole and opened up a 3-length lead that would hold safe to the wire. It was the third start, following two runner-up finishes at Delaware Park, for the 3-year-old son of Uncle Lino. The Michael Catalano Jr. trainee was bred by Clyde W. Martin Jr. and purchased for $4,500 by John Julia at the 2022 Fasig-Tipton Midlantic Fall Yearling Sale. He’s a half-brother to stakes winners You Need Me and Mollys Missb’havin and was the first winner for owner Katie DeCanzio. Addyson’s Dream was second while Prince of Chill checked in third.

The third race was a 1 mile and 70-yard allowance race. Even-money favorite In Spades dueled through the early lead before opening up at the top of the stretch and holding sway for a 4¼-length win over Warrior’s Vendetta and Check My Six. The 4-year-old son of Peace and Justice was bred by Steve Young’s A1A Racing and is owned and trained by Felissa Dunn. It was his fifth victory from 19 starts.

Ten maiden fillies and mares, 3 and up, competed at 7 furlongs in the fourth race. Eleventh time was the charm for 10-1 shot Mikey’s Song. Sitting eighth in the early going, the daughter of Exaggerator moved up along the inside around the turn to get within 2½ lengths of even-money favorite Beautifulcrazygirl. Continuing to rally strongly up the rail, she snagged her foe in the final strides to post a neck upset victory. Trained by Melecio Guerrero and owned by Price of Entry LLC, the 3-year-old was bred by Victoria M. Herlinger and purchased for $24,000 as a yearling at Timonium. 

The fifth race saw eight colts and geldings, 3 and up, cover 6½ furlongs. Kohler’s, the 7-10 favorite, broke last from the gate but quickly rushed up inside of horses to sit just behind the early pacesetters. He took command once the field turned into the stretch and, while wandering about, ultimately held off longshot Humble Joe for a three-quarter-length victory. The 3-year-old colt by Bandbox is a homebred for SMD Ltd./Avalon Racing Stables and a stakes-placed half-brother to their stakes-placed runners Miss Avalon and Seventeenohsix. 

Two-year-old colts and geldings traveled 5½ furlongs in the final maiden race on the card. Half of the eight to face the starter were making their debuts, and the money was smart in installing one of those, Dansk, the slight post time favorite at 5-2. Tracking just off the early pace, the son of Uptowncharlybrown took command turning for home and pulled clear to an easy 4¼-length win over another first-time starter, Smile Maker, with Dr. Lou third. Sent out by trainer Mike Pino, the colt is a homebred for Smart Angle LLP. 

Stakes action kicked off in the seventh race with the $100,000 Marshall Jenney Handicap at 5 furlongs. Moved from the turf to the main track, the field featured five entrants. With three horses vying for favoritism, lost in the shuffle was 9-year-old Smooth B, winner of the Marshall Jenney the last time the race came off the grass in 2022. Joined in a three-way duel for the early lead, Smooth B slipped past Traders Luck along the rail and drew off to win by 3½ lengths at odds of 7-1. 

The son of Weigelia is out of St. Omer’s Farm’s brilliant broodmare Katarica Disco (by Disco Rico). Bred by St. Omer’s and WynOaks Farm and owned by LC Racing, Smooth B boasts earnings of $893,447 with 11 wins, 13 seconds and nine thirds in 61 starts. Traders Luck held second over charging longshot Keithsendshelloooo.

PA-Sired, PA-Bred runners, 3 and up, were featured in the Jump Start Stakes going 7 furlongs, and a strong field of six lined up. Ninetyprcentmaddie took heavy money off his strong graded stakes showings in New York, with Gordian Knot a clear second choice in the wagering. Defending champion Veeson dueled through early fractions alongside 2023 PA Nursery winner Capo, while Gordian Knot tracked in the clear before sweeping past the vying pair in the final furlong. 

The 4-year-old gelding hit the wire 1¼ lengths in front while Capo held second over Veeson. Ninetyprcentmaddie was fifth, beaten eight lengths. It was the first win of the year for Gordian Knot, a son of Social Inclusion who now boasts stakes wins at ages 2, 3 and 4. A homebred for Joe Imbesi, Gordian Knot now features seven wins and four thirds in 14 starts for earnings of $529,730.

The Storm Cat Stakes squared off a field of six over a mile and 70 yards. With a hot and contested early pace of :23.29 and :47.03 being laid down on the front end between favored Movisitor and Windsor Gold, 5-2 second choice Irish Cork was content to trail in last, six lengths off the lead. Margin of Air got the jump on the frontrunners and opened a 2- length lead at the top of the stretch, but Irish Cork and rider Frankie Pennington chugged along up the rail to collar the leader. 

The gray pulled away to a 2½-length win over Margin of Air, while Market Maven checked in third. A 7-year-old son of Flat Out, Irish Cork was making his 41st career start and posted his first ever stakes victory for trainer John Servis and owners Irish Three Racing LLC. Bred by Two-Turn Farm LLC, Irish Cork was a $15,000 weanling purchase at Keeneland November in 2017. His record now stands at eight wins, 11 seconds and eight thirds in 41 starts and earnings of $530,222.

While the Mrs. Penny Stakes was reduced to six when coming off the turf, it allowed the opportunity for Morning Matcha to run as a main track only entrant. With earnings standing at over $970,000, a victory would anoint the 5-year-old mare as racing’s newest millionaire. A heavy 2-5 favorite in the 1 1/16-mile event, Morning Matcha tracked 6 lengths back in fifth before dropping to the rail and blowing past the leaders. Quickly opening up 4 lengths at the top of the stretch, she drew away under her own power for a dominate 11¾-length score to become a millionaire in style. Mia Tosca held off re-rallying frontrunner Nature’s Candy by a head for second. 

It was the fifth career stakes victory for Morning Matcha, whose record now boasts eight wins, seven seconds and seven thirds and earnings of $1,029,940. Bred by Clovis and Joanna Crane’s Crane Thoroughbred Services LLC, she was an $18,000 yearling purchase for LC Racing at the 2020 Fasig-Tipton Midlantic Fall Yearling Sale. Owned by LC Racing, Cash is King, and Gary Barber and trained by Butch Reid, Morning Matcha is the 34th Pennsylvania-bred to earn over a million dollars on the racetrack.

The 11th and final race was a 6½-furlong allowance for fillies and mares. A field of 11 faced the gate and a wicked early pace resulted in a pace meltdown. Confirmed Star, the 5-2 second choice, settled 7 lengths back in ninth down the backstretch before commencing a strong, but wide, rally around the turn. Meanwhile, favored Flamingo Way was moving up along the rail. Confirmed Star and Flamingo Way emerged the two leaders as they turned for home, dueling through the stretch before Confirmed Star started to inch clear. The 4-year-old daughter of Uptowncharlybrown owned by Cash is King LLC and LC Racing LLC ended up a half-length in front of Flamingo Way at the wire, who in turn held off the fast-closing 64-1 longest shot Pachelbel for second. 

Confirmed Star was bred by Uptowncharlybrown Stud LLC and is a full sister to stakes winner Oxana. She was a $32,000 Fasig-Tipton Midlantic May 2-year-old purchase by LC Racing and now has been first, second or third in 10 of her 12 starts.

A total of $2,633,466 was handled on the card. A big thank you to Parx Racing and the PTHA for helping the PHBA conduct another successful PA Day at the Races!

What would you do to make California racing great again? We canvas a cross section of opinions from those involved in racing and breeding in the Golden State

Words - John Cherwa

There is no doubt that horse racing in California is at a crossroads.

The closure of Golden Gate Fields in June signaled the possible end of full-time racing in the Northern part of the state. There is a long-shot plan to keep it alive at Pleasanton, but not everyone in the business is routing for success.

In the South, Santa Anita is still only racing three days a week and field sizes are not always impressive. Purses are not competitive with the rest of the country. The track sits on a piece of land in Arcadia that is worth at least $1 billion, so does it really make sense to run a few days a week for half the year? 

So, what are the views of those deeply involved in California racing on a day-to-day basis as a way forward? 

What follows is a question and answer session with prominent executives, trainers, owners and breeders. There are disagreements and obvious animosity. Although everyone interviewed has the same goal, keep racing in California alive. The solution to problems facing the most populous state in the country, might just be in here.

The answers to the questions we posed have been edited for clarity, brevity and to avoid too much repetition.

Can a one-circuit system (in the South) work?

Aidan Butler, chief executive 1ST/ Racing and Gaming: Absolutely. California is a huge betting state and it’s not just the horse population or purse disparities that separate us from other states that get additional revenue. There is a huge cost of running an operation that is an obstacle. So, putting all of the resources and effort into one area is the only way to go.

Alan Balch, executive director California Thoroughbred Trainers: It's highly doubtful, given that California is now more an "island" than at any time in at least 50 years.  There's very little chance of alternate circuits (Arizona, Washington) serving as viable or sustainable racing destinations for California breeders.  Successful Northern California racing was an integral and vital, if unsung, component of world-class California racing from the 1960s onward.

Bing Bush, equine attorney and owner: That’s to be determined but it’s difficult to envision that. I happened to be at Golden Gate Fields on the last day, I saw a lot of horsemen walking around in a very full grandstand, all thinking the same thing: “I wish all of these people were here during our days and then we wouldn’t be closing down.” I don’t see how Santa Anita hopes to fill that gap. It’s going to be a real challenge I hope we can meet. I’m hopeful but very concerned.

Phil D’Amato, a leading trainer at Santa Anita: I definitely think so. For me, we have the horses, we have the population. I just think we need to improve our purse infrastructure. When you get more money, people will come and owners will be more willing to put horses in the California racing system. 

Greg Ferraro, chairman California Horse Racing Board: Yes, I think it can. The problem is we don’t have enough horses, plain and simple. We’ll see how they do in Northern California with the dates we awarded them. I’m hopeful for them but I’m not optimistic. I’m worried that we don’t have enough horses for two circuits. Consolidating everything in Southern California may be the only way we can survive.

Eoin Harty, trainer and president of California Thoroughbred Trainers: If certain powers have their way, we’re going to find out. Personally, I don’t think so. The whole business hinges on breeding. The largest part of the horse population in California is Cal-breds and they don’t all belong in Southern California. If they don’t have a venue to run at, what’s the point in breeding them? And if you don’t start breeding them, where does the horse population come from? The economic impact on the state is huge. If we lose that, the fall is catastrophic.

Justin Oldfield, owner/breeder and chairperson of the California Thoroughbred Breeders Assn.: I think there was a misinterpretation of what a one-circuit system means. A one-circuit system is not defined by fulltime racing in the South and summer fair racing in the North. That is not the definition of a one-circuit system. I think what people mean is a one-circuit system that includes Los Al, Santa Anita and Del Mar and does not include the fairs. The fairs garner a lot more representation from the Legislature and the fan base across the North. I don’t think there is anyone who is saying we should end racing at the Fairs. I think no one would be in favor of a one-circuit system if it means only racing at one track at any one time.

Bill Nader, president and chief executive of Thoroughbred Owners of California: A one circuit system in California would allow the resources that are generated across the whole state be targeted into one single circuit which would effectively make better use of that money and funding. The problem with a two-circuit state like we have now is that if one circuit isn’t carrying its weight, like it is now, it takes its toll on the other region. 

Doug O’Neill, a mainstay trainer in California and two-time Kentucky Derby winning trainer: No. The track surface needs a breather throughout the year. I think with training and racing it needs some maintenance to bounce back. I think it’s really important to have some time between meets and that’s where it helps to be racing at a different circuit or track. 

Josh Rubinstein, president and chief operating officer at Del Mar: Yes. Nationally the foal crop is about half of what it was 30 years ago so that has affected every state. California simply doesn’t have the horse population to operate two year-round circuits. 

Is contraction the best way to stabilize the market?

Butler: We believe contraction is the best way to stabilize the market. There is  only a certain amount of purse money and a certain amount of population. Despite the hardship of the people at Golden Gate, concentrating all our efforts in the South is the only way to keep the state going.

Balch: The unplanned and devastating contraction announced by Santa Anita ownership, without consultation or notice to any of its interdependent partners in California racing, is the single most destabilizing event in California racing history since World War II. Given the contraction of the North American foal crop, particularly since 2008, all track owners and horsemen working together with the regulator and Legislature might have been able to develop a model where it could have been a stabilizing influence.

Bush: I think it will turn it into chaos unless we can turn it into something more attractive than it is today. If we can’t make California racing more attractive, I don’t see how contracting can help it.

D’Amato: As it stands now, it’s looking to be inevitable unless we find another revenue source. You would like to have two circuits. It definitely gives owners more options for varying caliber of horses. But if it has to be, it has to be. We need just one additional revenue source to help get these purses up and allow California to sustain. If we don’t get that, consolidating into one racing circuit  is probably the only option that we would still have. 

Ferraro: The best way to stabilize the market here is to increase the purses. That’s our problem and the reason we are short of horses is because we can’t compete purse-wise. We don’t have any way of supplementing purses like Kentucky does with Historical Horse Racing. If we had purses that were more competitive with the rest of the country, most of our horse shortage problems would go away.

Harty: I don’t believe so. I believe expansion is the way to save the market. You’ve seen what happened through contraction, small field sizes, people aren’t betting on us, which hurts our handle which just compounds the problem. We need to expand and plan to expand. Hopefully it’s not too late, but without some sort of addition to our purse fund where we can make it more lucrative for people to come to California, we’ve got nothing.

Oldfield: No. Contraction assumes there is a consolidation of not only the tracks but a consolidation of the horsemen and trainers and the employees. The assumption that trainers and owners would go South was probably false and unwisely made. Look at the trainers who have moved South, it hasn’t been a resounding success. To assume that if you close the North that it means a shift to the South is a pretty naive thing to consider.

Nader: It might be the only way to stabilize the market. Now if the North is able to hit its targets and meet the criteria we’ve agreed to then there is no need for contraction. If the North can’t hit their targets, I don’t think we’ll have any recourse but to contract to stabilize the market and secure Southern California and make sure the state of California is still relevant, healthy and has a future. 

O’Neill: For us to grow, we need to build on what we have and not shrink what we had. I think the whole industry has done a really good job of being a safer, more transparent sport. And to see tracks closing is not what the whole plan was, or at least I hope it wasn’t. I think the way the sport is going, we should be growing and building and not closing and shrinking.

How do you compete with no supplemental revenue streams?

Butler: You just have to try and be innovative, offer a product that people still want to bet, and continue to try and concentrate on a single circuit and there should be enough wagering dollars in state to keep the product moving forward.

Balch: Clearly, you don't, unless you develop alternate sources of supplementing purses, for example major corporate sponsorship, or otherwise. You need sources that could only be developed by all track owners and horsemen working together with regulators and legislators in serious strategic planning.  Fifty percent of track revenues formerly came from non-wagering sources at the track.  The nearly complete abandonment of marketing efforts for on-track business has cost all tracks in terms of profit and compromised California racing's future.

Harty: We can’t. I don’t see how it’s sustainable. It’s hard enough to attract horses to California in the first place. The level of racing is very competitive. There is a lot more bang for your buck somewhere else.

Nader: We need to find ancillary revenue so we are more competitive with other states that enjoy that advantage. That’s where California needs to be applauded for what it has achieved over the past 10 years without the benefit of a secondary income stream and still remains relevant on a national stage.

Oldfield: I couldn’t agree more that we need other revenue streams for the funding of purses. For horse racing  to survive long term, both in the  North and the South, we need outside sources of income, whether that’s Historical Horse Racing machines or some other mechanism. If the North were to go, it slows the bleeding but doesn’t stop it. I think the North is in a better position to survive without outside sources of income because of what it costs to raise a horse and race a horse in the North because we’re really not that far off the purse structure we have for the fair meets. Those machines are the lifeblood, not just to purses, but to keep racing in California alive.

O’Neill: It’s a little tricky with the Stronach business model because they own the ADW and the race track. In an ideal world there would be separation there and you would have the people or company that owns the race track try and do everything they can to get people to come out and have a great time, Concessions would be booming and ideally you would build on getting some on-track betting. 

Rubinstein: We have to close the purse gap that is widening from states that have subsidies that are supporting the purses. That is the one thing we can do here, increase purses, that would give California a shot in the arm.

What one thing can be done that would make a difference?

Butler: Obviously, getting another source of gaming revenue would make a huge difference in the state. For quite a while we were competitive from a purse perspective, but it’s become more and more difficult to find another source of gaming revenue.

Balch: Immediately convene the leadership of all tracks, labor, agriculture, owners, and trainers’ groups, for no-holds-barred strategic planning, to include ways and means of communicating with California's legislative leadership, to understand and save the massive economic impact on this industry in California.  It almost certainly cannot be saved without government assistance and stimulus.

D’Amato: We’ve got the weather and great training facilities. Santa Anita just added a synthetic training track to handle all weather situations. Del Mar is perennially a great racing circuit. So, to me, we just need bigger purses. We’re pretty much the model for what HISA based its safety structure on. California to me is on the forefront of all those things with the exception of bigger purses. If we get money, people will come.

Ferraro: If we can come up with something like Historical Horse Racing our worries would not be over but would be decreased.

Oldfield: I don’t think there is a single person I’ve talked to, North or South, who doesn’t agree those machines are absolutely necessary. I think that should be a rallying cry from every stakeholder in the North to every stakeholder in the South, from the horsemen to the trainers, we need to get behind. Why aren't we rallying around this instead of sitting in CHRB (California Horse Racing Board) meetings arguing about dates? Why are we not working collectively on a strategy to get these machines? If there is one thing this industry needs right now is unity and the industry needs to unify behind that. 

O’Neill: We need to rebrand to really celebrate the men and women who work alongside horses for a living. It’s just so important to get that mindset back that people are actually working and it’s not computers and gadgets that are doing all the work and that humans are actually getting their hands dirty. These are really a bunch of amazing men and women who have chosen to work alongside horses for a living and hopefully we never lose the hands-on approach that is so important. Our sport provides a lot of jobs and housing for thousands of people and that’s really important.

What is California racing doing better than anyone else?

Butler: If you look at the safety record for one and the operational performance without supplemental revenue we can be pretty proud of ourselves to where we are now. California has shown it can operate on a globally high level of safety and quality without having lots of cash coming in to help things. We should be pretty proud of that.

Balch: Very little if anything beyond what it's not responsible for:  enormous potential markets, great weather year-around, and unrivaled facilities, mainly Del Mar, given the deterioration of Santa Anita and the demise of Golden Gate.

D’Amato: I think in terms of how Santa Anita and Del Mar take care of their owners, I think they go above and beyond in our racing jurisdiction. I think it’s a little bit tougher in other states. For what we have to offer, we try to roll out the red carpet for our owners and offer a really nice place to run your horses.

Ferraro: The quality of the racing surface and our effort for safety and soundness. HISA basically copied our rules. So our health and safety rules are better than anyone.  

Harty: I think we have better venues than anyone else. There is not a prettier race track than Santa Anita. Del Mar offers the summer vacation package.

Oldfield: The one thing I can say about California racing is we’ve got a great fan base. California as a whole is an agricultural state, the largest in the country. The economic driver of the equine industry in California is largely horse racing. People tend to forget about the agricultural component to that, it’s huge. We would be dead without our Cal-breds, which also produces jobs and livelihoods for many people and in many cases provides an economy for smaller communities in California.

O’Neill: We are so blessed we can train day in and day out throughout the year and I think you have a lot fitter horse that comes from California than a lot of the country. That’s the one thing that no company or no family can screw up. We have the best weather in the world.

Is this too far down the road to fix?

Butler: We don’t think so. If we can find additional sources of revenue that’s going to really, really help. You get the purses, you have a far better chance of getting the horses. There is much more to the ecosystem when you’ve got the purses. We, as a company, want to make it as good as we can for trainers. We think of them as our customers and we want them to be successful. We’ve just got to try.

Balch: If you say you can't, you're already done.  If you say you'll try, you've at least begun.  No one person or one entity can do anything of true impact alone. It takes the entire interdependent industry together.

Ferraro: I hope not. I think the next year will tell. We’ll see how Northern California does. If they succeed that will be a positive thing. If not, then we will have some worries. If Santa Anita and Del Mar can keep a decent racing program going that would help. If we end up with six-horse fields and two days or racing instead of three, that’s going to be a terrible turn. 

Oldfield: Absolutely not. You go to the fairs and they are packed. There is an appetite for horse racing in California. We’ve just got to do a better job of figuring out how to market that. You can’t determine whether what happened at Golden Gate over the last couple of years or 10 years is indicative because they did not market the place. They had a tree that covered up their sign and it wasn't until it was in the press that the racetrack was closing down that people started to show up. You can’t use that standard to see if there can be success because what was done wasn’t that good. There is an absolute appetite in California for horse racing and we need to tap into that. If the machines were to come in tomorrow, we wouldn’t be talking about if the sport will survive but what are we going to do with all this money we are bringing in.

Nader: The jury is still out. We’ve established the metrics that CARF (California Authority of Racing Fairs) and the CHRB have agreed to and it’s too early to tell because we don’t have any data to pass judgment. It’s on the brink. As the North has stated on many occasions, “Give us a chance.” But I do think the chance comes with the obligation that the industry has to come together and make the call. It can’t be something like the North would be able to go forward with proving  its worth in the final quarter of 2024 because the balance is too delicate with no secondary income in the state and the fact that both circuits are linked to each other to create a sustainable future. 

O’Neill: Absolutely, not. I think it can be reversed in a positive way very quickly. I would love to see us turn someplace like Santa Anita into an equestrian center. If you could bring in that equestrian label, I think it has a better brand and reputation. And you would have a bigger pool of horse lovers and I think we have plenty of room here to do just that. If I hit the lottery and was president of Santa Anita for a couple years, my approach would be to focus on jobs and housing. I’d put new dormitories here, which gives you a bigger pool of horse lovers here who would work alongside horses for a living. I’d turn the back parking lot into an equestrian center or at least a mini-version of one. 

Rubinstein: Absolutely not. California is a state with over 40 million people. We have loyal fans and a rich history of thoroughbred racing at the highest level. We have California people betting on the races, we have California owners at the sales. I talk to many high-level people and they all agree that California is essential to the long-term success of the industry. 

How much time is left?

Butler: We’re not really looking at it in that way. We’re just looking to see what we can do at the moment to improve racing and the ecosystem around the track that involves the trainers and owners. We need to find that fine line where we can get everything we need to be done here.

Balch: Absent serious strategic brainstorming, less every day.

Bush: The question hinges on the success of Santa Anita. I think that question could best be answered by Belinda Stronach.  

Ferraro: Sometimes it feels like we have a couple of days. I think we’ll know by the end of this year how bad a shape we’re in.

Oldfield: I think we still have time because we have the ability to do something we haven’t had in years and that’s chart a new course in the North. The North is not going to be the savior of the South but we have the ability to demonstrate that things can work and we can do things better and we can set those examples for other parts of the state. The future of racing is publicly held companies. What does that mean for Santa Anita? I don’t know. As a horseman in California, I absolutely want to see Santa Anita flourish, but I don’t know how that intersection of public and private could work to keep Santa Anita alive.

Nader: It would be advantageous if you could start with a clean slate and start over, but that’s not going to happen because of the complexities in the state and the way things are done.  The key would be to get the secondary income stream and then chip away at the building blocks underneath to create a better structure. But you need that big change at the top.

Rubinstein: We have time and we’re focused on what we need to stay competitive with purses. I do think it’s important for us to stop and take a breath and look at the new dynamic without Golden Gate Fields. Losing Golden Gate changed the dynamic significantly.

What are the optimistic signs you see out there?

Butler: We’ve had numerous conversations with the TOC (Thoroughbred Owners of California) and they seem extremely supportive and seem to understand exactly what needs to be done in California. We are a little bit disappointed in the organizations that really don’t seem to grasp the amount of investment we continue to make to operate racing in California.

Balch: There simply aren't any. Even Santa Anita's decision to make a multi-million dollar “investment” in a synthetic training track was made in a vacuum, without considering other potentially more important and lasting changes.  Other commitments made at the time for California breeding stimulus and major backstretch improvements, have been ignored.

D’Amato: I see my owners continue to buy horses from all over, not only inside the country but outside of the country, and continue to funnel them into California. We still have that going for us despite the disparity of purse money with Kentucky, Arkansas and New York.  But as things start to go in opposite directions that window could change.

Ferraro: The loyalty of the horsemen here, and that Kentucky and the others are beginning to realize that they need California for them to be successful as well. Enthusiasm from trainers who want to make it work, that’s the best thing we have going for us.

Harty: The only optimistic signs are rumblings and rumors that the attorney general is looking into and searching for ways we can shore up our purse accounts. I was optimistic seeing the CHRB offering Northern California a lifeline. They are very, very small victories. We’re in a huge urban market. If Southern California can’t make a go of it, who can? 

Oldfield: The one thing that is very optimistic is when Golden Gate announced it was going to close, there was this idea that everyone would scatter to the wind. But ultimately the horsemen in Northern California united more and better than I’ve ever seen. That alone was very optimistic and heartwarming. That gave me a level of hope about this industry. 

Nader: It’s a huge state with so much importance nationally. We’ve got tremendous bandwidth as far as our buying power and our betting power not just in California but across the country. We’re over 20% of the national handle. The race tracks are so beautiful, the climate is great. The number of races that are carded on the turf that can actually run on the turf is high. It’s very conducive to horse players because of its reliability.

O’Neill: Closing day at Santa Anita you had 11 races on Saturday and 12 on Sunday. That’s optimistic. There was a record handle this year at the Kentucky Derby. That’s an optimistic sign.

Rubinstein: The progress of safety and that the Breeders’ Cup will be in California three straight years. The community, here at Del Mar, supports racing and the business leaders know how important racing is to the local community. On the racing side, Del Mar’s product has been as good as anyone’s over the last two years.

Can breeding in the state be sustainable with fewer Cal-bred races? 

Butler: The breeders have been absolutely brilliant considering the circumstances. We’ve got to continue to offer a wide variety of Cal-bred races so we can give them a reason to continue their operations. The breeders have been working with us and understand what needs to be done and to try and get this fixed.

Balch:  The issue is incentivizing breeding in California, wherever the Cal-breds run, whether in restricted or open company.  California-bred thoroughbreds comprise the critical population of horses running at all California tracks, in all races except unrestricted graded stakes.  California racing simply cannot be sustained without those horses filling races, especially overnights, since handle on overnights is what funds stakes purses.

D’Amato: Near the end of the Santa Anita meeting, there were 20 horses entered in both the 2-year-old Cal-bred girl and boy races. That’s a really good sign the California breeding industry is still going in the right direction. I don’t think we can survive as a circuit in California without a very strong Cal-bred program.

Ferraro: No, it can’t be. They have to be able to produce a certain number of horses to be viable. If there is not enough racing, there is not enough calling for those horses. Otherwise, you can’t sustain the breeding industry. 

Oldfield: The awarding of dates by the CHRB, stabilized the breeding industry. A lot of people didn’t know if they were going to breed at all in California. When those dates were awarded it gave people hope to continue and breed. I don’t think racing in the state can be sustainable without Cal-breds. Most of the horses that run in the North are Cal-breds. If you look at the races that card the most horses, those are Cal-bred races. If Cal-bred races were to go away, it would have a devastating impact on racing and the horse population.

Nader: Yeah, I think it just has to be managed well. You just have to be smart and understand. The number of foals in California was 3,800 in 2003 as there are 1,300 today. There has been plenty of contraction and if there would be more it would be unfortunate. But in the end, if it’s managed correctly while still maintaining the quality of Cal-breds, I think we would be OK.

O’Neill: No. That part of California racing needs to be tweaked and fixed . I don’t know where they come up with the money to invest in the programs. It’s working on the negative as it is. If I had a genie and one wish it would be to have a guy like Paul Reddam to run the track. You would see an instant turnaround. He has that kind of business mindset that people would be tripping over each other to get into the track. There are people like that who just don’t fail. The Rick Carusos of the world, and if they do, they don’t fail long. I would love for a guy like Paul Reddam to own a track like this for a year or two and see what would happen.

What is the most important issue to address?

Butler: It’s really improving the purses which will allow us to improve the inventory, which improves the betting.

Balch: Saving, incentivizing, and stimulating California breeding. All you have to do is compare the behavior and commitment from New York, New Jersey, and Kentucky to racing. It demonstrates the critical importance of governmental action in a state-regulated industry like ours. Sadly, that regulatory/legislative constituency in California, which was once the hallmark of attention and education by California tracks, owners/trainers, labor, farms, agriculture, etc., was largely and effectively abandoned once California track ownership began evolving in the late 1990s.

Bush: Purses, perspective and the image of horse racing with our younger generation. We need to figure out how to get influencers involved. And get them to understand how much love goes into the care of these horses by people who have a passion and a bond with those animals. 

Ferraro: The size of our purses. All of our problems stem from that one thing. The purses aren’t high enough so we don’t have enough horses, so we can’t run enough races. The public recognizes when you have a good race card, they come out. But when you have a lot of ordinary race cards, like we’ve suffered this year, they just won’t show. 

Harty: The purses and the breeding. If better minds than I, like the California breeding industry, can get together with other Western states, so instead of it just being Cal-breds, New Mexico-breds, Arizona-breds, Washington-breds, Oregon-breds. They do that in other states, so it’s not a new idea, but it would help incentivize racing in California.

Oldfield: Most important issue is an outside source of income to address the purses. It’s something that everyone can unite behind . Not a single stakeholder would disagree with that. It would put California on a level playing field with other states.

Nader: I’ll speak on behalf of the horse player who looks to California racing and recognizes what it brings to the betting population. We have to make sure the product hits the brand and reputation from the expectation of horse players, the competitiveness, the field sizes and meet the expectations of horse players. We have to maintain our standards and make sure our purses and field sizes respect the great reputation of California.

O’Neill:  The horseman moral is just about as low as I’ve seen it. I think we need to boost that up and what would boost it up is knowing that something is in the works that indicates we’re trying to build on-track business and on-track handle.

Rubinstein: We’ve obviously been on a very good run with safety and we can never be complacent with that. Business side we need to secure supplemental revenue sources.

Changing Paths: How the Road to the Kentucky Derby Has Changed the Path to the Triple Crown

Article by Jennifer Kelly

The Triple Crown has evolved into more than three historic stakes races; indeed, it dominates the first half of the racing calendar, driving the complexion of the three-year-old division and influencing both owners’ and trainers’ goals for their horses. The first of the three, the Kentucky Derby, has become the stuff of dreams, inspiring many owners of a young Thoroughbred to pursue their own piece of history. Preparing a horse for the first Saturday in May has taken on a new dimension with the addition of the Road to the Kentucky Derby points system. 

How much has this new priority affected trainers’ plans for their Triple Crown hopefuls? While trainers remained focused on preparing their horses to peak in late spring, how they get there has changed in the decades between the first eleven Triple Crowns and the 21st century’s two winners, a change that is both a result of and an influence on the approach to the Derby prep season. 

Path to the Crown

Preparing for a Triple Crown campaign over the last century has been as individual a pursuit as the horses themselves with the approach falling into a pattern in the later decades. Sir Barton went into the 1919 Kentucky Derby a maiden with no starts before his trip to Churchill Downs, a strategic move on trainer H.G. Bedwell’s part: the Derby had maiden allowance conditions at the time, which meant that the son of Star Shoot went to the starting line carrying twelve pounds less than favorites Eternal and Billy Kelly. 

Gallant Fox had only the Wood Memorial ahead of the Preakness Stakes, which came first in 1930. Counting that classic, the Fox had two races prior to his turn at Churchill Downs. His son Omaha was similarly tested in 1935; he opened his season with a win in a one-mile, 70-yard allowance before finishing third in the Wood Memorial at the same distance. War Admiral started 1937 with wins in a six-furlong allowance and then the 1 1/16-mile Chesapeake Stakes before heading to Louisville. 

The four Triple Crown winners of the 1940s were war horses not just because of the international context of that decade, but also because of their preparations for the triad of races. Whirlaway raced seven times at distances from 5½-furlong sprints to 1⅛-mile tests between early February and the first Saturday in May and all were in-the-money finishes as Ben Jones struggled to find a solution for the colt’s tendency to bear out on the far turn. Count Fleet echoed Omaha with his two starts in an allowance and the Wood Memorial, winning both. Assault started his path to Derby with three starts, a six-furlong sprint, the 1 1/16-mile Wood Memorial, and then the one-mile Derby Trial two days before the big race. Citation raced eight times in early 1948, finishing second only once, before his Kentucky Derby, starting with a six-furlong sprint in early February and stretching out to 1 1/8 miles twice. 

Secretariat’s path to Louisville went through a trio of races in New York, progressively lengthening the distance from seven furlongs in the Bay Shore to 1⅛ miles in the Wood Memorial. Seattle Slew had a similar preparation in 1977, stretching out from a sprint to nine furlongs, while Affirmed started four times, starting with a win in a 6½-furlong allowance, in California before coming west for his 1978 Triple Crown run. 

Keeneland Library Morgan Collection - War Admiral with C. Kurtsinger after winning Preakness Stakes 05.15.1937

Most of the first eleven winners prepared with races increasing in length as the first Saturday in May grew closer. While the number of races to get there varied by horse, that philosophy remained mostly unchanged, though now the need for points puts a heavier influence on the choice of prep races for potential Triple Crown horses. 

A New Approach 

Prior to 2013, the conditions for entry into the Kentucky Derby evolved from paying the entry fees to using criteria like graded stakes earnings to rank potential starters ahead of the first Saturday in May. The oversized 23-horse field in 1974 made it clear that the field size for the first Triple Crown classic needed to be capped. The following year, Churchill Downs limited the field to 20 horses with career earnings as the criteria for qualification. Contrast this with the Preakness and the Belmont Stakes, which both have 14-horse limits. 

As 20-horse fields became more common in the 1980s and onward, Churchill Downs had to change their metric from career earnings to stakes earnings to graded stakes earnings. The points system evolved as a fairer solution to the problem of qualifying for the Derby starting gate. In 2024, the Road to the Kentucky Derby series offered 37 races with points ranging from 1 point for fourth place in an early prep to 100 points for the top tier qualifiers like the Santa Anita Derby, the Wood Memorial, and the Bluegrass Stakes. In addition to the traditional American prep races, Churchill Downs has added both European and Japanese Roads to the Kentucky Derby in an effort to make the race more global. 

Since the introduction of the points system in 2013, the number of races for North American horses has remained relatively the same, with the inaugural season counting 36 races and the 2024 edition with 37. To make the Derby more appealing internationally, Churchill Downs added the Japanese series in 2017 and the European in 2018. The series starts with 13 two-year-old races, ranging from one mile to 1 1/8 miles, and then picks up steam in mid-January with the Lecomte at Fair Grounds and ends with the Lexington at Keeneland in mid-April. The same-year series starts with one-mile races and expands to multiple 1 1/8-mile tests, with the Louisiana Derby clocking in as the longest at 1 3/16 miles. 

With that in mind, how has this shift from graded stakes earnings to points changed how a trainer approaches conditioning their charges for the five-week Triple Crown season? 

Now and Then

Hall of Fame trainer Todd Pletcher is no stranger to the Triple Crown season. Since 2000, he has started 64 horses in the Kentucky Derby with two wins, Super Saver in 2010 and Always Dreaming in 2017, and four Belmont Stakes to his credit, including Rags to Riches, the last filly to win the historic stakes. 

Looking back at his first Derby winner, the path to Louisville with Super Saver “was sort of an interesting one because we really got behind schedule. After the Tampa Bay Derby, he got sick, which ended up pushing us back a week, and we ended up landing on the Arkansas Derby as his final prep, when generally we would have preferred to have four or five weeks from our final prep to the Derby itself. Seemed like the horse had the best month of his life during those three weeks leading up to the Derby.” Getting the WinStar colt enough graded stakes earnings to qualify for the first Triple Crown classic worked out with his placings in the Tampa Bay and Arkansas Derbies in addition to his win in the Grade 2 Kentucky Jockey Club Stakes the previous season. 

In 2017, though, the road to Louisville required collecting enough points to get into the gate. Always Dreaming started his three-year-old season with a win in a maiden special weight and then Pletcher and the colt’s partnership had to make a decision. “The real conversation that we had to have was whether or not we ran in the Fountain of Youth or if we ran in the allowance race the day of the Fountain of Youth. The horse was training exceptionally well, we were very confident that we were on the path to the Derby, and that we had a legitimate derby contender. But in order to make the decision to run in the allowance race, we had to have everyone on board to say that they were willing to roll the dice on one prep race.”

To earn his points, Always Dreaming then had to win the Florida Derby, his lone stakes before the Derby, where “if we didn't finish in the top two, or even if we finished second, it wasn't guaranteed that we would get in based on points,” Pletcher remembered. “Everyone was comfortable with that decision. Everyone wanted to bring him along that way. In this case, we decided to go with that plan and take a shot with one prep race.” The Bodemeister colt won his lone prep and earned 100 points, which guaranteed his place in the Derby starting gate. 

Nick Zito won his two Kentucky Derbies in the 1990s, when graded stakes earnings were the standard for qualification, which meant that juvenile stakes wins counted more than they do today. “Go for Gin won the Remsen as a two-year-old and then came back in the Fountain of Youth and in the Florida Derby, and then he was second in the Wood. So he had already qualified,” he remembered, “Basically, today, with the point system, they're just trying to get as many points as they can because they know there are a lot of horses that are trying to get to the Derby.”

Now, the Hall of Famer sees the Kentucky Derby as “more of an event. I remember Carl Nafzger’s ‘I love you, Mrs. Genter.’ […] And then, of course, Lukas and Baffert keeping this thing up. A lot of people just wanted to be in the Derby after that.” The increasing cachet of having a horse in the Derby has driven more owners to chase the points necessary to be in the Top 20 by the first week of May. 

If a trainer has a Triple Crown contender in the barn, then the point system changes how they map out the horse’s early starts in pursuit of points. “I think what they're doing is, at two they're trying to break the maiden. Then when they get to three, if they haven't broken their maiden at two, [they] go longer […] to try to break the maiden. And after they break the maiden, a lot of them go right into a stakes,” Zito observed. “My theory is they get the calendar out, they see the Jeff Ruby, or they see the Rebel, or they see this race, or that race, or this race, or Gotham, I better go there because I got to get some points.”

The Road to the Kentucky Derby may have influenced some changes to trainers’ strategies for their hopefuls, but it also has mirrored the trend toward racing less often in order to optimize a horse’s performance. The points distribution plays into that strategy, prioritizing the traditional preps in late spring.

Changing Strategies 

All of the races in the points system are a mile or longer, which favors horses stretching out earlier than they may have previously, making shorter races, even stakes, less of a target. “The point system has, I'm not going to say eliminated, but to a large part, greatly decreased trainers running horses in, let's say, the Swale,” Pletcher observed. “Traditionally, a lot of guys would do that and then go to the Fountain of Youth and Florida Derby and kind of take that gradual route of stretching out. And that's just not the way a lot of people are training. They're going to go straight to a long race, and long races have points.”

“Now most of them concentrate on the bigger races. If they don't have the points to begin with, they're going to have to run in a place where they could qualify,” Zito pointed out. “If you run first or second in one of those, chances are you might get in over horses that have accumulated points during the year. So, basically, it'll come down to those last three days, sometimes.”

This emphasis on points rather than earnings has eliminated the chance for early graded stakes winners and stakes-winning sprinters to get into the gate on the first Saturday in May. Even if those early winners did not train on at three, they still had earned a chance to try the Kentucky Derby; similarly, sprinters could set or stalk a fast pace early in the race, setting the stage for closers to make their run for glory in the stretch. The points system instead favors classic distance horses, especially those who can win at eight furlongs or longer early in their three-year-old seasons. With the higher point value preps in late spring, the system minimizes what a horse does in their juvenile season, which means that trainers face a new challenge: how to season a Triple Crown hopeful enough to handle the dynamics of a 20-horse field over ten furlongs while also having them in peak condition for that distance. 

Pletcher also pointed out “the other biggest impact is on fillies. A filly would have to step out and run against colts in a final prep in order to earn enough points,” as Secret Oath did in 2022, but only after she had accrued enough points toward a place in the Kentucky Oaks. Swiss Skydiver also stepped outside of her division to run second in the pandemic-delayed 2020 Bluegrass Stakes, which gave her enough points to qualify for the Derby starting gate. In the end, both fillies deferred that opportunity and ran in the Kentucky Oaks, leaving Devil May Care as the last filly to contest the Derby, finishing 10th in 2010, three years before the points system was instituted. 

Another trend over the five years has been the decreasing number of Derby starters contesting the Preakness. Other than Super Saver and Always Dreaming, Pletcher has “historically skipped the Preakness with a lot of our Derby contenders, and I think that's a good example of trainer management that's evolved over the years. And taking those horses and giving them five weeks in between the Kentucky Derby and the Belmont is part of the reason why we've had a lot of success” in that final Triple Crown classic. 

Zito followed a similar path with his most recent Belmont Stakes winners. “We ran Birdstone, one of the most memorable Belmonts ever, beating Smarty Jones. But he ran in the Derby; he didn't run in the Preakness,” the Hall of Famer observed. With Da’Tara, “he never ran in the Derby, and then he won the Belmont and stopped Big Brown.” His most recent Triple Crown starter, Frammento in 2015, earned his spot in the Kentucky Derby through in-the-money finishes in the Fountain of Youth and the Bluegrass Stakes. After finishing 11th behind American Pharoah, Zito opted to skip the Preakness and instead sent Frammento to the Belmont, where he finished 5th behind the Triple Crown winner. 

The Road to the Kentucky Derby is in its twelfth year, the number of horses going from Louisville to Baltimore remaining steady, with an average of four horses making the trip, until 2023, when only Kentucky Derby winner Mage tried the Preakness Stakes. So far, the decreasing number of horses returning for the Preakness may be attributed more to the trend of spacing races out rather than the effects of pursuing points, a phenomenon which has prompted discussion about expanding the gaps between the Triple Crown classics. As of 2024, any changes to the classic calendar remain an ongoing debate without an immediate resolution. 

The sport has seen two Triple Crown winners since Churchill Downs introduced the Road to the Kentucky Derby points system. Those two champions plus I’ll Have Another and California Chrome were the only horses to win two or more classics in the 2010s; in the century since Sir Barton, that number echoes most decades except the 1920s and the 1950s. So far, the 2020s have not seen any horse win more than one classic, but the question of what is behind trainers’ changing approaches to the Triple Crown season will require more time to answer.   

Track Superintendents - the three generations of the Moore family and how they have track management has changed over the last fifty years

Article by Ed Golden

            Dennis Moore’s career as the world’s foremost race track superintendent drew its first breath back in the 1930s, when his father, Bob, began a move akin to the Joad family’s forced escape to California from Oklahoma’s Dust Bowl, captured so poignantly in John Steinback’s 1939 classic, “The Grapes of Wrath.”

            Bob Moore, who passed away in 1987, was the patriarch of a family devoted to track maintenance and the safety of horses. In 1946, he went to work at Hollywood Park where he was a long-time track superintendent at the Inglewood, California track which closed on Dec. 22, 2013. Bob’s sons, Ron and Dennis, followed in his footsteps.

            They have been track superintendents at Santa Anita, and now his grandson, Rob, Dennis’ son, is taking over at the historic Arcadia, California track. In addition, they lend their services to Los Alamitos in Cypress, while Dennis also consults and plies his trade at tracks throughout the United States and across the globe.

            “I’ve done work overseas at probably over 150 different race tracks,” said Dennis, a native Californian who celebrated his 74th birthday this past Dec. 7. “I don’t count the tracks anymore. I didn’t want to leave California as a kid and now I’ve been to Germany, France, Dubai, all over the world. This is a great job, but you’ve got to have thick skin.

            “You listen to the trainers, but not those who make it personal and yell and scream and cuss. I won’t tolerate that, although sometimes their complaints are legitimate and you investigate, so all the scientific testing we do right now is a big help.

Bob Moore

“My dad came out here in ’38. He hopped a freight train and lived in hobo camps. He’d talk about the Dust Bowl and how they’d soak cloths in water and put them over their face so they could sleep at night.

            “His father told him he could go to California as long as he’d come back and finish high school. He did that, but as soon as he finished high school he returned to California and never left.

            “He got into construction as a mechanic in ’38, left Santa Anita in 1948, opened a garage in LA, then shut that down, went back to work at the track in 1953 and was there until he retired in 1979.

            “I was born in 1949; my brother was born in ’46. We’d go back and forth from Hollywood Park to Santa Anita. That was the circuit at that time, because Del Mar’s work was all done by Teamsters which had its separate crew.

            “That’s how my brother and I got involved with the race tracks. When I was about six years old, in the summer, we’d go to work with my dad sometimes. We’d ride on the harrows after the races and hang out in the garage, stuff like that. They’d race Tuesday through Saturday.

            “Ron worked for a while at Hollywood Park before taking over as track superintendent at Santa Anita in 1978. In 1972, I started working at Los Alamitos before working the Oak Tree meet at Santa Anita. In ’77, I became the track superintendent at Los Alamitos.”

            Ron, 77 and retired, says his history at the race track began by gambling, starting with Swaps and (Bill) Shoemaker in the 50s.

“When I was 14, I got a job as a footman on the carriages that took the judges around the track, way before there was closed-circuit TV and everything,” Ron recalled.

Ron Moore

            “We didn’t race Sundays then, only Saturdays and holidays, allowing me to work while still going to school, and the money I made went to betting. I didn’t do much good at it, but my interest started earlier, going to work with my dad and hanging out on the backside at Hollywood Park.

            “That’s where all the stable employees would go to gamble. During the races, I always wanted to get close to the rail and wait for Shoemaker to ride by so I could wave at him.

            “My first bet was made there, and I think I won $11. I did eventually work on race track surfaces at Santa Anita from 1969 to ’87. I worked as a construction laborer at Hollywood on the track crew and a little while at Los Al before I went into the Army. Later I operated racing equipment on the track.

“But give credit where credit’s due; my brother (Dennis) has been at the forefront in making racing safer. He’s never been afraid to try something new, and most times it’s not just an improvement, but a huge improvement.

“His decisions aren’t made lightly, only after much deliberation, investigation and discussion with experts on soil conservation. That’s the whole game, safety of the jockeys and the horses.

“Not because he’s my brother, but over the long haul in this country, I would say he’s done more for safety than anybody.”

Dennis & Rob Moore

            Dennis has extensive experience with a multitude of surfaces--dirt, turf, and synthetics as well as related maintenance equipment, perhaps more than any living being. Dennis and Rob currently are directing a gargantuan project, installing a Tapeta training track at Santa Anita.

            Track supers are burdened with a 24/7 task, shuteye a valued commodity attained at infrequent and welcome intervals. They are at the mercy of hourly weather forecasts, ringing cell phones and texts, with safety of horse and rider ever paramount.

            It’s a balancing act reminiscent of the Wallendas, only this on terra firma, an indigenous tradition with the Moores who wouldn’t have it any other way. To use a football analogy, sometimes it seems like it’s always third and long.

            “It’s not a nine to five job,” Dennis readily admits. “I get to the track every morning at 5:30 and don’t leave until about 6:30 (p.m.) or later. When the track is sealed, we come in about midnight, if we can open the track. There’s a lot more to it as far as maintaining, grading, the material composition and everything that goes with it.

            “I have horsemen call me 4:30, 5 o’clock, 6:30 in the morning, especially when we’ve got rain, when the track is sealed or even if they want a local (weather) forecast,” Dennis said. “That’s just part of the job.

            “We have a professional weather service that we use, but I have several other sites that I go on to try and make sense out of the forecast. The problem we have now is, everybody’s got a cell phone and they look at that and think it’s the accurate weather.

            “But the guys we use (Universal Weather) have been professional meteorologists for 40 years and are probably right about 85 percent of the time. I’ve been using it since 1977 and my brother and dad used it before. Universal gets timely updated forecasts whereas your phone may not be updated for 12 hours.

            “You consider all that information and decide if you’re going to open the track, leave it closed or what have you, and sometimes you’re the pigeon and sometimes you’re the pole, because when you’re wrong, you’re wrong, not the meteorologist.

            “You learn to deal with that, because all trainers consider themselves trackmen, but trackmen aren’t trainers. Every horse isn’t going to like your track. People talk about how safe synthetic tracks are, but, since 2020, I’ll put our (safety) numbers at Santa Anita and Del Mar against any synthetic tracks in the United States.

“I think Santa Anita and Del Mar are two of the best tracks in the country of the 50-some that have been tested.

            “I believe we can make dirt tracks just as safe as synthetics, but there’s a lot of work involved. All the protocols the Stronach Group started in 2019 and are in place now have helped a lot, as well.

            “But it doesn’t matter if a horse gets loose in the barn area and runs into a post and kills itself. It becomes national news. Some of these horses haven’t run in a year or missed 10 months of works, so you know they’ve got issues and we review them very carefully, but you’re not going to catch every one of them; things happen.

            “Most dirt tracks are comprised of sandy loam with silt clay particles,” Dennis added. “Synthetics can vary but Tapeta is the one right now that has been the most successful and that’s what is being put in the training track at Santa Anita. Along with the protocols, we have new rules and regulations we’ll follow, including a weather policy that dictates what we’ll do when we seal the track. It’s changed quite a bit from what it was in the old days.

            “We’ll be able to train on Tapeta in rain, snow, sleet or whatever.”

            At press time, Rob, who turned 54 the day after Christmas, was working hand in hand with Dennis in an effort to have Santa Anita’s Tapeta training track operational in January.

            “So far, so good,” Rob said. “We were under time constraints trying to complete it by the first week of January. Knock on wood, everything has been going well.”

            Following in the footsteps of family members was a natural transition for Rob.

            “That’s all guys in my family did and talked about,” Rob said. “For me, as a little kid going to the track with all that big equipment was like playing with soccer toys. Plus meeting all the race track characters and people from different walks of life made an indelible impression. It was attractive, in that sense.

            “But this job is kind of like a doctor’s in that you’re on call 24/7. I don’t think I’ve turned my (cell) phone off since I got the job. Sometimes meteorologists will forecast good weather, but then something unexpected happens like rain and wind. It seems there’s always something going on.

            “The fortunate thing for me is, I grew up around it and I thought I would be prepared for everything that would come along. But I wasn’t prepared at all, because there are so many minute details to consider in addition to the track and the horses.

            “When the pandemic hit, people were all talking about the horses, the horses, the horses, not about those who were on their backs. It was somebody’s father, somebody’s son, brother or sister, and that’s my biggest concern.

            “At every meet, I tell our crew we don’t want to be the reason something (negative) happens. I’m real fortunate with the crew I have because the majority of them grew up in the business, they’re third-generation like I am, they have a passion for the game and they care about it.

            “They pay attention to details, and that makes your job a lot easier when you have a reliable, dedicated crew. You’re only as good as your crew, plus my dad is a consultant, and he pops in every now and then pointing out potential problems.

“You’re not only responsible for the track itself, but everything that goes on around it. This is not a job you have just to make a paycheck

            “If you’re a trackman and you think you know it all, then you’re screwed and you’re screwing everybody around you. My dad’s been doing this 52 years and he’s still learning. I think that’s what separates him from everybody else. He’s always trying to make things better.

            “He’s a perfectionist, and it rubs off on you when you’re around it your whole life.”

Track consultant Dennis Moore alongside CHRB & track officials readying the Orono Biomechanical Surface Tester

            John Sadler is among the vast majority of trainers who concurs.

            “Dennis Moore is the gold standard for Track Superintendents,” said Sadler, 67, a Hall of Fame member-in-waiting.

 “I can’t heap enough praise on him. He’s the kind of guy you can call to discuss any issue. You can see that reflecting in our numbers favorably shifting dramatically on improved horse safety, and Dennis is a big reason for it, not to mention he’s been doing it for a hundred years.

            “The good thing about Dennis is, he can’t be pushed. He’s an experienced guy who believes in what he’s doing, and you have to allow him to do his job.”

            There are many special memories of Moore’s unselfish contributions to Sadler’s successes, one of which is foremost in his mind.

            “It was a week before Santa Anita’s big winter meet began in 2010 and Hollywood Park still had a synthetic track at the time, and it had rained for days and days,” Sadler recalled. “I asked Dennis how Santa Anita was doing because it was closed for training due to the rain, although horses could jog the wrong way.

            “I had horses pointing to the Malibu, the La Brea and the Mathis Mile, and Dennis said he might be able to open. So I vanned my horses over there and got to work on them, and we won all three stakes on the opening day card. Sidney’s Candy won the Mathis, Twirling Candy won the Malibu and Switch won the La Brea.

            “Dennis, communicated well and I got my works in. He wasn’t doing me a special favor, just telling me what was going on . . . a great guy.”

            Another tried and true member of the Dennis Moore fan club is Richard Mandella, who offered the following unsolicited praise.

“Track maintenance has everything to do with safety, and the Moore family is as good as it gets,” said Mandella.            

Dennis Moore – the gold standard for Track Superintendents

“It’s not an exact science, and everybody has to understand that,” Mandella added. “It’s something you have to have a feel for, and the Moores have always been excellent. Variables in track surfaces can work both ways for everybody, and even on a normal race track, that comes into play.

            “Some horses like deep tracks, some like them hard and fast. I don’t know if that’s important as far as safety is concerned, but the most important thing is uniformity and having a nice, even bottom with some bounce in the track so that horses are stable with it. It’s a combination that requires flexibility.”  

            While Dennis is primarily focused on safety and fulfilling random requests for trainers, it’s unreasonable to expect him to comply with all of them.

            “I’m sure he tries,” Mandella said, “but in my experience being on the California Thoroughbred Trainers (CTT) track committee for so many years is that if you have 10 trainers talking about track conditions, the ones who are winning like it, and the ones who aren’t, don’t.

            “It’s not easy to maintain a neutral position, but if anybody does it, Dennis Moore does.”

How racing is making strides into Big Data

Words - Alysen Miller

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you may have noticed many male footballers wearing what appears to be a sports bra during training and matches. This is not a political statement, a show of solidarity with their female counterparts, perhaps; nor is it the latest fashion craze. Rather the bras are, in reality, GPS tracker vests. Containing a small Global Positioning System gadget, they allow team managers and trainers to collect and analyze players’ individualized GPS data in order to make informed decisions about tactics and training.

Like all big-money sports, the top football clubs now employ legions of data nerds to crunch the numbers on all aspects of their players’ performances. Premier League football club, Arsenal, uses the STATSports system to gather physical data on all their players, from the under-12s to the men’s and women’s first teams. Marketed as “the most advanced wearable tech on the market” (that’s the famous bra), it records some 250 separate metrics, including accelerations and decelerations, average heart rate, calories burned, distance per minute, high-speed running, high-intensity distance, max speed, sprints and strain. The statistics are available live during training sessions so coaches can make real-time adjustments where necessary. 

And it goes beyond wearable tech. Players at last year’s World Cup in Qatar were able to get insights into their on-field performance through FIFA’s own player app. Physical performance metrics were collected through a highly accurate in-stadium tracking system, including multiple cameras located around the pitch. These included distance covered at various speed thresholds, number of actions above 25 miles per hour (about 40 kilometers per hour), and maximum speed – all displayed on positional heat maps. Thanks to this data, we know that Kylian Mbappé hit a top speed of 35.3 kilometers per hour (about 22 miles per hour) against Poland in the round of 16. Impressive for a two-legged athlete, even if he won’t be giving the likes of Flightline or Baaeed a run for their money.

Football is following in the footsteps of baseball and American football by embracing “Big Data”. Not only does this enhance teams’ abilities to play and train, it adds another dimension to the spectator experience. Who doesn’t want to know how far their favorite player ran? Horse racing, by contrast, still relies on a mathematical speed model, Timeform, developed in the 1950s.

“When you look at other professional sports, racing’s a fair way behind in terms of how we measure the athlete,” says David Hawke. “Basically, we don’t measure the athlete in a biometric sense at all, whereas most other professional sports measure their athletes in competition, when the athletes are at their highest output and highest exertion. And this is the crucial point.” Hawke is hoping to change all that. He is the managing director of StrideMaster, a system that combines GPS and motion capture technologies to produce detailed insights into the horse’s performance. 

“When we developed the technology, back in 2010, it was essentially technology for race day: tracking horses, getting all their times—all the normal race track performance information that punters might want to see,” he explains. In the course of gathering this information, Hawke accumulated a treasure trove of biometric data. In 2018, he joined up with Dr David Lambert. Kentucky-based Dr Lambert is an expert on equine physiology and the founder of a company called Equine Analysis Systems, which leverages this understanding of how the horse moves to select elite, high-performance thoroughbreds. 

He is looking for the top one percent, the cream of the crop. Hawke’s idea was to take this hypothesis and turn it on its head; in other words, to find the one percent “who were in trouble.” In this way, by identifying the horses that are trying to cope with a problem, vets and trainers would have a crucial data point which could be used to help prevent injuries before they happen.

So how does it work? Here comes the science part. Essentially, every horse has a unique stride “fingerprint.” Thanks to Hawke’s data, we not only know what that fingerprint looks like, but also when the horse deviates substantially from that fingerprint.

 The first step is to collect high-resolution data of the horse at the gallop. This is because, as prey animals, horses are disinclined to show lameness at the walk or trot (the traditional way of assessing a horse’s soundness). “The forces that are at play when a horse is going at 40 miles per hour compared to when it’s being trotted up at five miles per hour are completely different,” says Hawke. “The price that the horse pays for going fast is that it gives up autonomy over a number of things,” he continues. “It gives up autonomy over its breathing, for example. It becomes a mechanical breather. It also gives up autonomy over its footfall. If it’s got a raging foot abscess at the walk or the trot, it will decide not to put its foot down. But at the gallop, it can’t do that. It has no choice over when it puts each foot down. So the only option it’s got left to manage an issue that’s impacting it is postural change: it’s going to hold itself differently; it’s going to use different muscles to try and take the pressure off.” 

To capture these changes, samples are taken from three axes: the vertical, the longitudinal and the medial. This data is captured by a device about the size of an iPhone that’s slipped into the saddle cloth. These samples are then broken down further: “We split the stride up into three parts,” Hawke explains. “We have the hind leg stance phase, which is the primary propulsion and power source for the horse. Hind leg spring function is absolutely critical to a good stride, so if anything’s wrong at the back end, that immediately gets transferred to the front end on the corresponding diagonal. Then we have the forelimb stance phase. And then we have the flight phase, or the collection phase, when the horse is off the ground. The flight phase is where the horse is making most of its postural adjustments in the air. So if it’s got a problem it’s managing, it’s trying desperately to accommodate that problem during the stride. And then when it goes into the air, it’s trying desperately to get itself ready for the next stride to do it all over again.”

The system is capable of detecting minute variations in the horse’s stride that are effectively invisible to the human eye. “From an observational point of view, humans can’t detect these sorts of changes that we’re picking up. It’s simply happening too fast,” he says. The sample rate in StrideMaster’s sensors is 800 hertz, or 800 frames per second. The human eye, by contrast, cannot directly perceive more than about 60 frames per second. “That enables us to look at the stride in a very high level of detail,” he says. 

Hawke has accumulated so much data that it’s no longer necessary to have historic data on an individual horse in order to make a judgment about its soundness. Rather, there exists an “ideal” fingerprint for different categories of horse: “We have a Gp.1 fingerprint, we have a Gp.2 fingerprint, right down to a $10,000 claimer fingerprint, to use the American parlance,” he explains. In other words, soundness can be assessed against an ideal archetype. If a horse is more than two standard deviations outside of this ideal, that is considered an adverse change that the system then flags for the attention of the trainer.

So how is this “deviation” measured? “We’re tracking two or three things that are important: we’re tracking the amount of power they produce, and we’re tracking the amount of vibration they produce,” Hawke explains. Vibration is, essentially, any rapid change in acceleration. That is what is most likely to cause injury. Think of the horse as a four-cylinder engine, with the legs as the pistons. Each piston—or leg—moves in a set rhythm. As long as this rhythm is maintained, vibration will be kept to a minimum. But changes in rhythm (for example, because the horse is managing a problem) generate vibration which, in turn, generates damage. The sounder the horse, in other words, the less vibration. But with great power comes the potential to generate huge amounts of vibration. This explains why most of the horses that get flagged are competitive horses in whatever cohort they’re in. “They’re not horses that are running 20 lengths down the track,” says Hawke. “Generally, those horses are not producing enough power or vibration to get themselves into trouble. [The good horses] will always find a way to go fast,” he says.

While Hawke sees the technology primarily as an injury prevention tool, he acknowledges that its potential is broader than that: “From a social license point of view, that’s where the pressure is: to manage these injury rates and welfare outcomes better than we have been. So that’s the primary focus,” he says. But the same technology could, in theory, be used to identify future elite performers: 

“When you compare, say, a Gp.1 horse to a low-rating handicapper, what we see is increased deviation from optimum,” he explains. “To take a metric at random: gravity. The acceleration of an object toward the ground caused by gravity alone, near the surface of Earth, is called ‘normal gravity,’ or 1g. This acceleration is equal to 32.2 ft/sec2 (9.8 m/sec2). If you drop an apple on Earth, it falls at 1g”. 

“The Gp.1 horse will be much closer to that 1g than the lower rating handicapper,” he explains. “[The lower-rated horse] is not as efficient. They’re losing power in all directions. They’re going up and down more, they’re going side to side more. Whereas the elite horse actually generates surprisingly less power, but it’s all pointing down the road in the right direction.”

Hawke is keen to emphasize that he is not marketing a diagnostic tool. Rather, trainers should see this technology as another tool in their toolkit: “When the trainer gets the information, either they come and seek more information or talk to their vets about what’s going on. The vet can review the stride on a stride-by-stride basis. And when we get down to that level of detail, we can actually, on most occasions, give some indication of what quadrant the problem is emanating from.”

But what if you could identify such problems without even galloping the horse? 

Stephen O’Dwyer thinks he has a solution. O’Dwyer is the founder of Irish start-up TrojanTrack, which uses video cameras to record the horse at the walk and, from there, identify any variations in its movement. “We take video data of 52 different parts of the horse at 120 frames per second,” he explains. “We then convert those parts into biomechanical data: joint velocities, accelerations, angles. And then we can compare that to the horse’s healthy baseline movement to track any deteriorations or imbalances that might be creeping in.” But wait. Horses are prey animals. Won’t they naturally try to mask any injuries at the walk? “Horses are herd animals, so rather than show any sign of injury, they try to hide it as much as possible, and that means compensating on a different limb or something like that,” O’Dwyer acknowledges. “But because we’re tracking 52 points, we’re able to pick up any tiny deviations, tiny nuances that won’t be picked up by the human eye. 

“In talking to a few of the vets, they say that when the horse is in its walk, it’s at its most comfortable,” he continues. “And because they’re in their most comfortable state, they won’t be trying to hide their injury as much.” O’Dwyer plans to incorporate trot movements in the future.

Like Hawke, O’Dwyer sees his technology primarily as another arrow in the trainer’s quiver, rather than a diagnostic tool. “It’s hard for the trainer to pick up on the whole horse at once,” he explains. “They might be staring at one limb while the hip isn’t moving, and they’d have to walk by again and check the hip, and then they’re not looking at another limb. We look at all four limbs landing, the hip movement as one of the limbs is landing. So it’s the whole package of the horse in one to really show the trainer exactly what is going on.”

O’Dwyer acknowledges that the technology is still in its nascency. He is currently running customer trials a couple of yards in Ireland while he tries to drum up the next round of investment. StrideMaster, meanwhile, has been adopted by racing authorities in the United States and in Hawke’s native Australia. But any technologies that can help spot potentially catastrophic injuries before a horse hits the track must be taken extremely seriously by an industry that can, at times, feel like it is operating on the razor’s edge of public acceptability. As Hawke says, “The first priority is welfare because we have to look after the animal. If we’re not seen to be looking after the animal, the whole game’s in trouble.”

It seems like it is only a matter of time before racing joins the ranks of other sports in embracing Big Data. Says Hawke: “If I walked into a major football club and said, ‘Who here’s got expertise in biometric sensor analysis,' half the football department would put their hand up because they’ve been doing it for 20 years. But the information can be used in so many different ways in terms of performance, breeding and training techniques. We’re just scratching the surface.”

Artificial Intelligence tools - and their growing use in selecting yearlings

Book 1 of the Tattersalls October Yearling Sale is traditionally where some of the finest horseflesh in the world is bought and sold. The 2022 record-busting auction saw 424 lots pass through its hallowed rotunda for a total of 126,671,000 guineas. One of the jewels in the crown was undoubtedly lot 379, a Frankel colt out of Blue Waltz, who was knocked down to Coolmore's M.V. Magnier, joined by Peter Brant, for 1,900,000 guineas.

 It is easy to see why lot 379 made Coolmore open its purse strings. He has a stallion’s pedigree, being out of a Pivotal mare. His sire has enjoyed a banner year on the track, with eight individual Gp/Gr1 winners in 2022. He is a full brother to the winning Blue Boat, himself a 450,000 guineas purchase for Juddmonte Farms at Book 1 in 2020. Lot 379 is undeniably impressive on the page. 

But it is not his impeccable pedigree that makes Tom Wilson believe lot 379 has the makings of a future champion. “The machine doesn’t have any biases. It doesn’t know whether it’s a Galileo or a Dubawi or a Havana Grey,” he says. “The machine just looks at the movement of the horse and scores it as it sees it. It has no preconceptions about who the elite sires in the market are. It’s completely neutral.”

The “machine” to which Wilson is referring is, in reality, a complex computational model that he claims can predict with 73 percent accuracy whether a horse will be elite (which he defines as an official rating of 90 or above, or the equivalent in its own jurisdiction) or non-elite (horses rated 60 or below) based on its walk alone. It’s a bold claim. So how does he do it?

First, Wilson taught an open source artificial intelligence tool, DeepLabCut, to track the movements of the horse at the walk. To do this, he fed it thousands of hours of footage. He then extracted around 100 frames from each video and manually labeled the body parts. “You teach it what a hock is, what a fetlock is, what a hip is,” he explains. “Eventually, when you feed new videos through, it automatically recognises them and plots the points. Then you can map the trajectories and the angles.”

He then feeds this information into a separate video classification algorithm that analyzes the video and compares it to historic data in order to generate a predicted rating for the horse. “Since 2018, I’ve taken about 5,000 videos of yearlings from sales all around the world with the same kind of biometric markers placed on them and then gone through the results and mapped what performance rating each yearling got,” he says. “So we’re marrying together the video input from the sale to the actual results achieved on track.”

Lot 379 has a projected official rating of 107 based on his biomechanics alone, the highest of all the Frankel’s on offer in Book 1 (yes, even higher than the 2,800,000 gns colt purchased by Godolphin). Wilson’s findings have been greeted with skepticism in some quarters. “There’s so many other factors that you can’t measure,” points out trainer Daniel Kübler. “There’s no way an external video can understand the internal organs of a horse, which you can find through vetting. If it’s had an issue with its lungs, for example, it doesn’t matter how good it looks. If it’s inefficient at getting oxygen into its system, it’s not going to be a good racehorse.”

“It’s not a silver bullet,” concedes Wilson. “There are multiple ways to find good horses. It’s just another metric, or set of metrics, that helps.” But is it really “just another metric,” or the opening salvo in a data revolution that has the potential to transform the way racehorses are bought and sold?

Big data. Analytics. Moneyball. It goes by many names, but the use of data in sports is, of course, nothing new. It was brought to popular attention by Michael Lewis in his 2003 book Moneyball and by the 2011 film of the same name starring Brad Pitt. 

It charted the fortunes of the Oakland Athletics baseball team. You know the story: Because of their smaller budget compared to rivals such as the New York Yankees, Oakland had to find players who were undervalued by the market. To do this, they applied an analytical, evidence-based approach called sabermetrics. The term ‘sabermetrics’ was coined by legendary baseball statistician Bill James. It refers to the statistical analysis of baseball records to evaluate and compare the performance of individual players. Sabermetrics has subsequently been adopted by a slew of other Major League Baseball teams (in fact, you would be hard pressed to find an MLB team that doesn’t employ a full-time sabermetrics analyst), and ‘moneyball’ has well and truly entered the sporting lexicon on both sides of the Atlantic.

Take Brentford FC. As recently as 2014, the West London club was languishing in the third tier of English football. Today, Brentford is enjoying its second consecutive season in the top flight (Premier League), bucking the trend of teams that gain promotion only to slingshot back down to the lower leagues after one season. 

What is their secret? Moneyball. Brentford’s backroom staff has access to vast streams of data that detail how their players rank across a number of key metrics. This information helps them make day-to-day training ground decisions. But crucially, it also shapes their activity in the transfer market by helping them to identify undervalued players to sell on for a profit. Players such as Ezri Konsa, purchased from Charlton for a rumored £2.5 million in 2018 before being sold, one year later, to Aston Villa for a £10 million profit. Think of it as the footballing equivalent of pinhooking. 

The bottom line is that data analysis has already transformed the way athletes are recruited and trained across a range of sports. It stands to reason, therefore, that statistical modeling could help buyers who are spending, on average, 298,752 guineas for a yearling at Book 1 make informed purchasing decisions.

“I’ve always been interested in applying data and technology to an industry that doesn’t exactly embrace technology.” That’s according to star bloodstock agent Bryon Rogers. Rogers is widely regarded as the godfather of the biometrics movement in racing. “The thoroughbred industry is one that moves slowly, rather than quickly,” he adds, with a dash of irony. 

Having cut his teeth at Arrowfield Stud in his native Australia and Taylor Made Farm in Kentucky, in 2011 he started his own company, Performance Genetics. As its name implies, the company initially focused on DNA sequencing, attempting to identify markers that differentiated elite and non-elite horses.

From there, it branched out into cardiovascular and biomechanical research. Rogers quickly discovered that it was the biomechanical factors that were the most influential in terms of identifying future elite horses. “When you put all the variables in, the ones that surface to the top as the most important are actually the biomechanical features: the way the horse moves and the way the horse is constructed. They outweigh DNA markers and cardiovascular measurements,” he explains. 

According to Rogers, roughly a fifth (19.5 percent, to be exact) of what makes a horse a horse is explained by the way it moves. “That’s not to say that [those other factors] are not important. It’s just that if you’re ranking them by importance, the biomechanical features are more important than the cardiovascular ones.” 

His flag bearer is Malavath. Purchased at the 2020 Goffs Premier Yearling Sale for £29,000, she was first sold for €139,200 at the Arqana Breeze Up Sale the following year. “I know when I’ve found one,” recounts Rogers. “I walked up to her [at the sale], and there was nobody else there. At that time, [her sire] Mehmas wasn’t who he was. But her scores, for us, were an A plus. She shared a lot of the common things with the good sprinter-milers that we’ve got in the database. A lot of the dimensions were very similar, so she fit into that profile.” She has since proven herself as a Gp2 winner and most recently finished second behind Kinross in the Prix de La Forêt on Arc day.

In December 2022, Malavath sold again, but this time for €3.2m to Moyglare Stud and is set to continue her racing career in North America under the tutelage of Christophe Clement.

A find like Malavath has only been made possible through the rapid development of deep learning and artificial intelligence in recent years. Rogers’s own models build on technology originally developed for driverless cars—essentially, how a car uses complex visual sensors and deep learning to figure out what’s happening around it in order to make a decision about what to do next.

But wait. What is deep learning? Here comes the science bit! Machine learning and deep learning are both types of artificial intelligence. “Classical” machine learning is A.I. that can automatically adapt with minimal human interference. Deep learning is a form of machine learning that uses artificial neural networks to mimic the learning process of the human brain by recognising patterns the same way that the human nervous system does, including structures like the retina. 

“My dad’s an eye surgeon in Australia and he was always of the opinion that what will be solved first in artificial intelligence will be anything to do with vision,” says Rogers knowingly. Deep learning is much more computationally complex than traditional machine learning. It is capable of modeling patterns in data as sophisticated, multi-layered networks and, as such, can produce more accurate models than other methods.

Chances are you’ve already encountered a deep neural network. In 2016, Google Translate transitioned from its old, phrase-based statistical machine translation algorithm to a deep neural network. The result was that its output improved dramatically from churning out often comical non-sequiturs to producing sentences that are closely indistinguishable from a professional human translator.

So does this mean that the received wisdom around how yearlings are selected is outdated, subjective and flawed? Not exactly. “There are so many different ways of being a good horse;  I don’t think [selecting horses] will ever completely lose its appeal as an art form,” says Rogers. “But when we get all this data together and we start to look at all these data points, it does push you towards a most predictable horse.” In other words, following the data will not lead you to a diamond in the rough; rather, it’s about playing the percentages. And that’s before all before the horse goes into training.

After that point, the data only gets you so far. “I would say [the use of biomechanical modeling] probably explains somewhere between 30 to 40 percent of outcome,” says Rogers. “It’s very hard to disentangle. The good racehorse trainer has got all the other things working with him: he’s got the good jockeys, the good vet, the good work riders. He’s got all of those things, and their effect on racetrack outcomes is very hard to model and very hard to disaggregate from what we do.”

Nevertheless, it does not look like big data is going away any time soon. “It might be a couple of years away,” says Rogers. “As bloodstock gets more and more expensive and as the cost of raising a horse gets more and more expensive, the use of science is going to rise.” He believes there’s already an analytics arms race happening behind the scenes.

“For me, it isn’t a case of if it’s valuable; it’s a case of when it will be recognised as being valuable.” That’s Wilson again. “What you see in every sport is a big drive towards using statistical analysis and machine learning to qualify and understand performance. Every other sporting sector tells us that these methods will be adopted, and the ones that adopt them first will gain a performance edge over the rest of the field.”

Comparisons to Deep Blue’s defeat of Garry Kasparov might be premature, but it is clear that the racing industry is fast approaching a tipping point. “I don’t think the machine on its own beats the human judge,” says Wilson. “But I think where you get the real benefit is when you use the information you've been given by machine learning and you combine that with deep human expertise. That’s where the application of these types of things are the most successful in any sport. It’s the combination of human and machine that is power. Humans and machines don’t have to compete with each other.”

So will more trainers be adopting the technology? “There’s lots of different data points that you can use to predict a horse’s potential, and it’s understanding all of the pieces together,” says Kübler. “I’d want a bit more proof of concept. Show me that your system is going to save me loads of time and add loads of value. We’ll see in three or four years’ time how good it was.”

In the meantime, all eyes will be on Lot 379.

"BioSecurity" on the backstretch

Article by Ken Snyder

Cleanliness, or biosecurity, is essential to horse health and is at the core of minimizing infectious disease outbreaks and subsequent quarantines. Failures in biosecurity can mean canceled race days; idle trainers; and most important and awful, dead or injured horses.

Recent history reveals the importance of biosecurity on both the racetrack and also Thoroughbred breeding farms. In 2021, a life-threatening Rotavirus B outbreak in foals swept through farms in Central Kentucky, taxing farm staff and management with contagion containment. 

More recently, in 2022, an outbreak of equine Herpesvirus-1 at Churchill Downs resulted in a quarantine of as many as 13 horses in one barn. Contagiousness of this EHV-1 meant horses even indirectly exposed to horses with the virus were also quarantined in two other barns.  

EVH-1 isa far more serious threat in that more horses risk exposure on racetracks than on a farm. The virus causes respiratory disease, neonatal death, and neurologic disease, EHM (equine herpesvirus myeloencephalopathy). EHM is often fatal and if not, can leave long-term problems. Symptoms presenting EHM are heart-rending: Horses will lack coordination, have weakness or paralysis in some or all of their limbs, and become unable to balance or stand.

Contact and contagion are the dangers to horse health with viruses like EHV-1 or rotavirus B. Horses travel, and Kentucky might be the busiest crossroad in the world with Thoroughbreds coming in from all points in the country and world and traveling out to racetracks out-of-state and, of course, foreign countries. Experts agree that every effort has to be made in this state and elsewhere with biosecurity to prevent repeats of what happened last year and in 2021. 

They also are in agreement that trainers are the first line of defense.   

Because they see and care for horses daily, trainers will be the first to note abnormalities or symptoms of disease, according to Dr. Stuart Brown, vice president of equine safety at Keeneland Race Course.

“Trainers are the sentinels, the keepers of horse health, them and their attending veterinarians,” he said. “They're at the forefront of working with regulatory veterinarians as well as the state veterinary offices to maintain a healthy population of horses.”

The consensus among industry people like Brown is that trainers, with only a small minority of exceptions, do an excellent job because so much is at stake.

“By and large, they’re all very attuned to disease transmission,” echoed Dr. Will Farmer, equine medical director for Churchill Downs and all other racing properties. 

They have to be, he added. “If a trainer has a sick horse, a groom is taking care of it and multiple horses. There’s the possibility of spreading a disease. Trainers are very keen on biosecurity.“ 

Trainers, especially, must be sensitive to biosecurity in their barns as they move their stable from one race meet to another and new stalls for their horses. 

“I’ve shipped everywhere—Gulfstream, Tampa, New York a lot, Laurel a lot,” said Ian Wilson, assistant trainer to Graham Motion, naming only a few of the destinations for horses at the Fair Hill Training Center in Maryland.

He’s encountered conditions he described as “generally good.” 

“You never walk into a stall and say, ‘This one needs another bag of shavings or another bale of straw.’ 

“Where our concern lies is what you don’t know. A clean stall and a dirty stall sometimes don’t look that different.” 

Receiving barns, which especially should be as pathogen-free as possible, is not guaranteed. “In New York, I know the gentleman who takes care of the receiving barn and he does a really, really, nice job of it. I’ve watched him clean a stall, and he does it properly. In other places, I’ve seen them pick over a stall really quickly, and off they go.”

While disease outbreaks are sporadic, the goal, of course, is minimizing the maximum potential for occurrences. A mantra for Brown at Keeneland is “the solution to pollution is dilution.” In other words, every resource—human and inanimate—should be brought to bear to combat the potential for disease development, particularly with the cleaning and disinfecting of stalls. Every measure, however, will only dilute or reduce issues that arise.

While receiving barns will have straw down and should be clean, standard operating procedure for trainers moving horses from a barn they’ve occupied to another location and unfamiliar stalls is cleaning and disinfecting before another horse can move in. Stalls are mucked daily and cleaned, but disinfecting is a must. Frequency, though, varies among trainers; some might disinfect weekly, others only monthly.  

At Keeneland, the maintenance team follows departed trainers and does a second disinfecting to ensure the next occupant gets a clean environment. “Our team will go in, and they’ll basically strip and clean (disinfect) all of the stalls,” said Brown. “They’ll be left for a period of time for desiccation (allowing stalls to dry out). 

“Getting those stalls tossed out and then having them air out and dry as well as being inspected becomes a part of any kind of biosecurity protocol.“ 

Trainers, with few exceptions, follow guidelines prescribed by the Equine Disease Communication Center to one degree or another. These include scrubbing surfaces with warm, soapy water to remove any traces of organic matter (basically anything that comes out of a horse); allowing the surface to dry; applying a disinfectant; allowing the surface to dry after the application of a disinfectant; and disinfecting crossties if in use. 

The choice of disinfectant is at the discretion of a trainer or attending veterinarian. Brown said his maintenance team uses products recommended by the USDA or other regulatory bodies that are specified for controlling the spread of potentially infectious pathogens.

He is investigating a new “delivery system” of a disinfectant from a firm in Nicholasville, Ky., just south of Lexington, produced by Atmosphere Supply. The firm supplies a foaming product for farms of all types that have applications (literally) for racetrack stalls.

Peter Healy, business development manager for the firm, authored a manual, titled Biosecurity for the Equine Industry, after Thoroughbred farm personnel sought help during the rotavirus B epidemic. Healy’s company was asked to assess and critique biosecurity protocols and other practices. “Everybody was in a panic with this new rotavirus back in 2020,” he said.

One key recommendation right off the bat from Healy was to not use bleach. “It is for hard (non-porous) surfaces, not for wood. It does absolutely nothing when applied to wood and could possibly be harmful to a horse.” 

Other disinfectants like hydrogen peroxide have the potential to be caustic or acidic and also hazardous. “Horses rubbing against a stall wall are going to come in contact with whatever has been applied,” Healy said.

One particular issue is the application of a disinfectant. Wiping down or spraying with a liquid in a dark stall means the possibility that coverage might be incomplete. A liquid will also run off quickly, according to Healy. The foam disinfectant produced by his company solves both problems and dries in only 10 minutes. Use or frequency of use is at a trainer’s discretion, but it could be applied daily. 

Healy also recommends any product containing hypochlorous acid, primarily a salt and water mixture, that can be sprayed daily even while a horse is in the stall, as ingestion will not harm them.

Other measures to battle pathogens or disease-producing agents are largely a matter of common-sense hygiene. Water buckets at the end of a shedrow that every horse passing by can drink from are asking for disease to spread.

“Equipment contacting a horse can also be a source for contamination,” said Brown. “I know two or three trainers that have started dipping chains and shank clips in a water-diluted Nolvasan solution.” Nolvasan is a readily available skin and wound cleanser. It helps prevent disease spread if a hotwalker is going from horse to horse with the same shank, according to Brown.

Pathogens are generally organic but can be carried by humans. Here, too, there are preventive measures. Farmer at Churchill Downs noted that some trainers there are having their help wear gloves at feed time as they mix feed and add supplements. “That’s a proactive approach. They recognize they don’t have control over barn help 24/7,” he said.

Is there a day when grooms and hotwalkers are wearing gloves all the time, or stalls with a “last disinfected” sheet with dates posted on each?  All who were questioned for this story can’t see it, but similar and more stringent measures are already in place in Europe. At some racetracks in France, each stall will have a plastic seal that someone must break to enter—a guarantee that a stall has been disinfected. 

Over there, stall bedding and cleaning are the responsibility of the racetrack generally as most horses are day shippers. Some trainers have traced ringworm to sanitizing agents used by racecourses. “We are not told what they are using; there’s no real regime. Biosecurity is everything; it’s so important,” said French trainer Ilka Gansera-Leveque.

Gloves, plastic seals, “last disinfected” sheets… Sound far-fetched for American racetracks? Who knows? But if the solution to pollution is dilution…

What We Need to Know from HISA

Keeping up with the legal evolution of HISA is like playing monopoly onboard a ship in pitching seas—the players, tokens and money are strewn all over the deck.

Article by Annie Lambert

When the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act (HISA) went into effect on July 1, 2022, few people involved with the Authority or stakeholders operating under the new rules could have predicted the political path the statute would trudge down.

Specifically, HISA’s Anti-Doping and Medication Control (ADMC) rules, which were to go into effect January 1, 2023, were put on hold. If/when enacted, the Horseracing Integrity & Welfare Unit (HIWU) will handle daily operations and administration of the ADMC. Drug Free Sport International will conduct the drug testing.

Multiple legal challenges from multiple entities in multiple jurisdictions snarled any further implementation of HISA. There were cheers from those opposing the new rules and jeers from those looking forward to implementing national uniform safety rules and anti-doping and medication control rules for Thoroughbred racing in the United States.

Race trackers took issue with the fact that they had little to no input in the rules and implementation of HISA. The Authority responded by creating the Horsemen’s Advisory Group (HAG). The group is composed of 19 owners, trainers and veterinarians along with representatives of racing offices, backside employees, farriers and aftercare enterprises. They began meeting monthly last November and will serve one- to two-year terms.

While the HAG may have settled some issues for horsemen, the legal suits continue. HISA appears confident that their legislation—which was written by legal experts specifically adept in constitutional law—will remain intact. 

The Politics

Dating back to early 2021, the lawsuits against HISA have been detailed ad nauseam. While the courts have knocked down some suits, a few remain standing at this time. All challenges include some variations of the constitutionality of the legislation regarding specific regulations, with others challenging the assessment formula, definitions, search and seizure regulations and/or FTC enforcement and other specifics. 

In mid-November, just six weeks prior to implementation of the ADMC, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled HISA to be unconstitutional. The court felt that the legislation delegated unsupervised government power to a private entity. HISA rules are authorized by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which the court felt should provide closer supervision and have more input into the legislation.

Judge Joseph Hood, of the Sixth District Court, sided with the federal government on December 7 2022, suggesting the legislation established clear boundaries on HISA’s power, including a requirement that all rules be approved by the FTC. There is no timetable set for the court’s final decision.

On December 12, the FTC disapproved of proposed ADMC rules as submitted. The designated, independent enforcement agency of the ADMC program (HIWU) was prepared to enforce anti-doping and medication rules on January 1, 2023, if approved by the FTC. 

The FTC denied approval of the program rules “without prejudice” due to pending legal uncertainties. HISA will be resubmitting the ADMC rules. During the interim, state law will govern medication issues. The suspension of the ADMC also puts a hold on assessments that would be used to fund the program.

Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell wrote a quick, short-worded clarification of HISA that was submitted with the recent Omnibus bill and passed the Senate on December 19 2022. The fix gives the FTC the power to “abrogate, add to, and modify the rules” of HISA as they see fit. The Omnibus bill passed the House of Representatives the following day, and President Biden signed it into law on December 29.

Legal wranglers for HISA have since asked a federal appeals court to set aside its ruling that declared the Authority unconstitutional in light of the legislation’s rewrite by Senator McConnell.

The Assessments

Much of life seems to come down to money; it may not be the root of all evil, but it does guide a lot of policy.

When the FTC did not accept HISA’s proposed ADMC in mid-December, state-owed payments due to fund the Authority were put on hold. Roughly $58.1 million in payments for 2023 are currently pending legal outcomes. The majority of those assessments pertain to the launch of the anti-doping program that has also been put into a holding pattern. Assessments already incurred for 2022 are required to be paid by the state commissions and the racetracks.

HISA’s total budget for the current year (2023) is slightly north of $72.5 million. That number includes nearly $37.4 million for operating the HIWU and drug testing work to be done by Drug Free Sport International.

A staff of 35 full-time employees will be in place by the end of this year, charged with implementing sound collection protocols and working to maintain continuity with existing collectors. They will also work on testing operations, compliance, quality assurance, education and industry outreach, good relations with state racing commissions and collaboration with laboratories, investigations and technology. 

The budget for 2023 provides $18.7 million for lab and research expenses toward implementing the ADMC program. 

State racing commissions received their assessed HISA operational expenses last October. Using a methodology set by HISA and approved by the FTC, the formula is calculated from total starts and the percentage of purses paid of total United States purses, other than the Breeders’ Cup World Championship races. 

States given the top assessments by HISA are New York ($8,660,471), Kentucky ($7,445,145), California ($7,344,139), Pennsylvania ($6,611,479) and Florida ($6,445,226). Payments are due in monthly payments; and if state commissions do not pay their assessments, their expense is passed to the racetracks. In states with multiple tracks, each track will be charged with a portion of the obligation based on a proportionate share of starts.

State racing commissions are able to reduce their assessments if they negotiate with HISA and HIWU and choose to provide sample collection personnel and investigative services in compliance with new ADMC program rules. HISA has provided $23 million to fund these racetrack contributions.

The Strikes

The HISA crop, or whip, regulations have created some turmoil. The consequences for overuse during a race can be stringent. 

Crop regulations (which also apply to exercise riders during morning workouts) have been in effect since July 1 2022 as part of the Integrity and Safety Authority. The main source of contention regarding the rules is striking a horse during a race more than six times. 

For seven to nine strikes during a race, jockeys face a one-day suspension plus a fine of either $250 or 10 percent of their share of the purse, whichever is greater. But strikes exceeding nine are punishable by more severe consequences. Those infractions do not alter the pari-mutuel payouts but can lead to a horse losing its total share of the purse money distributed to the owner, jockey and trainer. 

Ten to 13 strikes results in a $500 fine to the rider or his share of the purse, whichever is greater, plus a three-day suspension. At 10 or more strikes, the horse is also disqualified.

Graded stakes, including Breeders’ Cup races, are no exception. A recent Breeders’ Cup jockey struck his mount seven times – just one strike over – and received a one-day suspension and was assessed three points on his license as an additional penalty.

HISA rules created a point system for multiple violations by repeat offenders that will eventually have penalties compounded. Riders with 11 to 15 points on their license would receive an additional seven days of suspension in addition to the newest penalty. Riders with 16 to 20 points receive an additional 15-day suspension. With 21 or more points, a jockey could get a full 30-day “vacation.”

Points expire over six to 12 months post-violation; expirations are decided on a sliding scale based on the violation class assigned to those infractions.

Riders have acknowledged that keeping an accurate count of their hits can be difficult. And there are situations when use of a crop might keep a horse from causing a dangerous situation, e.g., drifting in or out. Several top jockeys have also noted that the extreme penalties give them cause to be more cautious of the regulations.

One jockey, who was listed in the standings where he was riding, was given a 30-day suspension when stewards said he showed a lack of effort, a “lackluster” finish, not consistent with his usual riding style. It sounded like a cloaked suggestion that he had pulled his mount. The rider, who did not appeal, reported that he thought he had reached his six-strike limit.

The National Jockeys’ Guild filed litigation against HISA, which they have recently dropped. There are purportedly ongoing negotiations with concern on rules, which HISA seems willing to negotiate to some degree. 

Whip violations are handed out after the race card is over. The stewards review race video prior to issuing the rulings. Both jockey and owner will have an opportunity to appeal.

The Contraband

There are two basic lists of drugs within the ADMC rules: “banned substances” and “controlled medications.” The FTC, of course, has not approved this portion of HISA, and there are only guesses as to when it will be put to use. 

During the interim, state regulators will continue to be responsible for medication rules, drug testing and enforcement.

In the past, trainers and veterinarians have relied on suggested withdrawal times to decide how far ahead of a race to give a particular drug. The new rules do not rely on withdrawal times. Federal laws, as written, require the Authority and HIWU to base medication rules on international standards for racehorses.

Foreign countries base their medication rules on the International Federation of Horseracing Authority guidelines, which do not provide withdrawal times. Instead, they provide “detection times.”

Detection times are based on peer-reviewed studies of a drug. In the study, a sample of horses are all given a drug and tested at periods of time afterwards. The detection time is the first time point at which all the horses in the study were negative for the drug given.

Due to variations in how drugs are metabolized in individuals, the detection times are a starting point for vets and trainers to decide when to withdraw a drug. Based on the individual horse, dosage and how it was administered the connections to the horse must be aware the outcome may change due to the variables.

If the lines between legal dosages and overages are so fine, it could lead one to assume racing officials would prefer horsemen not use the drug at all.

One trainer was suspended for seven calendar days, fined $3,000 and assessed two points on the Association of Racing Commissioners International scale for multiple medication violations for a lidocaine positive. Testing showed the horse had tested above the allowed amount of a “permissible medication.”

The involved horse was disqualified from the Maiden Special Weight race win and the purse redistributed. 

Shoeing regulations have been a big issue with trainers and farriers from the get-go. The initially approved shoe dimensions were not manufactured, and those dimensions eventually changed several times. It left horsemen confused.

The federal regulation that prevents the use of toe grabs on front shoes became an issue again when connections of a second-placed horse in a Gr. 2 stake questioned if the winner had front grabs. It was determined the winner was shod legally. The finish stood.

Horses are commonly trained in different shoes than those they run in. Blacksmiths and examining veterinarians who see horses with prohibited shoes in the morning are said to be making trainers aware there would most likely be a problem if the horse were to race as shod. 

The voided claim is another regulated area that was foreign to some racing jurisdictions, while a state like California has been practicing for some time. 

HISA policy requires claims be voided if a horse is unsound in the test barn, experiences bleeding or has a post-race medication violation. These rules are in addition to policies many tracks had in place to void claims, such as a horse dying on track or having to be vanned off. To date, most voided claims were a result of post-race unsoundness or horses that bled.

In spite of legal frustrations and rules that horsemen feel are too restrictive and not beneficial to the Thoroughbred racing industry, HISA marches on. More horsemen being involved should help, but the learning curve seems too long for everyone in racing.

Prohibited Substances Overview

• Banned substances prohibited at all times, such as anabolic agents and diuretics or masking agents

• Banned methods prohibited at all times, such as chemical castration or immunocastration

• Controlled medication substances prohibited during the race period, such as analgesics and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs)

• Controlled medication methods prohibited during the race period, such as the use or administration of an alkalinizing agent

• Prohibited substances and methods may be included in the prohibited list by general category or with specific reference to a particular substance or method. 

The prohibited list will be updated yearly.

Lazarus’ Lessons Learned

Lisa Lazarus, the chief executive officer for the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority (HISA), pointed to the importance of sport-wide unity within the United States racing industry. Lazarus spoke during the Global Symposium on Racing held in early December at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

A year after taking her position with HISA, Lazarus pointed to 10 lessons she has learned:

1. Racing’s strength is the diversity of viewpoints, which creates a lot of debate among industry leaders.

2. Participants in the industry have a role in making HISA better, even those groups that have been critical of the Authority. That was her reason for adding the Horsemen’s Advisory Group to include all viewpoints in the rulemaking process.

3. Criticism is expected and welcomed from the people who make a living at the track with skin in the game. 

4. Stakeholder’s engagement, even criticism, is welcomed and will help make HISA and the industry better. 

5. The vulnerability of jockeys, who must trust that the system has reduced the risk of injury to horses and riders, will be able to depend on jockey health initiatives via the racetrack safety program.

6. Despite robust debate regarding the Authority, the racing industry has wanted uniform medication regulation for years. Racing participants who compete fairly deserve to know their competition is also competing fairly.

7. The sport of racing has tried independent regulation because a voluntary system has not worked.

8. Uniform rules must be accompanied by uniform implementation to work successfully.

9. The Authority’s regulators should not be the focal point for the sport. They should be operating in the background to root out those with bad intentions, leaving the industry a focus on integrity.

10. The Authority has incredible people who are committed to doing what is best for the industry. The intent is not to complicate people’s lives, but to help grow the industry through uniformity.

What Does It Take to Become a Jockey?

Article by Ken Snyder

Getting on a 1,100-pound Thoroughbred to race in traffic takes far more than diminutive size, weight and out-sized courage. 

It is telling that when asked if the Ortiz brothers, Jose and Irad, showed ability when entering Puerto Rico’s famed jockey school, the director, Ana Velázquez, responded “Not really,” adding they were at the same level as most of the other students. 

Yes, courage and natural athleticism must transfer to riding, but the skill to succeed as a race rider, as in the case with not just the Ortiz brothers but all aspiring jockeys, is learned…either on the job or, alternately and fortunately for some, in jockey schools. Velázquez expresses it succinctly but with dead-on accuracy: “It’s more than climbing on a horse and you go.”

Three schools in Puerto Rico, Canada and the U.S. are prominent in training jockeys. In fact, they are the only jockey schools in those countries. They are the Escuela Vocacional Hípica (the Vocational Equestrian School of Puerto Rico ((VES)) at the Hipódromo Camarero racetrack in Canóvanas; the “Professional Racetrack Exercise Rider/Jockey Program” at Olds College in Canada (in partnership with Horse Racing Alberta); and the Bluegrass Community and Technical College’s (BCTC) Equine program in Lexington, Kentucky, founded by Hall of Fame jockey Chris McCarron in 2006. 

Future jockeys at each school don’t come from where you would think and most surprisingly, in the case of VES in Puerto Rico, don’t have the background you would expect. 

“Students have to have a solid foundation as riders because of our short course [fifteen weeks],” said Theresa Sealey of Horse Racing Alberta, who directed the Olds program for sixteen years through last December. 

That doesn’t always mean, however, a solid foundation in horsemanship.

In the past, rural kids showed horses or barrel raced, according to Sealey. “Now we’re getting urban kids that have maybe taken a lesson here and there, learning how to ride—that kind of thing,” she added. 

“When we first started the program, we assumed [that] if you could ride a horse, you knew how to take care of it and knew something about injuries, feed, grooming, and wrapping legs. Now, lots of these kids go and take a lesson and never do any of that…never even tacked a horse.” 

Amazingly, Kendall said some students entering the BCTC Equine program have “little to no riding experience.

“I’ve had several students come in, and they just have a natural seat to them; they’re natural athletes so they breeze past the fitness part of the tryout, they score perfectly, and then they kind of muster their way through the basic riding. They actually get into the class, and some of them have gone on to do very, very well.”

Corinne Andros is a professional jockey who has riden in Abu Dhabi, Poland, and the U.S. as a graduate, she is now an Olds College instructor.

The biggest surprise is that Ana Velázquez at VES disregards a riding background altogether. “They know how to ride sometimes, but it’s not required. 

“Sometimes they bring with them things that belong to other horse disciplines.

“We like them more if they don’t know anything. We start from scratch,” she said.

Student size varies between the three programs. BCTC accepts only six students into its riding program and Olds, a maximum of fifteen students. The current class at VES is nineteen students in the jockey program. 

The students, of course, need horses. VES has eleven stabled in the school’s own barn at Hipódromo Camarero, and at Olds, Horse Racing Alberta loans each student a horse for training. BCTC Equine maintains twelve horses at The Thoroughbred Training Center outside Lexington and complements that string with six Equicizers, including the only MK10 racing simulator in the U.S. that tests rider balance—a critical factor in race riding. 

Literal size is a discriminator in whom each school accepts, as might be expected. BCTC Equine specifies a weight no greater than 145 pounds to accommodate students who might choose exercise riding over a jockey career.

VES has tougher requirements matching what will be required on the racetrack as a professional. “The apprentices will have to ride with 109 pounds, including equipment,” said Ana Velázquez. “The equipment will weigh around three pounds, so they have to be no more than 102 or 103.” This weight allows for some extra pounds gained as students add muscle from riding daily and becoming fit.

While Olds’ program is the shortest, both BCTC Equine and VES conduct two-year programs. 

Each school starts students off with introductions to the Thoroughbred breed and the racing industry before any student sits astride a Thoroughbred. “They will learn everything from nutrition to anatomy—internal and external; the type of lameness that horses get; the injuries that they might encounter and how to identify those; and types of illnesses,” said Sealey. The Olds program begins with four-week remote learning from home to introduce and orient students—some of whom, amazingly, have never been to a racetrack.

 “That first piece is also about the racetrack, which includes things like the behaviors of horses— why they do what they do. That’s something they can study online. 

“When they get to us that first week,” referring to in-person training on the Olds campus in the school’s indoor arena, “we can jump right into what they learned in their curriculum.

“They don’t just learn to ride; they learn how to care for the horse and its health from the inside out.”

In the final five weeks, instruction moves to Horse Racing Alberta’s Century Mile Racetrack and Casino at nearby Nisku and a portion of the curriculum called “Earn and Learn.”

“They work in the morning for the trainers, exercising the horses—working with some mentors—and then they come for class in the afternoon,” said Sealey. Century Mile has a classroom facility on its grounds.

“It’s kind of a neat thing for them to be able to get on horses every day, look after them, get to know them, and then see them race during the season,” she said.

VES’s two-year program is broken into four, six-month phases. The first is horse care, grooming and balance training using drums mounted on springs. Next, students ride horses in a round pen and become familiar with entering and breaking from a starting gate. They progress from there to a small track used by the school and riding school horses before moving to the main track at Hipódromo Camarero. They continue with school horses until proficient to breeze and race (yes, race) trainers’ horses stabled there.

In the BCTC program, at minimum, students take Equine Care Lab, Training Principles and Practices, and Intro to the Racing Industry. “Those classes are prerequisites or corequisites because they have to take them at least the same semester as Racehorse Riding Skills 1; and they have to pass all of those classes to move forward to Racehorse Riding Skills 2,” said Kendall.

“Exercise Rider” are key words in the Old’s program title, as an overwhelming percentage of students aspiring to be jockeys gravitate to this on the racetrack. BCTC Equine and VES also offer a separate exercise riding “major” as an alternative to jockey training. After schooling and some experience on the racetrack, however, that percentage changes drastically. “By the time they leave the program, only five to ten percent actually pursue being a jockey after six months or so,” said Sealey.

For Kendall at BCTC Equine, the percentage is higher for those who want a jockey license. “I would say we’re probably around twenty-five percent.” 

“As they get into the industry and start to understand the comforts that come with a salaried position as an exercise rider, many kind of lean away from the jockey pathway,” she added.

Upon admission, VES divides students between those wanting to be jockeys and those wanting to be exercise riders. While some students, especially those who enter the school at age 16 to be jockeys, might outgrow the jockey course, students in the one-year exercise rider program who weigh in the 110-pound range often switch to the jockey program and the second year of that program. 

The regimen with BCTC Equine is not for the faint of heart or more accurately, for those who might faint—period. Students will spend two to four hours a day on an Equicizer or on horseback. The kicker is that they are encouraged to do physical training outside the program.

“I have a graduate who is now a personal trainer, and she does a lot of fitness work with our riders,” said Kendall.  

“This last group that I had, they would actually go through fitness training with her at 5 a.m., be at the barn by 8 a.m. to make sure their stalls were cleaned and their horses were groomed, and then we’d be in the barn riding sets till about two or three o’clock in the afternoon.”

Kendall’s program culminates with 12-week internships that can launch careers in racing. “We place them with quality trainers that are going to help take their careers to the next level.  

“When they’re getting ready to start having those conversations about getting their license, they’re connected with the right trainers to help them along,” said Kendall.

Joe Sharp was one of those trainers. BCTC Equine grad Erica Herrforth won in her first race, riding Sharp’s horse, Carry On, last May at Churchill Downs. 

“They need the connections more than anything to be able to take those next big steps,” said Kendall. 

“We really kind of serve more as agents,” she added.

Sealey recognizes both the traditional route to becoming a jockey—exercise riding first—with the limitations of any school.

“We can’t teach anyone to be a jockey in fifteen weeks; I don’t care how good you are,” Sealey said.

That’s not to say that the school hasn’t produced top jockeys. Olds has graduated three Sovereign Award Outstanding Apprentice Jockeys: Omar Moreno, Scott Williams, and Sheena Ryan. Moreno also won an Eclipse Award as Outstanding Apprentice Jockey.

At VES, the goal is full-fledged jockeys ready for an apprentice license at the end of schooling. According to Ana Velázquez, most students will have agents coming out of school, and 80% will migrate to the U.S. for more opportunities and larger purses.

If there is a “Harvard” of jockey schools, it is VES. Four of the top 10 jockeys last year, according to Equibase, were graduates: the Ortiz brothers, John Velazquez, and Manny Franco. The impetus for the school, which opened in 1975, came from Puerto Rican jockey legends Angel Cordero and Eddie Belmonte who inspired Agustín Mercado Reverón to establish VES.

Ana Velázquez points to the school’s location inside Hipódromo Camarero as the principal reason for the school’s success. What it provides students—full-scale race riding—is of inestimable value in training future jockeys. Students will race against each other in ten races out of the gate, roughly every two weeks during mornings after workouts at Hipódromo Camarero. Perhaps more beneficial and definitely more exciting, the students compete against each other another ten times a year in the racetrack’s last race of the day. The preparation and atmosphere are exactly what they will experience as licensed apprentice jockeys.

“The only thing we don’t have is betting on these races,” said Velázquez. All practice races, morning or afternoon, are at five furlongs except for the last race in the school’s curriculum, which is a mile. Races serve as breezes with a plus for Hipódromo Camarero trainers with horses gaining valuable experience running in company in full fields.

“We have a prize, a trophy, flowers, and all that,” she added.

The school’s outstanding reputation extends also to exercise riders. 

“I talk to Todd Pletcher every winter,” said Velázquez. In her last conversation Pletcher told her that of seventeen exercise riders on his payroll, fifteen were from VES.

It's a safe bet that more Ortizes will come along from VES, but also more Carol Cedenos, who graduated from the VES in 2006 and who has earned more than $30 million in her career. In fact, more female than male riders might be expected in the future. Four of this year’s VES students are women, but that is nothing compared to Olds or BCTC Equine.  

Sealey at Olds said the ratio of male-to-female students is “one boy to ten girls.” At BCTC Equine, it is 80% female-to-male currently, according to Kendall, who added that in 2020, the class was all female.  

Move over Emma-Jayne Wilson. For that matter, watch out, Irad and Jose Ortiz. Competition’s coming.

HISA: Devilish details defined

Words - Annie Lambert

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 fluctuated and will probably continue to shift past their application.

Not everyone hates the idea, however. The intent was to make United States Thoroughbred racing safe, fair and ethical for everyone involved through national uniform standards. The legislation, H.R. 1754 passed in 2020 as part of a COVID-19 relief bill. Once signed by President Donald J. Trump, HISA officially became law.

(An introductory overview of HISA can be found in Issue 62/Breeders’ Cup 2021 of Trainer magazine on page 26.)

The legislation includes racetrack safety program protocols that began July 1, as well as anti-doping and medication control regulations, under the direction of Drug Free Sports International, to be finalized by January 1, 2023. The governing body of HISA, referred to as the “Authority” in the legislation, 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 before being asked/required to become obligated by registering themselves and their horses. The Authority refers to those within their jurisdiction as “covered,” such as covered horses and covered persons. 

According to the Authority, as of June 29th, 20,537 people and 23,070 horses were registered. In addition, 20 of 24 states under HISA Authority were in agreement or expected to comply.

Not signing up means a person or horse may not participate in 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.

To date, stakeholders who feel the regulations are overly invasive and confusing appear to outnumber those who believe HISA is necessary to save the horseracing industry.

Digesting the Law

Signing your name to a contract that is technically not complete and subject to changes that may influence your livelihood understandably terrifies any human nature. The extensive rules, regulations, protocols and punishments for non-compliance seem daunting.

An undertone from the backsides of many racetracks suggests that horsemen would feel more comfortable if they had additional time to digest the legislation prior to registering. Instead of the July 1, 2022 deadline, how about pushing the implementation to 2023?

HISA’s CEO, Lisa Lazarus, implied publicly the law was the law, in spite of aggressive timelines; the Authority has been responding to some of the many questions posed by the public. They will continue to educate racing industry participants. 

According to HISA’s Liz Beadle, they are unsure what to expect when it comes to the number of probable stakeholder registrations. 

“We aren’t going to venture a guess,” Beadle offered via an email. “Since such a registration process has never existed at the national level before, it’s unclear how many people and horses are or will be participating in racing. It should be noted that the universe of people expected to register is limited to the 24 states conducting covered horse races under HISA’s authority.”

Basically, everyone now licensed by any state racing commission must be registered by HISA to continue to work and/or run horses or work with horses (such as vendors) within restricted areas of the tracks. Any horse in training or racing at an approved racing facility must also be registered. There are no fees required to register, and you need only register one time. Those registered may unregister at any time.

People responsible for registering horses, usually the trainer, are required to keep daily records for each animal. Records required include any administered medications, therapeutic procedures, treatments and surgical procedures. Those records must be given to regulatory veterinarians, stewards and HISA when requested, making it important that they be updated daily.

Owners and jockeys must also register for HISA “to participate in Thoroughbred racing.” If an owner’s horse is not in the care of a trainer, it is the owner’s responsibility to register his horse. 

Trainers are required to complete continuing education classes for licensing, in addition to registering all horses in their care. As noted previously, they must agree to keep health, vaccination, training and daily treatment records for each horse in their care. Fortunately there is Equine MediRecord, a relatively new enterprise, specializing in securing those daily records. (See Sidebar #1)

Trainers entering a horse into a claiming race have given their consent to transfer that horse’s veterinary and treatment records from the prior 60 days to the new owner, should it be claimed. Claims will be voided if the horse dies or is euthanized on the track, has a positive test, bleeds or is unsound within one hour post-race. 

Claimed horses are required to go to the test barn. Whether those horses will be tested is unclear. If tested, who will pay for that protocol? The claimed horse will be immediately transferred to new connections, but what happens if a test comes back positive weeks later? A voided claim could end up in more litigation.

Covered riders—jockeys and exercise riders—are required to participate in continuing education, to take a physical exam and complete a baseline concussion protocol test. They will be required to use HISA-approved safety vests and helmets. A medical history card is to be carried inside the vest when on a horse. Riders are also obliged to study and follow new riding crop rules.

Only approved riding crops will be allowed under HISA rules and may be inspected by the safety officer, stewards and the clerk of the scales. The specifications include being a maximum weight of eight ounces, no more than 30 inches in length with a set amount of shock-absorbing material.

Enforcement of the crop specifications may be postponed to August 1, 2022, due to a shortage of manufacturing resources.

Use of the riding crop, for jockey or exercise rider, is only to maintain the horse’s attention for safety and encouragement. A rider may only use the crop on the hindquarters a maximum of six times during a race. The crop is only to be used two or fewer times before allowing at least two strides for the horse to respond before using the crop again.

A rider may tap the horse on the shoulder with the crop when both hands are on the reins and touching the neck. It is legal to show/wave at the horse with the crop without physical contact. It is not legal to raise the crop with the rider’s wrist above the helmet.

New horseshoe regulations will not be enforced until August 1, 2022, to ensure adequate inventory of HISA compliant shoes.

Basically, on both fore and hind feet, toe grabs, bends, jar calks, stickers and traction nails will be prohibited on all dirt, synthetic and turf surfaces during training and racing. The only exception is for full rim that is two millimeters or less in height from ground surface of the shoe and that extends the entire circumference of the shoe, used only on dirt and synthetic surfaces.

Purportedly, bar shoes, pads, glue on shoes, quarter crack patches may only be applied by a covered veterinarian. Those official regulations, however, will come in another phase of the bill.

Edicts & Concerns

An open letter was sent to Lazarus on behalf of the Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Associations, Inc, Kentucky Thoroughbred Association, Thoroughbred Owners of California and Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders. The communication pointed to several areas of concern for stakeholders within the legislation. 

Many horsemen outside the organizations cited by this letter have similar concerns and more. Here are a few:

HISA has been vague in defining some of the rules and protocols. For example, there is not clear guidance as to what is permitted at training facilities and out of competition horses (layups) as compared to racetracks. Perhaps a list of approved training facilities and farms, including which HISA rules will be enforced at these facilities.

Medication lists, classification types and protocols seem to be lacking clarification. To date there is no list of controlled medications with guidance for legal usage. Most medication violations stem from controlled therapeutic medications used to enhance equine quality of life. A therapeutic use exemption could be useful.

There should be a distinction between prohibited medication and controlled medication violations. As now written in HISA, every violation of every type requires unnecessary and costly legal defense costs. Prohibited substances that show up during testing due to accidental contamination causes reputational harm to stakeholders when officials overreact and go public before investigating thoroughly. 

There should be distinct definitions between punishments prescribed to prohibited substances, specified substances and controlled medications. After all, very few positive tests can be attributed to actual doping incidents each year.

The confusion and conflicts created by the aggressive enactment of the HISA legislation causes concern that egregious problems could arise when the Anti-Doping and Medication Control Program (ADMC) is executed January 1, 2023.

So many factors within HISA deserved more oversight by horsemen before being written into the law. Little things like allowing suspended horses to train while not able to race. Allowing ownership groups to decide which principle should be the managing partner. Collecting a post-race urine sample at the horse’s stall (with regulatory oversight) when he cannot relax and provide urine at the test barn. 

Better definitions for “race day” and “official timed works.” The overreach of the HISA Authority having a say in when a horse should be retired is wrong in any horseman’s realm. Owners, not a non-horseman entity, should make the decision of retirement.

Litigation & Money Woes 

Multiple lawsuits have been filed on behalf of state racing commissions and other racing entities. The courts have overruled most suits, while others are pending appeal. The Texas Racing Commission (TRC) has declined to abide by HISA’s federally mandated program.

Texas law cites that only the TRC can make rules and regulations for Texas racing. HISA demands that state racing commissions enforce the rules and regulations per HISA. 

Amy Cook, executive director of the TRC, has announced that Texas will allow wagering on out-of-state racing signals at simulcast locations in the state. The TRC will not, however, allow pari-mutuel wagering at a Texas meet that is HISA-compliant or the export of simulcast signals to other states.

According to Cook, all pending requests for approval of the import and export of pari-mutuel simulcast signals will be considered and approved on a case-by-case basis. Texas horse racing will therefore be confined to Texas. It has been predicted that the state will take a financial hit from the decision; it remains to be seen if the ominous financial predictions come to fruition.

Litigation was recently filed on behalf of Louisiana and West Virginia, their respective state racing commissions, the Louisiana Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Association, Louisiana Thoroughbred Breeders Association, the Jockeys’ Guild and several Louisiana individuals considered “covered persons” under the Authority.

The complaint basically cited that HISA was unconstitutional by overstepping state racing commissions, has multiple violations of the Administrative Procedure Act and violated the Fourth and Seventh Amendments of the U.S. Constitution, which guarantee a right to a jury trial and protection against unreasonable search and seizures.

A federal judge in Louisiana denied the litigants’ request but gave the defendants in the suit—HISA, its CEO Lisa Lazarus and the Authority’s board members, the FTC and individuals associated with the FTC—until July 14 to respond to the motion.

One of the great unknowns regarding HISA has always been, “Who pays what and how?” That question has only been partially and vaguely answered. Racetrack operators, industry stakeholders and the betting public obviously have monetary concerns. HISA’s first year operating budget is roughly $14.3 million.

Fees are calculated whereby those states or tracks with the highest handle, purses and number of starts will pay the largest assessments. Each state racing commission decides whether to opt in or out of collecting and remitting fees for the program. If a commission opts out, the responsibility falls to the tracks and horsemen.

Five states have chosen to fund their portion of HISA: California, Colorado, Kentucky, Minnesota and Virginia. Each state has a little different formula for collecting their fees.

For example, California will owe $1.4 million to the Authority for 2022. The state purportedly will split the payment between Thoroughbred horsemen, through purse revenues, and Thoroughbred racetracks, via commissions, from their share of Advance Deposit Wagering (ADW). The California Horse Racing Board has stated this will not affect bettors.

The other states are funding their HISA invoice in a variety of ways, and some have yet to make a decision. 

Out in the Cold

A Facebook page titled Horsemen Arguing HISA has arguably exposed sincere concern and even fear from stakeholders who are looking at their livelihoods vanishing directly in front of them. 

Their main concerns circle around fairness to backstretch workers, the fact that not enough input in the HISA legislation came from horsemen and that the true welfare of the horses has been overlooked in some areas. Were stakeholders left out in the cold as rules and regulations were written?

With no or little input from horsemen, those industry workers have suspicions that animal activists like People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) may have influencers among those within HISA. Many questions and concerns submitted to the HISA website and at various meetings across the country went unanswered.

Prohibited protocols and penalties are also worries for the horsemen. Why is it taboo to ice a horse pre-race? Human athletes use ice in competition regularly. How can it be prohibited to fire shins on horses (beginning with the 2022 foal crop), but legal to fire splints and curbs?

Investigative powers seem over-the-top to many on the backside. The Authority would have access to all properties and places of business with the right of seizure for covered persons in question?

The concerns go on and on, as does a growing distrust. Covered persons have had trouble being heard by those in charge of HISA—a lack of communication and transparency. Those under the HISA legislation would like to see it simplified using a more common sense approach.

On the Record

Equine MediRecord principles worked this year’s Preakness, including (l to r) Finlay Dargan, COO, Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, Pierce Dargan, CEO, and his fiancé, Alexandra May.

Most horsemen have a vivid aversion to bookkeeping. Understandably so… They’d much rather concentrate on training horses and keeping owners happy and informed.

The new Horseracing Integrity & Safety Act (HISA) requires trainers and veterinarians to maintain detailed, daily health and treatment records for equines in their care. Those records must be made available to regulatory veterinarians, stewards and HISA upon request. The record keeping also applies to layups that are being given rest time at off-track facilities.

Imagine the daily hours to keep up with a barn full of trainees. There is a solution—a software program—to ease the struggle.

Equine MediRecord became operational in 2018, 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 sign up with Dargan’s company platform, which allows them to keep the precise and 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. “This has meant that top trainers such as Todd Pletcher, Chad Brown, Steve Asmussen and many others had to use the system to keep records for those races.”

“Seeing as [HISA] is the first time in the U.S. that trainers will be having to keep these records nationwide, we are now in discussions with multiple trainers to keep the system outside of these large racing events,” he added.

Sorting Through HISA 

The Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act of 2020 (HISA) contains many, many of pages of government speak. It can be confusing and difficult to discover the answers you are seeking. Perhaps knowing how the general categories are listed may help. HISA will hopefully include a search engine in the future.

Additional Perspectives on the Horseracing and integrity Act

Words - Peter J. Sacopulos

As the effective date of July 1, 2022, approached, the issues and inquiries regarding the  Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act (HISA) became immediate. These questions include inquiries from racetrack veterinarians as to their obligations for registering and reporting medication and treatment of Thoroughbred horses and from jockeys seeking guidance on whether the new rule regulating the use of the crop is effective between HISA’s start date of July 1, 2022, and the delayed enforcement of the use of the new crop on August 1, 2022. So too have been questions regarding the pending constitutional challenges and legal efforts to enjoin HISA. These issues have received significant attention by way of journal articles, HISA-sponsored “Town Hall Meetings” and national seminars. Conversely, HISA’s impact on those in the Thoroughbred industry outside of the United States have received limited analysis and discussion. 

As a practitioner representing licensees before regulators, I have received multiple inquiries from trainers outside the United States as to their obligations and their owners’ obligations relative to HISA. Additionally, I have received questions as to what, if any, impact HISA has regarding simulcast signals from tracks outside of the United States such as Woodbine in Canada. 

To comply with HISA, the foreign national trainer must register as a covered person. In fact, compliance with regard to registration and licensing is a three-step process for the foreign national Thoroughbred trainer. First, to comply with HISA, the international trainer is required to register as a covered person pursuant to 15 U.S.C.S. §3054(d). Second, he or she is required to apply for and secure a Thoroughbred trainer’s license from the jurisdiction (state) in which they will enter and race. For example, if the foreign national trainer has a Thoroughbred that will compete in this year’s Breeders’ Cup event, then he or she must have a current valid Thoroughbred trainer’s license issued by the State of Kentucky for the 2022 season. Third, the foreign national trainer must properly register the Thoroughbred horse(s) that he or she will enter and start with both the state and the HISA Authority. 

The rules requiring HISA registration are codified at 15 U.S.C.S. §3054(d). Online registration is available at https://www.hisaus.org/registration. Additionally, only days before the effective date, the Authority issued the “HISA Trainer Handbook,” which can be found at https://www.hisaus.org/home#resources. 

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. 

The issue of HISA and control of a track’s signal is one that has received discussion and attention. In fact, one racing jurisdiction, the State of Texas, has refused to honor HISA. In response, the HISA Authority is prohibiting Texas tracks from exporting their simulcast signal across state lines. What is clear and defined relative to the HISA Authority’s right to control a simulcast signal is that a state that refuses to recognize and comply with HISA may be placed in a position of having its tracks prohibited from exporting the simulcast signal. Conversely, what has received little or no discussion, is how, if at all, HISA’s rule regarding simulcast signals will affect Canadian or European simulcasting. 

For example, it seems clear that HISA has no control or jurisdiction over Woodbine’s simulcast signal since it is outside the jurisdiction of the Authority and the FTC as it is located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Less clear, is what, if any, control HISA/the Authority has or may have over Sam Houston Race Park and Lone Star Park (Texas tracks) exporting its signal to Woodlawn. Should the Texas track(s) do so, it could be argued that the signal is being transmitted across state lines and, therefore, subject to HISA regulation. Conversely, it may also be argued that the signal is not “crossing state lines” but rather being transmitted to a foreign jurisdiction and not subject to HISA control or restrictions. The answer is unclear. Equally unclear is whether additional states will adopt the “Texas position” on HISA when HISA announces the “rest of the story”—that being each jurisdiction’s proportional share of the costs for the Anti-Doping and Controlled Medication part of the program. This expense is expected to be a multiple, perhaps many multiples, of each state’s assessed cost for implementing the Racetrack Safety Program.

The passing of the effective date of HISA and the ongoing and repeated modifications and changes, has resulted in additional questions. For example, the new crop rule, covered under Rule 2280 of the Racetrack Safety Program rules, became effective July 1, 2022. However, the riding crop specification rule will not be enforced until August 1, 2022. And, there is ongoing concern including the mandated registration for participation despite the anti-doping and medication rules not being submitted for public comment and approval by the FTC.

Also, there are and continue to be multiple challenges to the legality of HISA. The HBPA, together with twelve (12) of its affiliates, have a pending appeal before the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans, Louisiana. That lawsuit challenges the constitutionality of HISA on the basis that Article I, Section I of the United States Constitution, prohibits delegation of legislative authority to a private entity as well as for the reason that HISA violates the Due Process Clause of the United States Constitution. The State of Oklahoma, the Oklahoma Racing Commission, Tulsa County Public Facilities, Global Gaming RP, LLC d/b/a Remington Park, the State of Louisiana, the State of West Virginia, the West Virginia Racing Commission, the Oklahoma Quarter Horse Racing Association, Hanover Shoe Farms and the United States Trotting Association also have an appeal pending before the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati, Ohio. In July, the State of Louisiana, the Louisiana State Racing Commission, the Louisiana HBPA, the Louisiana Thoroughbred Breeders Association, the Jockey’s Guild, Inc., the State of West Virginia, the West Virginia Racing Commission, and several individuals filed an additional (third) challenge to HISA that is pending before the United States District Court. That action seeks not only to find HISA unconstitutional but also seeks injunctive relief in the form of a temporary restraining order. That matter is set for hearing later in the month of July. 

The Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act is national federal legislation governing Thoroughbred racing in the United States. The authority and jurisdiction of HISA and its governing agency, the United States Federal Trade Commission, is limited to racetrack safety issues (presently) and anti-doping and medication issues next year in the U.S. However, the effects of HISA will be felt by those in Canada, Europe, and elsewhere outside the U.S. as the 2022 season continues and into the future. 

The Long Game - what can be done to bolster the “staying” division?

Words - Annie Lambert

North American distance races appear to have an ever-shrinking number of entries. The pool of horses willing and able to run a route of ground has slowly contracted. Finding a reason as to why, however, does not have a singular answer.

The Jockey Club statistics expose a downward trend in foals produced in the United States. The mid-1980s saw the high point with the 1985 foal crop exceeding 50,000 registered foals. But since that peak, the numbers have slipped. The economic downturn in 2008 caused many breeders to sell off or curtail breeding operations, which led to the number of foals falling from around 32,000 in 2008 to just over 17,000 in 2021.

That stunning 45% decline of potential runners could explain smaller fields, but not necessarily a loss of distance runners. Or could it?

Fewer horses to enter races with certain conditions revolves into a vicious circle; when racing secretaries cannot fill longer races, for example, they will inevitably offer fewer of them. 

It does not come across as though lagging purses are the biggest culprits, but it may be that breeders are looking toward pedigrees that produce runners with more speed than endurance. Do sprinters provide a faster return? Economics usually proves a strong motivator, especially in such a competitive industry as Thoroughbred horse racing.

Fewer breeders breeding fewer Thoroughbreds in general, plus more commercial breeders seeking speed that sells, could be a major factor.

One thing for certain is that no one can offer a definitive answer as to why it is difficult to fill races at classic distances. Solutions to the problem are also elusive. Those within the Thoroughbred racing industry will only offer personal hypotheses. 

Nature, Nurture & Breeding

The modern Thoroughbred’s ancestry traces back to foundation sires imported to Europe around the turn of the 17th century. The Darley Arabian, the Godolphin Arabian and the Byerly Turk, from the Mediterranean Middle East, were crossed on native English equines. The result was a horse that could carry weight while sustaining speed over extended distances.

The foundation Thoroughbred originated in Great Britain with its genetic origin being Arabian, which might suggest endurance. Generations of selective breeding have sped up the North American Thoroughbred. Study condition books from any racecourse, and you’ll find only a small percentage of distance races— those being one mile and one eighth or further.

When it comes to breeding, experts often disagree on the heritability factor of genes—heritability being a measurement of how completely a trait is passed down through the genes.

E. Gus Cothran, PhD, was formerly a research professor with the University of Kentucky’s Department of Veterinary Science. The emeritus professor is currently an advisor and consultant to the Department of Veterinary Integrative Biosciences (VIBS) at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas. The retired professor believes racing performance has a heritability of 30–35%. The remaining 65–70% he attributes to non-inherited factors, the likes of training, nutrition and health care.

“Very few people understand heritability,” Cothran said. “It’s the trait itself that has the heritability of roughly a third. That means that about 30% of what causes the trait is genetic, and the rest of it is environmental. It has to do with training and upbringing; about a third is nature and two-thirds nurture.”

Having a low genetic contribution to the trait means it will be more difficult to select for thorough breeding, according to Cothran. A complicated trait is probably made up of multiple genes having to interact. For example, there are multiple genes that would contribute to speed.

“Typical animal improvement breeding practices, which means you pick the animals that have the traits you desire to the highest degree you can find, breed them together and hope they will produce individuals that are equal or better than the parents,” Cothran explained. “And you’d have to do that probably several generations to make a large improvement, if it is even possible.”

“There may be one gene that has a maximum contribution to speed, one form of it, [for example] a particular gene with muscle characteristics,” the professor added. “But by itself, it is only going to make up a little bit of the total package of the speed.”

Andy Havens, founder of Havens Bloodstock Agency, Inc. in California, sees the trend toward speed; but he believes his ideas as to why things have changed are merely guesses as there are no statistics to back up the ideas.

 “I think the phenomenon is real,” Havens said of vanishing distance horses. “For a number of years and for a number of reasons the trend has turned more toward speed-oriented racing on the dirt, going away from the European type distance horses. Most of the races, other than Del Mar, that were longer races have been shortened.”                

A Turn of Foot

California-based, multiple-graded stakes-winning trainer Leonard Powell believes a lot of breeders are looking toward marketing their equine product. Since speed sells, there may be fewer classic-distance horses being produced. Powell hails from a racing family in France, riding races and training there prior to relocating to the United States. He has had plenty of experience with route horses.

“We run all day in Europe and have one pace, and it isn’t that way here,” Powell pointed out. “We bring middle-distance horses here; you want a horse that has a turn of foot. He can go a mile, mile and one eighth. With tactical speed, you can be in a good spot.”

Powell noted that the racing office has trouble filling races going one mile and one eighth or further. Those races might draw five or six horses on a good draw, but if they drop the race back to one mile and one sixteenth, it will have a full field.

Jeff Mullins is based at Santa Anita and recently set up an annex stable at Gulfstream Park. He was hoping the condition book in Florida would provide more opportunities, and larger purses, for his distance runners; that turned out not to be the case. 

“A lot of those [classic distance] horses have gone elsewhere, where there is more money,” Mullins opined. “If you go to Churchill or Keeneland or Oaklawn, those purses are higher than California.”

Mullins, with career earnings approaching $55 million, has won graded stakes with imported horses, the likes of Itsinthepost (FR), Battle of Hastings (GB) and River Boyne (IRE). He and his customers choose European horses for their surface preferences as much as their running distances.

“We purchase some sprinters and some distance horses—it just depends on the horse,” he said. “The main thing that we look for over there are horses that like firm ground.”

According to Mullins, there are not enough distance horses in California to fill those races, but “there are not enough horses in California period.”

It’s Not Just Canada 

Scott Lane, racing secretary at Woodbine in Ontario, Canada, was quick to point out that a lack of entries in stayer races was not solely a Canadian problem.

“It’s a North American issue,” he lamented, “not just a Woodbine issue.”

Lane did not have an “expert reason” why the problem exists, but thought there were many more stallions with shorter-distance pedigrees.

“You see a lot of middle-distance, milers now that are the vast percentage of the sires available in North America,” he pointed out. “You just don’t see many of those classic-distance horses that are going to stud, horses that race at a mile and a half and a mile and three quarters. You don’t see many of those turned into studs. That could be a reason why.”

Havens, a leader in bloodstock sales in California for over 30 years, would agree with Lane’s opinion on North American stallions. Very few stallions that are primarily distance horses seem popular with breeders.

“All I can really say is, it’s a function of selecting the stallions that we like,” Havens offered. “I think the choices of stallions that we go to stud with are speed oriented horses that like to run early. We like those really hot, brilliant horses that are precocious enough as two-year-olds to get enough experience to run in the classics [at three].”

Lane, who has written Woodbine’s condition book since 2019, leaned away from blaming North American purse structures. He cited Gulfstream’s $3 Million Pegasus World Cup (Gr. 1), as a case in point. In the field of nine, only first placed Life Is Good (Into Mischief) and runner up Knicks Go (Paynter) had won Gr. 1 stakes. The balance of the field, although most were graded stakes placed, had not.

“We have two Gr. 1’s [at Woodbine] going a mile and a half on the turf that we’ve seen very difficult to fill over the last couple of years, unless we get some European interest,” Lane cited. “With the [pandemic] travel restrictions we had to modify those races a little bit. 

“For the Valedictory Stakes (Gr. 3) we cut back from a mile and three quarters to a mile and a half. The Singspiel Stakes (Gr. 3) used to be at a mile and a half and is now a mile and three eighths. We’ve modified our distances to try and suit some of the handicap horses that [normally] go a route of ground at a mile and a sixteenth to a mile and a quarter to try and help fill longer races.”

Those changes, and other distance race changes around North America, may prove a lack of quantity and quality of horses for the stayer divisions everywhere. Many more horses are bred to sprint or run middle distances, according to Lane.

“We never have problems filling Woodbine races from five furlongs up to seven furlongs,” he noted. “You start getting to a mile and a sixteenth, we still have a lot of interest for those races. A mile and a quarter and over, we don’t have as many of those horses with the classic pedigree, so to say, anymore. We definitely see the farther you go, the less and less pool of horses you have to pick from. It’s just the way it is now.”

Texas Hold ‘Em

Texas Thoroughbred racing has had its ups and downs for decades but is ascending in recent years with popular racetracks, high-value incentive programs and prospering horse auctions. Ken Carson is the general manager of Valor Farm in Pilot Point, Texas, which was founded by Dorothy and Clarence Scharbauer who campaigned 1987 Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner Alysheba (Alydar). Their son, Doug Scharbauer, now owns the farm.

Carson, who has been on the Texas Thoroughbred Association board for nearly 30 years, agrees breeding trends are at least partially responsible for decreasing distance horse numbers. He does, however, have a lot of clients that breed to race.

Although Carson is a Texas native, he spent a decade or more in Kentucky working many facets of the racing industry, including five years as pedigree consultant at Three Chimneys Farm in Versailles. Carson believes commercial breeders have contributed in part to the vanishing distance horse pool.

“The market drives the bus,” Carson voiced. “The speedier horses sell better; they look better at the sales, and you don’t wait as long on them. I’m not saying it’s right, but I think that’s driving a lot of it. The two-year-old in training sales—they work an eighth real fast, and they bring the big dough.”

 Conformation traits of speedier pedigrees tend to portray a more precocious individual. They appear balanced as though they are mature and grown into their frame, even as a two-year-old. Distance horses are often rangier, long-bodied with leaner muscle leaving their overall look as not being finished, which they are not. It will usually take that immature looking distance-bred horse longer to mature physically as well. Thus, the economics of a quick return are diminished.

Carson has no doubt there are still North American mare owners breeding to increase those classic distance horses—even in Texas. After many years of deflated numbers, The Jockey Club report of the number of mares bred shows Texas annual foal numbers are rising.

Most acknowledge the trend toward fewer stayers is real. It seems to have crept into the industry slowly, but does anyone truly care? It would not seem so.

“I don’t think it is a planned influence,” Havens opined of the shorter-faster phenomenon. “I don’t know if anybody really thinks it’s a problem.”

Hybrid Stayers

With a shortage of distance horses in North America—those running one mile and one eighth or further—steeplechase horses occasionally take to the flat track to help alleviate the problem.

Scott Lane, racing secretary at Woodbine in Ontario, Canada, said the hybrids are “few and far between now,” but they can help to fill a race now and again.

“[Trainer] Jonathan Sheppard comes to mind as one that would have some of those hybrid horses,” Lane pointed out. “They’d see a flat race at Delaware, then go to Saratoga and run over the hurdles. You do see some horses that race here through the years that transition to the hurdles afterwards. Some of the United States interest will buy these horses that are no longer competing at Woodbine and transition them into the U.S. hurdle races during the summer months.

“They have extensive hunt meet racing from July through October with races in Virginia and Maryland; and I think probably South Carolina and Pennsylvania. The top ones run in Saratoga in the summer.”

The next generation of dirt surfaces

By Ken Snyder

Ask any Thoroughbred horseman or horsewoman what the safest racetrack surface in North America is, and the response will probably be immediate: synthetic. And they would be correct. Ask California horsemen or horsewomen the same question, and there’s a good chance the majority will have a different opinion. It’s “good old-fashioned dirt” as Dennis Moore (the noted racetrack surface consultant) calls it with understandable pride—specifically the dirt at Del Mar Racetrack where he is also track superintendent.

Overall, Jockey Club statistics show synthetics are safer than dirt with a 1.02 fatality rate per 1,000 starts and 1.49 for dirt in 2020. Del Mar’s rate of fatalities on dirt was 0.29 in 2020 with only one fatality. What’s more, the Del Mar fatality rate has been lower than those recorded for both the synthetic surfaces at Golden Gate Fields and Woodbine over the last four years.

Across North America, Del Mar was the lowest in fatalities among the major racetracks reporting statistics to The Jockey’s Club’s Equine Injury Database (EID) for last year. (Pleasanton achieved zero fatalities in 874 starts.)

Del Mar, certainly, is the “star” among U.S. dirt tracks, but it is also leading a trend for racing on “next-generation” dirt surfaces. While synthetic and turf fatality rates have moved higher and lower over the last five years, dirt tracks have experienced a steady decline in fatality rates to 2020’s all-time low.

Gone is the hue and cry for synthetics that once blanketed Del Mar, Santa Anita and the dearly departed Hollywood Park, particularly in the wake of the disastrous 2019 at Santa Anita when 19 horses died on the dirt surface. It’s not just that dirt is “back,” as evidenced by the Southern California tracks and Keeneland returning to it after synthetic surfaces, but it is evidently better than ever.

Mick Peterson

Can improved safety stats on dirt continue? The answer is a promising one for not only California but all of Thoroughbred racing in America. The 1.41 equine fatality rate in 2020 on all surfaces—dirt, turf and synthetic—was the lowest since the creation of the EID in 2009. Mick Peterson, another noted racetrack consultant and executive director of the Racing Surfaces Testing Laboratory, has been at the forefront of research and improvements in surfaces since 2006 along with Moore. He likes to use the word “multi-factorial” when looking at improving safety stats over the past decades. In other words, it is not quantifiable but undeniable.

Why are dirt tracks improved and safer? The answer is in a key ingredient most in the horse industry would agree has been missing from a sport not governed by a central authority: common sense. At least regarding track surfaces, it may have had its first application, not surprisingly, at Del Mar.  

Historically a lot of injuries occurred in the first week or two of race meets “where the surf meets the turf” with horses coming down from Santa Anita. When Moore took over as track superintendent at Del Mar, he immediately observed something: “This doesn’t make any sense. It’s the same horses. Why would you have a different surface [from Santa Anita]?” With a subsequent rebuild, he created consistency between the two racetracks. The base at Del Mar was overhauled to match Santa Anita’s, and banking in the turns was changed to exactly match the geometry at the Arcadia, Calif. track—roughly two hours north from Del Mar.

“When you have several tracks in the same jurisdiction—if you can keep the tracks, the maintenance program and the material and structure of the material as close as you can to one another—it’s going to benefit everybody,” said Moore.

Today that kind of collaboration continues with the ongoing rebuild at Laurel Park in Maryland, which has involved both Moore and Peterson. Laurel Track Superintendent Chris Bosley has also turned to Glen Kozak, who oversees the New York Racing Association’s (NYRA) facility and track operations, for input into the Laurel project. NYRA and Maryland tracks experience similar weather and more importantly, perhaps, Kozak oversaw track surfaces in Maryland before moving to New York.

California and Maryland are not the only states where racing is benefitting from collaboration. Peterson recalled a recent Kentucky Derby where an equine vet, looking at the track surface, casually remarked, “You know it seems to me like every time I come to Churchill, it looks a little bit more like Keeneland; and every time I go to Keeneland, it looks a little bit more like Churchill.” It is no accident, according to Peterson, but the product of much hard work.  

California efforts at uniform consistency with racetrack surfaces preceded a Safety-from-Start-to-Finish Initiative launched by Churchill Downs Inc. in 2008 to replicate on their racetracks what had been done on the West Coast.

“The Start-to-Finish Initiative provided the funding for me to go from Calder to Arlington to Churchill Downs to the Fair Grounds to make them match,” said Peterson.   

Pedro Zavala

Fair Grounds Track Superintendent Pedro Zavala talks regularly with his Churchill Downs counterpart, Jamie Richardson, as horses head north from the Fair Grounds winter meet to Churchill Downs in the spring. “Now those are very different climates that aren’t like NYRA or like Del Mar and Santa Anita, but to the extent that they can make things match, Jamie and Pedro will,” Peterson said

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Recruiting runners - the lengths racing secretaries are going to to field runners for their races

By Bill Heller

From New York to California, racing secretaries are working diligently to recruit horses, a task made significantly more difficult by the ongoing pandemic.

“Everybody is struggling to get horses,” New York Racing Association Senior Vice-President of Racing Operations Martin Panza said. “Everybody has empty stalls. Tracks that were running five days a week, now are running three or four.” Del Mar Racing Secretary David Jerkens put it this way: “It’s always a challenge. Any racing secretary in the country will tell you it’s hard to land new inventory.” Panza and Jerkens are veteran executives who have seen good times and bad.

Santa Anita’s Chris Merz began his first job as race secretary in February 2020. His timing couldn’t have been worse. “I think it was just before the pandemic,” Merz said. “You’re trying to come up with these ideas to get horses out here, and then you have the pandemic. Any plans get thrown out the window. Recruiting went out the window. You’re just trying to survive.” Thankfully, the New York Racing Association’s three tracks: Aqueduct, Belmont Park and Saratoga did survive, as did Santa Anita and Del Mar, which is the site of this year’s Breeders’ Cup. Yet the racing industry has shriveled considerably following the closing of Hollywood Park, the recent loss of Calder Raceway and, unless a miracle happens, Arlington Park.

“If tracks such as Arlington go away, if you lose a city like Chicago and take a big track out of the picture, it hurts the industry,” Panza said. “They’re not going to build new tracks to replace Calder, Hollywood, Arlington Park. It’s sad what you lose, but it’s a sign of the times. The industry is changing so quickly. What maybe worked 15 years ago might not work today.”

For smaller tracks, survival may depend on finding a niche. At Indiana Grand, Chris Polzin, who had been working at Arlington Park before moving to Indiana at the end of last October, was asked how his track competes with larger ones. “We race Monday through Thursday,” He said. “So we don’t really run against them. The big tracks gather all the attention. Who’s going to pay attention to us if we run on weekends?”

In mid-March, a month before Indiana Grand opened its 2021 Thoroughbred and Quarter Horse meeting, Polzin said, “Our stalls are jam packed. We have 900 stabled. I’ve got a list of 140 stalls people want and there are none.”

In mid-March, a month before Indiana Grand opened its 2021 Thoroughbred and Quarter Horse meeting, Polzin said, “Our stalls are jam packed. We have 900 stabled. I’ve got a list of 140 stalls people want and there are none.” Mike Anifantis, the racing secretary at Prairie Meadows in Iowa, hopes his Thoroughbred/Quarter Horse meet, which runs from April 30 to September 26, will be smoother than 2020. “This year, obviously, is a little bit easier than last year,” he said. “We didn’t know when we were opening. This year, we’ve got 15 to 18 new trainers coming in and eight or nine people who couldn’t come last year. We start out with Thoroughbreds, then mixed breeds; both run on the same card.”Asked if it’s a challenge to survive, Anifantis replied, “It’s a challenge for sure.”

Lone Star, which has both a Thoroughbred and Quarter Horse meeting, relies on its neighboring tracks. “We have a good circuit,” Lone Star Assistant Race Secretary Matt Crawford, a former trainer, said. “Sam Houston runs from January to April, then we start and run through July. Remington Park runs from August through December. We primarily get 75 to 80 percent of our horses from here. We get some horses from Oaklawn Park. We get some interest from Louisiana Downs, and it’s only a three-hour drive from Turf Paradise.” Asked about his hopes for this year’s meet, Crawford said, “We hope to be okay. It might be a little light the first couple of weeks. Around the first of May, we’ll start rolling pretty good.”…

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Life after Lasix

By Denise Steffanus

An estimated 95% of American racehorses go postward on Lasix, a diuretic that reduces bleeding in the lungs caused by extreme exertion. Now, nearly 50 years since horsemen and veterinarians battled for approval to use the therapeutic drug on race day, stakeholders in the industry have launched an initiative to phase out Lasix from American racing. 

The debate whether Lasix, technically known as furosemide, is a performance enhancer or a performance enabler has raged for decades. With that debate comes the discussion whether Lasix helps the horse or harms it. But we’re not going to get into that debate here. 

With racetrack conglomerates such as The Stronach Group and Churchill Downs adopting house rules to ban Lasix use on race day in two-year-olds starting this year and in stakes horses beginning 2021, the political football of a total Lasix ban for racing is headed to the end zone. Whether that total ban happens next year or in five years, racing needs to take an objective look at how this move will change the practices and complexion of the industry at large. The Lasix ban will affect more than what happens on the racetrack. Its tentacles will reach to the sales ring, the breeding shed, the betting window, and the owner’s pocket.

When Lasix first was approved for racing in 1974, only horses that visibly bled out the nostrils—an extreme symptom of exercise-induced pulmonary hemorrhage (EIPH)—were permitted to use the drug. A few years later, flexible endoscopes enabled veterinarians to identify horses with trace levels of EIPH internally that qualified them for Lasix. So many horses became approved for Lasix that most jurisdictions stopped requiring proof of EIPH to send a first-time starter postward on Lasix. All trainers had to do was declare it on the entry. Soon, nearly every horse was racing on Lasix, many with no proof it was needed. And that’s the situation we have today.

Racing regulations tag a horse as a bleeder only if it visibly hemorrhages from one or both nostrils (epistaxis). For this article, “bleeder” and “bleeding” are general terms for all horses with EIPH, not just overt bleeders. With almost every horse now competing on Lasix, no one knows how many horses actually need the drug to keep their lungs clear while racing. When Lasix is banned, we’ll find out.

Safety First

Racing Hall of Fame jockey Mike Smith

How a particular horse will react when capillaries in its lungs burst is unpredictable. Thoroughbreds are tough, so most horses will push through the trickle, and some may win despite it. Other horses may tire prematurely from diminished oxygen, which could cause them to take a bad step, bump another horse, or stumble. Fractious horses with more severe bleeding may panic when they feel choked of air. Will the current number of human and equine first-responders be adequate to handle the potential increase in these EIPH incidents?

Racing Hall of Fame rider Mike Smith, who earned two Eclipse Awards as outstanding jockey, has ridden in more than 33,000 races during his four decades on the track. He said he can feel a change in the horse under him if it begins to bleed. 

“Honestly, a lot of times you just don’t see that ‘A’ effort that you normally would have seen out of the horse,” he said. “You know, they just don’t perform near as well because of the fact that they bled, which you find out later. … When they bleed enough, they can literally fall. It can happen. It’s dependent on how bad they bleed. If a horse bleeds real bad, they don’t get any oxygen. … I’ve been blessed enough to have pulled them up, and if I wouldn’t have, they probably would have gone down or died, one or the other, I guess. They’re few and far between when it’s that bad, but it does happen.

Dr. Tom Tobin

“If you literally see the blood, then you stop with them. You don’t continue because it’s very dangerous.”

In 2012, Dr. Tom Tobin, renowned pharmacologist at the University of Kentucky’s Maxwell Gluck Equine Research Center, and his colleagues reviewed the correlation between EIPH and acute/sudden death on the racetrack, as set forth in published research. They noted that 60%-80% of horses presumed to have died from a “heart attack” were found upon necropsy to have succumbed to hemorrhaging into the lungs. Tobin and his colleagues concluded their review with a warning: “EIPH-related acute/sudden death incidents have the potential to cause severe, including career-ending and potentially fatal injuries to jockeys and others riding these horses.”

Mark Casse has won 11 Sovereign Awards as Canada’s outstanding trainer, five Breeders’ Cups, and three Triple Crown races. He’s a member of the Horse Racing Hall of Fame in both Canada and the United States, one of just three individuals to accomplish that feat (Lucien Laurin and Roger Attfield are the others).

“If as soon as they ban Lasix, we start having more injuries, they’re going to have to do something about that,” Casse said. “It will be more than just first-responders. That’s pretty scary to think, ‘Ok, we’re going to take horses off Lasix, and so now we’re going to need more medical people out there.’ That doesn’t sound too good to me.”

Spring in the Air wins the 61st running of the Darley Alcibiades at Keeneland Racecourse.

Training Strategies

Casse has a special way of training horses with EIPH, but he was cagey about the details and reluctant to disclose his strategy. 

“What I do is try to give any horse that I feel is a bleeder, especially four to five days into a race, a very light schedule,” he said. “That’s one of the main things I’ll do with my bad bleeders. So, in other words, not as much galloping or jogging—stuff like that.”

In 2018, trainer Ken McPeek had the most U.S. wins (19) without Lasix. Besides racing here, McPeek prepares a string of horses to race in Europe, where Lasix is not permitted on race day. He puts those horses on a lighter racing schedule.

“As long as a horse is eating well and doing well, their chances of bleeding are relatively small,” he said. “If a horse is fatigued and stressed, I always believed that would lead to bleeding.”

McPeek said if a two-year-old bleeds, the owner and trainer are going to have a long-term problem on their hands, and they’re better off not racing at two.

In 2012, the first year the Breeders’ Cup banned Lasix in two-year-olds, Casse’s rising star Spring in the Air entered the Grey Goose Juvenile Fillies (Gr1) fresh off an extraordinary effort in the Darley Alcibiades Stakes (Gr1), where she lagged behind in tenth then launched an explosive four-wide dash coming out of the turn to win by a length.

The filly had run all four prior races on Lasix, but without Lasix in the Juvenile Fillies, she never was better than fifth. After the race, Casse told reporters she bled.

“She went back on Lasix,” Casse said of Spring in the Air, who became Canada’s Champion 2-Year-Old Filly that same year.

Dr. Jeff Blea is a longtime racetrack veterinarian in California and a past president of the American Association of Equine Practitioners. He said racing without Lasix is going to require a substantial learning curve for trainers and their veterinarians. During this interview Blea was at Santa Anita Park, where he’s been working with trainers to figure out the best way to manage and train horses that race without Lasix.

“That’s a case-by-case discussion because all trainers have different routines and different programs,” he said. “In addition to the variability among trainers, you have individual horses that you have to factor into that conversation as well.”

When a horse comes off the track from a work or a race with severe EIPH, Blea asks the trainer if this has happened before or if it’s something new. If it’s new, he looks at the horse’s history for anything that could have precipitated it. Blea uses ultrasound and X-rays to examine the horse’s lungs.

“With ultrasound, I can often find where the bleed was,” he said. “If I X-ray the lungs, I’ll want to look for a lung lesion, which tells me it’s a chronic problem. I want to look at airway inflammation and the overall structure of the lungs. … I’ll wait a day and see if the horse develops a temperature. I’ll pull blood [work] because this bleed could be the nidus for a respiratory infection, and I want to be able to be ahead of it. I typically do not put horses on antibiotics if they suffer epistaxis, or bleed out the nose. Most times when I’ve had those, they don’t get sick, so I don’t typically prophylactically put them on antibiotics.

Based on his diagnostic workup, Blea will recommend that the horse walk the shed row for a week or not return to the track for a few weeks.

“Depending on the severity of my findings, the horse may need to be turned out,” he said. “I use inhalers quite a bit. I think those are useful for horses that tend to bleed. I’m a big fan of immune stimulants. I think those are helpful. Then just old-fashioned, take them off alfalfa, put them on shavings...things like that.”

Blea discusses air quality in the barn with the trainer—less dust, more open-air ventilation, and common sense measures to keep the environment as clean and healthy as possible.

Prominent owner Bill Casner and his trainer Eoin Harty began a program in January 2012 to wipe out EIPH in his racehorses. Casner's strategy to improve air quality for his horses and limit their exposure to disease is to power-wash stalls before moving into a shed row and fog them with ceragenins—a powerful, environmentally safe alternative to typical disinfectants. He has switched to peat moss bedding, which neutralizes ammonia, and he only feeds his horses hay that has been steamed to kill pathogens and remove particulates.

Particulate Mapping

Activities in barns, particularly during morning training hours, kick up a lot of dust. Researchers at Michigan State University looked at particulates (dust) that drift on the air in racetrack barns. Led by Dr. Melissa Millerick-May, the team sampled the air in barns and mapped the particulate concentration in a grid, documented the size of the particles, identified horses in those barns with airway inflammation and mucus, then correlated the incidence of airway disease with hot spots of airborne particulates.

Gulfstream Park has erected three “tent barns” that are large and airy with high ceilings and fans near the top.

For part of the 18-month study, the research team used hand-held devices to assess airborne particulates; another part outfitted the noseband of each horse's halter with a device that sampled the air quality in the horse's breathing zone.

Some stalls appeared to be chronic hot spots for particulates, and horses in those stalls chronically had excess mucus in their airways. Often, moving the horses out of those stalls solved the problem. 

These hot spots were different for each barn. Interestingly, because small particulates lodge deep in the lungs more easily than large ones, a stall that visibly appears clear might be an invisible hot spot. 

Getting Prepared for the Pegasus—Lasix-Free

Dr. Rob Holland is a former Kentucky racing commission veterinarian based in Lexington who consults on infectious disease and respiratory issues, for which he obtained a PhD. Months prior to the Lasix-free Pegasus World Cup Invitational Stakes at Gulfstream Park in Florida, several trainers asked his advice on how to condition their horses so they could compete without Lasix. He told them they needed to start the program at least six weeks before the race. His first recommendation was to use ultrasound on the horse’s lungs to make sure they didn’t have scarring, which is a factor in EIPH, because scar tissue doesn’t stretch, it rips. Scarring can develop from a prior respiratory infection, such as pneumonia, or repeated episodes of EIPH. Next Holland directed the trainers to have the horse’s upper airway scoped for inflammation and excess mucus.

“I had one trainer who scoped the horse’s upper airway and trachea and decided, with the history of the horse, against running in the race without Lasix,” Holland said. “So there were trainers who were really on the fence, and that was for the betterment of the horse. Every trainer I talked to, that was their main focus: How do I do this so that my horse is OK? That was always the first question they would ask me. Second, they would ask me if I could guarantee [that] running their horse without Lasix wouldn’t cause a problem, and the answer is there’s no guarantee.” 

Holland instructed trainers to start cleaning up the horse’s environment at least six weeks before the race to rid the air of dust, allergens and mold. He told them not to store hay and straw above the stalls; remove the horse from the barn while cleaning stalls and shaking out bedding; don’t use leaf blowers to clean the shed row; don’t set large fans on the ground in the shed row; elevate them so they don’t stir up dust; practice good biosecurity to avoid spreading disease; and steam or soak the horse’s hay and feed it on the ground. All this reduces irritation and inflammation in the airway.

The Pegasus World Cup Invitational at Gulfstream Park, 2020.

Holland prescribed nebulizing the horse’s lungs twice a day either with a chelated silver solution that kills microorganisms or ordinary saline solution to soothe the airway. He cautioned trainers with allergic horses not to use immunostimulants, which might cause adverse reactions in them. 

By starting the program well in advance of the race, trainers were able to experiment with management and training strategies to see which worked best.

“We programmed all the horses to be ready for a race without Lasix by starting the program at least a month before the race,” Holland said. “We tried to simulate the exact situation they’d be going into at Gulfstream—same bedding, same feed, same hay, but no meds. If the horses didn’t have a problem, they could give their best. Also, I wanted the trainers to test the theory that the horse could do OK in a work without Lasix. So the horses all worked and got scoped afterward to see that there weren’t any issues before the Pegasus. The trainers followed my advice, and they knew their horses would be OK. And they were.”

Confidentiality prohibited Holland from identifying the trainers who consulted him, but he said all their horses ran competitively in the Pegasus with only trace amounts of bleeding or none at all.

Help Us, Please

Some horsemen have expressed frustration, complaining that racetracks are telling them they have to race without Lasix …

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Kentucky Derby - the road takes a detour - impact of the delayed Derby - horse preparations

By Bill Heller

Who could have imagined that the road to the Kentucky Derby would have a detour? Or that the order of the Triple Crown Classics would be reshuffled? Or that major stakes would be contested without fans? Or that three undefeated colts who might have been vying for favoritism in the Derby would be injured or retired? 

The first Saturday in May, the Run for the Roses in the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs, became the first Saturday in September—September 5. That will be the second  leg of the Triple Crown, not the usual first.

The Preakness Stakes, regularly the second leg of the Triple Crown, was rescheduled for October 3 as the final leg of the Triple Crown.

And the Belmont Stakes, reduced from a mile-and-a-half to a mile and-an-eighth, will begin the Triple Crown instead of ending it on June 20.

Horses who had already earned enough points to start for the Kentucky Derby may now be joined by late-developing three-year-olds arriving on the scene. The top 20 point leaders to get into the Derby on the original date for the Kentucky Derby (May 4) could look much different than the top 20, four months later.   

It’s never been more challenging for trainers entrusted with the difficult goal of getting their horses to peak on the first Saturday of May than being able to do the same four months later.

Barclay Tagg

“I’m just glad they’re having the Triple Crown,” Baffert said. “They could have canceled them all.”

Now? “Everybody out there is in the same boat,” trainer Barclay Tagg said. Tagg’s boat carries his outstanding three-year-old Tiz the Law, whose four-for-five record stamps him as one of the Kentucky Derby’s major contenders. “Of all the horses out there, Tiz the Law is right there with my guys,” Baffert said in late May before fate intervened. At the time, his guys were three undefeated colts: Nadal, Charlatan and Authentic.

Unfortunately, after working a half-mile at Santa Anita on May 28, Nadal suffered a colyndar fracture of his left front knee. Surgery was done and two screws were inserted, and Nadal was retired and will be able to impact future generations of Thoroughbreds as a stallion. Then Charlatan suffered an ankle injury which means he’ll miss the Belmont Stakes and Kentucky Derby. Finally, Authentic finished second to Honor A.P. in the Santa Anita Derby on June 6th. 

Tiz the Law

That left Tiz the Law as a likely heavy favorite in the Belmont Stakes, and, if he wins, clearly the horse to beat in the Kentucky Derby. His top threat could be Honor A.P., who impressed winning the Santa Anita Derby for trainer John Shirreffs.

Churchill Downs reopened without fans on May 14. Santa Anita, where Baffert is based, began spectator-less racing the very next day. “The whole world is going through this,” Baffert said. “I’m just thankful that Los Angeles County let us open back up. It’s the safest environment. We keep the barns disinfected. We don’t want viruses spreading from barn to barn. Everybody is wearing masks. We treat it very seriously. What I was worried about was the backstretch workers. I’m responsible for a lot of families back there. If we didn’t open up, there wouldn’t have been jobs for them. I kept people on that had worked for me.”

Tagg had a heck of a problem just figuring out when he could ship Tiz the Law from his barn at Palm Meadows to his barn at Belmont Park, which will begin spectator-free racing on June 3 after a planned opening day on April 24. “I made a couple calls to New York and I asked, `Should we stay in Florida longer? There’s somebody in my barn in New York,’” Tagg said. “They said they’ll get back to me. They called me back. They said it looks like this: we’ll have the horses out of your barn in a day and a half, and then you can move in. Three weeks later, I called the guy in my barn in New York, and he said, `I’m still here. And so are my horses.’”

Finally, Belmont Park got the clearance to announce it would reopen on June 3 and that the Belmont Stakes would be held June 20 at a shorter distance. “They shortened the distance of the Belmont,” Tagg said. “How is it still a Classic if they shorten the distance?”

Maxfield wins the Matt Winn for trainer Brendan Walsh.

But really, there will be asterisks for all the legs of this year’s Triple Crown, especially if one horse sweeps all three. “If a horse wins the first two, if there is a horse going for the Triple Crown, it’ll be great for the Preakness,” Baffert said.

But he’s not thinking that far away. “I don’t think I have to think about it now,” he said. “Every day things change. These are very challenging times right now. You have to be able to change paths.”

He had no idea how many path changes were coming up for his Derby contenders. …

Nadal beats King Guillermo in the 2020 Arkansas Derby.

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