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.

Alan Balch - Fiefdoms redux?

I’m reminded of racing’s counterproductive fiefdoms by a 2008 writing in these pages of the late Arnold Kirkpatrick, my much-revered colleague and friend.  Back then, it seemed to him, there were way too many fiefs in the way of industry-wide accomplishments.  

To Arthur Hancock’s suggestion that our problems were caused by a lack of leadership, Arnold was “unalterably convinced that our problem is not a lack of leadership but too much leadership.”  He counted 183 separate organizations in Thoroughbred racing alone, each with their own agendas and jealousies.  “With 183 rudders all pointed in different directions, we have two possible outcomes – at best, we’ll be dead in the water; at worst, we’ll be breaking apart on the rocks.” 

In 2024, can it be said, without irony, that this is the best of times, and the worst of times?

In North America, and California in particular, an historic sport and industry contraction is well underway, by every possible indicator – led by the declining foal crop.  One might think there has been a corresponding contraction in the list of racing’s organizations; somehow, I doubt that’s true.  Nevertheless, in the “Golden State,” once a perennial leader of American racing, we have lost a critical mass of tracks since 2008:  Bay Meadows, Hollywood Park, fair racing at Vallejo, San Mateo, Stockton, and Pomona, and Golden Gate Fields this year. 

Is it simply a coincidence that this all happened while one racing operator – the Stronach Group --  increasingly dominated and controlled the sport in California, as no track owner ever before was permitted to do?

Arnold’s word “fiefdom” . . . comes back to mind, but now from a different perspective.  In European feudal times, as we learned in school, the fief was a landed estate given by a lord to a vassal in return for the vassal's service to the lord.  There are a great many California owners, trainers, breeders, jockeys, vendors, fans, and even regulators, who have been wondering how the vassals ever turned the tables.

In a Los Angeles Times interview published on April 5, Aidan Butler, the chief executive officer of 1/ST Racing and Gaming, the Stronach operator, used the term “imbeciles” to describe those who would question the company’s intentions, and perhaps its motives, in sending what was widely perceived as a blatantly threatening letter to the California Horse Racing Board.  

Instead, he termed the letter “transparent.”  And then stated, “if nothing else, people have been forewarned.”  Seconds before, he had claimed that the amount of money Stronach had invested in Santa Anita proved its good intentions.  This is the same executive who months earlier had suddenly announced, giving stakeholders notice of only hours, that Golden Gate Fields would be closed within weeks, before changing his mind under pressure from the rest of the industry.

Confused?

Stronach’s track management may be described many ways; truthfully “transparent” is certainly not one of them, despite constant assertions to the contrary.  As a private family company, even in a regulated industry, its leaders can claim whatever they want with impunity.  After all, the exceptionally valuable real estate on which most (all?) of their track holdings reside appears to make them immune from audit or inspection:  they rarely, if ever, are reluctant to tell their racing fraternity vassals that it’s their way or no way.  The damage resulting from that attitude is staggering.

Edward J. DeBartolo, Sr., was a predecessor billionaire owner of multiple American tracks.  Perhaps, however, because of his ownership of great and successful team sports franchises, among other interests such as construction, retail, and shopping center development, not to mention education and philanthropy, he knew what he didn’t know.  He realized he always needed teammates.  He delighted in saying to his fellow track owners that managing race tracks was by far the most difficult of all his enterprises, due to the elaborate interdependent structure of racing, and its nearly infinite number of critical component interests, each with different expertise.  More complicated than any of his other pursuits, he said!  To succeed in racing challenged him to learn, and his success resided in hiring, consulting with, and relying on people who knew more than he did.  As it did in all his businesses. 

Even to the most oblivious, it can’t have been hidden to the Stronach leadership that entering the heavily-regulated California racing market in the late 1990s would present serious challenges, at least as enormous as the opportunities.  Acquiring the two glorious racing properties of Santa Anita and Golden Gate (with a relatively short leasehold at a third, Bay Meadows) had to have been exciting.  To someone with the DeBartolo outlook on interdependent management, rather than the inverse, it could have been invigorating and boundlessly successful. 

That the opposite has resulted is an enormous tragedy for the sport worldwide, not just in California.  After all, the State of California’s economy (as measured by its own Gross State Product) is among the top five in the world, outranking even the United Kingdom’s.  How could this happen?

Had Stronach leadership begun, at the outset, consulting and cooperating in good faith with its California partners (including regulators, legislators, and local communities, not to mention fellow racing organizations, the owners, trainers, breeders, and other tracks), learning from them as teammates rather than dictating to them, California racing would look far different now than it does.  Its imperious and constantly changing management leadership compounded perennial problems and threats, not to mention complicating the industry’s politics and standing in California sports.  Obvious failures to understand California markets and invest in sophisticated communications and marketing also have been apparent, despite continual assertions to the contrary.    

Is there still hope for California racing?  Yes . . . but if and only if honest humility suddenly appears from Stronach leaders, and immediate, sincere engagement occurs with all the rest of the interdependent entities upon whose lives and success the racing industry depends. 

Alan Balch - What, me worry?

Article by Alan F. Balch

If you’re of a certain age, you can’t help but remember Alfred E. Neuman, the perennial cover creature of MAD magazine.  I sure do, and not mainly because of the magazine’s content . . . I was a dead ringer for him.  Skinny, gap-toothed, freckle-faced, red-haired, with crazy big ears.  So my laughing “friends” said, anyway.

Kids can be so mean to each other.

Obviously, the teasing stuck with me.  For a lifetime.  But back then, I shared another trait with him:  nothing worried me.  Everything seemed like a joke.  Like everyone else, I just yearned to grow up so I could be free.  Free of school, free to live all day, every day, with horses in a stable, if I wanted.  Which I did.

By college, though, I was an inveterate worrier, and still am.  My best friend once said, “Alan, if you didn’t have anything to worry about, you’d be worried about that!”  

We in racing, and in California particularly, have an overabundance of worries these days.  How the hell did it all happen?  From leading the world in attendance and handle a few short decades back, not to mention great weather, we have (not suddenly) come to . . . this.

In an interdependent sport, business, industry, such as ours, everything one part does affects all the others.  No part can succeed without the others; if one fails, all fail.  Unfortunately, there have been many failures to observe amongst all of us.

Ironically – but not entirely unexpectedly – I believe California racing’s historical prowess started to unravel in the best of times:  the early 1980s.  Our California Horse Racing Board regulators no doubt believed the industry was so strong that it could easily withstand disobeying a statutory command, which “disobedience” some of us believed could lead to disaster. 

 Hollywood Park sought to purchase and operate Los Alamitos, despite a clear prohibition in the law forbidding one such entity to own another in the state, “unless the Board finds the purpose of [the law] will be better served thereby.”  Santa Anita’s management at the time objected strenuously, including in unsuccessful litigation, providing a “list of horrors” that might ensue if the delicate balance among track ownerships in the state were disturbed.  

Among those horrors was the prediction that a precedent was being set for the future, where one enterprise might not only become significantly more influential than others, it could even become more authoritative and powerful than the regulator itself.

We at Santa Anita, whose management I was in at the time, were deeply concerned about our own influence and competitive position . . . and our reservations and predictions were largely ignored, undoubtedly for that very reason.  At everyone else’s peril, as it has ultimately turned out.

That Hollywood Park acquisition move turned out to be ruinous.  For Hollywood Park!  And the cascade of repercussions that followed, including changes of control at that track, led to another fateful regulatory change in the early 1990s:  the splitting of the backstretch community’s representation into separate and sometimes rival organizations of owners and trainers, which in every other state in the Union are joined as one.  Before his death, the author of that idea (Hollywood’s R.D. Hubbard) said, “That was the worst mistake I ever made.”

Consider that in the first half-century of California racing, interests of the various track owners, as well as owners and trainers in one organization, were carefully balanced.  No one track interest ruled, because the numbers of racing weeks were carefully allotted in the law by region.  

Unilateral demands of horsemen went nowhere.  Practically speaking, the Racing Law couldn’t be changed in any important way without all the track ownerships agreeing, with the (single) horsemen’s organization.  In turn, that meant there were regular meetings of all the tracks together, often with the horsemen, or at their request, to address the multitude of compelling issues that constantly arose.  

But when that balance was disrupted, even destroyed, is it any surprise that for the last three decades the full industry-wide discussions that were commonplace through the 1980s are now so rare that track operators can’t remember when the last meaningful one even took place?  

Thoroughbred owners have meetings of their Board not even open to their own members, and never with the trainers’ organization.  The Federation of California Racing Associations (the tracks) apparently still exists, but hasn’t even met since 2015.  The Racing Board meets publicly, airing our laundry worldwide on the Internet, showcasing our common dysfunction and lack of internal coherence to anyone who might be tempted to race on the West Coast.  

Not to mention those extremists who cry out constantly to “Kill Racing.”  And one private company, which also owns the totalizator and has vast ADW and other gaming holdings, not to mention all the racing in Maryland and much of it in Florida, answerable to nobody, controls most of the Thoroughbred racing weeks in both northern and southern California.

Our current regulators didn’t make the long-ago decisions that set all this in motion, and may not even be aware of them.  In addition, the original, elaborate regulatory and legal framework that was intended in 1932 to provide fairness and balance in a growing industry is unlikely to be effective in the opposite environment.  And the State Legislature?  All the stakeholders originally and for decades after believed nothing was more important than keeping the government persuasively informed, in detail, of the economic and agricultural importance of racing to the State.  Tragically, that hasn’t been a priority for anyone in recent history.

Just to top it off:  as an old marketer of racing and tracks myself, I believe in strong, expensive advertising and promotion as vital investments.  For the present and future.  I once proved they succeed when properly funded and managed; but I’m a voice in the wilderness now, to be certain, when betting on the races doesn’t even seem to be on the public’s menu.

What?  Me worry?!

Alan Balch - Federalism Redux

As if we in American racing weren’t already facing serious threats to our very existence as a major sport, and an exceptionally elaborate interdependent business, now we’re also an example of the present national political dysfunction and irrationality. Just one more sharp dagger.

Over a half-century ago, I spent a previous lifetime in academia—studying government and political philosophy, with an emphasis on American political enterprise and evolution. When I joined Santa Anita, I never thought that I would one day witness at the racetrack the fundamental contradictions of the American founding! 

But here we are, courtesy of the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority (HISA). As you are probably aware, this addition of national government oversight to Thoroughbred racing, which had previously been the province of state-by-state regulation, came by way of its sudden inclusion in a must-pass federal budget bill in the waning days of the Trump presidency. Courtesy of Republican Party Leader Senator McConnell, of Kentucky—whose patrons The Jockey Club and Churchill Downs advocated for it.

There is little doubt that the enabling legislation wouldn’t have been adopted had it been considered on its own merits, absent the cover of the required federal budget.

In any event, the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, adopted at the founding, reads in whole, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

Since racing had always been regulated by the individual states where it had been held (for nearly 100 years, or even more in some states), its sudden impending regulation by the federal government was bound to raise serious issues of “federalism.”

Way back when American schools required Civics and American Government to be taught—rigorously—we all were expected to learn the basic founding stories: about the original thirteen colonies of Great Britain, the American Revolution, and the Articles of Confederation which preceded the Constitution. Suffice it to say that the age-old tensions between the prerogatives and responsibilities of the individual state governments and those of the national (“federal”) government underpin all of American politics.

Federalism, our system of government whereby the same geographic territory is under the jurisdiction of multiple layers of authority, is at once the genius of our American democratic republic and its potential debilitating weakness. Such a structure requires cooperation—and repeated compromise. It’s been nearly 250 years since our Declaration of Independence. To this day, our founding tensions underlie virtually all our politics and governments . . . from local school boards to town and city councils, to counties, states, and the federal government.  

So, is it any wonder that when consensus in our complex, diverse nation is still so difficult to achieve on fundamental issues of human rights, race and voting procedures, our own (trivial?) questions of how horse racing is to be governed hardly have merited a glance?

Irony has heaped upon irony in racing’s current regulatory quagmire. The contemporary political party that seems to believe in the supremacy of states’ prerogatives as to critical issues of voting and personal behavior—the opposite one from the party that used that same banner to fuel the secession of Southern states igniting the Civil War in 1860—has abandoned it when it comes to racing oversight! Its leadership believes the heavy hand of the federal government is too weighty for issues of life, death and voting, but necessary to wield on regulating racing.

Thus far, trying to use federal law to serve the cause of regulatory uniformity nationwide has resulted in the opposite, at great expense, monetary and otherwise. The “otherwise” may well include sacrificing basic tenets of due process of law, such as the presumption of innocence for those accused of misbehavior.

And all of this was so unnecessary. The Jockey Club and the other prime movers of HISA should have simply engaged in good faith at the outset with the Association of Racing Commissioners International (ARCI). Its model rules have been developed over decades of interfacing with state racing boards and the Racing Medication and Testing Consortium, which includes trainer and owner representation. With that approach, the issues now plaguing all of us would be much diminished, if they still existed at all. Bottom line, nobody in the sport wants cheaters. But a relatively few in the sport, it would seem, do still want to decide for and dictate to all the rest of us. Does The Jockey Club actually want a more rapidly shrinking sport? It’s entirely possible, perhaps probable, with all the foreseeable angst. 

HISA leadership professes to be open, transparent and willing to consider improvements. If that is so, why won’t it immediately understand the serious threat of “provisional suspensions” to every trainer and owner, and the near-total lack of transparency and timely response when it comes to cases of obvious environmental contamination? That very concept of “provisional” suspension, which came from international non-racing equestrian sport regulation, is indicative of a blindness to the realities of racing which would have never occurred were the ARCI model rules adopted.

Instead of using its expensive public relations machine to continue sending repeated self-serving, congratulatory messages to a skeptical community, HISA should tell all the rest of us how we can go about expeditiously amending its rules to provide for practical, fair and truly transparent governance.

Publius (the pseudonym for James Madison in Federalist Paper #47) wrote this in 1788: “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” 

As it stands now, HISA’s authority, rule-making, disciplinary practices and governance are perilously close to just that destructive.

WIth absent judicial intervention, only HISA itself can open the door to necessary reform—before it’s too late.

Alan F. Balch - Elephants

Article by Alan F. Balch

Among my earliest childhood memories is loving elephants. As soon as I first laid eyes on them in the San Diego Zoo, I was fixated. I still am. Not too long ago, at its relatively new Safari Park, I stood for an hour watching these pachyderms of all ages in their new enormous enclosure, enjoying a massive water feature. Now, every time I fire up YouTube, it knows of my interest; I am immediately fed the latest in elephant news and entertainment.

Right up there with horses and racing.

You probably know, however, that you’ll never see elephants in a major American circus anymore. No more elephant riding, either. Even that is endangered in parts of the world where it goes back centuries, along with forest work. Zoos now breed their own.

Which brings me to the difference between animal welfare and animal “rights,” which is the crux of the problem horse racing faces everywhere it still exists, not to mention all horses in sport.

Owing to many, many factors, animals in our contemporary world have increasingly and vocally been portrayed as having rights, just like humans. (Or as humans should, we might more exactly say.) Even some of the more moderate organizations that oppose horse racing couch their fundamental opposition in the bogus claim that there is no critical difference among species, human and non-human (just as there is none among races of humans) . . . that to believe there is such a difference is to be “speciesist.” Which, to our enemies, is at par with racist on the continuum of odious and repulsive.

Truth be told (not particularly important for those who would destroy equine sport), there are in fact critically important differences between species, and types of sentient beings.

The most critical is that only humans among all species can conceive of the very notions of welfare and conservation! Other sentient beings cannot, even if they experience rudimentary “feelings.” Nor can they conceptualize their own welfare, let alone of the welfare of other animals or sentient beings. Only humans can make intellectual choices.  Don’t these simple irrefutable facts order the species, in favor of humans over all others?

Humans formed the first (and only) animal welfare organizations. Animals didn’t. Humans developed conservation. Animals didn’t. Humans developed veterinary medicine, not animals, as well as genetics, domesticated breeding programs, and on and on.

For better or worse, humans also discovered and elaborated anthropomorphism . . . the attribution of human behavior or characteristics to animals. Insects. Or objects. The world now has humanistic talking and thinking animals of virtually every description—crickets and ants, and even cars, machines, weapons, and airplanes. We think nothing of it, do we? Yet it tempts us—dangerously—to consider all of those as members of our own family.

To do so is fantasyland.  “Alternate realities and facts,” products of humans, are counters to objective truth. They threaten all humans. And, therefore, all animals. This kind of “intelligence” is not just artificial, it’s destructive. Its potential ramifications are frightening, to any human capable of fear. Would anyone like to see a “friendly” nuclear weapon arrive? Nor can I forget the three young jokesters in 2007 who thought a tiger in a San Francisco zoo might be fun to provoke—until she killed one of them.

The anthropomorphist or vegan humans who hate racing and all organized activities with non-humans (including pet owning), which they claim must require the animals’ “informed consent,'' seriously threaten the future of all equine sport. They have captured the attention of the world’s media; they capitalize on the contemporary and widespread emotion that animals are part of our own family, exploiting any relatively rare incident of abuse or sheer accident as a reflection on the whole of sport. The media embraces and embellishes the controversy without understanding the dangers of its origin.

Sadly, it is we who have bred these elephants in our room.  Even though horse racing above all other equestrian activities has advanced the equine standard of care and veterinary medicine immeasurably and inexorably—for centuries now, worldwide, that exceptional standard has collided with market economics and human greed, to the detriment of the race horse—imperiling the very sport itself.  We have increasingly been breeding potential unsoundness to unsoundness for at least half a century, then disguising and possibly amplifying conformation defects with cosmetic surgeries. And we wonder why our horses are more fragile?!

In America, our breed registry’s grandees have looked everywhere but in the mirror for the sport’s villains. In so doing, they have invited, stimulated, and even enhanced horse racing’s growing disrepute. They have cast blame for our woes on trainers, veterinarians, therapeutic medications, track operators, state regulators, and even the bedrock of American law—due process—but not on themselves. Their new, elaborate, often indecipherable enormity of national rules wrongly purport to address every potential weakness in the sport. But not weakness in the breed itself, for which they themselves must be held responsible.

The aim of breeding a better horse is the foundation of horsemanship. Or it should be. By “better,” for a couple hundred years, we meant both more durable and more tenacious for racing—racing as a test of stamina, substance, and soundness. “Commercial” breeding, for the sake of breeding itself and financial return at sales, not to mention glory at two and three, with quick retirement to repeat the cycle, is failing the breed itself. Obviously.

Our sport’s aristocrats, who are so fascinated with the efficacy of their new rules, have long needed a look at their mirrors. Let’s see if they can also regulate their own house—registration, breeding, selling—developing effective deterrence to and prohibitions on the perpetuation of fragility and unsoundness. Can they incentivize breeding for racing, to test substance and stamina? 

That’s the elephant in our room: the critical, fundamental need to breed a sounder horse. 

Alan Balch - The stress test

Article by Alan F. Balch

My old horse trainer, one of the wisest people I ever met—and I find many trainers to be so wise, way beyond their formal educations—used to define stress this way: the confusion created when one's mind overrides the body's basic desire to choke the living [bleep] out of some [bleep] who so desperately needs it.

Any trainer reading this will immediately recognize the sensation, surrounded as he or she is by countless other “experts” (at least in their own minds): regulators, do-gooders, gamblers, veterinarians, reporters, owners, blacksmiths, hotwalkers, entry clerks, and track officials—to name only a very few categories of her or his advisers.  

Everyone else in racing these days (not to mention virtually everyone else on Earth) is experiencing that same sensation. Our mutual feelings of stress are ubiquitous—that is to say, they’re everywhere in virtually everything we’re doing.

I can remember a time, not that long ago, when people went to the races, or owned horses, to get away from politics. And stress. The objectivity of the photo-finish camera, invented nearly a century ago now, was a welcome relief from all the conflicting opinions outside the track enclosures. And my $2 was just as valuable as Mr. Vanderbilt’s.

To be certain, there have always been politics within racing—our own politics. And gradually, with politically appointed state regulators, non-racing politics, real politics, became more and more intrusive as the decades marched on.

What we have witnessed in the last few years, however, is something new. Or, perhaps, a throwback to the early 1900s, when much of American racing was simply abolished in the name of “reform,” which a “reform” movement later led even to prohibition! It’s perhaps instructive that prohibition of alcoholic beverages ended about the same time that modern pari-mutuel betting on newly approved tracks began in the 1930s.

I’m not sure that what we’re witnessing now in racing—the advent of national, federal legislation to accompany and supplant state-by-state regulation—will be as cataclysmic for racing as what happened before in the name of “reform,” but I’m also not sure that it won’t be.

What it comes down to is this: how much reform did or does present-day racing really need? Are the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority (HISA) and its bureaucratic bedfellows actually going to result in whatever reform is really necessary? Or, are we going to fail this stress test?

The Jockey Club and Breeders’ Cup—those august, elite, and self-righteous bodies who always claim to know what’s best for racing—now find themselves arrayed against the National Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Association and the Association of Racing Commissioners International. The latter can be equally self-righteous and are accompanied by some state regulators, but have no august or elite pretensions. Quite the opposite, in fact, they claim to represent “the people.” Which is to say, bluntly, the non-elite. And let there be no mistake: in racing as in all things, the less-than-elite vastly outnumber the elite. The taking of sides we’re seeing leads to absurd ironies: one vocal HISA supporter dared to scorn the Kentucky HBPA for not being democratic enough . . . apparently not realizing that The Jockey Club, prime mover of HISA, is perhaps the least democratic organization on the globe, with the possible exception of the Catholic Church.

More importantly, the top of any sport’s pyramid is very, very tiny indeed, and isolated, unless it has a broad and sturdy foundation with ready and fair access to the top. Those at the tip-top would do well to consider that fundamental fact. In American racing, remember that those graded stakes purses are funded by how much is bet on the overnights—meaning, for the most part, non-elite and lower level claiming races—which need robust field sizes to attract sufficient handle. Those are the trainers and owners represented by the organizations who are questioning the necessity and implementation of several supposed HISA “reforms.”

We hear these reasons for racing’s supposedly necessary reforms. First, we need to stamp out cheating.  Second, we need to better protect the welfare of horses. Third, we need uniformity of racing rules throughout the country.

Following the experience of the last year or so, does anyone now seriously believe that adding a new layer of national bureaucratic and governmental oversight to the state oversight and regulation we’ve had since the 1930s will lead to greater uniformity, rather than more complexity, confusion, and cost?  Predictably, uh, no. And, in the bargain, just what is happening to the total cost of racing regulation and oversight?

Equine welfare? To the extent that the rest of the nation expects to be required, for the most part, to follow California’s progress, this could be a positive. But is it outweighed by resulting confusion, misunderstanding, and outright resistance to its very necessity, practicality, and incremental costs? Why were so many complex regulations that were not in dispute replaced by even more intricate new language and protocols that indicate lack of fundamental horsemanship?
Finally, the worst self-inflicted wound, the perception that cheating is rampant in racing, repeated endlessly and without proof by The Jockey Club, in its anti-Lasix crusade. Yes, the authorities discovered and proved a cheating scandal via wiretaps intended for another purpose. So, please point us to the armor in the HISA hierarchy of complicated supervision that will prevent such an outrage from happening again.

What’s to be done? Well, we can continue to hope this bronc can be broke . . . and be thankful our cowboy is mounted on a horse instead of a tiger. If he is.   

Alan Balch - Awake yet?

Article by Alan F. Balch

I don’t know about you, but as for me, a couple of years ago when I started hearing about being “woke,” and since then have been relentlessly pounded with the expression, I hadn’t a clue what that meant.

I’m not sure I entirely understand it now . . . but I did some research.

At just about the time of his commemorative holiday in January, I learned that the late Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s last Sunday sermon prior to his 1968 murder was entitled, “Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution.”  Dr. King referred to the tale of Rip Van Winkle, who had been asleep for 20 years, dozing off during the reign of King George III of England, and awakening during the presidency of George Washington.  He literally slept through the American revolution.

King preached that his congregations needed to awaken to the injustice still all around them, and demand meaningful change.  He exhorted them "to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change.”

If I had fallen asleep in 1990, when I had major responsibilities at both Golden Gate Fields and Santa Anita, and awakened today, I would recognize the San Francisco Bay and the San Gabriel Mountains immediately.  But I would have slept through a different kind of revolution than Rip did.

Given the ages and longevity of racing’s community of trainers – in California and elsewhere – is it any wonder that the era of critical change our sport has faced and continues to undergo feels threatening, daunting, and sometimes even overwhelming?

While racing has perennially (ever since its modern conception in the 1930s) been the most heavily regulated of all professional sports, by far, recent additions of a new federal regulatory structure, added to various and sometimes inconsistent state and track rules, have made for an even heavier burden on all those responsible for the welfare of horses.  Each new straw on this camel’s back can seem like a tree.

If the trainers and veterinarians need to be wide awake, so too do the owners, regulators, media, and track managements!  The impetus for Congressional action and federal regulation of racing, on its surface, was to harmonize and improve oversight of the sport.  Wasn’t it?!  Not to mystify and complicate it any further.

Training a horse . . . and horsemanship itself . . . are infinitely complex by themselves.  To begin with.  There are plenty of books about these subjects, but no manuals.  The rules governing training have sometimes been conceived, enforced, and praised, by individuals whose experience doesn’t include even one working minute in a stall or shed-row, and who couldn’t begin to persuasively define horsemanship.  And who then wonder why morale on the backstretch isn’t positive?!

All of us in racing or non-racing equestrian sport, worldwide, have been raised with the mantra that the welfare of the horse is paramount.  But actions speak louder than words.  With all the attention to elaborate rules and regulatory structures, where is the corresponding attention to and investment in backstretch conditions, for both human and equine residents?  In track conditions and the latest surfaces and technologies?

We hear a great deal today about equestrian sports’ “social license to operate,” that the treatment of animals must match the public’s expectation of proper welfare practices.

“Well,” I’ve always been tempted to say, “let’s bring the public to the horses, where they live, so the public will see how well they are treated.”  At Santa Anita, we did that for years, and very successfully.  But when I see many of today’s backstretches, as opposed to how they looked when I went to sleep 30 years ago, I’m appalled.  If regulators and track managements expect the professionals who care for the horses to bear the burden of more onerous requirements and regulations for behavior than ever before, shouldn’t the conditions under which the horses live/train and the professionals (including veterinarians) practice their trades be at the highest levels of expectation as well?

In all the “social license” and horse welfare discussions, it’s appealing but wrong to ascribe human characteristics to horses – as animal “rights” groups consistently do.  We who love horses, as horses, must do better, in our own language, to avoid the traps the enemies of sport with horses are setting for us, whether consciously or not.  Two-year-old colts or fillies (or even foals and weanlings) should not be referred to as “babies.”  They aren’t.   We shouldn’t call males or females “boys or girls,” either.  They aren’t.  We shouldn’t say, “he loves being a race horse.”  He doesn’t know what that means.  The concepts of “love,” or even “happiness,” are human, not equine.  He probably does “love” carrots or sugar; actually, he doesn’t, because he doesn’t think like we do.  But a good trainer knows when a horse is content, satisfied, happy . . .  or nervous, upset, and unhappy!  Even though the horse is not those things in human terms, but instead in the context of being an equine.  An animal. 

In 1824, William Wilberforce, member of the British Parliament, was a founder of what became the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the very first animal welfare organization in the world.  He was among the most wide-awake of all humans at the time, and maybe ever:  he was the leading English advocate for the abolition of slavery.  He was a man of conscience, rather than party.  He led his peers in advocating new ideas, remained vigilant, and unflinchingly faced the challenges of necessary change.

He knew the differences between humans and animals, and that real animal welfare can only be achieved and maintained by humans. 

Alan Balch - Remembering where we come from

Victor Espinoza photo

Like so many of us in racing, I’ve been horse crazy my entire life.

Some of my earliest memories are being on my dad’s shoulders, going through the livestock barns at the San Diego County Fair, and then lighting up when we got to the horse show . . . which, back then, was located just outside the turn at Del Mar into the backstretch, at the old 6-furlong start, long before the chute was extended to 7/8. All their horse barns back then were the original adobe, open to the public during the fair, and we could walk down the shed rows talking to the horses, petting those noses and loving the stable smells.

At least I did. My mom was appalled, of course.

She assumed, I’m certain, that I would grow out of my weird fixation. But the way those things go at certain ages, the more I was discouraged, the more obsessed I became. The fact that our family was decidedly not elite in any respect, certainly not educationally or financially, became a great opportunity for me to work at what I loved the most: taking care of the horses, to begin with, and camping at the barn whenever possible. At first, I wasn’t getting paid at all—except in getting to learn to ride by watching and listening and then riding my favorite horses without having to rent them. Lessons were out of the question.

I gradually learned that the people who owned and showed and raced horses had to have the money to do it, and being able to do that myself was beyond my imagination. I don’t remember ever caring. Nor do I remember ever being mistreated because of my lowly station. In fact, it was a great bonus for me to get out of school at times to travel to shows and live in a tack room in the stables. And, as I grew older, to start getting paid actual wages for my work.

Making it through college and graduate school without having to wash dishes in the dining hall led to my loving equestrian sport in a different way and at a much different level—especially when I met Robert Strub at the Forum International Horse Show in Los Angeles (which I was managing while attending school). He offered me a position at Santa Anita. 

Elite equestrian sport, racing and non-racing alike, became the rest of my distinctly non-elite life. And, I venture to say, my fellow non-elites in these sports vastly outnumber the elites. 

Almost all trainers, jockeys and racing labor on the backstretch, who make the game go from hour to hour, day to day, month to month, and year to year, weren’t elite when they started out, at least by any definition except the one that counts: their merit, their specialized skills, and their commitment to horses and the sport. I remember how moved I was a decade ago when one of international racing’s most elite trainers got choked up when describing how it felt to be appointed a director of an esteemed racing association. “I’m just a trainer,” he said, as though his accomplishments and expertise didn’t qualify him to rub shoulders and contribute to deliberations alongside wealthy and powerful elite decision-makers. They did. And they do.

In this greatest of all sports . . . where the interdependence of all its critical components is its essence . . . elites of accomplishment and merit, like him, comfortably perform alongside all the other elites, including those of birth, inherited or self-made wealth and royalty.

Horses have brought us all together, and many of us have been lucky enough to know—and be appreciated by—some of the world’s most famous personages.

So it was when Victor Espinoza, the self-proclaimed “luckiest Mexican on Earth,” won the Triple Crown, and later had occasion to meet and joke with Queen Elizabeth II at Royal Ascot. Doesn’t his story sum it up? And remind most of us where we came from?

The eleventh of twelve children, born on a dairy farm in Tulancingo, Hidalgo, growing up to work in a manufacturing plant and the stables, Victor drove a bus to pay for jockey school. Anyone who has endured Mexico City traffic knows the elite skills that must have been required! He aspired to more; his skill and determination resulted in successes reserved for the very fewest of the world’s top athletes. As the famed Dr. Robert Kerlan – who treated athletes at the highest levels of every major sport – once observed, “pound for pound, jockeys are the greatest.”

When honored by the Edwin J. Gregson Foundation, which has raised over $6 million from the racing community in 20 years—of which 98% is dedicated to backstretch programs including scholarships for its children—Victor again cited his luck in achieving what he has without much school, as well as his amazement at the Gregson’s success in its scholarship program. Hundreds of backstretch community children have gone to college because of it—in fields ranging from mechanical engineering to biology, nursing, graphic design, criminal justice, life sciences, sociology and everything else.  

A few are now even among the world’s elites in architecture and medicine. The backstretch teaches tenacity.  

And isn’t that just one reason why her late Majesty the Queen loved horses, racing, and its community, above all her other pursuits?  

Alan F. Balch - Those pesky rules

In California, throughout the United States, and worldwide, if there’s one gigantic bone of contention we can all see, it’s the starkly divided attitudes of populations toward the need for rules.

An anti-regulatory fever seems to be reaching everywhere, often couched in terms of a grand contest between freedom and tyranny. Within racing’s microscopic corner of the governmental universe, we sense it every day. After all, racing is probably the world’s most regulated sport. Over a century of experience, with its glory and equally alluring temptations, taught governments what was needed to ensure its integrity in the public interest. And perhaps to save it from itself.

There’s another reason, of course. And that’s always been our reliance on the noblest of animals, whose welfare must always be our paramount concern. We can’t just mouth those words. We have to live with them. And be entirely intolerant of any in our midst who don’t.  

That intolerance of unacceptable behavior requires robust rules. Sadly, human and racing history teach that the worst angels of our nature tend to thrive in a vacuum of rational regulation, or if its enforcement is ineffective.

It is in this context that California Thoroughbred Trainers is leading a task force of all the interdependent organizational and other stakeholders in our state’s racing to determine what additional steps, beyond those already enforced over the last three years, might be taken to protect the welfare of our horses still further. Over the last decade, and nationwide, all objective statistical evidence points to impressive progress in making our sport safer and safer for its essential athletes, human and equine. 

This effort is important, I believe, but not because of those who loudly oppose the very existence of racing. The most vocal and extreme of those factions cannot ever be satisfied with any enhancement of our welfare practices; they believe fundamentally that an animal is required to provide its “informed consent” in order to participate in any activity. Such activities include sport, of course, but also confinement in any way, or control by humans. Therefore, for them, no pets, nor zoos, nor conservation, nor breeding, nor human consumption of animals, obviously.

No, our effort is important because we ourselves should be the professionals who elevate standards of horsemanship and care, in our own self-interest and that of our equine partners. It is difficult for me to conceive of a logical rule proposed to enhance equine welfare that wouldn’t be welcomed by the best horsemen among us, however much the reason or need for it might be lamented. 

In my comments to the California Horse Racing Board in January, I called attention to two specific areas of particular concern, to begin with, in our statistical safety figures: incidents of unexplained sudden death in racehorses and shoulder fractures. The first is a particular problem for humans as well as equines; and answers will only come from sustained, expensive, targeted research, some of which is already underway via the Grayson-Jockey Club Foundation. That foundation, and others like it, have for decades proved racing’s commitment to improving equine welfare, doing by far the most important work in the world for horses in every activity, not just racing.

The risk of shoulder fractures among horses returning from layoffs needs to be dramatically reduced or even eliminated by improved horsemanship. Serious continuing education as to best practices is the key here, since equine respiration and musculature fitness improve more rapidly following a layoff than does bone strength. Owners and trainers may therefore be led to believe that increasing training stress is indicated before it should be.  

A suggestion I made about potentially compulsory education for trainers on this matter brought me the accusation that I was “anti-trainer.” Far from it. The opposite, in fact.  

Nobody except a trainer has a greater appreciation for and respect of what horse trainers do than I.  

So, who better to elevate the professional standards of trainers than trainers themselves? That is precisely why we as an organization accepted the responsibility of leading the California task force, when the suggestion was made that a rule should be advanced to penalize trainers for catastrophic breakdowns. Instead, let’s consider every conceivable idea, from any source, that could lead to continuing improvement in our welfare practices.

When arguments about the tyranny of regulation and freedom swirl around me, whether in racing, or about public health or anything else, I just stop to think. Public order—even productive public debate —depends on a common understanding of the rules. And a consensus definition of the common good.

What would happen to public safety (what is happening to public safety) if speed limits were removed (or not enforced), if traffic lights disappeared, or driver’s licenses weren’t required? And what would happen to air and train travelers and homeowners if rigorous regulation for transportation and housing safety weren’t in place? 

The need for robust regulation of racing has been demonstrated time and time again . . . despite the fact that so few trainers are ever accused of serious rule violations. That alone is a sufficient reason that trainers themselves should study and recommend rules and practices for improving the sport’s safety.

We and all of racing’s other stakeholders continue to welcome serious suggestions from any quarter.

Alan F. Balch - Who’s responsible?!

The California Horse Racing Board, our state’s regulator, recently announced a meeting of its Medication, Safety, and Welfare Committee, for a public “discussion regarding the advisability of penalizing trainers for injuries and fatalities for horses in their care.”

In early 2019, management decisions at Santa Anita, track conditions, and abnormal weather, combined for several weeks to produce greater risk of calamitous injury to our horses than any of us could remember.  Not only did this draw nationwide, even worldwide attention to serious animal welfare issues in the sport, it also resulted in a temporary closure of Santa Anita itself for track reconditioning.  A spate of regulatory elaborations followed, along with new legislation as well as “house rules” intended to address the need for reform.

At the outset of my life in the sport (when most show horses were former race horses), and especially when I joined Santa Anita’s management, I was taught that respect for interdependence was critical to our industry’s success.

Nobody said it better than Edward L. Bowen, of The Blood-Horse, about 30 years ago, in his column entitled “The ‘without us’ syndrome: ‘without us, there would be no game,’ is a comment made often, usually with a hint of self-righteousness.  It is one of the most galling comments we know, and yet it is heard all too frequently in racing.  The comment is self-congratulatory, but ultimately self-destructive, for it unmasks a basic inability to grasp the interdependence of various segments.”

When I was in management, I heard this more often than I would like to remember from trainers, owners, and breeders.  When I was away from racing for about a decade, I heard it from acquaintances in every segment of the sport.  Now that I’ve been associated with the trainers, I hear it most often from owners and track management.  

Permit me to quote Bowen again at length.  “The approach that without us, there would be no game, stands in the way of progress.  It is a simplistic approach, blinkered on both sides, for it is so self-evident in every case that it hardly bears repeating.  It should be patently obvious that without owners there would be no horses and therefore no racing; without tracks there would be no place for horses to race or fans to assemble; without trainers and jockeys, there could be no Thoroughbred racing as we know it; without mutuel machines run by technically knowledgeable professionals, the wheel that drives the industry could not turn; without breeders, there would be no source of horses; without backstretch personnel, the game would grind to a halt; without fans and bettors, racing would recede to hobby status; without the rules, legislative, and regulatory arms, the industry would be chaotic, or illegal.”

The progress we’ve made in California improving our safety record since 2019 is remarkable . . . but it’s only progress, not perfection.  And as if to demonstrate their closed-mindedness, racing’s enemies will doubtless take this public opportunity to discuss potential new rules assigning penalties to trainers for equine injuries to flog us all even more mercilessly.

Most if not all trainers have respected the need for continuing regulatory reform and enhanced oversight since 2019; new legislation and increasingly burdensome rules have been accepted with varying degrees of grace, of course.  That’s only human nature.

But what is more important is that trainers are only one critical part of the progress.  

In this interdependent sport of ours, every segment has had a key role, and borne their own increasing burdens.  As the most prominent faces of racing generally, track operators have endured significantly increased expenses and administrative challenges, not to mention public relations and staffing crises.  Owners and breeders have withstood negativity never before experienced, not to mention reduced opportunities and economic hardship themselves.  Veterinarians have never worked harder, nor with more visibility and risk.  Employees and vendors (including the backstretch community) have felt unprecedented strains.  Support of our fans for an embattled sport has been tested severely.  And our regulator, representing the state government to the public, has been subject to a merciless onslaught of misinformation, disinformation, and brutal, unfair criticism from all sides, beyond any previous boundaries. 

The progress we’ve achieved, therefore, is based on every one of our interdependent segments working together to achieve the same goal, whatever tensions might exist between them.  Efforts toward reform have affected them all.  Continuing to work together will achieve greater progress; the opposite courts ever more disaster.

The old aphorism to “fix the problem, not the blame,” is apt here.  However great the temptation to assign blame for equine injuries and fatalities to one constituency, it must be resisted, even scorned.

To do otherwise is to risk the progress in equine safety already made and rightly celebrated, and turn racing’s interdependent segments against each other as never before.

Alan F. Balch - Is this herd safe?

In short, no, it isn’t.

And it’s long past time for racing’s leaders to recognize the overwhelming threats to the sport and act decisively and intelligently.  Up ‘til now, every monumental effort we’ve made has, in reality, been only a half-measure.  

Month after month, the California Horse Racing Board has been under siege by a small band of “animal rights” extremists.  By extension, so has our governor’s office and several local jurisdictions as well. Not too long ago, authorities in New York were similarly besieged, as were U.S. Senators and members of Congress. Key editorial boards and journalists of American newspapers are constantly surrounded and pummeled by well-organized and funded opponents of racing who detest our livelihoods. Important radio and television broadcasters in racing markets, and nationally, not to mention legislators in almost every state where racing is conducted, are all under the same gun. Then there’s “social media” – don’t get me started on that fount of misinformation and misdirection.

While I’ve touched on this issue in these pages before, without noticeable effect, let’s be even more explicit. If racing’s leadership doesn’t now organize and fund what’s needed to be done for many years, the battle to protect and advance racing will be hopelessly lost, if it isn’t already.

We take for granted the most elementary aspects of basic horsemanship, and we shouldn’t. A reporter recently contacted me with an allegation received from an activist that “these horses are in their 12’ by 12’ stalls 23 hours a day. They’re confined most of their lives. It’s kind of like a prisoner in solitary confinement. You let them out for one hour, they’re going to go crazy. They’re going to exercise, they’re going to run around, they go insane. So that’s what these horses do. You let them out of their stalls, and you line them up and you put them in the starting gate. Of course, you open up that gate, they’re gonna run like hell because they’ve been locked up all day.”

So, the reporter innocently (and seriously) asked me, “Can you speak to this point? Is this an accurate claim, or is this false or an exaggeration?”

First, understand clearly that such an allegation, however false, sounds entirely plausible to anyone unfamiliar with basic horsemanship. In other words, it’s taken seriously by probably 95% of the general population, or even more—including, by the way, the aforementioned editorial boards, politicians, journalists, broadcasters and social media addicts, who receive other such accusations constantly.

As a horse-crazy marketer at heart myself, I trace our failings back a long way . . . to the increasing abandonment of promoting on-track attendance, which coincided with the advent of Advance Deposit Wagering and simulcasting before it. I have always felt that selling our gaming at the expense of the horses and sport was suicidal, since no sport can compare with ours, but every other game can.  Continually emphasizing the game detracts dangerously from the horse, the essence of our sport. Its unique selling proposition.

The “animal rights” activists sense this. They are accomplished strategists. Their appetites have been whetted as they have learned from their own case studies that precede us: fashionable furs, elephants at the circus, and orcas at marine parks, which, in truth, are all importantly different from racing. Lately, their approach to racing is two-fold: people really don’t need horses to bet on (because there’s historical racing in the first place and plenty of other ways to bet). Real horses are miserably abused and killed when they should be running free. Or, more logically, they’re not bred in the first place.

Racing’s wealth has been spent (wasted?) so far on defense, often taking positions that actually worsen our public reputation. The Jockey Club has devoted a fortune to advancing anti-Lasix legislation, that has fed and even emphasized a false narrative that race horses are unconscionably drugged. Some tracks have pursued advertising campaigns that even call attention to break down statistics in the name of improving safety, thus affirming our attackers. “Crisis management” firms have largely failed, it would seem, at enormous and an often counterproductive expense.

Understanding our opponents and their goals is key. Then we must take the offensive to save our sport, all the while continuing and increasing ever more effective efforts to breed and race and enhance soundness in our horses.

We are confused when the “animal rights” extremists don’t respect or appreciate our efforts to improve animal welfare. We shouldn’t be. To them, the two concepts are fundamentally incompatible. To a human who believes that any (“other”) animal is equivalent to a human, that it is therefore entitled to express its informed consent before undertaking any activity, the very concept of human husbandry of animals is moronic. To the true believers, the extremists who drive opposition to racing, no animal can be raised or processed for food or any byproduct. No animal can be a pet. No animal can be farmed—meaning bred—for any purpose at all. Their informed consent is literally impossible.

Moreover, these extremists seek to impose their own beliefs and conduct on all the rest of us, while secretly ridiculing and marginalizing any effort to improve animal welfare. Let us recognize that only the tiniest fraction of the public would support such extreme views, if their motives were understood. Nor would the public accept such a draconian restriction on the freedom of others if they knew what was at stake.

When that reporter posed those questions to me, I thought about how stables had evolved over thousands of years, for the safety, protection, happiness and well-being of our herds. We owe it to them, and to our sport, to convene the brightest minds and deepest pockets we have, all together, to develop effective strategies, using the most modern methods, to combat our enemies in the public sphere.

Everyone who truly loves animals, for the joy and even the sustenance they bring to human life, needs to understand how threatened they are.  

Alan F. Balch - Just a few questions, please?

One of the few upsides of having months to worry and reflect about where we all are in our lives and our sport, is that we have time to reflect.

And ponder the fundamentals.

So here are some impertinent questions we should consider, and should have considered seriously and resolved long before now, not just rhetorically, if horsemanship and our sport are really to have a prosperous future.  Or any future.

Are breeders who breed unsoundness to unsoundness, or unproven to unsound, or unproven to unproven, likely to be breeding a better, sounder, more durable race horse?  Which will, in turn, further improve the breed?

Does it really make sense to “surgically correct” conformation defects in weanlings?  For racing soundness?  For future breeding soundness?  For soundness, period?  Is a surgically corrected yearling actually “sound,” in the sense of correct horsemanship?  Are conformation defects that have been corrected surgically likely to disappear magically when a corrected horse enters the breeding shed?  Is it possible that “corrected” conformation defects are actually genetically compounded and multiplied during future generations of breeding?

Should surgical corrections to weanlings and yearlings be disclosed to potential buyers?  To the breed registry?  If not, why not?  Is there any way to become aware of such procedures other than through “the honor system”?

Should The Jockey Club, as the breed registry, take responsibility for the proper phenotype (conformation) of the Thoroughbred, as well as for the genotype (genetic composition as determined through DNA testing)?  If so, how, and if not, why not?

Given the economic Regression that is undoubtedly upon us now – note the use of that word instead of “recession” or “depression” – can or should or will this economic disaster present us some unavoidable opportunities to address these questions sensibly?  The foal crop is already at 1965 levels.  Given the delays that have been evident following previous economic calamities, will it be a year or probably two or more years from now that the foal crop numbers decline even more precipitously?

At some point, is it inevitable that the number of races conducted annually will finally begin to coincide once again with the supply of horses?

Will demand for durable, sound, substantial race horses ever reappear and return us to observing the maxim that racing is the proof of breeding?  Where, when, and at what surviving tracks?

And just how can a track survive in the years to come?   A breeder? A trainer?  An owner?  Where do any of them find the will to survive?  On what basis?

Haven't common sense, as well as recent events, finally confirmed that our historic approach to testing for drugs and medications is desperately in need of thorough re-examination and restructuring?  With unfathomable millions being spent on routine testing concentrated on therapeutic medications as it always has been, shouldn't we consider other approaches?  Can correct, careful random testing of races going forward release necessary resources for concentrating on research, development, and sophisticated, expensive surveillance to discover and test for contemporary methods of cheating and abuse?

Is it likely that the ongoing collision of the profit-motive with the superior motives of enhanced horsemanship and respect for the breed itself – and the real reasons for breeding – will finally result in an heretofore unfathomable contraction of the sport in the aftermath of which those superior motives might again be asserted and respected?  Weren’t those superior motives once the foundation of the sport, that enabled its growth and elaboration and the public support some of us can still remember, however dimly? 

Isn’t it time, or is it already too late, to distinguish publicly between animal welfare and animal rights?  Clearly to separate the two, which are very different?  To understand that believing in animal “rights,” a fantasy requiring that any animal provide its “informed consent” to participating in any activity, is actually contradictory to our long-held beliefs in the importance of animal husbandry, animal welfare, the humane treatment of animals, and even owning pets?  Isn’t it true that all those worthwhile practices contradict the “rights” doctrine that every species of animal – whether poultry, fish, livestock, equine, canine, feline, or human – is literally equal to any other in the natural order?

Will it fall to the leaders of our sport to organize any and all humane activities involving animals – whether the infinite variety of equestrian sport, pet ownership, zoos and aquaria, wildlife conservation practices, nurturing of livestock, poultry, and fish for human consumption – and tell the public how threatened these activities are by vegan extremists who seek to impose their lifestyles and beliefs on everyone else?  Who use their freedom of speech and comment in the public square to advocate against the freedom of others to choose their own lifestyles?  And who condemn racing’s behaviors relentlessly while countenancing the wholesale and heartless, intentional kills of countless rescued pets and other animals?  Isn’t that extremist behavior not only unethical, but hypocritical?  Shouldn’t we be saying so?

I’m not sure whether these questions are actually impertinent – rude, insolent, and impolite – but I’m confident they’re necessary to answer clearly and intelligently.  Forcefully.  And seriously.

Alan F. Balch - Anticipating necessity

Looking back over 2019, it seems to me this has been The Year of the Bromide.  Our own annus horribilus in so many ways, including having to endure so many of those truisms, many of them dubious, owing to racing’s regrettable circumstances.

“Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”  “The darkest hour is just before dawn.” “There is no I in TEAM, but ME is in there somewhere.”

And my own personal favorite: “Stress is the confusion created when one’s mind overrides the body’s basic desire to choke the living s**t out of some a**hole who desperately deserves it.”

So, yes, if there’s one thing we’ve plenty of, it’s stress.  As an enterprise, humor aside, all of us in racing are stressed as never before; not the least of that stress is trying to determine what’s been happening, why, and how we can correct our course.

It seems to me that the root of our problem is cultural.  Other sports, when distressed, can resort to multiple remedies including constant rule-changing when faced with fundamental problems.  Tennis invented the tie-breaker to eliminate endless boredom.  Basketball adopted the three-pointer for excitement and closer competition.  Baseball re-organized its leagues, designated hitters for pitchers, juiced the ball, defined wild card teams, and improved drug testing.  Football is finally concentrating on player safety . . . too late?

But we have an animal to nurture and protect.  We’re fundamentally different from all other sports.  How human culture treats animals has been evolving since the beginning of time, and that won’t stop.

In horse sport, we who have always preached animal welfare are now confronted by those who no longer speak in terms of humane husbandry, but instead of animal “rights.” Football players choose their game; horses do not, even though they’re bred for it.  Racing’s rabid enemies vehemently argue that “no animal can be required to participate in any activity without its informed consent.”  Seriously.  That means your pets and even your choice of food are at risk, according to these advocates, not just horse racing. And any leisure activity involving a horse or any other animal.

Absurd, you say?  No, it’s not.  I’ve been in front of several governmental authorities this year when these arguments have been made.  And have been received seriously and solemnly.  They underly, stimulate, and spread the entire worldwide opposition to racing we are seeing more and more every month.  Our experience and the media coverage of it at Santa Anita this year, and elsewhere, has given our enemies a platform and influence with media and journalists they always had but never before could exploit as they do now.  We belittle them, fail to understand them, and ignore these arguments and their consequences, at our peril.

A year ago in these pages, I actually praised The Jockey Club’s annual Round Table, for a change, on its enlightening and productive conference.  This year, I wish I could do the same . . . but with one exception, that’s impossible.  

The industry had a rare opportunity this August to listen to an expert who should also have been understood deeply:  David Fuscus of Xenophon Strategies, which deals with crisis management and communications.  Anyone whose company is named for the founder of horsemanship and cavalry command is someone we should take seriously.  The complete transcript of his remarks is readily available.  

After pointing out that every crisis, however dangerous, offers opportunity, he stated very simply that “the first rule of crisis communications is to end it.”  That is, end the crisis, take the actions necessary to correct the situation, and then clearly communicate that to the public.  But most often, he said, industries don’t “end it” because they don’t observe one or more of the four fundamentals he then described:  engagement, transparency, responsibility, and meaningful actions.

After detouring through non-racing case studies for illustration, he pointed out that many elements of racing are engaged on the current crisis, but not coordinated on a clear message or solution.  As to transparency, there is no unified narrative, so we’re perceived by the public as “cloudy.”  While we admit to being responsible for a problem, we don’t actually define or even agree on just what it is.  Meaningful actions?  We are a long way from ending the crisis, despite the serious steps begun in California and replicated elsewhere to improve safety.

Here, then, was a golden opportunity for The Jockey Club to set out explicitly what should have been and needs to be done. As an expert, who understands racing, Fuscus could have helped us understand and begin developing the fundamental “engagement” he said we required.  But what happened?  Instead, he pitched the Horse Racing Integrity Act, as did the following two speakers, one from the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS).  Each was at great pains to try to connect that same old, divisive Jockey Club legislative project (which deals exclusively with an authority for uniform national drug and medication rules) to what ails us now.  That can’t be done, at least in anything close to the bill’s present form, which even detracts from the engagement, transparency, responsibility, and meaningful actions we need!  Moreover, eliminating race-day Lasix and funding the United States Anti-Doping Agency would not improve our safety metrics, and might well even worsen them, all the while calling more attention to our sport’s supposed “cheaters and abusers.”

Was it a coincidence that the 2019 version of this legislation was introduced March 14 in Congress, simultaneously with California’s United States Senator and Santa Anita’s Congresswoman in Washington calling for racing at Santa Anita to be stopped?  I doubt it . . . since the HSUS political operatives were working over Congress in support of that legislation at the very same time Santa Anita had been closed for track renovations.

Does anyone seriously believe that the enemies of racing wouldn’t see through the smokescreen of that federal legislation in a heartbeat, were it even possible to enact, and could turn its passage into the rightful accusation that it does absolutely nothing to improve safety?  Worsening our perception problems?

To achieve true engagement of the entire American racing industry on this crisis, The Jockey Club, National Thoroughbred Racing Association, Breeders’ Cup, National HBPA, Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association, California Thoroughbred Trainers, Thoroughbred Owners of California, New York Racing Association, Churchill Downs, The Stronach Group, National Turf Writers and Broadcasters Association, Association of Racing Commissioners International and each major racing state’s commission, should be invited immediately to appoint delegates of racing’s wisest and most experienced to a leadership council.  Unwieldy?  Maybe not so much – there is so much overlap and duplication among many of these organizations that preliminary conversations could well lead to a manageable number.  In any event, the first task of these Supreme Overseers would be promptly to elect a much smaller, more effective steering committee to organize an exceptionally serious closed-door brainstorming and consensus-building strategy summit prior to the end of this year.

Engagement is job one, remember, to coordinate on clear messaging and solution development.  Everything else flows from that.

And remember too, as I’ve written before, that we are in this situation because of our increasing failure over decades to observe the most basic principles of horsemanship and racing management, and adapt to cultural changes.  Breeding a more substantial, sound horse is fundamental to its welfare; so is that horse’s proper management and the proper management of the conditions under which it is raised, trained, and raced.  There is enormous room for improvement in these basics.

As daunting as those tasks, or more, is grappling with public perception.  The culture of “animals are people, too” no doubt started with human domestication of and care for animals.  That began with dogs around 15,000 years ago, researchers say, and other animals around 12,000 years ago.  It no doubt seemed only “natural” to begin naming particular domesticated animals and even ascribing human characteristics to them.  What we now call “media,” beginning in the early 1900s, intensely stimulated this process:  Felix the Cat was “born” in 1919 and Mickey Mouse in 1928.  Motion pictures and the advent of “talkies” literally gave these animals humanistic lives, and the race to anthropomorphize virtually everything was on.
Think of it:  we started naming mammals, then expanded to fowl (Donald Duck), and as media attention exploded, just about everything else:  insects, fish, even inanimate objects such as cars and natural phenomena like storms and winds.  This all seems to be an innate tendency of human psychology, and some believe it actually helps to keep humans happy and grounded.

Pets have come to be part of the typically affluent American family, of course, and are treated as such.  Prior to World War II, pets were far less common.  But now, expenditures in the United States alone on pets mushroomed from $17-billion in 1994 to an estimated $75-billion this year.     Almost 70% of American families now own a pet, and pet marketing is based fundamentally on ascribing human characteristics to pets, as each of us sees every day in media and markets if we have our eyes open.

Is it any wonder, therefore, that animal “rights” has taken over from animal welfare, in an unthinking way, by so many in our political and media leadership and influencers?  I freely admit that I didn’t understand the distinction myself until a few months ago, and I have little doubt that only a relatively small portion of the American public has given these issues much more than a passing thought.  Which is exactly what animal “rights” extremists are banking on.  The status and emphases of organizations like the 4-H Club and Future Farmers of America have been transformed as the nation has transitioned from less rural to more urban economies, and understandings of livestock husbandry have been diminished drastically and increasingly in the last 50 years.
It is in this very fertile soil that racing’s enemies are multiplying, flowering, and prospering, while we flounder to respond.  To end a crisis.  To save our sport’s reputation and the very sport itself.

If racing is to survive in anything like its present reach and magnitude, our leadership, our cavalry command, must act like Xenophon, with care for and husbandry of the horse above all else.  They must urgently develop our strategy, anticipating the necessity of changing in harmony with the cultural evolution we can all see.  Now.  And we soldiers in the cavalry – whether breeders, owners, trainers, veterinarians, regulators, or marketers – must execute their fully developed national strategy without reservation and with massive financial, emotional, political, media, and public relations support. 

There is no realistic alternative for ending this crisis.

Alan F. Balch - A cluster-f***ailure!

Given the ongoing train wrecks or meltdowns (take your pick) we’re now experiencing in our racing lives, isn’t it about time to try to figure out what the hell happened in the last six months?  Why it did?  What’s still to come?  And what to do about all this?

Twenty-five years or so ago this study made a lasting impression on me: “The Logic of Failure,” by Dietrich Dörner, now emeritus professor at the Institute of Theoretical Psychology at the Otto-Friedrich University in Bamberg, Germany.

One reason is that the English translation I had was exceptionally difficult for me to understand; the most important is that after grappling with it through two complete readings, I felt I had learned some critical lessons.

Consider for a moment what your definition of “success” is.  If you’re a Major League hitter in baseball, you’re very successful – that is, you get a hit, and win your competition with the pitcher – maybe three at-bats out of ten.  You bat .300.  Which means you failed to get a hit in seven of those at-bats.  Far more than most hitters aren’t even that successful.  They fail to solve the problem the pitcher presented way more often.  

In racing, if you’re a trainer or an owner or a breeder, you know your success rate, counting by wins, is almost certainly worse than this.  Which means you fail even more.  Even if you have already solved innumerable problems just to get into the starting gate. 

Shall we talk about betting the races?  Solving those problems?  Uh, no.

So, when you contemplate all the books and courses about “how to succeed . . . ,“ at just about anything, it struck me that what we all should really be doing is what Professor Dörner did:  study failure and mistake-making instead.  So much so that, at the time, I thought I could make a fortune founding the Balch Institute for the Study of Failure.  After all, I’ve had plenty of experience with it.  We all have.  Success or “winning” or true problem-solving really mean the avoidance of mistakes or errors.  What we’ve been experiencing at Santa Anita, and threatened with everywhere else, is stark, colossal failure.  Mistakes compounded by more and more.

Do we really understand failure?  Why it happens?  How to avoid it?

In part, Dörner used a case-study approach to analyze various disasters, and see what they had in common.  Were he still active, I’d send our current experience in American racing his way to headline a new edition of his book.  We in racing continue to check virtually all his boxes for serious mistakes and likely calamity.

One overwhelming reason for the critical situation in which racing finds itself is the complexity of our sport and industry.  Virtually all of our stakeholders – and the media – have participated in elaborating the fundamental errors that have led us to a precipice.  Whether or not we can even correct our course at this point is open to serious question.

We’ve all heard the maxim that assumption is the mother of all mistakes.  It’s true.  Humans tend to oversimplify problems.  Of all our many self-defeating behaviors, according to Dörner, one is key:  we just don’t like to see any particular problem as part of a whole system of interacting factors.  So, when there’s a problem in a particularly complex system (like a nuclear generator or Thoroughbred racing or training a horse) oversimplification and assumption are dastardly enemies of success.  Of avoiding failure.  Oversimplified assumptions cause serious mistakes to be made.  Even deadly ones.

I still remember the late Edward DeBartolo, Sr., telling us that in all his many varied businesses and fields of enterprise, racing was far and away the most complex.  So, when an important racing management assumes that what apparently “succeeds” in Florida (whether it actually does or not is a separate question) can be applied to California, with the same results, without seriously considering all its possible ramifications, that’s just planting a quickly germinating seed of escalating failure.

Any true problem is likely much more complex than we humans would prefer, says Dörner.  My old boss at Santa Anita, Robert Strub, whose father founded it, was incessantly criticized by just about all of us for being too deliberate, requiring too much study before any important decision.  But that worked for Santa Anita through six decades.  When he turned away from that deliberation just one time, he got the first Canterbury Downs in Minnesota, and almost took down his original Crown Jewel in the bargain.  The outside “experts” on which he relied, rather than insiders, knew what they were doing, he said.  Until they didn’t.  Then it was too late and bankruptcy beckoned.

So, always beware the “experts,” whether inside or outside.  Check their assumptions.  Incessantly.  Three-Mile Island nearly melted down, in important part, because an expert of great renown didn’t need his calculations checked, because of that renown.  Until he did, and then it was almost too late.  Expert trainers and their expert veterinarians must likewise be checking their mutual assumptions incessantly.

Our human errors are so frequent because we resent slow thinking.  We want to streamline processes to save time.  In the name of “urgency.”  We try to repeat our past successes, even if the situations are importantly different.  

The more complex the situation, the more facets are involved, the more dynamic and constantly changing it is.  We humans don’t easily grasp the exponentially multiplying ramifications of what might at first appear to be simple commands: “tighten up this track.”  “Run more often or your stalls are at risk.”  Intended to achieve a goal of growing field size, while ignoring the potential ramifications of the escalating and even more serious problems they created, among other factors these directives provided an ideal environment for upheaval.  Like my old riding teacher used to preach, “you never know what you can do until you try to undo what you just did.”  Amen.  

Is it any wonder that adding the exceptionally complex physiology of the horse and infinitely ingenuous human art of training them to such a complex, volatile mix, you actually have all the elements (or even more) of an operating nuclear reactor?

As Dörner states, “An individual’s reality model can be right or wrong, complete or incomplete.  As a rule it will be both incomplete and wrong, and one would do well to keep that probability in mind.”

Indeed.  The reality-model that track management applied to Santa Anita in January was both incomplete and wrong.

Then when things started to go awry, these same human frailties we all have as problem-solvers came into play, whether for managers, trainers, owners, regulators, veterinarians, reporters, critics, or politicians.  Every human shortcoming was reflected in what each of us did in response, and magnified the original problem exponentially.  We’re all mistake-prone humans.

At first, we fail to react, carefully or at all, especially if we as managers or administrators or trainers or regulators are afflicted with the “it’s not my problem” or “this isn’t really serious” syndrome.  Those of us who saw our problems developing and didn’t do enough (or anything) to confront them, share mind-numbing responsibility for what happened later.  

Those who stonewalled their very recognition have even more.

The next response following their recognition, however, can be equally or even more dangerous: emotional, subjective overreaction.  Governments, regulators, managers, and media, all then join a chaotic and ever-expanding whirlpool of feedback, failing to respect or even recognize their own lack of objectivity and knowledge.  Managers speed decision-making even more, and point fingers, attempting to fix blame elsewhere.  Honest media, in particular, while not intentionally destructive, tend to hide behind the “don’t kill the messenger” syndrome, having little or any regard for their own complicity in exaggeration and lack of context.  They can’t control what others do, or fail to do, with the facts they report.  Then there’s the observer effect: the mere observation of a phenomenon inevitably changes that phenomenon.  

Journalists share the same human frailties with the rest of us, remember, although some don’t seem to recognize that.  With ever-increasing competition among all media, for speed of reporting, for notice, readers, viewers, clicks, and social sharing, not to mention ego, recognition, reward, and profile . . . their selfish goals almost always overwhelm context, accuracy, sourcing, and detail.  The world is more complex than ever before, and our sport the most complex of them all; yet the media are correspondingly at their most superficial.  Any and all public enterprises are at serious risk in such an environment, where broadcasting and sharing of the false or misleading or incomplete or exaggerated become virtually impossible to prioritize, modify, correct or place in proper context.  The media, fired by critics and extremists, in turn inform (or misinform) governments; then, even experienced legislators and regulators panic in reaction, rather than pausing to learn, then to calm and educate their publics.

Let’s remember the complexity of our sport yet again – racing and horses are far, far more difficult to understand and explain than they were even 50 years ago.

Which brings us to the issue of animal welfare vs. “rights,” an important distinction lost on most of the media and apparently on most regulators, legislators, and leaders as well.  The public statistics relied upon by racing’s insatiable enemies, developed in the context of The Jockey Club’s own equine injury database and by governments, must be urgently and seriously corrected, improved, clarified, expanded, refined, and made capable of explanation by all of us.  Our adversaries respect no rules, and care nothing about honesty, nuance, expertise, or horsemanship . . . racing’s leaders must become equally implacable and much better equipped than at present to educate the public, media, and governments about our efforts continually to improve horse welfare and simultaneously protect the hundreds of thousands of humans who depend on the sport and larger industry.  Not to mention its overall economic impact.  Those who oppose what they call “speciesism” – those who believe that humans and all “other” animals are equals, that discrimination in favor of one species, usually the human species, over another, is wrong – must be understood and isolated as the impractical extremists they are.  Their influence within government and the media must be unrelentingly resisted and rejected if racing is to survive.  Not to mention owning animals for pets and the raising of livestock, poultry, and fish for human consumption.

The very first priority, however, is to continue improving our own husbandry of horses, beginning with breeding a sounder horse, then managing and training them as the individuals they are, always recommitting ourselves to respecting and enhancing their welfare above all else.  We must improve and magnify continuing, extensive, expert education of veterinarians, trainers, riders, and stable workers.  Racing associations, horsemen’s organizations, and regulators must respect the declining size of the foal crop, adjusting calendars and conditions accordingly.  Every protocol for track and turf maintenance must be re-examined; the possible improvement and re-introduction of the latest in synthetic tracks must be considered.

So, right now, every one of us in this almost infinitely complex and interdependent industry, and all the observers of it – whatever our role – need to pause, step back, and assess our own mistakes objectively, admit them, and learn from them.  We have all made them.  We have to learn how to avoid continuing and compounding them.

Alan F. Balch - At last . . . . .

Way, way back in 1986, I was invited to speak at The Jockey Club Round Table in August at Saratoga.

I thought it went fine.  After all, I reasoned at the time, I was leaving Santa Anita and racing altogether, and could “tell it like it is.”  The reaction in the room to my remarks was startling and apparently supportive of what I had to say, some of it bluntly critical of racing’s leadership and approach to marketing, which was my principal interest then.

The Jockey Club felt otherwise.  For one thing, Mr. Phipps never spoke to me again (not that we were in the same social and professional circles!), and the racing media at the time interpreted what I had to say as radical.  

The late Tim Capps reported in The Thoroughbred Record that I had “scolded racing for not being willing to face competition head-on, for not reacting aggressively to new competitive forces, whether they be lotteries or other forms of gambling or simply other leisure activities.”  He quoted me as saying, “As the old boys on the block, we ought to know how to do this, yet we seem to act like we know less about competing effectively.”

In his opinion piece in the same issue, Capps described my audience as “a wildly cheering throng,” which was nice from my point of view but obviously exaggerated, as anyone who has ever attended a Round Table must realize. But he wasn’t exaggerating when he said I had “excoriated racing leaders for being unable or unwilling to compete in a market that is far more competitive than was the case 30 or 40 years ago.”

And this was in 1986!

So, here we are now, another 32 years later, with competition of all forms that would have been unimaginable then, and this year’s Round Table has just concluded. As it turned out, I didn’t leave racing back then as I had anticipated I would, instead continuing to preach what I believe about marketing racing to the few who will listen. Therefore, I am somewhat stunned and surprised to agree with virtually everything reported this year at the Round Table as to “industry initiatives.”

It’s about time.  And we can only hope it’s not too late. 

To begin with, how refreshing it is (for a change) to see no mention this year of The Jockey Club’s self-destructive hatred of Lasix. Not that they’ve changed their minds, we know; but the salvation of racing and the Thoroughbred breed simply have so little connection to that battle of theirs. Public arguing about therapeutic medications or “performance enhancing drugs” is just unfathomably stupid.  But their new McKinsey initiatives have everything to do with competing in the public marketplace for our share of gaming!

Their thrusts this year concern dramatically ramping up racing’s ability to compete for fans in the modern era. Deep commitment on topics like “digital fan development and engagement,” and “advanced analytics” is music to my old ears, as is emphasizing the importance of the track experience in developing new fans. Serious consideration today of fixed-odds betting and flexible takeout is about 30 years late, but so what? At least now we’re talking! Credit The Jockey Club for this, as well as their interest in what we can learn from the British.

Labor Day weekend I was at Sandown Park outside London. What a treat! A day there, or at Del Mar, or Saratoga, or Keeneland, drives home the importance of the on-track experience. But we must realize in the United States, once and for all, that off-track betting isn’t going anywhere (except toward new and more powerful competitors), and we must finally and thoroughly capitalize on what it can bring to us, not what it takes from us.

To be sure, enormous mistakes were made and even more enormous opportunities missed in how it was implemented here and elsewhere. Crying about it won’t change anything. Instead, we must learn how to capitalize on and invest in marketing a distribution system that has penetrated the population almost entirely. Just think of that. According to Pew Research, 77% of Americans already own a smartphone. While I dislike how much harder that seems to make marketing the on-track experience in the short term, I love how much opportunity it could provide for funding synergistic marketing of both! 

Locally, regionally, and nationally, however, racing is still not competing. Those of us in the game tend to assume everyone knows you can bet the races on your phone or via the Internet. Sadly, so little effective marketing has been done for racing over the last decade or two that the sport isn’t even on the regular menu of interest for all but the tiniest fraction of the population. The only way to change that is with a massive commitment to remarketing it, preferably coordinated among the major stakeholders, or at least complementary among them as competitors for the gaming dollar.

I once called it “positive competition” as we witnessed the old marketing wars among California rivals Santa Anita and Hollywood Park, as well as Bay Meadows and Golden Gate. Why? Because when rivals try to out-do each other, not only does the market respond, but the market’s awareness of what’s on offer rises dramatically. Just think what could happen if racing’s major American entities – the Stronach Group, Churchill Downs, New York Racing Association, The Jockey Club, and the Breeders’ Cup – made concerted, competitive national advertising and marketing investments to sell betting on the races to the enormous population of smartphone and Internet users who don’t even know it exists.

Authentic wild cheering and an avalanche of new business.

Alan F. Balch - Thomism . . . and racing

Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) understood education and persuasion as well as anyone else ever has.  He once said that when you want to convert someone to your view, you go over to where he’s standing, take him by the hand (mentally speaking), and guide him to where you want him to go.

What you don’t do is stand across the room, or sit next to him, shouting at him.  Or, possibly worse, whisper insults in his ear, after loudly accusing him of dishonesty.  You don’t call him names.  And you don’t order him to come over to where you are.

Instead, you start where he is, and work from that position.  That’s the way to achieve movement toward consensus.

In racing, and the larger world, we’ve lost sight of this elementary psychology.  Everywhere we look these days, we see passionate, adversarial advocates who simply scream their own prejudices and beliefs, while excoriating their opponents.  All this does is make people who agree feel better, make people who disagree stiffen their resistance, and make anyone in the middle feel uneasy and skeptical that either side is speaking the whole truth.

Almost every passionate and partisan argument overstates its own case and understates its opponent’s case!

For the last several years in California, we’ve seen an evolution of this increasingly unproductive behavior when medication rules have been proposed and advanced by the Equine Medical Director of the California Horse Racing Board (CHRB).  

Raise your hand if you favor cheating . . . . hmmm, none to see?  That’s because nobody favors cheating except a cheater, and we believe there are very, very few of those.  A cheater, by definition, does everything possible to avoid detection.  In short, they don’t raise their own hands; but they may point to others. 

Our Equine Medical Director recently stated that he doubts he has gone a week in the decade-plus he has held that position when he hasn’t had “an owner, trainer, or someone else in the industry complain that we weren’t doing enough to control doping.”  He made that statement in the context of advocating elaborate new out-of-competition equine testing rules without which, he said, racing “does not have a robust anti-doping program.” He then pointed at both California Thoroughbred Trainers (CTT) and Thoroughbred Owners of California (TOC) as opponents of out-of-competition testing, whose opposition he called “bewildering.”

Such “opposition” is even more bewildering to CTT and TOC, since it simply doesn’t exist.  To the contrary, both verbally and in writing, both organizations have repeatedly endorsed the desirability of expanded out-of-competition testing, and elaborated rules for its conduct, including in votes at the Racing Medication and Testing Consortium (RMTC) meetings.

As the Equine Medical Director himself proclaimed, California already does more such testing than other racing authorities in the United States, and pioneered it in 2007, with the ongoing support of both CTT and TOC.  

Various versions of the latest RMTC proposal for expanding out-of-competition testing have been considered across the United States.  Many states have differing rule-making procedures, and California’s is among the most detailed and careful, subject to its Administrative Procedure Act and Office of Administrative Law regulations.  Our Equine Medical Director has been constantly critical of California’s rule-making process.  But he avoids any discussion of the reasons it exists as it does, to protect the citizens of the State of California from unnecessary, unenforceable, duplicative, or arbitrary rules, including any which would conflict with other rules or statutes.  In short, he would apparently prefer a system where he alone could simply order obedience to him, no matter the disastrous consequences to individuals or the sport if his rules were imprecise, unfair, or unenforceable. 

With only a modicum of success thus far – though noteworthy when achieved – CTT has advocated the use of informal working group meetings to achieve consensus on medication proposals prior to or during the formal rule-making process as outlined in California law.  Such meetings can be scheduled when veterinary practitioners are available, as well as representatives of the regulator, and without the trappings of court reporters and public notice requirements.  And without the unproductive posturing, by anyone, which becomes so tempting and destructive in a public setting.  A working group simply works, in short, to achieve an agreed goal.  Once a consensus develops, the formal process thereafter moves very quickly.  If a complete consensus cannot be reached, at least differences are narrowed to a very few, and are understood by all, during the formal process.  That’s our preferred roadmap to expedited rule-making. 

The present proposal was last formally considered by the CHRB in February 2017, over a year ago.  Our reservations as to its details were waved aside, as is customary.  The Board pointed out that we should instead use the required formal 45-day comment period prior to their consideration of its final adoption.  In March 2018, a year later, that commentary was solicited for a May hearing.  CTT and TOC then submitted their serious concerns, in writing, as required by law and as had been suggested by the Board itself a year earlier.  CHRB then postponed its hearing until June.  That’s when the Equine Medical Director accused us of “last-minute road blocking” for suggesting the proposal needed additional consideration at the Committee level.  He told the Commissioners they were “being played.”

Who is playing whom?  Why couldn’t a working group have been convened during the entire year after the 2017 meetings, to expedite this “essential” rule?  Our concerns have been voiced for well over a year, have been detailed in writing, and deserve sincere, thorough consideration.  We want rules that are consistent with the law, that are fair, that can be enforced, that provide for proper therapy and the welfare of horses, and will at the same time achieve their stated goal of deterring dishonest behavior.

Alan F. Balch - Now, about Pegasus . . .

No, I’m not talking about the Pegasus World Cup.  Not yet, anyway.

I’ve been a fan of the original Pegasus since my earliest memories around horses, when he was the symbol of the American equestrian governing body.   As drawn by George Ford Morris, he appeared on the engraved medals and embossed certificates for horsemanship we were all trying to win.   

For those of us interested in pedigree, he was sired by Poseidon . . . Greek god of horses, incidentally, along with the sea, earthquakes, and storms.  And never underestimate the influence of the bottom line:  his dam was the hideous, winged, venomous monster Medusa, no doubt the source of his own lovely, powerful wings, but not his handsome countenance.  Nor his stunning white purity.

His jock was Bellerophon, who invented the riding helmet and safety vest, and, needing no whip, had his hands instead on a shield and golden spear.  

Bellerophon was sent on the original Mission Impossible (well understood by every single one of today’s riders, no doubt) – to slay the ferocious, fire-breathing, hybrid monster Chimera, whose very sighting was an omen for disaster.  Pegasus was his vehicle, and the necessary if not sufficient condition for vanquishing evil.

In short, the horse came first.  Still does.  Without Pegasus, the jockey was nowhere.  And the monster would live.

So it is quite fitting, at least in one sense, that the world’s richest race would bear the name of the heroic and inspirational Pegasus, thunderbolts and all.

In another sense, sadly, it simply calls attention to the chaos we face in American racing, particularly in California . . . top and bottom of that Pegasus pedigree, by the way, trace back to Chaos.  Repeatedly.

According to media reports, the 473-ton, 110-foot tall, dark steel and bronze depiction of Pegasus stomping a dragon (absent his jock) cost $30-million to construct at Gulfstream Park in Florida.  The World Cup purse there was $12-million in 2017, and is being elevated to $16-million in 2018.   

Out at faraway Santa Anita, owned by the same outfit, the Blood-Horse reported in 2013 that $15-million had gone toward more grandeur in the track’s most sumptuous areas, its Chandelier Room and added mezzanine suites.  More recently, apparently millions more have been dedicated to new table terraces and other opulent enclaves nearby.

In all, what’s that?  Probably $50-million in statuary and splendor alone.  Not those purses.  Not even counting the ongoing maintenance and improvement of that magnificence, as status, monuments, and indulgence for the privileged few. 

Despite the commitment of all that investment in extravagance and shrines, pre-eminent horseman D. Wayne Lukas didn’t hesitate publicly to decry the deplorable and decrepit state of the stables at Santa Anita following the draw for the Breeders’ Cup Classic that same year.  “I would be embarrassed to take an owner out there now,” he said, despite having called the Santa Anita backstretch home when he first joined the Thoroughbred community in 1978.  His own shed-row at the time had become the exemplar for all to emulate, there and everywhere else he raced.  He believed in luxury for his horses.

Our Sport of Royalty has always depended on commoners.  We commoners, to begin with, actually take care of the horses.  And as King Henry himself said, “All men are equal – on the turf, and under it.”  In more contemporary times, it has disproportionately been the commoners (among the horsemen, as well as in the grandstand), who have made the tip-top magnificence possible.  After all, as I never tire of reminding those who just won’t hear or comprehend, 90% of the races (filled by the commoners and bet on by commoners) must be attractive enough to fuel the betting that funds the 35% of purses that go to the stakes and our royalty, only about 10% of the races.

The World Cups in Dubai and Florida take the yawning gulf between hype and reality to a new level of absurdity.  There are probably 20 horses from the tens of thousands active in the world who will contest them in a given year, along with their connections.  In the American case, almost all of the money they’re running for is their own, so perhaps that “makes sense.”

What doesn’t make sense in any way is the ongoing neglect of investment in backstretch facilities and conditions, for horse and human alike, whether at Santa Anita, Golden Gate Fields, or any track, any place in the world, in a sport where the horse comes first, and its human caretakers should, too.

This is our Chimera, and we clearly have the resources to vanquish it . . . if not the will or the proper priority.  Remember that even Bellerophon ultimately learned the hard way that glory by itself is not entitlement, unceremoniously dumped by Pegasus.  He ended up alone, hated by gods and man alike.

Alan F. Balch - Expertise?

Alan F. Balch - Where went the marketing?