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 Balch - Inspiring Ascot

Although I’ve never been to Royal Ascot, I first went to the course in October 2012, for the second British Champions Day, where Frankel “miraculously” recorded his 14th straight and final win after having been left at the start of the rich Champion Stakes.  

On a cold, damp day, with the going “soft, heavy in places,” a capacity crowd of 32,000 was in attendance, and somewhat uncharacteristically for the British (I was told), yelled itself crazy for Frankel’s super effort. Not to mention trainer Henry Cecil.

Actually, however, Ascot has a true capacity far in excess of that day’s attendance. In the most recent Royal meeting, in June this year, crowds of over 60,000 were there. The television coverage of the masses of humanity in the stands, the infield and the various enclosures all along the mile straight, the paddocks, and on both ends of the strikingly beautiful permanent stands, gave any racing fan a thrill.

At the Cheltenham Festival for jump racing in March this year, attendance over four days ranged from 64,000 to 74,000 . . . “almost capacity,” according to management. And that left the media speculating about possibly adding a fifth day to its schedule, “like Royal Ascot.”

I was in London myself this year, late in March, amazed (and pleased) to see abundant advertising for Royal Ascot almost everywhere I went. Even though Opening Day was over two months away! Track managements in Britain clearly don’t take such attendance figures for granted . . . they believe in strong promotion and marketing, at least for their major racing, and undoubtedly their commercial sponsors (of which there are many high-profile brands) do as well.

What I see here in American racing attendance is virtually the opposite. And it’s a grave concern. Have we given up trying to persuade fans to go to the races?

The exceptions here seem to be the Triple Crown races, Breeders’ Cup, some Oaklawn days, the short summer meetings at Del Mar and Saratoga, and the two short Keeneland sessions. As one of racing’s dinosaurs, I admit to living in the past. But when I joined Santa Anita in 1971, I was told by one of racing’s most authoritative figures that I’d never see a crowd of 50,000 at our track again: “Those days are long gone.”  Within five years, however, the Santa Anita Handicap, Derby and Opening Day were regularly drawing well over 50,000. More importantly, our daily average attendance 15 years later, over 17 weeks of 5 days each, peaked at just under 33,000 in 1986. And that was when announced attendance in California was scrupulously honest and audited.

I mention this because now I hear the old pessimism again, all the time, walking through the nearly vacant quarter-mile long stand at Santa Anita . . . that the days of regular big crowds at race tracks, actually any real crowds at all, are long gone. The reasons cited are obvious: Internet, satellite and telephone betting, pervasive competition from other sports and gaming, and the proliferation of all sorts of simulcasting—all disincentives for going to the races.  

What worries me most is hearing track executives and horsemen saying, “It really doesn’t make any difference, not having fans at the track, as long as the total handle’s there, generating purses.”

Actually, I believe it does. Not just because bets at the track contribute way more to purses than any others, and non-wagering revenues are critical to a track’s finances. It’s also an enormous difference for the future prospects of the sport. Where are those future off-track bettors going to come from if they’ve never been to the races? And how about future owners, too—how much fun is it to win a race with a few loud yells echoing through an empty stadium, whether you’re an owner or a horseplayer?

Consider, in geographical terms, that California by itself is 1.7 times larger than the United Kingdom, and a few years ago this state surpassed that entire nation in annual gross domestic product. Competitive gaming and sporting opportunities in the British Isles equal or probably exceed those available in California, at least in terms of access. Yet—I am told—the reason there’s apparently so much more interest in racing there than here is “cultural.” Her Majesty the Queen and all that?

It's true that in many respects Great Britain is the birthplace of all equestrian sport. Queen Anne founded Ascot itself in 1711, official colors were invented and approved in 1783, and then the British Empire ruled the world for so long . . . until it didn’t.  

However, the Belmont Stakes and Saratoga commenced in the 1860s, the Kentucky Derby in 1875, and organized California racing in fits and starts beginning in the early 1900s. For a very long time, racing was far and away America’s most popular sport. That it hasn’t maintained a true competitive popularity here, despite the advent of so much competition, are sheer failures of management, marketing and promotion. American racing’s commitment to sophisticated, creative marketing as an investment, rather than a troublesome expense to be cut, then cut even more, has seriously waned or even disappeared over the last quarter-century.

It's never too late to rediscover and share the magical spectacle of racing. Whatever troubles our sport faces, its intrinsic allure of intersecting superlative beauty, elegance, human and equine athleticism beyond compare, coupled with its enormous array of gaming opportunities, is a marketer’s dream.

As anyone who attended Royal Ascot or watched it on television can attest.  

Alan Balch - Past is prologue?

By Alan F. Balch

Just over 35 years ago – when I was entrenched in California track management – I spoke publicly, and much more vehemently in our private executive confines, about my belief that the racing industry should invest heavily in research and development to meet the competitive challenges to come.  

While we could still afford to do it.

What I had to say then was met with shaking heads, laughter, rolling eyes, and then confined to the round file.  As this essay undoubtedly will be, too.

But the fact of the matter is that the future of racing then appeared dubious to me, even while on the crest of the wave we were riding in the mid-1980s.  The California State Lottery had been approved by the voters in November 1984, and its first tickets were sold in October 1985.  The United States Supreme Court upheld native American tribal sovereignty over the states in 1986, and by 1988 their gaming was beginning in several jurisdictions via compacts with state governments.  Satellite and intertrack wagering throughout California were well underway, and national simulcasting between jurisdictions was “old” then by comparison.   

At that point, we certainly couldn’t have envisioned all the ramifications of the Internet revolution; web browsing began about 1990.  Amazon was founded in 1994.  Websites became prolific.  My own marketing agency even had a Cool Site of the Day on the World Wide Web, and our client Del Mar developed one of racing’s first websites.

In short, it was no secret in 1985, and increasingly understood thereafter, that traditional gaming enterprises, and horse racing in particular, were going to be subject to greater competition than ever before, on a wider and deeper scale.  Shouldn’t we then have been sparing no effort to determine how we were going to innovate and compete in the evolving world?  

I remember citing Ted Levitt’s landmark work entitled “Marketing Myopia,” which pointed out the obvious (every successful business was once a growth enterprise) to demonstrate the not-so-obvious.  What happened to the vastly successful railroads, for example?  Well, they kept on insisting they were still in the railroad business (as opposed to defining the transportation business they were actually in, with all its other opportunities) until they were out of business almost entirely.  

Just think about that for a moment.  And apply it to horse racing.

In some ways, it’s a testament to racing’s strength as a sporting proposition that it has survived at all, or as well as it has, given the onslaught of competition and our continuing ignorance of potential opportunities.

One of my favorite corporate stories is American Totalisator Company, now AmTote.  Imagine what a revolutionary step it was in 1933 to be able instantaneously to calculate and display odds and payoffs, illuminated electronically via giant Tote boards to tens of thousands of bettors!  Based on the Straus patents, it’s no wonder that company had virtually no competition in American racing by 1940, when our sport was far and away this country’s biggest, most successful, and richest of all.  And is that possibly why Straus’ own myopia about what his company was really doing left the door open to its competitor IBM and every other technology enterprise since then?  

Technology now literally rules the world, and racing is becoming increasingly insignificant, a micro-market compared to its position 90 years ago.

My original racing mentor at Santa Anita, Robert Strub, used to warn all of us, “we don’t want to go the way of the buggy whip.”  And that’s what originally got me interested in industry, product, and brand life-cycles.  But heading a public company, as he and his Board did, also caused them to focus more on earnings-per-share-this-quarter, rather than assessing or investing in nebulous future opportunities.  And confronting the real threats we faced, covert and overt.  We didn’t have the discipline to do either.

So, rather than having had a coordinated industry approach developed decades ago to revolutionize betting on the races in America, we now have three behemoths – NYRA, Churchill, and 1/ST Racing/Stronach – battling each other.  They use outmoded ground rules, competing for horses now that foal crops are again at 1965 levels, while field sizes and starts per horse are at or near historic lows.

Here on the island of California, decreasing field size is leading to increasing competitive disadvantage in the national betting picture.  There’s so much hand-wringing you can practically hear it.  Rather than address these complex issues jointly among all organizational stakeholders, with some modicum of sophistication applied to objective data, our ongoing internal blame game has reached unprecedented heights of popularity.  Even though it’s never been a laggard in the ratings. 

The advent of the new Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority [HISA] may level the national competitive plane somewhat in California’s favor, once our safety protocols become widely observed.  But the fundamental structural problems will remain.

California trainers, owners, tracks, regulators, and key legislators, urgently need to understand and brainstorm the situation we face, together, the same way, at the same time, with the same data.  No idea should be off the table.  Sophisticated purse redistribution and participation incentives, based on level of competition, field size, field content, and surface, should head the list . . . along with potential realignment of racing schedules to fit the horse populations available, joined with robust recruitment programs . . . and critically needed capital improvements at Santa Anita and Golden Gate Fields particularly.

We’ve suffered from a California version of myopia for just short of a century now . . . isn’t it about time to open all our eyes, together?

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 Balch - Reason and Emotion, Noses Apart!

When Abraham Lincoln was only 28 years old, he delivered his Lyceum Speech, in Springfield, Illinois. When it was published, it was instrumental in establishing the reputation that led to his presidency decades later.  

The remarkable intellect that ultimately saved the United States was already on full display.  He decried “increasing disregard for law,” which he saw pervading the country, and a “growing disposition to substitute the wild and furious passions” of “savage mobs” for the “sober judgment of Courts.”

What can that possibly have to do with today’s racing?

Just this: In commenting on the November 1864 election, which returned him to office only a few months before his assassination, he famously remarked, “Human-nature will not change. In any future great national trial, compared with the men of this, we shall have as weak, and as strong; as silly and as wise; as bad and good.”  

In short, since human nature won’t change, that’s why we need laws, and why we need the rule and process of law, and sober judgment of courts, instead of passion and emotion to define our decisions.

Over the last several years, emotion has threatened to overtake reason in the governance of racing, in several noteworthy incidents. It’s understandable, if not admirable. First, a calamity of national negative attention brought to racing by Santa Anita’s horrid and preventable spike in catastrophic injuries in 2019 brought forth a torrent of emotional reactions. Tempered, just enough, by reason? As did the international pandemic which added enormous economic and behavioral stress to everyone. Then, just as we were beginning to return to a semblance of normalcy, or to hope for it, America’s highest profile professional trainer became—virtually overnight—the supposed symbol of everything cumulatively wrong about the sport.

Wild and furious passions have indeed been unleashed. Again. Will reason prevail?

Many in racing’s leadership, including some among its most elite, seem bent on stoking the fires of what Lincoln called a “mobocratic spirit,” rather than its opposite, “reason, cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason.” Passion, he had declared, is our enemy—the enemy of all free governments.

Rushing to judgment has perennially been among the preeminent weaknesses of human nature, and if Lincoln is to be believed, it will always be so. It’s why we have due process of law in this country, guaranteed (supposedly) as a constitutional right. Most of us are frustrated—always or at least occasionally—by how long it takes to decide the most critical questions, either legislatively or legally.  But “due process” is there to wring as much passion of the moment as possible out of the ultimate decision. And I vividly remember a man decades ago who was finally vindicated in court, after a years-long process, who then said to the media, “Great. Now where do I go to get my reputation back?” So now, in the spirit of unimpassioned reason, let’s reflect on what’s right, valuable and praiseworthy about our last few years.

I remember one of our leaders complaining incessantly for a decade about how long it takes to enact rules in California, owing to the process required by the Administrative Procedure Act. He failed to note that in the benchmark matter of severely curtailing the use of clenbuterol, several years back, a broad coalition of trainers, owners and regulators got that accomplished very quickly—entirely in accordance with the ponderous process required by the Act. And that was even before the more recent crises erupted. 

California has also led the way in establishing many useful and productive reforms that most of us thought weren’t necessary but have proven in practice to be effective and probably long overdue, incenting better horsemanship, a more level playing field and a more pleasing sport for the public.

Was every action taken entirely rational and mandatory? No overreaching? No emotion? Almost certainly not. But, on balance, they have presented a more defensible sport than we had before, without a doubt. More recently, as the State Legislature has seen it politically necessary to “do something,” several matters that are more logically suited for regulators or rules than for law, became statutory.  Emotion nipping reason at the wire in that case?

One thing is certain: Even if we don’t think about it this way, as we should (or haven’t been taught it), our sport has proven again to be interdependent. It’s useless to debate whether that’s a strength or a weakness. It’s a fact. Every entity, every stakeholder group—whether government, breeder, owner, racing association, breed registry, trainer, veterinarian, blacksmith, vendor or participant, bettor or spectator—is dependent on every other one. We’re all necessary conditions for success. Not one is sufficient by itself. And not one is superior to the others. We each have to behave properly, in the best interest of the horse, or we have no sport.

This wisdom applies to each of us. From the lowliest to the highest. It’s human nature. When Lincoln decried mobocracy, he knew that we each share that same nature . . . mobs can rise from the rabble, and all the way to Park Avenue.

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Alan Balch - Toast?

Those of us of a certain age vividly remember Walter Annenberg, friend of presidents, Ambassador to the Court of St. James, master of Sunnylands in Rancho Mirage, and publisher of Daily Racing Form. 

We tend not to remember his criminal father Moses (Moe) or the Chicago and Capone connections integral to the success of the racing wires and Form, leading to his imprisonment for evading over $20 million in U.S. taxes (in today’s currency). For those interested in the birth and ongoing life cycle of American racing, further research would be enlightening. 

Suffice it to say that our sport was once highly lucrative. An oligopoly, and even monopolistic in some respects. 

Tycoon Warren Buffett, now styled “The Oracle of Omaha,” long ago teased his audiences by asking them to name the nation’s most profitable newspaper, having little advertising, costing the buyer a dollar when other papers cost a dime. He started out as a teen-aged publisher of his own tip sheet, was ruled off for not sharing his proceeds with the track operator—a student of “speed” vs. “class” handicapping. Most of those at his feet had no idea that he was talking about The Morning Telegraph, which was succeeded by the Form, of course. 

In the many decades since, Buffett’s investing led him far, far away from speed and concentrated on staying. He took a cue from the Annenberg son, whose Triangle Publications was founded on what Walter termed “essentiality.” Anyone seriously interested in business had to have The Wall Street Journal; in horse racing, the Daily Racing Form; in television, TV Guide. For the nation at large, two of the three were essential. Even the Form was essential, in the sense that no other sport, early on, permitted legal betting on its contests; any bet on a race, without critical information, was literally uninformed to a significant extent. In the early days, racing was undoubtedly America’s leading professional sport. 

Until recently, Buffett was a major investor in newspapers, and one of his first jobs, along with that track publishing stint, was as a paperboy. Over a decade ago, he bought 28 local papers for $344 million. In 1977, he had gotten The Buffalo News for $36 million. Lately, he sold all those at a loss, although financing terms of the transactions may make him better than whole in the long run. 

In a 2019 interview with Yahoo Finance, he described the evolution of newspaper publishing, along with the essential nature of local news and advertising, and how the business had changed. “It went from monopoly to franchise to competitive to ... toast.” Gulp. 

That racing and its place in the gaming universe also have been dramatically changing isn’t exactly a secret, right? Or unforeseen, long before now? New York OTB was authorized in 1970. The New York Lottery had begun in 1967. Out on the island of California, its state lottery was authorized by a vote of the people in late 1984. Despite its 50% takeout, giant payoffs to the brain-dead and a very few with real luck began luring our clientele away the next year. 

While we in racing haven’t exactly been asleep, maybe we’ve been dreaming ... that somehow this reality would never actually bite. And chew. That simulcasting, satellites, ADW and sports betting would see us through? And just exactly how would that work? Decades, literally, largely have been wasted. Racing’s leaders could have invested wisely in research, development, and acquisition, dedicated to competing successfully in the evolving world of gaming. There was a time when we should and could have better marshaled our financial resources for critical future orientation. 

Not to mention keen, deep appreciation for our unique selling proposition in the gaming world: the horse. 

The last time the North American foal crop was under 20,000, as it is now, was 1965, but then it was on an upward trend. That year, the average field size was stable at just under 9 horses per race. In 2019, it was 7.5, or a decline of 17%. Average annual starts per runner has declined from 11 in 1965, to barely over 6 in 2019, or about 45%. In California alone, 3,365 races were run in 1965; in 2018, 3,874. Make sense? 

Most industries use similar objective data to guide decision making and policies. We do not. Despite our fans’ mania over the most minute data to drive betting! Is it any wonder we face the most uncertain of futures? 

To make matters still worse, greater and greater numbers of the declining stock of horses are increasingly concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, leading to far less attractive betting contests for the public. Racing associations, governing bodies and horsemen’s organizations seem reluctant even to discuss, let alone act on, what the data present. For racing to have a serious chance to flourish again, stall limits on trainers must be gradually but increasingly implemented. A far broader distribution of horses among trainers is essential to growing field size and enhancing our fundamental game. The business reasons are starkly clear. 

But that’s only one essential tactic in what should be a strategy based on all the intellectual capital the entire industry can assemble. 

So, do I believe we’re toast? No, not necessarily ... racing will continue, survive and possibly thrive. 

However, true prosperity is only ours if we remember, no matter the obstacles, the fundamental reasons for our sport’s adaption to change through the centuries. Its foundation is the majesty and attraction of horses to the vast public, and the socialization our shared affection inspires. In turn, that requires vigorous commitment to equine welfare, allegiance to the principle of breeding a better, sounder horse, and genuine, loving, sincere observance of good horsemanship. 

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Alan Balch - "Socialist impertinence?"

By Alan F. Balch

“On, no,” you’re saying to yourself, “not more politics!”

But stop and think: American racing is and has been since the 1930s essentially political, since it’s a state-regulated industry. It’s about to add another layer of government regulation, now that in their mutual wisdom The Jockey Club, United States Congress, and former President of the United States have just enacted new legislation to elaborate racing regulation still further. And complicate it?

The last time I wrote about subjects I’m going to raise again here, I was accused by one of our most prominent readers of being a “socialist,” and that sprang to mind when I was assailed the same way very recently by another prominent personage. I know that one of them is a strong supporter of the new “Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act,” or HISA.

My former students at Harvard College would get a serious jolt out of that accusation; they used to call the classes in Government I taught “Firing Line,” after William F. Buckley’s right-wing conservative television program of the day. I once read aloud to them paragraphs from a Lincoln Day speech delivered by a prominent politician, and largely written by one of my academic mentors who had been showered in infamy for his work with Barry Goldwater. I didn’t tell them that, of course. And then I asked them who they believed delivered those ringing sentiments.

“JFK,” came shouted back. “FDR. Justice [Hugo] Black. Justice Douglas.” Liberal lions all. Then I read another famous line from the same speech, about the “nattering nabobs of negativism,” and they all realized the parts of the speech they loved had also been delivered by one Spiro T. Agnew, former Vice President of the United States.

Labels, like stereotypes, are diversions from objective analysis. As we assess what ails our sport, and ideas to improve it, labeling a person or an idea “socialist” (or anything else) is just plain counterproductive. We have to confront objective reality and consider all possible corrective means.

A hundred years ago – when this really was the Sport of Kings -- it relied then as it still does now on all the commoners. Both kings and commoners love to bet, but there are way more of the latter than the former, and now a great many owners are commoners, too. Back then, virtually everyone recognized that a sport so afflicted with temptations to dishonesty and corruption needed serious governmental oversight if it was to survive and prosper. Yet our racing forefathers were hardly “socialists”!

So were born pari-mutuel wagering, the totalizator, and testing for forbidden substances, among countless rules across dozens of American states to build and retain public confidence in the integrity of our sport. Does such government intrusion and oversight smack of “socialism”? To some or many, yes. And they bring with them their own problems of potential misconduct and unfairness in administration. Whether king or commoner, whether citizen or government official, we all share one thing: human nature.

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Alan Balch - “The trainers"

By Alan F. Balch

Over the last 65 years, since I first was a horse-crazy kid, doing anything I could to be with these animals, I’ve spent an inordinate time around horse trainers.

To begin with, it was simple hero worship.  Why, why, why . . . it seemed like every time I opened my mouth, that was the first word out.  Why does a horse do this or that?  Why do you do this or that?  Since most of my time was spent mucking, feeding, watering, cleaning, raking, brushing – and relatively little time doing what I wanted to do much more, riding – I had plenty of time to observe and wonder.

Looking back now on those earliest days of my equine consciousness, I guess it should be said that the best trainers are patient.  With children (and fools) like I was (and am).  And with their horses, which one famous horseman described to me as like “the dumbest child you might ever be around.”  And he meant that in a positive way.  

The first horses I knew were not even what I might have later called park hacks.  But I was in awe of them.  I remember their names, just as you would:  Joe, Maude, Sugar, Ginger, Marine, Banjo, Elvis, Sunburst, and a dozen more, including my favorite, Sox, who was a refugee from some race track, somewhere.  They were rented by the hour, to sailors on the shore in San Diego, for birthday party rides, and matrons who had grown up in high society and their children.  In those days, the 1950s, “horseback riding” was a thing to do, and rent stables abounded . . . to the professional trainers who owned and ran them, they were a gateway to the show ring, to competitive riding, and to clients with money.

By the early 60s, I had also discovered the race track at Del Mar, earlier at the horse show during our county fair, then the races and summer sale, which brought layups and yearlings to be broke to the stable I worked at in La Jolla.  Race horses that were too slow but still sound were the primary source of hunters and jumpers and dressage horses in those days.  Horses from the major California tracks that had ultimately been relegated to Caliente, across the border, or to the many auctions conducted in those days, found their way to the show ring.   Including my first competitive horse, a gray gelding by Mahmoud, bred by Mervyn LeRoy, who had topped the Keeneland sale as a yearling.  As I learned on my first day working at Santa Anita much later – when I discovered chart books and the American Racing Manual -- he also once had held the course record there for about a mile and three-quarters on turf, in 1954. 

Until a little over ten years ago, in racing or otherwise, I was always a suit – I never had worked for a trainers’ organization, although I had been in plenty of intense negotiations with horsemen’s groups from time to time, and had owned any number of horses to ride and compete myself, but not to race.

So, I now know about horse trainers, nationally and internationally, from almost every perspective, through many decades of experiences.  And if there’s one thing I’m certain of, it’s that those individuals in politics, management, or the media, or as regulators, or administrators, who speak of “the trainers,” just don’t know what in hell they’re talking about.

Stereotypes of any category of people (or horses) may be entertaining or malicious, but are likely dubious in the most important respects.  That word comes from the Greek – and literally means a “solid impression.”  Those who traffic in stereotypes often use and enhance them viciously, as we have come to learn.  Sadly.  Repeating such stereotypes endlessly only makes their “impression” more solid.  Just ask a lawyer.  Preferably one with a sense of humor.

“Get a group of ten horse trainers to discuss any subject and you’ll get at least a hundred opinions.”  There’s more than a germ of truth in that, and I console myself with it when I hear management or regulators or journalists pontificate about what “the trainers” will do or say or believe in any instance.

Early in my days representing California trainers, I remember vividly the reaction I got when I spoke of the “intellectual capital” the professional horsemen might bring to a problem we were facing.  An outburst of laughter and head-shaking greeted that!  One prominent owner we were meeting was even more shocked at my reaction.  I told him it might not be the same kind of firepower he was used to dealing with in his boardroom of fellow millionaires, but it was just as valuable and even more so when applied to horse racing.  After all, I lectured, didn’t he spend a literal fortune on horses?  Didn’t he then place them under the care, custody, and control, of a “mere” horse trainer?

To those of us who know and really like horses, trainers deserve and receive our undying respect and appreciation.  And I’m not mainly talking about the exceptionally rare individuals who have achieved fame and riches . . . because, just as with horses, Mother Nature only makes a relative few with that kind of talent (whether in horsemanship or otherwise).  Fortunately, She makes relatively few scoundrels, too, whether equine or human.

No, it’s the overwhelmingly large number of trainers you’ve never heard of that I’m talking about.  The people that commit themselves and their help to their horses 52 weeks a year, at all hours day and night, every day.  They run small, unique, difficult businesses that never close.  They deal with all the human problems the rest of us do, and an unfathomably large number of equine risks, issues, and behavior – and that of their owners -- mostly without complaint.  

Why do they make this commitment?  Why is this the life they’ve chosen?  

The next time you hear someone bash “the trainers,” please tell them the answer.

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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 Balch - Trainers’ rights?

By Alan F. Balch

Justice—and injustice—are as old as humanity. Our contemporary ideas and standards of fairness trace all the way back to the very beginnings of recorded history, whether in Egypt, Greece or Rome.

“Lady Justice” appears at courthouses and law schools almost everywhere, although few of us take the time to see what she symbolizes. The scales of justice connote impartiality, the weighing and balancing of the sides to any issue. The sword, usually unsheathed, commands respect, and means there’s no justice without enforcement of a decision. A double-edged blade protects the innocent as well. The blindfold—a relatively contemporary addition—stands for objectivity and is a barrier to connections, politics, fame or wealth influencing an outcome.

The evolution and role of justice in racing are more ambiguous. Even though King Henry VIII (or possibly Lord George Bentinck) famously declared that “all men are equal on the turf, and under it,” such an opinion has rarely if ever applied to the discipline or behavior within our sport’s community. It’s probable, in fact, that the description of the lowly being “called on the carpet” originated in racing:  when the grand poohbahs or stewards of the Jockey Club in England confronted an offender to the regular order of behavior who deserved a scolding. Or worse.    

In my own time, dating back only 50 years, I’m ashamed to say we in track management used to laugh that the Constitution of the United States applied everywhere except within a race track enclosure. For better or worse (and in the earliest years of modern racing during the Great Depression, it may well have been for the better), to speak of “rights” for anyone other than the track ownership and stewards was anathema. But in those early days, as the only organized sport or activity with state-sanctioned and legal betting on the outcomes, amidst a sea of economic deprivation, hardship and blossoming organized crime, preserving racing’s integrity seemed to demand draconian rule.   

In California, one steward was appointed by management—one by the State of California—and those two selected a third. Needless to say, the track had the upper hand in all decisions and discipline. It was the mid-1970s before things started to change, gradually at first. Still, when the major tracks had multiple applications from horsemen for every available stall, and many major owners still had private trainers, we weren’t living in a “civil rights” paradise for anyone—whether customers, horsemen, or backstretch denizens.

By its nature, with enormous sums of money involved, in betting, purses, real property and bloodstock values—not to mention public economic impacts and multipliers far beyond any individual track or farm—racing required (and still requires) meticulous statutory and regulatory oversight. The law is there, and the rules are there to protect and enhance the public interest, including the economy. In California, that means the Horse Racing Board (CHRB) is empowered to supervise all of it. Politics may enter, of course, because the governor appoints its commissioners. But until the 1970s, CHRB had only three members . . . increasing politicization came during years of expansion and labor strife as it grew from the original three to five to the current seven appointees.

Nowadays, trainers everywhere, not just in California, are justifiably concerned with methods of rule enforcement and their legal protections (or lack thereof) as they prepare and race horses under greater public scrutiny than ever before. Are they entitled to meaningful fair procedures when their conduct is questioned or criticized, not just in the rule enforcement process, but generally? Can they be protected from scapegoating in a sport that is fundamentally reliant on risk, and inherently hazardous, involving precious animals?

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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.