Jane Cibelli, leading trainer at Monmouth Park in 2011 and '12, has been denied stalls at the Oceanport, N.J., track that has served as her stable's summer home since 2002.
Cibelli said she was notified of the decision by John Heims, Monmouth Park's racing secretary and director of racing.
“Heims told me, 'I'm tired of it, you always want things your way,'” Cibelli said. “I told him, 'That's what I get paid to do to survive. I'm looking out for my owners' best interests.”
“I won't deny I said that,” Heims said. “Overall, her conduct is not necessarily conducive to the atmosphere we want here at Monmouth Park. It's a lot to take and not worth the aggravation. It's too much.”
Cibelli said she was once “ambushed” by Heims and Monmouth Park general manager Bill Anderson over shipping horses from her stable at Monmouth to race at other tracks.
“They said, 'You ship a lot.' I asked them which horses and they said they didn't know. I told them I hadn't shipped any horses that Monmouth had races for. I had 40 horses and 30 of them are turf. Monmouth has 12 races a week on turf. When my horses are ready to run, I want to run them. The majority of my horses have run at Monmouth.”
Cibelli admits to be “a little testy” and a review of rulings against her shows that she has been fined for behavioral issues and altercations with other licensees. In 2020, she said, she had additional stress and fatigue while undergoing what she called “triple dose chemo” that began in Tampa, Fla., and continued in New Jersey to treat ovarian cancer. For now, she says, she is cancer free.
“I made an effort to support the Monmouth meet in 2020 after so many bailed because of COVID,” she added.
Cibelli ranked in a tie for sixth in the 2020 trainer standings at Monmouth with 12 wins from 48 starters. The previous year she was eighth, winning 14 races in 66 starts.
“At first I was upset (about being denied stalls),” Cibelli said. “A couple of owners told me to call Bill Anderson. I said, 'I'm just not doing it. I've spent my whole life in this business, I'm almost 60 years old, and I'm not going to beg for stalls.'”
Cibelli said she was also going up against a culture at Monmouth Park that was “always a bit of an old boys' club.”
The track had no problem, for example, allocating stalls for 2018 to then leading trainer Jorge Navarro after he was fined $10,000 for conduct detrimental to racing when caught on a September 2017 video while watching a simulcast race from Gulfstream Park with owner Randal Gindi. Navarro's brother had just won the race and Gindi said, “That's the juice. That's the vegetable juice.” Navarro responded: “We f – – k everyone.” Gindi replied “We f – – k everyone and I line my pockets with the bookie with another $20,000. Oh yeah, life is great.”
Navarro, along with another Monmouth Park mainstay, Jason Servis, was indicted in March 2020 in connection with an FBI probe into doping of racehorses. Some of the incidents described in the federal indictment took place at Monmouth.
“I might lose a couple of owners by not going back to Monmouth Park,” Cibelli said, “but when one door shuts another one opens.”
She indicated she will likely maintain her stable at Palm Meadows in South Florida for the time being, race at Gulfstream Park, and then look to summer meets at other mid-Atlantic tracks including Colonial Downs, Laurel Park and Delaware Park.
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