Khadijah Mellah: Pioneering jockey inspires new racing academy
Pioneering jockey Khadijah Mellah says she hopes a new riding academy inspired by her historic success will help "change the narrative" in horse racing.
Month: May 2021
Robin Goodfellow’s Racing Tips: Best bets for Thursday, May 20
Sportsmail's racing expert Robin Goodfellow dishes out his tips for Thursday's meetings at Sandown, Wolverhampton, Lingfield and Market Rasen.
Michael McCarthy Joins Writers’ Room
Fresh off the first Classic win of his career with his first Triple Crown starter, trainer Michael McCarthy joined the TDN Writers' Room podcast presented by JPMorgan Private Bank Wednesday morning. Calling in via Zoom from his Santa Anita stable as the Green Group Guest of the Week, McCarthy discussed getting Rombauer (Twirling Candy) to run his peak race in Saturday's GI Preakness S., whether he has any regrets about not running in the GI Kentucky Derby, what he learned from former boss Todd Pletcher and more.
“When the horses came to the quarter pole, I started getting excited and I almost had a bit of disbelief,” McCarthy recalled of his emotions Saturday. “The first thought that went through my head was, all right, the horse carried himself to the quarter pole and at least I can say he put up a respectable performance in a Triple Crown race. When they straightened up for home and Flavien [Prat] wheeled outside and they were three across the track, I could see the other two guys inside of him working. Flavien still looked like he was in a little bit of a rhythm and hadn't really gotten after him all that aggressively yet. Then, it was almost like my world went silent from the quarter pole to the wire. When he did strike the front and was pulling away from those horses, it was like an out-of-body experience.”
Asked about what he learned in his eight years working as an assistant to Pletcher, McCarthy said, “If you're around Todd, he leads by example. He shows up and gives it his best every day. He's got some things that I think he does better than anybody that I've been around. His attention to detail. His organizational skills. His big picture kind of thinking. This is something that he set out to do. As I read it, he had said to his parents at 12 or 13 that he'd like to be a racehorse trainer. So when you've got someone that's dedicated their life, like Todd has, to training racehorses, obviously he's left no stone unturned. It doesn't take thousands of races won or championships or Triple
Crown races to see the kind of person he is.”
Elsewhere on the show, which is also sponsored by Keeneland, West Point Thoroughbreds and Legacy Bloodstock, the writers reacted to the news that the New York Racing Association is suspending Bob Baffert and, in the Minnesota Racehorse Engagement Project Story of the Week, debated whether or not the punishment fit the crime for Linda Rice's suspension. Click here to watch the podcast; click here for the audio-only version.
The post Michael McCarthy Joins Writers’ Room appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.
Florida Legislature Hands Sports Betting To Seminoles, Permits Non-Thoroughbred Tracks To Decouple From Gaming
On the final day of a special session, Florida legislators on Wednesday approved three separate gambling measures that will strengthen the Seminole tribe's dominant position in the gambling market, allow non-Thoroughbred pari-mutuel facilities to decouple casinos and card rooms from their racing and jai-alai operations, and create a five-member Gaming Commission that will replace the state's Division of Pari-Mutuel Wagering.
The net result will mean more competition for the state's two remaining Thoroughbred tracks, Tampa Bay Downs in Oldsmar and Gulfstream Park in Hallandale Beach. Horsemen fear that will lead to lower purse money for Gulfstream Park and a reduction in racing days, according to Stephen Screnci, president of the Florida Horsemen's Benevolent and Protective Association.
The bill that garnered the most attention is approval of a 30-year compact between Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Seminoles, giving the tribe a monopoly on sports betting and permitting the addition of three new casinos on the site of the existing Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Hollywood, approximately 10 miles northwest of Gulfstream Park. The state gets $500 million a year from the the deal for the next five years.
The Seminoles will have a monopoly on sports betting, both at the seven Florida casinos they currently operate and via mobile applications. Pari-mutuel facilities may enter into agreements with the Seminoles to offer sports betting and split revenue with the tribe.
That portion of the legislation, along with language that could bring a new casino to Miami-Dade County off tribal land, is likely to be challenged in court by gambling opponents who say the bill violates a 2018 statewide ballot initiative that blocked any further expansion of gambling without voter approval.
The bill to approve the Seminoles compact passed 38-1 in the Senate and 97-17 in the House.
The decoupling bill likely will end live racing at South Florida's Pompano Park, the state's only harness track that opened in 1964 and is now known as Isle Casino Pompano, a Caesars Entertainment property. A last-minute amendment in the Florida House version of the bill to exempt harness racing from the decoupling law was stripped in the final version that passed the Senate by a 39-0 vote and the House in a 73-43 vote.
Hialeah Park may also have seen its last race. The historic track that once hosted South Florida's best winter Thoroughbred meet has been operating its casino since 2010 in connection with a Quarter Horse permit that began with competitive racing sanctioned by the Florida Quarter Horse Association. Those races were replaced by match races that were run so that Hialeah fulfilled its casino license obligation to conduct races as defined by Florida statute. That will no longer be necessary.
The idea of acquiring licenses for card rooms and simulcasting by running horse races began in Florida's panhandle when an operation in Gadsden County offered pari-mutuel wagering on barrel races. After a court struck down that as not fitting the definition of pari-mutuel races, lawyers familiar with state regulations came up with the idea of match races – sometimes involving flag drop starts and slow horses walking or trotting down a dirt path. Remarkably, that passed legal muster and Quarter Horse permits sprung up in several other locations around the state, with farcical races giving operators the legal right to open card rooms and simulcast parlors.
Under the bill passed on Wednesday, all those facilities may now end the sham horse races but continue to operate their card rooms and simulcasting. The same is true of the state's jai-alai frontons, which may also be decoupled. Greyhound racing became extinct at the end of 2020 after Florida voters approved a ballot initiative to ban the sport, so those tracks already have decoupled from their card rooms and simulcasting.
Screnci, the HBPA president, said revenue from slots operations to purses – currently about 20% of total purses – will fall. Currently, he said, horsemen receive about $9 million annually from the Calder Casino, but the contract with owner Churchill Downs Inc. (CDI) is set to expire on July 31. CDI previously received state approval to couple its Calder Casino operations with a jai-alai permit it acquired, allowing the company to end live racing at the track that in recent years has been leased to Gulfstream Park's owners and rebranded as Gulfstream Park West. The decoupling bill will allow CDI to stop conducting jai-alai and keep its casino open. Screnci said he has had talks with Bill Carstanjen, CEO of CDI, about the company continuing to contribute to purses, since horsemen were instrumental in Calder getting its casino license.
According to Screnci, the Gulfstream Park slots contribute about $6 million annually to purses, and that could fall as the other casinos in the region (including the former Hollywood greyhound track now known as The Big Easy casino and located just over one mile north) become more profitable.
The tax rate on slot operations run by the Seminoles is 12.5%, Screnci said, with Gulfstream Park paying a 35% tax rate.
Horsemen lobbied in Tallahassee for concessions for Thoroughbred racing, but those talks fell on “deaf ears,” Screnci said.
“We asked for a purse pool, with the decoupled permit holders contributing a portion of their funds now that they won't have to spend anything on racing,” he said. “That didn't get a lot of support. There still could be some appropriations from compact money that goes to the state. That's not dead. This compact doesn't discuss any appropriations of money. We might be able to get in the mix there.”
Screnci said the compact between the tribe and DeSantis permits Miami-Dade and Broward pari-mutuels up to a 5% tax break, but not until 2023.
“It's a bad compact,” he said, adding that even with the addition of new casinos and sports betting the state is only getting an additional $100 million per year compared to the old compact.
His fear is that with Calder no longer an option as a racetrack and purse revenue expected to decline, Gulfstream Park will have to cut racing dates. “We can only go so low (on purses),” he said. “If we lose too many racing days, the lure of year-round racing goes away. That's one way we've managed to keep stables here in October and November, by racing so many days.”
The post Florida Legislature Hands Sports Betting To Seminoles, Permits Non-Thoroughbred Tracks To Decouple From Gaming appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.
