The International Forum for the Aftercare of Racehorses (IFAR) announced today that it will be hosting its sixth forum as a series of two virtual webinars in April. The sessions, which will include a combination of prerecorded content and live discussions, will be held on 5 and 19 April at 12 p.m. BST (11 a.m. GMT) and will each last approximately two hours. Recordings of the events will be made available on the IFAR website. The 2021 IFAR conference was also held virtually in a similar format. IFAR is partnering with the Japan Racing Association (Japanese Consultative Committee on Aftercare of Racehorses) to put on this year's event.
With a conference theme of “Many paths – One goal,” expected topics to be covered during these sessions include traceability, transitioning horses off the racetrack and assessing suitability for other careers, the use of Thoroughbreds in unique careers, responsibility in making end-of-life decisions, and the next generation's perspective on aftercare. The full list of topics and speakers, as well as registration information, will be announced at a later date.
“After the positive feedback from last year's virtual IFAR, our team is excited to host another virtual series that will be easily accessible to anyone who works with or benefits from the Thoroughbred,” said Di Arbuthnot, chair of IFAR. “The theme we have chosen for this year's forum highlights the wide diversity of paths after racing, all with the consistent goal that the welfare of the horse is paramount. The topics assembled will be of interest to all stakeholders in the Thoroughbred industry, and we are assembling an expert group of speakers to discuss these issues.”
Prior to the virtual conference series in 2021, IFAR had previously been held in conjunction with the Asian Racing Conference in Cape Town, South Africa, in February 2020; the European & Mediterranean Horseracing Federation's General Assembly in Oslo, Norway, in May 2019; the Asian Racing Conference in Seoul, South Korea, in May 2018; and the Pan American Conference in Washington, D.C., in May 2017.
After two months and ten races, the curtain came down on the inaugural Bahrain Turf Series on Friday, with the results of the final two contests having both international and local appeal.
Britain's champion trainer Charlie Appleby fielded his first runners of the series in the seven-furlong Al Sakhir Cup and duly landed the spoils with Silent Film (GB) (New Approach {GB}), who rallied under a strong drive from James Doyle to win by a head from Shebil Aljazira (GB) (Exceed And Excel {Aus}).
The 4-year-old winner was landing his third victory in succession in three different countries, having won a seven-furlong handicap at Sandown back in June and then reappeared at Meydan last month to win off a mark of 94.
“He's a horse we pinpointed for the race so we're delighted he's gone and won,” said Appleby. “It's a great series they have set up in Bahrain and we're just happy that we've been able to find the right horse to come over and be competitive. Everyone is very happy in Dubai, and I'm sure we'll be part of the Turf Series moving forward.”
The following race, the Vision 2030 Cup, went the way of the partnership which is leading the tables in Bahrain his season, with dominant local trainer Hesham Al Haddad, who trains in partnership with Fawzi Nass, claiming his seventh victory in the series with Zagato (GB) (Frankel {GB}) under Neil Callan, the leading rider on the island for the current campaign with 19 wins under his belt.
Shaikh Sultan Aldeen Al Khalifa of Al Mohamediya Racing is a familiar figure both at Tattersalls and on British racecourses, and his visit to Newmarket last September proved to be a fruitful one as he purchased the smartly-bred Zagato from John and Thady Gosden's stable for 55,000gns. John Gosden had also trained her dam, the dual Group 1 winner Izzi Top (GB) (Pivotal {GB}), for breeder Meon Valley Stud.
A winner at Thirsk last year over a mile, the 4-year-old has been gradually finding his feet in his new homeland and he had previously finished third then second in earlier legs of the Turf Series on Dec. 31 and Feb. 5. On Friday, he blew his rival away after skimming the rail round the tight bend for home and blasting through under Callan to win by 6 1/2 lengths.
“Zagato has been an improving horse and he has improved with each start,” said Fawzi Nass. “We'll see what the handicapper does with him but he'll probably get an entry into the King's Cup which is a race run over 12 furlongs so he'll have a further two furlongs to negotiate.”
With $50,000 per race up for grabs in prize-money, the Turf Series also rewards the horse to have earned the most points throughout the series in two distance categories: 'Pot A' is for horses racing over six and seven furlongs and 'Pot B' for those over nine and ten furlongs.
Happy Craf (Arg) (Mastercraftsman {Ire}), trained in Bahrain by Allan Smith and the winner of four of her last five starts, took the $25,000 Pot A bonus, while the Newmarket-trained Arqoob (Ire), representing William Jarvis, landed the same bonus in Pot B, with $15,000 going to his owners and $10,000 to the trainer. Though Arqoob did not win one of the races in the series, he appeared in five of them, placing three times.
Music agent Emma Banks, who is involved in the ownership of Arqoob and who enjoyed a memorable season on the track in 2021 with her Group 1-winning filly Lady Bowthorpe (GB) (Nathaniel {Ire}), said, “What a fantastic bonus to keep him out here. He hasn't won yet but he's been ultra-consistent and passed a lot of horses. It's a really interesting way the points have worked out and makes for an interesting end to the series.”
She continued, “You can't be disappointed when you go home with prize money from races, prize money from the league table and a lovely trip to Bahrain.”
Arqoob's trainer William Jarvis added, “I'm so thrilled his owners have been able to come out and witness this race. I'm very proud of him, he's been so consistent and the support I've had from Richard, his owner, has been massively appreciated.”
Happy Craf is likely to be seen in action next in Europe, switching from Allan Smith's stable to the Newmarket base of his son Martin.
Allan Smith said, “She deserves it. It's a pity we couldn't run her in the last Turf Series race but she's off to England at the start of April. She'll be targeted at Listed and Group 3 races. Hopefully if she can pick up some black type we can send her to stud and then she can return to Bahrain to foal.”
The Bahrain Turf Series, which got underway on Dec. 10, has been shown through 20 broadcasters around the world via the Racecourse Media Group. Channels to have featured the racing from Sakhir include Fox Sports in America, ESPN in Latin America, Dubai Racing Channel, and Japan's Green Channel.
As somebody remarked at the time, on seeing B. Wayne Hughes and M.V. Magnier deep in conversation one morning before the 2019 Breeders' Cup: “I'll give you 140 guesses what they're talking about.”
Both men were at Santa Anita representing farms that have had a transformative influence on the commercial breeding landscape, developing a similar system for launching stallions on an industrial scale. We have, of course, since grieved the loss of Hughes–but among his many legacies can now be counted a supporting role in the defeat of The Jockey Club's contentious proposal to cap books at 140 mares.
True, the litigating farms had not yet managed to net that particular whale when a harpoon from the Kentucky state legislature got the job done virtually overnight. That initiative will maintain the 72nd district representative in the esteem of many in his community, as one of their own; and wherever you stand on this divisive issue, you know that Matt Koch, for one, will absolutely buy into the decorous talk of unity with which The Jockey Club sugared the pill they've had to swallow.
And it really does feel incumbent on all who have prevailed here not just to be magnanimous in victory, but also to take that step back and ask whether at least some of the concerns The Jockey Club had sought to address might merit collective attention.
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All parties profess to have the interests of the breed at heart, albeit sometimes perceiving these in a fashion that blatantly coincides with their own. And certainly it can be argued that The Jockey Club's approach was too arbitrary–in both senses of the word–to deal effectively with a challenge as complex as maintaining genetic diversity. To me, however, we only ended up in this pickle because the real need for correction fell beyond the reach of any enforcement: at ringside, that is, and in the behavior of buyers.
As it was, we ended up with a stand-off that could be conveniently conflated with wider polemics. The conservative establishment, for instance, resisting brash, self-made success; or paternalism versus the free market. Following the intervention in Frankfort, it can even be depicted as a test of the kind of state autonomy we are seeing harnessed, as sacrosanct, against federal menaces to the constitutional right to dope your racehorse.
The trouble with all this emotive symbolism is that if you're not careful you end up taking a train that terminates in no regulation at all. And then how would you preserve the integrity of the breed? If there's enough money in it, for enough people, you'll end up with a cookie-cutter racehorse, between artificial insemination and eventually cloning, the only remaining differentiation being what you inject with your needle.
For now, it's well-worth remarking that actually nobody would be better suited by a more even spread of mares than the stallion farms themselves.
Trying to get your money back on a stallion in barely 18 months is a horrible business model for their accountants. But that is pretty much what the market is often asking them to do, in flitting from one rookie to the next like a honeybee in a hothouse. While operations as skillfully adapted as Spendthrift and Ashford still seem able to keep a stallion in the game at least through years two and three, many young sires are being abandoned overnight by breeders terrified of getting stuck with the second or third crop of a sire cooling off in the ring–albeit even then he still won't have had a chance to demonstrate whether he can actually breed runners. Nothing, in the end, should be more commercial for a mare than a bunch of stakes horses under her name. But, if you're breeding to sell, then you'll probably start off by mating to sell, too.
And really, as I've often acknowledged, you can no more blame commercial breeders for the overall situation than you can the farms. Both are trying to put bread on the table through the notoriously precarious agency of an animal prone to countless game-ending mishaps. So, the only reason hundreds of mares are sent to unproven new stallions, many of whose credentials are decidedly marginal anyway, is because of anticipated market demand.
Now, I've been rebuked in the past that proven stallions are so expensive that you have no choice but to roll the dice on a new one. But I won't buy that while some new sire who will probably end up with one stakes winner in Panama, and standing in Oklahoma, continues to draw three times the mares than, for instance, one who produced winners of the two most prestigious dirt races in America, in Lookin At Lucky.
I do willingly concede two things. One is that the situation is infinitely worse in my homeland Britain, and Ireland. At least commercial breeding in Kentucky remains properly focused on a horse that can run two turns on the first Saturday in May. The other is that there is a self-fulfilling logic to investing in a first crop, in that most stallions will never get a better book than their debut one.
That said, I do think we all need to take our share of responsibility–above all, those who direct investment at ringside. They need to be held account both by their affluent patrons, who want nothing better than a runner; and by the breed itself, which would be far better served by the seeding of commercially unglamorous but demonstrably effective sires. If The Jockey Club's attempt to stem the tide simply wasn't viable, then it's up to all of us to make such contribution to the betterment of the breed that falls within our reach.
So note that while the two big Derby hopes resuming in the GII Risen Star S., Zandon and Smile Happy, each happen to be from only the second crops of their sires, both Upstart and Runhappy stand at farms that keep a voluntary lid on book sizes. This, of course, is partly because they believe they actually look after their clients better that way, by preventing inundation at the sales. And the whole reason I'll be rooting for Zandon is that he was brought into the world by such exemplary people, who scrupulously dovetail their commercial mission with the long-term prosperity of the Thoroughbred itself.
Certainly this, at last, looks like the race to put horses back at the center of the Derby conversation, rather than one particular trainer. True, Smile Happy happens to represent a barn that finds itself with Baffert-like depth, this time round; and his win over the Derby track last fall has now been advertised further still by Classic Causeway (Giant's Causeway). Just like Zandon, however, he comes into a tough field pretty raw. You feel that both horses only need to run well enough to set up a grab for the necessary gate points next time.
If they do make the Derby, mind, they plainly won't have many miles on the clock. Whether such delicate handling, increasingly common among modern trainers, might reflect some perceived or actual dilution in the breed is hard to say. Perhaps a horse like Zandon would have been perfectly equal to an old-school grounding: his sire, after all, was placed at the elite level at two, three and four. But there are plenty of old sages around who will tell you that horses today simply don't have the timber of generations past.
And that's the kind of trend we must keep in mind if tempted to predicate our breeding strategies only on short-term gain. If you didn't like being told what to do by The Jockey Club, that's fair enough. But if, as everyone invariably claims to be the case, your choices are governed primarily by the welfare of the horse, then you shouldn't need telling in the first place.
If there's one thing more sacred than your right to take your own decisions, it's the wellbeing of these noble animals as they pass through our brief stewardship. Rights, remember, are the other side of the exact same coin as duty. If we want to take our own decisions, then we must also accept the accompanying responsibilities.
Controversial trainer Marcus Vitali has been handed a one-year suspension and a $10,000 fine after one of his horses tested positive for d-methamphetamine. Single Lady, conditioned by Vitali for long-time client Crossed Sabres Farm, received the positive test after winning a maiden special weight contest at Presque Isle Downs on Aug. 26, 2021. The horse, who has since moved to Turf Paradise with Vitali's string, has been disqualified from that race.
According to rulings posted in the Pennsylvania Racing Commission's database, Vitali requested a split sample test via the UIC Analytical Forensic Testing Laboratory, which came back positive in late December.
On Jan. 27, stewards issued a year-long suspension scheduled to start on Feb. 15, a $10,000 fine, and six multiple medication violation penalty points. Vitali is appealing that ruling.
Also on Jan. 27, stewards issued a $500 fine to Vitali after the discovery of medication without a prescription at Presque Isle on Oct. 6, 2021. According to that ruling, Vitali was in possession of Dr. Burch's 40 Equi-Dyne and Dr. Burch's 6 Windy, both of which included labeling stating that they were “for veterinarian use only” and which had no prescription labels on the bottles.
According to labeling for the product Dr. Burch's 6 Windy, the product is produced by Drs. Burch and Burch, which shares a mailing address with racetrack practitioner Dr. George Burch. Burch had previously done work for Vitali when the latter trained in Florida in 2013. Burch's name came up in the course of an animal cruelty complaint filed against Vitali in 2013 by a Florida racing manager. The racing manager claimed a horse off Vitali and later said Vitali told him afterwards the horse had been diagnosed with a slab fracture prior to being entered to race, and provided the racing manager with radiographs taken by Burch. Vitali said at the time Burch took the radiographs but did not review the results with him. The complaint was closed for insufficient evidence.
Vitali has a lengthy history of run-ins with regulators over drug and other issues. He relinquished his training license in Florida in 2016 after racking up seven drug violations in a four-month span, temporarily evading suspension. He left for the Mid-Atlantic, where he accumulated another positive, and eventually went back to Florida in an attempt to require his license. Before he was relicensed, a Paulick Report investigation revealed he was regularly entering the Gulfstream Park backstretch on a visitor's pass and appeared to be training horses, although his attorney denied that he was training without a license. Vitali was later barred from properties owned by The Stronach Group and from Tampa Bay Downs for alleged paper training. In 2019, he was given a one-year suspension in Delaware after officials said he interfered with a search of an employee's dorm room and absconded with a vial of an unknown substance which was never recovered. In 2020, Vitali was implicated by officials at the Maryland Jockey Club in a scheme to have fellow trainer Wayne Potts serve as paper trainer for Vitali-trained horses entered at Stronach-owned Laurel Park.
In 2021, he started horses at Presque Isle, Turf Paradise, Finger Lakes, Lone Star Park, and a lone runner at Saratoga.
In March, the New York Racing Association is scheduled to hold a hearing to determine whether it will revoke or suspend his ability to enter horses at its facilities.
