Month: March 2022

Multiple Graded Stakes Winner Con Lima Suffers Fatal Stall Injury

Con Lima, the multiple Grade 3-winning daughter of Commissioner, suffered a fatal stall injury Wednesday evening at WinStar Farm in Lexington, Ky. The news was broken by co-owner Eclipse Thoroughbreds on Twitter Thursday morning.

“We're devastated to report Con Lima suffered a catastrophic injury in her stall last night and had to be euthanized,” the Tweet read. “Con Lima epitomized all that was good about Thoroughbred racehorses and our heart goes out to her, our partners, her breeders and all who cared for this grand gal.”

The 4-year-old filly was at WinStar preparing for a 2022 campaign.

Trained by Todd Pletcher, Con Lima won seven of her 13 career starts, placing second in an additional five races. Her major victories included the G3 Saratoga Oaks, G3 Wonder Again, and G3 Herecomesthebride. Con Lima also finished second in the G1 Belmont Oaks, beaten just a half-length by Santa Barbara.

A $15,000 weanling purchase at Keeneland November, Con Lima earned $884,865 on the racetrack.

The post Multiple Graded Stakes Winner Con Lima Suffers Fatal Stall Injury appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

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Second Gold Strike Extends Final Furlong

Evidently she's no Busher, to look at. Between 2011 and 2018, in fact, she changed hands four times as a pregnant mare at Keeneland, her value gradually declining until the late Mike Recio was able to purchase her for just $13,000.

The previous evening, Recio had called Dan Zanatta, founding/managing partner of Final Furlong Racing with Vince Roth, and announced: “Tomorrow morning, I'm buying you a broodmare.”

Zanatta was not enthused. Final Furlong was evolving nicely, syndicating New York-bred fillies. Though they did have one broodmare, apart from pinhooking weanlings, the focus was primarily on racing in the Empire State program.

“No! Whatever you do, please don't buy us another mare!”

“Don't worry about it,” Recio replied. “She'll only cost about 10 grand, you're going to love her, it's a no-brainer.”

Then the agent revealed her identity.

“Oh!” Zanatta said. “Right. Okay. Yeah, tomorrow you're going to buy us a mare!”

And that was because, deep in the November Sale, Recio had found the dam of a filly who was then shaping up as Final Furlong's most promising talent yet. The edge they had was a certainty that Espresso Shot (Mission Impazible) would contribute more to the page of Glory Gold (Medaglia d'Oro) than was apparent, shortly before the auction, when she finished last in the GII JPMorgan Chase Jessamine S. at Keeneland.

“That race was a mistake,” Zanatta says. “We had Espresso Shot pegged as a two-turn, turf horse–and we had read her all wrong. Based on her early breezes, she'd run first time out in a turf sprint and was actually entered in a turf route for her second start at Belmont. It was only when that got rained off, and she won so impressively, that we started thinking maybe she was a dirt horse after all.

“So after the Jessamine, now that she had changed our minds for us, we were looking to put her back into some New York-bred stake races. We thought she'd be pretty competitive, and that if she was going to earn black type, then her dam was a no-brainer as a Medaglia d'Oro mare at that kind of money.”

The upshot, three and a half years on, is that Final Furlong have meanwhile fielded two winners of the Busher Invitational S., both out of the same mare, while having bred one of them.

Espresso Shot herself quickly vindicated the team's judgement, the Busher only one of four stakes type wins in the course of a $516,625 career that prompted the Spendthrift team to give $300,000 for her at Fasig-Tipton last November. Even in her own right, then, she secured impressive dividends on the $69,000 she had cost as a yearling in the New York catalog at Saratoga.

But that has turned out to be not even half the story. When Recio turned up Glory Gold, she was being offered in foal to the young Crestwood sire Firing Line. If anything, Zanatta considered that a bonus.

“I felt Firing Line was a little underappreciated,” he says. “After all, he was second to American Pharoah in the Derby. And it also really hit a chord with me that the mare had been purchased by several groups before us, to support their own stallions. That made me think the mare would hit one day.”

But while Final Furlong generally only breeds to sell, the Firing Line filly delivered by Glory Gold on Valentine's Day would have to be offered in the volatile yearling market looming in the middle of a pandemic. And since she was shaping up so nicely, it was decided to keep her for the racing division.

As a result, Final Furlong could consecutively involve two bands of brothers in the project. The mare herself had been shared with Maspeth Stable, duly listed as co-breeder of the filly then syndicated between Final Furlong and Parkland Thoroughbreds.

“I live in Garden City, 10 minutes from Belmont, and Maspeth Stable is a group of fellows from the same neighborhood,” Zanatta explains. “They're pretty much all retired now, but they all grew up within a few blocks of each other in Queens, and stayed close their whole lives. They're golfing buddies with a small private stable, and they'll take a leg nearly every time we buy a yearling to race. They partnered with us on Espresso Shot, so when I called about the mare, they jumped at that opportunity too.”

As for Parkland Thoroughbreds, the closeness of the relationship can be judged from the fact that Zanatta is engaged to Tracy Weston, whose father Steve is a principal of the stable.

Glory Gold's Firing Line filly, meanwhile named Venti Valentine, received the usual education with Brandon and Ali Rice in Ocala before joining Jorge Abreu at the track.

“And everyone, from the grooms to the riders, to the trainers on the farm, all the way to Jorge, has said from day one that Venti Valentine was night-and-day better than Espresso Shot,” Zanatta discloses. “So we always thought we had something special. And whereas with Espresso Shot we were kind of learning on the fly, I feel we've been able to be a lot smarter this time. We've had another three or four years watching those stakes races cycle through, year in, year out, and we've planned out her career really very diligently–even from before she'd raced. We knew what we had, and we knew what the hope was.”

Her first big objective was duly identified as the Maid of the Mist S.

“Even if she was still a maiden, even if she was still unraced, the goal was to be in that race at Belmont in October,” Zanatta says. “So we were waiting for a race to come up that made sense, with that in mind. We ended up getting stuck with a six-furlong sprint, but luckily she was good enough to win by a nose despite getting left at the gate and a really wide trip. That made us really excited.”

They had already decided that Venti Valentine was not just classier than Espresso Shot but also more rugged, and that a second turn would be within her compass. After she ran Nest (Curlin) to a neck in the GII Demoiselle S., they gave her a winter in Florida before trying to scale a three-rung ladder via the Busher and the GII Gazelle S. to the GI Kentucky Oaks itself.

That agenda went from pencil to ink at Aqueduct last weekend, following a spectacular seven-length rout that leaves Venti Valentine with 54 Oaks points in the bank already.

Whatever happens from here, she has already conferred an unusual distinction on her dam, as her second daughter to win the same stakes. Even before that, her updates had helped Glory Gold's weanling filly by Omaha Beach achieve $220,000 at the Keeneland November Sale from Sewanne Investments.

Being empty this year, meanwhile, Glory Gold has had an early cover by Munnings–for which purpose she is currently with Mike Heitzmann and his team at Stone Bridge Farm, though her customary base is Dr. Scott Ahlschwede's River Valley Stock Farm near Saratoga. (Albeit the foaling of Venti Valentine herself is a credit to Chad DeGregory's Schuylerville Thoroughbreds.)

Zanatta does not pretend that the mare's genetic prowess is blatantly obvious in her physique.

“To be honest, she's quite a plain mare,” he admits. “She does have some size, but if you wanted to be critical you might say she's a little upright, in the shoulder; she may not have the strongest top line in the world; she may not have a ton of leg. But I'd say she puts a lot more leg onto her foals than she has herself, a lot more shoulder, and a lot more length. She's definitely moving up her foals.”
In that belief, Final Furlong had already doubled down on the family by the private purchase of one of Glory Gold's earlier daughters, the 8-year-old, four-time winner Goldtown (Speightstown).

And while Medaglia d'Oro plainly requires no introduction, actually this family has some cosmopolitan flavors deeper down. Glory Gold's mother is by Lord Gayle, whose sire Sir Gaylord gave us so many good broodmare sires: Sir Ivor, Habitat, Drone. She was bred by Edward P. Evans from an Argentinian Classic runner-up, extending a line that traces to Epsom Oaks winner Brulette (Fr) (Bruleur {Fr}). That pre-war matriarch unites the pedigrees of such European luminaries as All Along (Fr) (Targowice), Vaguely Noble (Ire) (Vienna {GB}) and Diminuendo (Diesis {GB}). A more proximate credit, moreover, is Glory Gold's half-brother Mocha Express (Java Gold), a 16-time winner who broke the Louisiana Downs track record in a graded stakes over nine furlongs.

If there has been an element of serendipity to Venti Valentine, her emergence is perfectly consistent with Final Furlong's dynamic progress. Zanatta, still only 35, was a college intern at Merrill Lynch when he met Roth, who introduced him to the fractional share action he was enjoying through the likes of Sovereign Stable and Dream Team Stable. After Zanatta graduated, they created Final Furlong.

“I'd say we've been doing it in earnest for around five or six years,” Zanatta explains. “Our niche in the market is pretty focused. We buy New York fillies. We think the economics make sense, for us and our partners: we can afford some of the best fillies in that division every year. And for four straight years now we've had a New York-bred 2-year-old get black type. We also had horses nominated for New York-bred divisional honors in each of those years. Typically we have eight to 12 horses at the track, so I think that's a real testament to the model.”

With horses syndicated in the $75,000-$150,000 range, and partners generally staking 3-5%, Venti Valentine is another horse offering to evangelize a sport historically perceived as a preserve of the wealthy.

“I would say we cover the whole gamut,” Zanatta says. “We have people who are able to afford $10,000 or $15,000 every year, investing in each crop. But we also have people with a budget of $3,000 every other year. And very often it's the ones at the nearest entry point that are most passionate.”

Return business is so strong that access instead tends to be limited by demand. With Venti Valentine herself, for instance, all bar one of the Espresso Shot partners went straight back in. Needless to say, calls are now coming in about buying into their adventure, and some calculations will doubtless have to be made before the Gazelle. In bringing so many people together already, however, this filly is first and foremost an apt memorial to her dam's purchaser, whose loss last September at just 46 devastated so many in the community.

“Mike treated his clients like friends and family,” Zanatta says. “He was a big part of our whole operation, in every aspect: mares, yearlings, pinhooks. But more than anything, as everyone knows, Mike loved to party. So we became good friends not just with Mike, but with all his staff, with his whole family. So it was a huge loss to this giant circle of people he built around himself. We miss his daily calls, and we miss his friendship.”

But Zanatta stresses how the same standards of excellence are maintained across the Final Furlong team, from the Rices in Ocala to the trainer for whom Venti Valentine could become his breakout horse.

“I think we gave Jorge the fourth horse he ever had,” Zanatta recalls. “We had a filly coming off a layoff and, as we normally race in New York, we were interviewing trainers to take her at Gulfstream for the winter. Most of them, we hung up and I never heard from them again. But Jorge was so hungry that he called me every single week, after our initial conversation–inquiring about the filly, sharing his opinion on all the videos he'd looked up, calling Brandon and Ali about how she was coming along. That's how interested he was, and that's how he got our business. So we've been involved together from the ground up, and it's been wildly successful.”

Sure enough, Final Furlong enjoyed its best year yet in 2021, with 10 wins at 29% and an average of $17,000 per start. Zanatta's first commitment remains as a senior vice-president at T.D. Bank, but it's heartening that someone with that background considers the New York Thoroughbred a viable investment vehicle–even before the advent of a filly that could send the operation to the next level.

“It's been a long story in the making, from the day Mike rang about this mare,” Zanatta says. “But so far all the planning has come out quite nicely, and she's definitely exceeding our expectations. Remember that after Espresso Shot, we're talking about a group of friends that have been going to the races together and rooting for their horses for four or five years now. And then going out to celebrate every win, all the time becoming more comfortable about bringing friends and family to the racetrack. There's a lot of people having a lot of fun.”

The post Second Gold Strike Extends Final Furlong appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

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2022 IFAR Speakers and Agenda Announced

The speakers and agenda were announced for the sixth annual International Forum for the Aftercare of Racehorses (IFAR) on Thursday. “Many Paths-One Goal” is the conference theme and IFAR will be divided into two virtual webinars on Apr. 5 and 19. Each webinar will begin at 12 p.m. BST (11 a.m. GMT), and lasting for approximately two hours. IFAR is partnering with the Japan Racing Association (Japanese Consultative Committee on Aftercare of Racehorses) to host this year's event. IFAR is free to view, but registration is required. Please click here to register.

The lineup of speakers features experts addressing key topics including equine traceability, equine therapy, and veterinary science. A key highlight will include a Young Professionals Panel, where Australian racing presenter Caroline Searcy will explore the attitudes and views of emerging industry leaders regarding current and future aftercare strategies. The speakers are as follows:

The Apr. 5 IFAR session will be moderated by Rishi Persad (UK)

Speakers:

  • Annamarie Phelps (UK) (Keynote): Chair, British Horseracing Authority
  • Di Arbuthnot: Chair, IFAR
  • Jeff Berk (US): Equine Medical Associates PSC; Past President, American Association of Equine Practitioners
  • Meredith Flash (Aus): Lead Researcher, Australian Thoroughbred Wellbeing Project
  • Jock Hutchison (UK): President and Co-Founder, Horseback UK
  • Angela Schuster (Aus): Managing Director, Schuster Consulting Group

 

The Apr. 19 IFAR session will be moderated by Caroline Searcy.

Speakers:

  • Michael Drapac (Aus): Owner/Breeder
  • Adrian Farrington (HK): Executive Manager, Veterinary Clinical Services, Hong Kong Jockey Club
  • Kirsten Green (US): Executive Director, Retired Racehorse Project
  • Jennifer Hughes (Aus): General Manager, Equine Welfare, Racing Victoria

Young Professionals Panel

  • George Broughton (UK): Trainee, Godolphin Flying Start
  • Harry Derham (UK): Assistant Trainer
  • Caoimhe Doherty (Ire): Co-founder, Treo Eile; Stud Manager, Forenaghts Stud
  • Natasha Rose (HK): Equestrian Affairs Project Manager / Retired Racehorse Unit Manager, Hong Kong Jockey Club
  • Elinor Wolf (US): Trainee, Godolphin Flying Start

“We are delighted with the group of speakers we have compiled for this year's IFAR conference,” said Di Arbuthnot, Chair of IFAR. “Between the formal presentations and allocated time for Q&A with our audience, the two sessions are sure to spark engaging conversations about Thoroughbred aftercare.”

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Thoroughbred Idea Foundation: Commissions Crush Confidence With Lack Of Transparency

Restoring customer confidence has to be a leading driver for American racing in the present day. The sport and its regulators must act in the best interests of its customers – the horseplayers – at every opportunity.

Improved customer confidence will help increase participation, drive revenue, grow purses and industry benevolence.

Several recent actions, or lack thereof, undermine the confidence of horseplayers.

Jockey Mychal Sanchez wagered over $129,000 on dozens of races in the span of 11 days. Amongst those, he won thousands on wagers in races where he rode, but bet on other horses.

Stewards banned Sanchez for 60 days as a result of the bets he made on racing at Parx.

That ban ends on March 21..

As far as comparable suspensions for jockeys found to be betting, let alone against their own horses, it is one of the least punitive the Thoroughbred Idea Foundation could find.

ONLY 60 DAYS

Australian rider Damien Oliver was banned for eight months after it was learned in 2012, two years after the fact, that Oliver had placed a single bet on a rival horse via a third party. He copped another two months for using a mobile device in the jockeys' room.

One bet – eight months. One use of a phone in violation of the rules – two months.

Michael Duffy, then chairman of Racing Victoria, the governing body for the sport in the Australian state, qualified the impact of the suspension.

“The result of today's stewards' inquiry has sent a powerful message to the jockey profession that there is zero tolerance of any breaches of the prohibition on betting.”

Mandatory minimum penalties were introduced across Australia in subsequent years, with jockey betting now carrying a two-year disqualification. Jockey James Mc Donald was banned for 18 months having received a six-month reduction for pleading guilty and cooperating, after a $1,000 bet in New South Wales, Australia in 2016.

In November 2021, British apprentice Finley Marsh was given a six-month ban after having been found to have placed 119 bets on racing over a 16-month period, though never on other horses in races he rode.

A British Horseracing Authority (BHA) judicial panel acknowledged the “appropriate period of disqualification would be 12-18 months,” and as Marsh had already been sitting out of racing since November 2020, the six-month ban was deemed acceptable. The report also noted that Marsh's bets “were the product of his addiction” to gambling.

Alan Pincus, attorney for Mychal Sanchez, explained his client was suffering from “some type of depression” in this story from Paulick Report.

FOLLOW THE RULES

The rules in non-American jurisdictions vary, but generally make it clear – jockeys either cannot bet, or if they do, it must be only to win and through the owner or trainer of the horse.

The Association of Racing Commissioners International (ARCI) offers a model rule on the matter, copied below, and adopted by several states, including West Virginia and Indiana.

“A jockey shall only be allowed to wager on a race in which he/she is riding. A jockey shall only be allowed to wager if: (1) the owner or trainer of the horse which the jockey is riding makes the wager for the jockey; (2) the jockey only wagers on his/her own mount to win or finish first in combination with other horses in multiple type wagers; and (3) records of such wagers are kept and available for presentation upon request by the stewards.”

Maryland's rule is as follows:

“On a day that a jockey is scheduled to ride, the jockey may not bet on any race except: (1) To win on a horse which the jockey is scheduled to ride; and (2) Through the owner or trainer of that horse.”

Public records obtained by TIF from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, via open records requests, confirmed that Sanchez made two bets on races at Laurel, one on December 26, 2021 and one on January 2, 2022, in which he won $14,346 betting on horses that he did not ride, but were competing against him.

The bets were almost assuredly made from the jockeys' room at Laurel Park, minutes before Sanchez got a leg up on horses that finished last and fourth, collecting a basic mount fee.

Despite Sanchez's repeated violations over that short period for betting, the sanction from the stewards on behalf of the Maryland Racing Commission merely runs concurrent to Pennsylvania's 60-day ban.

[After some initial confusion between the Commission and TIF when the betting details were first obtained, executive director Mike Hopkins since confirmed Sanchez was suspended 60 days to run concurrent to the Pennsylvania suspension, while also successfully completing a gambling addiction course.]

Sanchez is banned indefinitely at the properties of 1/ST, which owns Laurel Park.

A statement from 1/ST, published shortly after the case came to light, said the following:

“1/ST RACING stands on the principles of integrity and accountability, and we believe there is no place in our sport for this kind of unethical and illegal activity.”

While 1/ST has maintained a strong position on barring Sanchez, he will be free to ride elsewhere in the very near future.

SUSPENSIONS AIM FOR DETERRENCE

A strong penalty when betting rules are violated aims to deter such activity from the wider community of jockeys, not just the individual rule violator.

This week, the National Football League suspended Calvin Ridley of the Atlanta Falcons for at least the entirety of the 2022-23 season after an investigation revealed he bet on NFL games, though not on games he was personally playing or when he was with the team. In a tweet, Ridley claimed his bets totaled $1,500.

The NFL rules on the matter were clearly outlined in 2018.

“All NFL Personnel are prohibited from placing, soliciting, or facilitating any bet, whether directly or indirectly through a third-party, on any NFL game, practice e or other event. This includes betting on game outcome, statistics, score, performance of any individual participant, or any other kind of “proposition bet” on which wagering is offered.”

The suspension serves as a monumental deterrent to anyone that might consider breaking the rules.

Sanchez's 60-day stint on the sidelines when combined with few public details from stewards and commissions, does little to instill confidence amongst horseplayers.

Former jockey, current NBC broadcaster and entrepreneur Donna Brothers, a member of TIF's Board of Directors, believes the penalty is remarkably short, particularly without any additional context.

“In my time, riding from 1987 to 1998, I would have expected this to be something between a 10-year suspension and a lifetime ban.

“It just wasn't anything that most riders would consider. There was far too much risk for a reward that is, by definition, a gamble.

“At that time, betting on a horse race that you were riding in was akin to race fixing. I'm not saying they are the same thing, but they were treated the same. The only way that a jockey could be associated with a wager was if the owner or trainer bet for the jockey and bet only to win.

“Even an across-the-board bet would've been considered betting against yourself, even if the owner made the bet for you.

“I do not understand how the penalty can be so insignificant, not just for the jockey involved but the impact the small suspension can have across all of the jocks in the room.”

Without a detailed report from the stewards or commissions in Pennsylvania or Maryland, everyone on the outside, including other jockeys, are left to ponder questions they have left unanswered.

That is insufficient for racing's customers – the bettors – and it is grossly unfair for Sanchez.

CONTROLLING MOBILE DEVICE USAGE

Sanchez's betting may have been prevented, at least in part, if basic rules prohibiting or controlling mobile device usage in the jockeys' room were enacted.

Texas is one state that strictly limits jockey communications during a race day.

“A jockey reporting to the jockeys' room must remain there until the jockey has fulfilled all of that day's riding engagements. While in the jockeys' room, the jockey may have no contact or communication with any person outside the jockeys' room other than with an owner or trainer for whom the jockey is riding that day, or with the stewards or other personnel authorized by the stewards.”

Delaware allows mobile device usage, but includes the following provision:

“[A} Jockey's use of a mobile electronic device in the Jockey room signifies the Jockey's consent to a search of the mobile electronic device by or on behalf of the Commission.”

The world has changed, and Brothers believes the rules need to evolve for the protection of all parties.

“For decades, it was basically not permitted for jockeys to make or receive calls in the jocks room.

“To not have rules in place today, in a time of 'personal mobile devices' where you can do far more communicating than just talking to someone, is utterly inexplicable.

“If your agent was at the track, sometimes you would talk to them between races but even this was rare. There is no emergency situation where a jockey needs to talk to his/her agent. And if there is an emergency situation where an agent (or loved one) needs to speak with one of the jockeys, that call should still go through the stewards, to the clerk of scales desk, and the conversation should take place in this setting — in front of other people.”

In many overseas jurisdictions, jockeys are limited from access to communications devices during the race day. Rules from three jurisdictions are reprinted below.

In New South Wales, Australia:

“Without the permission of the Stewards, a person (including but not limited to a jockey) must not: (a) bring into the jockeys' room; (b) have in that person's possession in the jockeys' room; (c) use in the jockeys' room, any mobile telephone, tablet, radio transmitter, radio transceiver or any other appliance, apparatus, instrument or equipment capable of receiving or transmitting information.”

In Hong Kong:

“No person shall…Within the Jockeys' Room or its precincts, without the permission of the Stewards, use or have in his possession any portable telephone, radio transmitter, radio receiver or any other appliance, apparatus, instrument or equipment capable of receiving or transmitting information.”

In Great Britain:

“A Restricted Person [a Jockey or Valet who attends a Race Meeting in their capacity as a Licensed Person] may not use or switch on a Communication Device during the Restricted Period [30 minutes before first race until after the last race has started], unless they are in the Phone Zone [an area in weighing room dedicated to communication device usage] and: the Communication Device is registered with the BHA; or the BHA gives permission to do so. The BHA shall only register a Communication Device if a Restricted Person consents to providing, on request from the BHA, fully itemised billing accounts for the Restricted Period.”

These jurisdictions have all dealt with issues related to the integrity of racing. These rules exist for those reasons and enable those jurisdictions to have a clearer path to protecting the public.

North American states and provinces should be adopting similar and, importantly, enforcing them.

Such rules protect the jockeys, too.

INSUFFICIENT MEASURES OF TRANSPARENCY

State and provincial racing commissions must recognize that a concerted effort to improve transparency is a necessity in the present day, particularly for a sport that is grounded in gambling.

However unfair it may seem to the well-intentioned, a lack of transparency can easily be perceived by some as an attempt to hide or deceive. In other words, if you are not providing customers with a transparent approach to racing's business, you are against progress.

Recent examples in California, Arizona and Kentucky offer diverse examples in handling transparency.

In a report released last week, the California Horse Racing Board (CHRB) indicated a compounding factor which led to Modern Games being erroneously scratched from the Breeders' Cup Juvenile Turf was a failure of telecommunications devices between officials to function properly.

The incident led to millions in customer losses as well as millions in refunds on a horse that eventually won.

The CHRB report was just a “summary.”

“While the CHRB does not typically release an investigation report, especially when it does not result in a complaint, given the widespread public interest, a summary of the investigation is provided.”

The summary provides very few precise details of decisions made by named individuals, as opposed to generalities. Decision-makers and witnesses are merely grouped as a whole: “the veterinarians,” “the tote room,” “various witnesses.” The usefulness of the report is limited, particularly for others in the sport to understand ways to avoid such incidents again.

It leaves many questions unanswered.

The discouraging story of Creative Plan, a gelding humanely euthanized in Arizona after seemingly being allowed to race with serious injuries, highlights another angle of the need for improved rules and enhanced transparency when dealing with troubling racing incidents.

The Paulick Report's Natalie Voss covered that story.

Less than two weeks after the story came to light, the case was packed away without much detail. An Arizona Racing Commission spokesperson told Voss: “The stewards interviewed multiple individuals regarding Creative Plan and determined no rule was broken surrounding this case.”

While the regulatory body committed to seek ways to improve the rules, the lack of detail to the public, let alone other commissions seeking to improve outcomes, is remarkably disconcerting.

Once again, many obvious questions are left unanswered.

In the case of the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission (KHRC), at least some effort is being made to improve its measures of transparency.

Several recent examples have highlighted the antiquated regulation in the state which prohibits the KHRC from being transparent about ongoing cases, particularly prior to stewards' issuing final rulings.

Chairman Jonathan Rabinowitz explained in a recent meeting, streamed live on YouTube, that changes are coming.

“This commission is committed to transparency, as well as the best interest of the horsemen, associations, and the racing industry as a whole. As a result, we've begun the process of making significant changes to 810 KAR 9:010 in order to ensure that this commission remains an industry leader in transparent government. It is of the utmost importance to this commission that we get this [regulation] changed.”

One quick act exemplifying a new approach was the airing of the appeal hearing in the Kentucky Derby overage case involving Medina Spirit. It has well over 1,000 views in less than a week.

Still, conflicts of interest, whether real or perceived, are routine across racing, and the KHRC was reminded of that in advance of the hearing in this piece from Ray Paulick.

The more open and transparent proceedings can be, both before, during and after, the greater the likelihood customers, and all racing stakeholders, will be more confident in the adjudication of the sport.

That's good for racing.

IMPROVEMENT NEEDED

The missteps of the past cannot be undone. Improvements are sorely needed.

Penalties for egregious rules violations must serve not only as punitive for the guilty party, but deterrents for all. When customer confidence is crushed, meaningful steps to change must be adopted to begin the laborious process of rebuilding it.

Examples of improved rules and an uplifting of North American racing's integrity infrastructure, as well as adopting best practices in transparent reporting about all incidents, but particularly controversial ones, are easy to find from the rest of the developed racing world.

Wheel reinvention is not required.

Marginal improvements to racing's approach to transparency will benefit marginally. Radical improvements will benefit radically.

With change can come some discomfort for those accustomed to an engrained method. But decisions that improve the confidence of horseplayers and the well-intentioned in our sport will benefit all.

The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The next best time is today.

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