September, 2023 | Horse Racing Free Tips

Peter Miller, Carla Gaines Will Each Serve Seven-Day Suspension For Acepromazine Positives

Southern California-based trainers Peter Miller and Carla Gaines have each been fined $1,000 and ordered to serve a seven-day suspension after horses in their care tested positive for the tranquilizer acepromazine, according to the public disclosures section of the website for the Horseracing Integrity & Welfare Unit (HIWU), the enforcement arm of the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority (HISA).

Three of Miller's trainees tested positive after racing at Santa Anita Park in early June. Each has been disqualified with purse money ordered returned.

Forgiving Spirit tested positive after finishing second in an allowance optional claiming race at Santa Anita on June 11. A claim on the horse was voided.
Anmer Hall tested positive after finishing first in a claiming race at Santa Anita on June 4; the horse was claimed by Steve Knapp. The claim may be voided under HISA rules, unless the new connections opt to keep the horse; Anmer Hall breezed once at Santa Anita on June 22, but has not started since that June 4 race.
Giver Not A Taker tested positive after finishing fourth in an allowance optional claiming race on June 4 at Santa Anita. The horse has since finished third in an allowance optional race at Los Al, second in the Real Good Deal Stakes at Del Mar, and fifth in an allowance optional race at Del Mar.

Miller's seven-day suspension began on Sept. 16, 2023. The trainer was also assessed two Penalty Points, the accumulation of which can lead to suspensions (6-7 points leads to a 30-day suspension).

Gaines' trainee Summer Lake tested positive for acepromazine after a vet's list workout at Santa Anita on July 14. The 4-year-old daughter of Lakerville made two starts in April and May of 2022 for trainer Blake Heap; her best finish was a fourth in a maiden special weight event at Santa Anita. Summer Lake resumed workouts in April of 2023, and is not currently listed on the California Horse Racing Board vet's list.

The seven-day suspension for Gaines began on Sept. 16, 2023. She was also assessed two Penalty Points.

As a reminder: HIWU's regulations for vet's list workouts include stricter medication restrictions than those for horses completing routine timed workouts. Horses on the veterinarian's list are required to complete a recorded work before a veterinarian and undergo post-race drug testing to be taken off the list. Horses completing routine, non-vet's list workouts are prohibited from having analgesics, non-steroidal anti-inflammatories, corticosteroids, and local anesthetics in their system, but other therapeutic medications are permitted.

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Economic, Environmental Pressures Slow Demand For Retired Racehorses In Australia

Economic and environmental pressures have caused demand for retired racehorses to slow in Australia, reports Racing.com.

Nicki Cook, a trainer who works with Racing Victoria's Off the Track program, specializes in retraining retired racehorses out of her program Shory Park Horses. She has said that the slowdown has affected her business and she fears the ramifications may be insurmountable if conditions persist.

Cook has re-trained and sold hundreds of retired racehorses, but says that she is struggling to sell any of the 25 she currently has in her care; she has sold just one since the beginning of August.

She believes that higher interest rates, increased cost of living and feed prices, and threat of drought have combined to make potential horse owners reluctant to buy, particularly Thoroughbreds. Cook traditionally would be able to sell a horse after giving it six weeks of retraining, but she now has the horse in her care for about six months. Some of the quirkier horses she's had in her care for almost two years.

Prices for the horses have also markedly declined; while she used to be able to demand $3,000 to $5,000 per horse, she now can't sell some of the completely retrained horses for even $1,000.

Cook is a recognized trainer with Racing Victoria, meaning she receives $100 per month for each horse in her care from the organization. The program is funded through a two percent deduction from the state's overall purse pool.

Currently her farm is full, with no ability to take on more horses, though trainers call her each week with horses needing a place to go as they retire.

In an effort to offset her expenses, which are nearly $7,500 per week, Cook has had to adjust her business plan which will now include selling horses directly from the track with no retraining, in addition to lowering the price tag on some of her trained horses.

Retired racehorses will arrive at Cook's farm, be assessed and ridden very minimally: in the arena, down the road and over a jump. If the horses are sound and willing, they will immediately be offered for sale. She is hopeful that this move will allow her to sell more horses more rapidly, opening stalls for those horses that are retiring from the track and in need of a place to land.

‘TDN Rising Star’ Taiba Retired

Zedan Racing Stables' Taiba (Gun Runner), a three-time Grade I winner and 'TDN Rising Star', has been retired from racing and taken up residency at Spendthrift Farm, where he will begin his stud career in 2024 along with Zandon (Upstart) and Arabian Lion (Justify) as was announced Saturday.

Taiba will stand for an introductory fee of $35,000 S&N and is available for inspection by appointment.

“There are very few stallion prospects that tick all the boxes, to use the old cliché. Taiba is certainly one of those horses that possesses everything commercial breeders are looking for today, and we believe he will be wildly popular,” said Spendthrift general manager Ned Toffey. “We are grateful to Mr. Zedan for the opportunity to stand such an exciting horse.

“Taiba will be afforded every resource necessary to have a successful stallion career, and we think he has a big chance to hopefully replicate some of the good fortune we've had in recent years in terms of developing young sires. We invite all breeders to make an appointment with one of our sales guys to come out and see him. He's really a stunning individual,” added Toffey.

“Taiba is a special horse to us,” added Amr Zedan of Zedan Racing Stables. “He is the first horse to jump from a six-furlong maiden to immediately winning the GI Santa Anita Derby. I knew he was special and that is why I insisted he make that jump. He rose to the calling like the true champion he is and made us proud.”

Taiba retires with a record of 8-4-1-1 and earnings of $2,356,200.

The post ‘TDN Rising Star’ Taiba Retired appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

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Letter To The Editor: ‘Those Of Us Who Love The Sport Should Panic’

In 1975 I was in graduate school, living in New York. It was just two years after Secretariat's Triple Crown and his appearance on the cover of Sports Illustrated, two years after Roe v. Wade legalized abortion in America, three years after Title IX barred discrimination based on sex. Billy Jean King had just defeated Bobby Riggs in the “Match of the Century” and everywhere in New York women were sprouting buttons bearing the name “Ruffian,” in anticipation of the upcoming match race between the great undefeated filly and Foolish Pleasure, that year's Kentucky Derby winner: the women's liberation movement had embraced the magnificent thoroughbred as one of their own. The race, watched by over 20 million on TV, and Ruffian's tragic death shortly thereafter, marked not only the end of feminism's romance with horse racing; it also marked the beginning of our sport's slow, continuous, decline.

Of course the decline in horse racing can't just be blamed on that awful July day at Big Sandy: increasing competition from other sports for consumer attention, expanding competition for the wagering dollar, the endless cheating and drug scandals, the deaths on some of racing biggest stages – Go for Wand, Eight Belles, Barbaro – and, more recently, the growth of computer assisted wagering, are all part of it, but what is undoubtedly true is that aside from bullfighting, horse racing is the only legal competitive sport where death is an accepted part of the game, and if you've been to Spain recently, you know how that's going. Greyhound racing died because of the public perception that the sport is cruel, and the perception of horse racing as cruel is also reaching a crescendo. There is almost no one in the mainstream media who supports our sport.

I just listened to Steve Byk's Aug. 31 podcast with Bill Casner and Steve Crist, and as much as I respect Crist – he's wrong.

Horse racing is on the precipice, if not of immediate extinction, of irrelevance, and the recent breakdowns of Maple Leaf Mel and New York Thunder on two of racing's biggest days were not just, as Crist states, one-in-a-million incidents – there were nationally televised breakdowns at all three Triple Crown races (the headline of my local paper, covering the Preakness, was “Baffert-trained horse euthanized at Pimlico.”) Every year I watch the Kentucky Derby, with 20 young, inexperienced horses all vying to save the same ground, with bated breath and I think – We are one tragedy away from going the way of the Greyhound.

I've been a horse racing fan all my adult life. I've owned racehorses. At one time I attended live racing fanatically and I supported myself financially through law school wagering on the horses. And I can tell you that seeing a horse break down is among the most heart-wrenching of experiences. The letter by Pamela Wood, explaining why she is leaving the sport, is emblematic of those who walked out of Saratoga ashen-faced those two days – we are losing those people forever to a sport that is already rapidly declining and desperately struggling to create new fans.

You're wrong, Steve – those of us who love the sport should panic. If panic makes us act, panic we should.

I question how much can be done to significantly minimize the risks to an 1,100-pound animal running 40 miles an hour, exerting maximum effort, on legs as thin as one's wrist. Maybe our sport, like bull fighting and jai alai and Greyhound racing, has run its course. But I do believe we can try and that, yes, reducing deaths by even one in a thousand starts is important – if for no other reason then to stem the public perception that we do nothing to make our sport safer. And I don't know, and doubt if right now anyone truly knows, if the solution is synthetic racing surfaces, better policing, more comprehensive pre-race inspections, less breeding for speed and more for soundness, or any of the other answers that have been proposed, none of them, by the way, mutually exclusive.

But what I do know is that we haven't come to this crisis point suddenly. It's been building for decades. Racetracks have been closing everywhere and the dollars wagered by true fans – not by computer-driven syndicates – is in virtual free fall. And our sport, fractured, galvanized by narrow, short-sighted self-interest, on life support and kept alive by racinos and the computer syndicates, has failed again and again to even address the most basic question – how do we unify stakeholders so as to create a framework that will allow us to come to a consensus as to how to make things better? There's a crisis, usually precipitated by tragedy, there's handwringing and talk of the incremental improvements we've made, and then another crisis, and then more handwringing and more talk. And after loving this sport for almost 50 years, and watching its slow, seeming inexorable decline, I've lost faith that anything will change.

I hope someone will prove me wrong.

And that's my view, Ray, from the eighth pole.

Fred Abramowitz
Fan/horseplayer/former owner
Fort Collins, Colo.

If you would like to submit a letter to the editor, please write to info at paulickreport.com and include contact information where you may be reached if editorial staff have any questions.

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