Month: December 2023

“I keep waiting for them to show the video evidence.”

Dean Reeves, whose Brick Ambush was disqualified from second and placed last in Saturday's $500,000 New York Stallion Series Stakes/Great White Way division at Aqueduct racetrack, was denied an appeal of the controversial stewards decision by the New York State Gaming Commission on Monday, and still doesn't know what his horse did to warrant a disqualification.

Drew Mollica, who filed the appeal on behalf of Reeves, said the decision to not conduct a hearing on the matter “speaks volumes about what is wrong with New York racing.”

The disqualification of Brick Ambush left many in racing scratching their heads.

“It's really a little bit baffling how this whole thing panned out, played out and was adjudicated,” said retired jockey Richard Migliore, an analyst on NYRA's Fox Sports telecast.

The race was won by Antonio of Venice, ridden by Manny Franco, who according to the Equibase chart footnotes “was blocked nearing the quarter pole, came out and bumped with a rival” while racing behind the front-runner, Heavyweight Champs, at the top of the stretch. The horse Antonio of Venice bumped was The Big Torpedo, whose rider, Javier Castellano, had to check hard. Solo's Fury, to the outside of the The Big Torpedo also was bumped in the chain reaction and wound up being eased.

Brick Ambush, according to the Equibase chart, was making a four wide bid at that stage “while being bumped in the hind end.”

The stewards lit the inquiry sign and the only number flashing on the board was that of the winner, Antonio of Venice. Castellano said he lodged a claim of foul, but it apparently was not relayed to the stewards.

#1 ANTONIO OF VENICE ($14.00) swings to the outside and gets up to win the New York Stallion Series Stakes at Aqueduct. The son of Laoban was ridden by Manual Franco and is trained by Rudy Rodriguez. Congrats to all the connections! #12 Brick Ambush was moved from 2nd to last. pic.twitter.com/xITnj1oBax

— TVG (@TVG) December 16, 2023

Migliore, on the Fox Sports telecast, said Brick Ambush was not the one responsible for the bumping. “The horse from the inside (Antonio of Venice) came out…and I feel created the problem.”

Migliore added, “I have a hard time understanding the decision process.”

So do a lot of others.

Reeves said he's received a steady stream of emails, text messages, and telephone calls about the DQ. “It hasn't stopped,” he said. “People I don't even know are contacting me. I don't know that I've ever seen this much response from the racing community on a single disqualification. I've yet to see one person say, 'Maybe your horse did cause it.'”

At least one person, New York State Gaming Commission steward Braulio Baeza Jr., did see it that way. He told Daily Racing Form's David Grening “the outside horse (Brick Ambush) caused the pressure.”

On Monday, the following statement was posted on the New York Racing Association website in the section explaining stewards decisions: “At the ¼ pole #12 Brick Ambush (Junior Alvarado) came in, causing a chain reaction. The #11 Solo's Fury (Jose Lezcano) pushes down into the #7 The Big Torpedo (Javier Castellano). After reviewing the video and speaking with the riders, the stewards disqualified the #12 Brick Ambush for interference and place him behind the #11 Solo's Fury.”

The explanation does not mention Antonio of Venice, whose number was blinking during the lengthy inquiry as stewards reviewed video of the incident.

On Sunday, adding salt to the wound, Alvarado, Brick Ambush's jockey, was given a three-day suspension by NYSGC steward Baeza, who wields more power than the stewards from the New York Racing Association and The Jockey Club.

“In New York, the only steward who can act is the state steward, Mr. Baeza,” said Mollica. “The other two stewards are merely advisory.”

The connections of The Big Torpedo also filed an appeal, which was denied by the NYSGC.

On Monday, the NYSGC issued the following statement:

“On December 17, 2023, the New York State Gaming Commission received correspondence from the connections of two horses that participated in the 9^th race at Aqueduct Race Course on December 16, 2023. Specifically, the connections and/or their representatives sought to appeal the stewards' disqualification of the horse Brick Ambush and the stewards' declination to find interference by the horse Antonio of Venice. The correspondence collectively states disagreement with the decision of the stewards.

“The Commission responded to the connections today, advising them that the decisions to disqualify Brick Ambush and to not find interference by Antonio of Venice were judgment calls “based on questions of fact, which the stewards are empowered to make pursuant to Commission Rule 4039.20 (9 NYCRR §4039.20), and the decision(s) (are) therefore not appealable to the Commission, pursuant to Rule 4039.5. New York Courts have long held that stewards' placement decisions are questions of fact that cannot be appealed. See, e.g., In the Matter of the Seventh Race of June 12, 1996 at Belmont Park [May I Inquire] (NYSRWB 1996), confirmed, Matter of Moshera v. Bilinski, 244 A.D.2d 555 (2d Dep't 1995); see also Discenza v. N.Y. Racing Ass'n, 134 Misc. 2d 3, 7-8 (N.Y. Civ. Ct. 1986); Shapiro v. Queens County Jockey Club, 184 Misc. 295, 300 (N.Y. Mun. Ct. 1945). For these reasons, the stewards' decision is final and the New York State Gaming Commission cannot consider your appeal.”

Mollica said the agency regulating New York racing has allowed previous appeals on stewards decisions.

“They are like ostriches,” Mollica said. “They want to stick their head in the sand like it didn't happen. Their argument is, 'We can do what we want because we can do what we want.' How can they not want to have an official review?”

The disqualification cost Reeves nearly $100,000 in lost purse money for second place. If Antonio of Venice had been disqualified instead of Brick Ambush, Reeves would have received $275,000 in first-place money.

Reeves said he hopes NYRA CEO David O'Rourke will take the matter seriously.

“I'm really disappointed New York racing, NYRA, would have incompetency at the stewards level for the type of racing they want to have,” Reeves said. “If I was David O'Rourke, I would at least go in to the stewards and have them show me on the film how that call was justified.

“I keep waiting for them to show the video evidence, to say, 'Here's the pictures.' I don't think they will because they can't – it's not there, so we get no explanation.”

The post New York Regulators Won’t Permit Appeal Of ‘Baffling’ Stewards Decision appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

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Every racetrack operator's worst nightmare is a fire, and the Fair Grounds has lived through two of them.

This week in December 1993, neighbors of the New Orleans track came out of their houses around 7 p.m. to see flames coming from the racetrack's historic grandstand. Racetrackers and locals gathered in the parking lot, some crying, watching with horror as the local landmark became completely engulfed in a matter of hours.

Ty Ezell was working in the track's video department back in 1993; he's still there as a contractor today.

“It was after racing; we were setting up a microphone on the third floor of the Jockey Club for a party the next day,” Ezell remembered. “We left to go to a drugstore to get something to drink. We weren't gone ten minutes and the whole place was … you could see it glowing in the distance.”

Investigators later determined that faulty wiring near the jockeys' room sparked the blaze, which ripped through the wooden grandstand rapidly. In the end it would be a seven-alarm fire that brought 170 firefighters and 53 trucks to the scene.

At the time, the wooden Fair Grounds structure was the third-oldest in the country, having been put in place after another fire destroyed the original in 1918.

Eclipse Award-winning writer Ronnie Virgets was on-site that day. His ode to Fair Grounds ran alongside the news coverage of the fire in the Blood-Horse. Virgets recalled his youth at the track, which became his home base through the years.

“Forget Plato, skip Aquinas, shun Descartes. It's horse racing that proves the existence of God, and racetracks, plain and simple, are temples,” he wrote. “Only now the temple is being profaned by the ultimatum of change. The firehoses are working hard, but when fire reaches this intensity, it chortles at those who try to tame it. Windows pop, TV monitors explode, roofs fall, and a racetrack's history goes flying to hell somewhere in the sky.

“With each collapse, each structural yielding, comes a new revealing, a shameful disrobing of an old friend.”

Ezell remembered arriving at the track the next day by sunrise (there was no power on the front side) and seeing the metal safety rail had melted from the heat of the flames. He and friends sifted through the rubble looking for the New Orleans Handicap trophy, which had been in the building, but never found it.

If anything can be considered fortunate about a fire, the timing of the event minimized the potential for the loss of life. The barns are situated on the other side of the racing oval from the grandstand, and racing had finished for the day. There were a few customers on-site for off-track betting, but they were quickly cleared and no employees or patrons were injured, although The Blood-Horse reported two firefighters were.

Quick-thinking racing officials dragged out the fire-proof cabinets that stood in the racing office and held almost all the foal papers for the 3,000 horses on the grounds, avoiding further challenges for their trainers and owners.

The 1993 fire also hadn't been the first time racing at Fair Grounds had faced adversity – it was sold to developers in the 1940s and saved by a group of investors in the eleventh hour. Before that, racing had been banned in New Orleans between 1908 and 1915.

But racing people are tough folk, and don't let legal, financial, or natural disasters stop them in their tracks.

By the time the Christmas edition of The Blood-Horse was mailed to its subscribers, the Fair Grounds was already planning its comeback. The fire was estimated to cause $26 million in damages but within days, track ownership met with a consultant who staged the annual jazz festival at the Fair Grounds to generate some ideas.

Three days after the fire, the Blood-Horse reported a tented clubhouse was being constructed along with bleachers, while additional tents could hold a paddock area and trailers were being brought in to serve as office space and jockeys' quarters. Autotote sent a mainframe computer to the site and 100 mutuel machines were installed.

Racing restarted 19 days after the blaze and a new grandstand was opened in 1997, with its current enclosed and air-conditioned design.

“Everybody missed the old building; it had character,” Ezell said. “The old grandstand, it had these huge windows, they were wooden and glass. But they were mechanical with chains. On a nice day, half would go underground, half would go up. That was something you can't replace.

“They designed the new track so you can see the paddock from every floor, which is awesome. It's more fan-friendly, the new track.”

This local news clip features on-site reporting from Hoda Kotb in her pre-Today Show days.

Virgets and Ezell teamed up for this video piece looking back on the fire:

The post This Week In History: Fair Grounds Goes Up In Flames, Again appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

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