In late October, prominent and outspoken owner Mile Repole announced that he was launching something he called the National Thoroughbred Alliance (NTA). Repole's goal is to shake things up in the industry and makes changes for the better. That will be the goal, too, of his right hand man, Pat Cummings, who came over from the Thoroughbred Idea Foundation to serve as Repole's executive director. On this week's TDN Writers' Room sponsored by Keeneland, Cummings was asked about the goals for the Alliance, how he can build consensus in a sport famous for infighting and how the group can make changes when it doesn't have any regulatory power. Cummings was the Green Group Guest of the Week.
Cummings, who describes the project as a work in progress, said one frustrating factor he has run into so far is that the fiefdoms don't want to make sacrifices for the greater good of the sport, a problem that has been around as long as the sport has.
“One of the things we found, and I think a lot of people would agree with this, is that if you started having a conversation with people in many different streams of the sport, the racing space, aftercare, the wagering side, when you're talking about kind of the big issues in racing, most people are going to agree about many of those things,” Cummimgs said. “And we've had some tremendous calls in the first couple of months with different organizations, leaders, individuals in every space of the business. And what we have found is that there's a tremendous amount of commonality. Our interests in improving the sport are shared. But when you start to poke into areas that directly impact certain individuals, the pushback starts to come and it's like, well, I agree on 90% over here, but on this 10%, which directly affects me, maybe I'm not so interested in changing all of a sudden, or maybe I don't want to go about rethinking the way in which my business generates revenue or how my members are impacted one way or another. So we are finding that there's a lot of openness to change, but there's a lot of potentially, you know, door closing that goes on when you suggest that change might need to affect everybody in some way, shape or form.”
Cummings said there will be eight key areas that the NTA will focus on.
“The way we see it, racing aftercare, education, sales, wagering, PR, marketing, breeding and then horsemen support rather generic catch all about the way in which we help not just owners and trainers individually, but their staffs and how they work and operate within our business,” he said. “If we have aligned that, there are these eight key areas that all need an element of focus and we have identified some opportunity areas within each of them.”
But without any authority or power, which rests now with the racetracks, racing commissions, HISA, The Jockey Club, horsemen's groups and others how can you usher in changes?
“I didn't have any authority with Thoroughbred Idea Foundation either,” he said. “But we inspired folks, we educated, we advocated and we did help get some things done and even some of those things that we did help facilitate getting done. They haven't always gone smoothly either, you know. So even when you do have that authority, it doesn't mean it's going to go off smoothly. When we set out five years ago and said, let's write a paper about breakage saying, 'Oh yeah, that's cute, that's nice and it's a problem and we need to fix it.' Well, yeah. So let's put a plan together to try and work on that. And we did. We had to get our law changed here in Kentucky. We tried to work with some other states. We realized some of those doors weren't open. We weren't able to work in New York, for example, on that particular topic. But maybe New York will focus on it in 2024. They've given some indications that there's a chance to do that. And if we saw New York adopt pending breakage in 2024, that be a huge win that I never saw coming.”
Also on the show the hosts discussed the Coolmore Stallion of the Week, Jack Christopher. By Munnings, Jack Christopher was 5-for-5 around one turn, including three Grade I wins, in the Woody Stephens by 10, the Allen Jerkens by 1 3/4, and the Champagne by 2 3/4 lengths–all that after his eight-plus length 'TDN Rising Star' debut at Saratoga.
Elsewhere on the podcast, which is also sponsored by Elite Power, WinStar Farm, the Pennsylvania Horse Breeders Association, 1/ST Racing, the KTA & KTOB, West Point Thoroughbreds, and XBTV.com, the team of Randy Moss and Bill Finley took a look back at 2023 and a look ahead to 2024. The consensus was that 2023, for numerous reasons was not a good year for the sport. To make things better we offered solutions for 2024. Finley advocated for the SafeSTRIDE technology, which has proven it can cause a significant cut in breakdowns to become a regular fixture at the track. “What are we waiting for?” he said. But Moss warned that as long as breeders don't focus on soundness and durability and continue to breed to fast horses who had brief careers and soundness issues, then nothing would change. The team also took a look at their Eclipse Award selections, and they largely agreed on all the categories. The exception was the Filly & Mare Sprint, where Moss is casting his vote for Echo Zulu (Gun Runner), while Finley and Zoe Cadman said they voted for Goodnight Olive (Ghostzapper). All three also cast their votes for Bill Mott for champion trainer.
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