The California Horse Racing Board (CHRB) has filed a complaint against trainer Peter Miller, alleging that he was involved in the daily training of horses after they had been turned over to and put under the name of his former assistant Ruben Alvarado.
Alvarado has also been charged in a separate complaint involving the same allegations.
In November, Miller announced that he was taking a “temporary hiatus” from training to spend “more time with my family, focus on overall health and wellness, and pursue other interests.” The announcement created speculation that Miller was stepping away because he had come under scrutiny for having five horses die under his care due to catastrophic injuries in 2021. But Miller insisted that his decision to stop training had nothing to do with any factors other than his feeling that he needed time away from the sport.
Miller made his last start in 2021 on Nov. 28. The majority of his stable was then placed under Alvarado's name and Alvarado made his debut as a head trainer Dec. 3.
The CHRB is now charging that Miller never fully stepped away. According to the complaint, between Dec. 23, 2021 and Mar. 24, 2022 Miller “engaged in behavior consistent with the duties of a trainer at the San Luis Rey Training Center with horses in the barn of Ruben Alvarado.” The CHRB has charged that Miller entered horses, conducted endoscopy exams, gave instructions to riders, examined horses, consulted with veterinarians, controlled and accessed bank accounts belonging to Alvarado Racing Stables, assigned jockeys and created training charts.
In the complaint issued against Alvarado, the CHRB wrote that Alvarado acknowledged that he was aware that Miller had continued to handle many of the training duties regarding the running of stable. It was also noted in the complaint that Alvarado did not set up a stable bank account independent of Miller, which was required per the Stewards's direction.
The complaint was issued May 23. Miller has been notified to appear before the stewards at Los Alamitos June 20. Alvarado's hearing in set for July 18 at Los Alamitos. Should the stewards rule that Alvarado and/or Miller did in fact conspire to allow Miller to train behind the scenes, it is not clear what the penalty might be. However, the complaint acknowledges that the stewards are empowered to impose a number of penalties, including a suspension of that person's license.
Miller did not respond to a text seeking comment Wednesday.
Last week, Miller entered a horse under his own name at Churchill Downs and said he was ready to return to training. The horse, Respect the Code (Honor Code), finished sixth in a May 29 allowance at Churchill. Miller said that Respect the Code was the only horse he had in Kentucky and that his main focus upon his comeback would be the upcoming Los Alamitos and Del Mar meets in California. 1/ST Racing has said little about Miller's status at Santa Anita. Alvarado has horses entered at Santa Anita on Friday and Saturday. Alvarado has compiled a record of 23 for 134 (17%) and won this year's GIII Las Cienegas S.
Though he said NYRA is willing to be part of a dialogue involving changing the dates of the Triple Crown races, a hot topic since GI Kentucky Derby winner Rich Strike (Keen Ice) opted out of the GI Preakness S., NYRA President and CEO Dave O'Rourke has made it clear that the racing organization has no immediate plans to sign off on proposals that would alter the status quo.
“We are touching on tradition here,” O'Rourke told the TDN Wednesday. “We are touching on the one thing that is sacrosanct to our industry in the U.S. We have to be very thoughtful about any proposed changes.”
O'Rourke cautioned against the industry and the three Triple Crown tracks making any changes without carefully weighing all factors and how any decision might impact the three-race series.
“We understand the arguments on both sides, but this is definitely not an area where a knee-jerk decision should me made,” he said. “It is something that needs to be deliberated. We would welcome input from everyone.”
The chances that the spacing of the Triple Crown races will be changed picked up momentum after the owner of Rich Strike announced that the horse would not contest the Preakness. Rich Strike will become the first Derby winner that emerged from the first leg of the Triple Crown in good health to pass on the Preakness since Spend A Buck in 1985. Rich Strike's owner Rick Dawson said that passing the Preakness, run two weeks after the Derby, was a matter of giving the horse extra time between races in the belief that it would better set him up for the GI Belmont S., run five weeks after the Derby.
The defection was a blow to the Preakness, and 1/ST Racing, which owns Pimlico, has indicated that changing the date of the race is a possibility. In a report Wednesday in the Baltimore Sun, which explored extending the Triple Crown schedule, an unnamed representative of 1/ST Racing told the paper that the company “is looking at this internally and intends to speak with other Triple Crown partners once we are through Preakness 147.”
When asked for additional comment, 1/ST Racing Chief Operating Officer Aidan Butler texted the same statement to the TDN.
Among those in favor of extending the spacing between Triple Crown races, the most popular change would be for there to be four weeks between the Derby and the Preakness and another four weeks between the Preakness and the Belmont. Had the change been made for this year's Triple Crown, the Belmont would be run July 2.
An argument can be made that having just two weeks between the Derby and the Preakness has caused problems for the Preakness. The Preakness field of nine includes just three horses that ran in the Derby. However, the current spacing of the races has not been a major issue for the Belmont. While many Derby horses skip the Preakness because of the two weeks' rest, normally, many of those same horses come back for the Belmont.
Still another argument can be made that even with its issues, the Triple Crown has never been more popular, both with racing fans and the general public. Would changing the schedule be a matter of fixing what isn't broken and can the public's interest be sustained over a two-month or more period? O'Rourke said that is something that needs to be considered.
“With what we've been seeing lately when it comes to the Triple Crown, you have to be hesitant to touch something like that,” he said. “That's a concern. This is the one thing in racing that is growing and works really well. It's a worldwide event. You have a Triple Crown contender and everybody is watching. To lose that momentum, yes, that is a big concern.”
Despite O'Rourke's reservations, there's nothing NYRA can do if 1/ST Racing makes the call to change the date of the Preakness. In the event that the date of the Preakness is changed, NYRA would likely be forced to move the Belmont.
“The possibilities are, we could either stay where we are, we could move it a week, we could move it two weeks,” he said. “We would probably open a dialogue with other people in the industry. It impacts more than just one race, especially for us. Right now, it's just too off-the-cuff and these are not the type of decisions that should be made off-the-cuff.”
For now, it isn't expected that any decisions will be made regarding the future of the Triple Crown until after the conclusion of the Belmont. Perhaps 1/ST Racing will, at that point, pull the trigger and move the Preakness starting in 2023. At the very least, O'Rourke hopes that doesn't happen without taking into account the myriad factors involved in the equation.
“This event impacts more than just the three participants.” he said. “It impacts everything. We feel if we were ever going to touch this, we would much prefer an industry-wide dialogue and as much consensus as possible.
By the beginning of April, there had been two fatal musculoskeletal injuries during the current Santa Anita meet. Wind the clock back to an identical window in 2019, there had been 22.
During Aqueduct's benighted 2011-2012 Winter meet, 21 horses died, 18 of which were fractures sustained during racing. Over the next seven years, New York's four racetracks saw a 50% reduction in racing fatalities.
What is the common denominator? Huge advances in identifying those horses at higher risk of sustaining fatal injuries in racing and training, and much tighter safety nets to filter these horses out of the racing pipeline before a catastrophic event occurs.
Racing's North Star is to reduce the number of musculoskeletal injuries to a single duck egg. But there remains a stubborn impediment: The ability to easily and accurately identify those emerging and subtle injuries that can't be detected with the naked eye but have the potential to devolve into a sickening fracture.
How prevalent are these sorts of issues? Well, 21 one of the 22 horses that died during Santa Anita's 2018-2019 Winter meet showed pre-existing pathology at the site of their fatal injuries.
Enter stage left the 21st century, and a collision of new technologies that bring an objective, mathematical approach to pin-pointing these hitherto elusive and barely perceptible problems.
The New York Racing Association (NYRA) is deep into a project that began last summer to trial a sophisticated biometric sensor mechanism which fits snugly into the horse's saddle cloth and can detect minute changes in a horse's gait at high speed. Called StrideSAFE, the sensor has been proven to detect problems in a horse's stride sometimes weeks in advance of a catastrophic event occurring.
Over on the opposite side of the country, The Stronach Group, under its 1/ST banner, is gearing up to unveil its own system which uses high-definition cameras to create detailed skeletal movement maps of horses as they navigate the racetrack. Company officials believe the technology has the potential to similarly red-flag horses at the very earliest warning stages.
What's more, these new kids on the block converge with an emerging generation of imaging modalities-think PET, MRI and CT-more capable than their diagnostic ancestors of providing a clear yes or no answer to the presence of subtle pre-existing problems.
And now, some of the industry's most pragmatic, unflappable leaders are making the argument that, given further development and understanding, these biometric systems hold the key to reducing fatal musculoskeletal injuries from the sport even further-potentially altogether.
“This is probably one of the most important contributions to the Thoroughbred horse industry that has ever been made,” said Scott Palmer, equine medical director for the New York State Gaming Commission, about the StrideSAFE sensor. “I do have a big stake in saving horses' lives, and so, in some respects this has been a holy grail.”
The Sensor Is The Ultimate Jockey
When David Lambert studies horse racing through a technology lens, he compares it to a ladder propped against a house going into the third-floor bedroom window.
Currently, racing's hitherto timid embrace of cutting-edge technologies-even basic training monitors, for example, used liberally for decades in human sports-have kept the industry rooted to the lawn.
“Me trying to get this [StrideSAFE sensor] introduced is the first rung of the ladder,” Lambert explained. “Keep that up over time, slowly but surely, you'll get right up to the third floor and walk into the bedroom.”
Lambert is a loquacious and affable 73-year-old veterinarian hailing from the North of England, who has dabbled in the odd bit of race-riding and training. He's lived Stateside for more than 50 years, during which time, he's spent decades digging through the mathematical arcana of performance prediction, and the role that sensors play.
Mickael Holmstroem, a Swedish PhD with expertise in equine conformation and locomotion, and Kevin Donoghue, professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Kentucky, have been Lambert's business and academic partners for much of this journey.
In 2019, they all formally embarked upon a mission to design a system that StrideSAFE looks like today. In all, Lambert reckons he has poured $1 million of his own money into its development.
It's no surprise, then, that he talks about it with the enthusiasm of a teenager with the keys to his first car.
“The sensor is the ultimate jockey,” Lambert said. “It's the best rider that ever rode a horse, never forgets anything, and picks up data 800 times a second in each of three directions for a total of 2,400 data points a second from the horse.”
So, how does it work?
This wireless iPhone-shaped device fits snugly into the saddle towel, and eight-hundred times a second, it takes an assortment of measurements to capture in minute detail the movement of the horse at high speed.
These measurements include the horse's acceleration and deceleration, its up and down concussive movement, and its medial-lateral motion-in other words, the horse's movement from side to side.
Ultimately, the sensors capture the sorts of high-speed lameness invisible to the naked eye but significant enough to cause major musculoskeletal failures at some point down the line unless someone intervenes on the horse's behalf.
“A horse can basically stand to race. Their bones are strong enough, their ligaments are strong enough,” said Lambert. “But what they can't stand is imperfection over and over and over again. They're going to break something.”
When explaining the equine biomechanics underpinning the success of the StrideSAFE technology, Lambert first compares the horse to an antipodean cousin-the kangaroo.
“People don't get that,” he said, of the comparison. “Sixty or seventy percent of the energy it produces to go fast is from spring or elastic recoil.” He then breaks a single stride into three stages.
In the first phase of the gallop, the hindlimbs load and propel the horse forward, kangaroo-like. In the second, the horse shifts its weight to the front, its forelimbs acting like shock-absorbers. This is followed by a period of suspension, the horse entirely airborne, a time for it to catch its breath.
But if the horse suffers a physical problem, however, it cannot adjust its body to compensate when its feet are on the ground. It can only do this midair, rotating its spine and pelvis in preparation for landing.
“The horse does all kinds of things in the air, twisting and shaking and moving,” Lambert explained. Imagine a race-car hurtling along at high speed, one of its bolts working loose.
What's more, these midair adjustments are infinitesimal, occurring within a 1/100th of a second window imperceptible to even the jockey-but not a sensor.
“It tries its best to re-align itself and repeats it all over again,” Lambert added, of the horse. “Then six, eight, ten weeks in, that front leg is going to feel it. You're going to get a joint or a knee. You start to see the obvious lameness.”
Coady Photography
StrideSAFE works like a traffic light signal, providing a green for all-clear, a yellow for caution, and a red for possible danger. In mathematical terms, a red means that the horse's gait abnormalities are beyond two standard deviations of the norm.
It's important to note that a red-light doesn't necessarily indicate a brewing issue. It could simply mean the horse is slow or that it doesn't try.
Nevertheless, from trials at tracks in Tasmania, and at Emerald Downs and Kentucky Downs here in the U.S., the sensor has repeatedly proven effective at highlighting gait abnormalities sometimes weeks in advance of a fatal breakdown.
Lambert shared data slides showing the five-race progression of a 6-year-old mare. During her first three runs, the mare's way of going-what Lambert calls her “fingerprint”-showed no abnormalities.
Her fourth race garnered a red-flag, however, despite finishing an encouraging second that delighted connections. A few weeks later in her fifth race, the mare fatally broke-down.
“In a normal day of racing just one or two horses will get a red flag warning and this small group contains a significant proportion of the horses in danger of catastrophic injury,” Lambert said.
Early injury detection can help to not only avoid painful, expensive and time-consuming treatments but expedite convalescence time, too-a fillip for an industry grappling with the consequences of a dwindling horse inventory.
“Attrition of racehorses is an enormous problem,” said Scott Palmer. “This device gives the opportunity not just to identify horses with a gait abnormality before it becomes evident normally to a human being, it allows regulatory veterinarians and racing officials to work together with trainers early in the process to help keep horses in training.”
Last summer, NYRA used StrideSAFE on every horse in one race per day at Saratoga, allotting each the requisite red, yellow or green label. By the end of the meet, 3% of the horses measured had been red-flagged.
All participants were then tracked over the subsequent four months, to see if and when they returned to race-day competition.
Of the green horses, 78% were able to race back within four months. Of the yellow horses, 72% raced within four months. But only 40% of the red-flagged horses returned to race within four months.
“If you have horses that don't run back regularly, don't race on a regular basis, there can be a number of reasons for that, but the most common one is lameness,” said Palmer.
So impressed has Palmer been with the technology, NYRA has used it on every horse to race during the most recent Belmont Park and Aqueduct meets, for a number totaling roughly 6,000 recordings.
That data is now being evaluated. Plans are also afoot to trial the technology on horses during training. But Palmer already imagines a future where this technology is a more permanent part of the NYRA furniture.
“My vision about this is that when I get notified of a red-alert, I can just send an email to the trainer that says, 'trainer, your horse just got a red-alert today. What does it mean, what does it not mean, and what are your next steps,'” said Palmer. “That horse is going to get extra scrutiny, and that's the name of the game right now.”
And it reveals much when Palmer, chief veterinarian at one of global racing's highest profile jurisdictions, admits that StrideSAFE has evolved his understanding of the equine athlete.
He said, “I will never look at the horses in the same way.”
While StrideSAFE utilizes motion sensors that attach to the horse, 1/ST is readying for later this year the launch of a three-year, multi-million-dollar effort to design a biometric system with multiple uses, including the ability to create detailed skeletal movement maps of horses using high-definition cameras.
“We're at the beginning of the journey in terms of 'how far can we take it?'” said Paul Williams, who heads up technology at 1/ST. “But we're beyond the beginning of 'very excited about what it can do.'”
The basic building blocks of this system consisted of creating virtual 3D models of each 1/ST track which were then then mapped against the position, angle and zoom of the TV cameras already dotted around these facilities.
It took a year, said Williams, to be able to pin-point a horse on the track to within 13 centimeters of its actual location. Since then, he and his crew have whittled that down to a six or seven-centimeter range of accuracy.
“That gives us a level of accuracy where we can track the physical horses and people and vehicles and weather, weirdly, of the locations from the TV camera,” said Williams.
And with 85 million historical race clips already plugged into the system, “that's a nice place to be because you have such a large data lake to start to test and to infer theories,” he said.
Among the information the system collects includes acceleration and deceleration and horse stride length. What's more, the system, said Williams, can “effectively replace” and in some instances vastly improve upon a host of commonly used industry practices and technologies, like start-stop time, race order, race-speed, top-speed, and the number of times the jockey uses the whip.
“Even down to pseudo-jockey aero dynamics, based on where they're positioning their weight on the equine athlete,” Williams said, pointing out that some of the derivative data could be packaged and geared towards gamblers.
And from this model, Williams and Dionne Benson, 1/ST's chief veterinary officer, are in the process of adapting it to identify patterns of horse lameness not visible to the naked eye.
The basic principle is fairly simple: High-definition TV cameras will pick up QR codes-think restaurant menu barcodes-attached to a horse's saddle towel during training, sending back in real-time a rich pool of highly detailed, high frame-rate data.
Over time, this system can accrue historical skeletal movement maps for each horse at all gaits, from walk to high-speed workouts.
Though this part of the system is still being beta-tested, the range of motion captured by the cameras is so sensitive, said Benson, they can pick up fractional changes to the fetlock, for example.
“At the trot, fetlock drop is very informative,” Benson explained. “If we know a fetlock is dropping more than it had been, that is a potential indicator of a problem going on-maybe because the ligament is weakening.”
A key to accurately pin-pointing horses with early brewing problems is a matter of proportion-in other words, having a comprehensive enough database of races, workouts and training days for the computer algorithm to identify outliers.
An outlier could be a horse that displays troubling gait changes over a period, for example. Or the system could red-flag certain horses using proven patterns of movement abnormality among horses in general. And so, there's another crucial component to this venture.
“Right now, you can't see a lot of the stuff that's picked up by the computer with the naked eye. So, there's going to be a period of time where we're going to be looking at issues that we may think is something but isn't,” said Benson.
The system's ultimate success, therefore, also rests upon what protocols are in place to siphon red-flagged horses towards diagnostic technologies-modalities like the PET and MRI units already housed at Santa Anita-capable of detecting those minor bone adaptations that can turn ugly.
Given the system's performance to date, both Williams and Benson appear noticeably sanguine about its promise to screen out early the horses who illustrate the sorts of subtle problems that could prove catastrophic.
“I'm pretty confident, because of the quality of data that keeps coming out of this thing, that we will get very close,” said Williams.
The system is expected to be launched and live at all 1/ST locations later this year, including training locations.
“If we get positive feedback there, I think we'll look to extending it beyond our tracks to our partners,” said Williams. “Horse populations move around the country, and to have this be a useful benefit for the industry, it's got to track a horse all the time.”
What stands out from discussions with proponents of these biometric technologies is the potential for adaptation, using them to compare the relative strengths and weaknesses of different jockeys, for example, a horse's performance on different tracks, and how hard it works.
Lambert tells the story of a horse fatally injured during a race. He said the post-race read-out showed noticeable gait abnormalities a full 70 seconds before the fatal event-from the minute the horse exited the gate, in fact.
And so, theoretically, such systems could also eventually be used in real-time, opening the door to preventing catastrophic injuries from occurring during a race or workout.
For the ambitious trainer looking for an edge other than through pharmaceutical intervention, therefore, technologies like StrideSAFE hold the key, said Lambert.
“You get to know your horse really, really well. You get to be the best horseman you can be by having the right kind of data to care for your horse,” he said. “It's the future.”
Officials at 1/ST, the consumer-facing brand of The Stronach Group–parent company of a portfolio of several California racetracks and/or training facilities–have issued a statement in the aftermath of the 90-day suspension handed down to trainer Bob Baffert.
The statement, in its entirety, reads: “The California Horse Racing Board announced on Saturday, Apr. 2 that “[trainer Bob Baffert is now suspended pursuant to CHRB Rule 1484].” California has thus reciprocated the suspension against Bob Baffert imposed by the Kentucky Racing Commission, which will begin on Apr. 4, 2022. Because of the CHRB's ruling, any trainer on the grounds at Santa Anita Park, Golden Gate Fields, San Luis Rey Downs or Los Alamitos Race Course who may be the transferee of horses from the Baffert barn will be required to apply for stalls for those horses from the Santa Anita or Golden Gate Fields racing offices, as applicable, for review and approval. A Change of Trainer form will also be required to be submitted in order to enter races following such transfer. Horses that are not transferred to a trainer in California will be required to leave the grounds prior to Apr. 4.
“Because the suspension is over 60 days, under the CHRB rules, during the term of the suspension, Mr. Baffert will be banned from all enclosures under the jurisdiction of the CHRB and Mr. Baffert shall not be permitted to be involved in the training of horses who have previously been under his care. Any trainer who may apply for stalls in anticipation of a transfer will be required to comply fully with any applicable restrictions.
“The CHRB rules require Baffert to vacate his barn at Santa Anita Park prior to the start of the suspension on Apr. 4, along with removing all signage, colors and training equipment belonging to the trainer. The closing day of Santa Anita's winter-spring season is June 19, 2022. The 90-day suspension from the KHRC concludes the following week.”
