Letter to 60 Minutes: Craig Bandoroff

In Tuesday's TDN, we ran a letter from JoAnn Hayden urging industry supporters to write to 60 Minutes with their thoughts on their Nov. 12 segment, “Horse Racing Reform?” Denali Stud's Craig Bandoroff shared his letter to 60 Minutes with the TDN.

To: 60minutes@cbsnews.com

Let me preface this by saying I'm 68 years old and I have religiously watched 60 Minutes for the past 35 years and I've watched it less regularly my whole life. I have the show automatically recorded so I'm writing to you as a devoted follower of your show.

I have been involved in thoroughbred racing and breeding my whole career, which is now 50 years. I was very disappointed in your segment on Sunday. There is no question we have a history of a drug and cheating problem. But the way you presented your story doesn't portray that the incident percentage of both drug positives and breakdowns is small. Any breakdown is too many. Everyone in the industry feels that way. It is an industry where extremely devoted people labor because of one common thing: we all love horses, especially thoroughbred horses. That did not come across in the piece. Granted your story was about our problem but some senses of balance would have been appropriate.

I was very disappointed in both the piece and 60 Minutes in general. It makes me question the integrity and balance of the pieces I have seen over these many years.

–Craig Bandoroff, Lexington, Ky.

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Letter to the Editor: `Give The Jockey Club to the Industry’

It is time for Stuart Janney to make his greatest gift to racing.

On Sunday afternoon, I received a text from a colleague alerting me that I should tune into 60 Minutes later that night to watch their feature, “Horse Racing Reform?”

Never before has it been more clear that as the sun begins to set on 2023, we are well past time to modernize the structure of The Jockey Club to make it accountable to all Thoroughbred industry stakeholders. The Jockey Club ought to be a fair representation of the industry and the industry should guide its future. No one man or family should have absolute control over The Jockey Club. In the current climate, it is no longer acceptable for industry participants to be kept in complete darkness.

We implore you, Mr. Janney, to give the greatest gift to those of us still in love with the greatest game by taking the CLUB out of the Club. Eliminate the secrecy. Change the structure of The Jockey Club so that industry stakeholders have the opportunity to elect the members and board who may in turn control the finances, agenda, and direction of the industry with a transparency beneficial to all.

Mr. Janney, give The Jockey Club to the industry.

–Max Hodge

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Hayden Urges Racing Supporters to E-Mail 60 Minutes

Editor's note: After 60 Minutes aired a segment called “Horse Racing Reform?” on its Sunday night broadcast, Dark Hollow Farm's JoAnn Hayden posted a letter she had written to 60 Minutes on her Facebook page and urging friends and racing industry members to do the same.

She writes: “I have always felt proud and grateful to be part of Maryland's thoroughbred racing community. Over the past 50+ years my circle of friends, employees, trainers, and colleagues have been exemplary humans who have provided the best care for my horses and have always had my back. I cannot let the 60 Minutes segment on cheaters, corruption and breakdowns be the last word. Please take the time to send a response to Cecilia Vega and 60 Minutes. The horse industry deserves better! We deserve better! Send to 60min@cbsnews.com.”

Her own letter to 60 Minutes reads:

Good Morning 60 Minutes and Cecilia Vega.

I am writing in response to Sunday evening's segment on racing's worst problems which did a great job of casting doubt upon the future of the Thoroughbred industry which I love. I question your motives. Why would 60 Minutes choose to highlight cheaters and horse deaths to present to their 12 million viewers at a time when this industry is in crisis?

Thoroughbred racing just completed a successful Breeders Cup weekend with so many newsworthy stories to report. World class race horses, devoted owners, hardworking HONEST trainers and backstretch workers and the world's best racing and there was no mention of that! Where was the poignant account of the bond between the boy Cody Dorman and the horse Cody's Wish?

Why is the only news offered for this sport about tragedy or corruption? Where were the statistics to show how drastically the fatality numbers have decreased and the protocols that have been implemented for the safety and welfare of our horses and jockeys and their track surfaces?

I accept that you have the right to present your gruesome facts and sound bites of cheaters and horrific footage of horses breaking down but you could have acknowledged the honest hardworking people in our industry and left us with HOPE. WE deserve better!

My GOOD news story is from Maryland and I owe it to my horses, trainers, workers and myself to acknowledge what racehorses have done for me.

JoAnn Hayden

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60 Minutes Airs Expose On Horse Racing Doping

The CBS news program “60 Minutes,” which aired Sunday evening included a segment that covered horse racing's worst problems, horses breaking down and dying and the use of performance-enhancing drugs on horses. 60 Minutes often reaches as many as 12 million viewers. The segment was hosted by correspondent Cecilia Vega.

Though the program gave ample time to Jockey Club Chairman Stuart Janney III, Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority CEO Lisa Lazarus, Meadowlands owner Jeff Gural, and others who have been working to solve the problems, it left no doubt that the sport has pressing issues that if left unsolved threaten its existence.

“Horse racing has reached its moment of reckoning and we wanted to know, `can the sport really be reformed or is it too late?'” Vega said.

What followed was a recantation of the rash of fatalities that surrounded the GI Kentucky Derby and other major events, which included graphic footage of horses dying on the track.

“People who are not in your world see this headline of more than a dozen dead horses and they think, `what is going on in that industry?'” Vega asked Lazarus.

“My response is that HISA is here now and we're going to address it,” she said.

She continued: “There's clearly a problem that needs to be addressed and now we have some tools to fight it. We really owe it to those trainers who have spent their lives in this sport who have an incredible amount of integrity to get rid of those who tarnish this sport.”

It was not hard to get industry leaders to admit that doping is a major issue that has yet to be brought under control.

“(Doping) is a big problem,” Janney said. “It strikes at the integrity of the sport. There's nothing about it that is acceptable.”

Asked how the sport can clean itself up, Janney replied: “You put people away. You send them out of the sport and some of them go to jail.”

That very process began in March of 2020 when more than 33 veterinarians, trainers and drug distributors were charged by the Justice Department for using and manufacturing performance-enhancing drugs.

“The FBI said this led to broken legs, cardiac issues and in some cases death,” Vega said.

The show played wiretaps of conversations between convicted trainer Jorge Navarro and a another trainer in which Navarro bragged about how the drugs he was using made his horses run faster.

“I (expletive) gave it to this horse and this horse (expletive) galloped. He galloped,” Navarro said to the unidentified trainer.

“Amino acids?” the other trainer asked.

“Yeah, some amino acid  injectable. Small bottle,” Navarro replied.

They also played wiretaps from harness trainer Nick Surick in which he spoke of how he was put in charge of disposing of horses that Navarro had killed.

The FBI was assisted by 5 Stones Intelligence, which was hired by The Jockey Club and Meadowlands owner Jeff Gural. Janney said 5 Stones was told to not be afraid to go after the biggest names in the sport, like Navarro and Servis.

“I said I'm not interested in you going in an finding a relatively unimportant person working in someone's barn who has made a bet they shouldn't have made or has done something immaterial to what we're talking about,” he said. “I want you to go after the important people that I think are corrupting the sport.”

Before they were arrested, Servis and Navarro were clearly worried they could be caught and that the penalties could ruin their careers. A wiretap caught them saying the following:

Servis: We can't do it in broad daylight, we got to do it like…”

Navarro: “I know. I'll keep it at my…I'll keep…I'll keep it in my car. I ain't worried about that.”

Servis: What about, what I am-I don't want people to see that (expletive). We are dead. We are dead.”

Shaun Richards, who was the lead FBI agent on the case that nabbed Navarro, Jason Servis and others, spoke a hopeful note, that the progress made with the arrests has put investigators, HISA and others on the right trail.

” We're right where we need to be,” he said. “We have a really good subject identified and we are getting fantastic evidence.”

Vega asked Lazarus “How long will it take to clean this up?”

“It will probably take years to be truly confident that we've got a fully clean sport,” she said.

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