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NYRA Releases Aqueduct’s Fall Stakes Schedule Worth $4.9 Million

The New York Racing Association, Inc. (NYRA) today announced the stakes schedule for the 18-day fall meet at Aqueduct Racetrack that will include 26 total stakes, including 10 graded contests, which will run from Friday, November 5 through Sunday, December 5.

Offering total stakes purses of $4.9 million, the fall meet will be highlighted by a four graded-stakes card on Saturday, December 4, headlined by the Grade 1, $750,000 Cigar Mile Handicap for 3-year-olds and up.

The stacked Cigar Mile undercard will also include the Grade 2, $250,000 Remsen for juveniles going 1 1/8 miles with 10-4-2-1 qualifying points to the 2022 Grade 1 Kentucky Derby on the line. Its counterpart for 2-year-old fillies, the Grade 2, $250,000 Demoiselle, will offer 10-4-2-1 points towards the Grade 1 Kentucky Oaks. Also on tap for the December 4 card is the Grade 3, $250,000 Go For Wand Handicap for fillies and mares 3-years-old and up competing at one mile.

The Big A fall meet stakes action begins on Opening Day, November 5, with the $150,000 Tempted for juvenile fillies going one mile and the $100,000 Atlantic Beach for 2-year-olds at six furlongs on the turf. Opening weekend at the Big A continues on Saturday, November 6, with the Grade 3, $150,000 Turnback the Alarm Handicap for fillies and mares 3-years-old and up at 1 1/8 miles and the $100,000 Stewart Manor for juvenile fillies at six furlongs on the grass. The Grade 3, $150,000 Nashua will bookend the Opening Weekend stakes offerings.

Following the $150,000 Artie Schiller and $150,000 Winter Memories on November 13-14, the Grade 2, $200,000 Red Smith highlights a strong weekend on November 20-21, which will include the $100,000 Key Cents and $100,000 Notebook on Sunday, November 21.

Thanksgiving weekend will offer ten stakes over three days beginning Friday, November 26 with the Grade 3, $200,000 Comely for 3-year-old fillies at 1 1/8 miles; the $150,000 Gio Ponti for sophomores at 1 1/16 miles on the turf; and the $150,000 Forever Together for fillies and mares 3-years-old and up at 1 1/16 miles on the grass.

Four stakes will be contested on Saturday, November 21 including the Grade 3, $400,000 Long Island for fillies and mares 3-years-old and up in a marathon 1 1/2 miles on the turf; the $150,000 Aqueduct Turf Sprint Championship for 3-year-olds and up sprinting six furlongs; the $150,000 Discovery for 3-year-olds at 1 1/8 miles on the main track; and the $100,000 Central Park for juveniles at 1 1/16 miles on the turf.

Thanksgiving weekend racing at the Big A will close with three stakes on Sunday, November 28, including the Grade 3, $200,000 Fall Highweight Handicap for 3-years-olds and up at six furlongs; the $150,000 Autumn Days for fillies and mares 3-years-old and up at six furlongs on the turf; and the $100,000 Tepin for juvenile fillies going 1 1/16 miles on the grass.

The Big A fall meet will conclude on Sunday, December 5 with a pair of $150,000 New York Stallion Stakes Series races going seven furlongs on the main track, with the Thunder Rumble for 3-year-olds and up and the Staten Island for fillies and mares 3-year-olds and up.

The Aqueduct winter meet will commence on Thursday, December 9, with seven stakes carded through the end of the calendar year. The first stakes of the winter meet will be the $100,000 Garland of Roses for fillies and mares 3-and-up at six furlongs on Saturday, December 11.

The following Saturday will again showcase a pair of NYSSS contests with half-million dollar purses for juveniles competing at seven furlongs, with the $500,000 Great White Way for males and the Fifth Avenue for fillies.

The next day, Sunday, December 19, will offer the $125,000 Queens County for 3-year-olds and up at 1 1/8 miles and the $100,000 Gravesend for 3-years-old and up sprinting six furlongs in the final stakes action before a 10-day holiday break.

Live racing will resume Thursday, December 30 with the $100,000 Bay Ridge for New York-bred fillies and mares 3-years-old and up at 1 1/8 miles. New Year's Eve will feature the $100,000 Alex M. Robb for state-bred 3-years-old and up at 1 1/8 miles.

For the complete Aqueduct fall meet stakes schedule, please visit: https://www.nyra.com/aqueduct/racing/stakes-schedule/.

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NYRA Tells Judge Its Motion to Dismiss Baffert Suit is Imminent

The New York Racing Association (NYRA) on Tuesday gave notice to a federal judge that it intends to file a formal motion to dismiss trainer Bob Baffert's civil complaint, which seeks to overturn NYRA's ban against him.

On May 17, NYRA informed the Hall of Fame trainer with the highly-publicized string of recent equine drug positives that he was temporarily not welcome to stable or race at the association's three tracks, Saratoga Race Course, Belmont Park and Aqueduct Racetrack.

That ban, NYRA said at the time, would be re-evaluated once the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission adjudicates Medina Spirit (Protonico)'s positive betamethasone tests that came back after the colt won the GI Kentucky Derby. In the 12 months prior to Medina Spirit's positive, four other Baffert trainees also tested positive for banned substances, two of them in Grade I stakes.

On June 14, Baffert filed a civil complaint against NYRA, alleging that the association's ban violates his Fourteenth Amendment constitutional right to due process.

On June 30, NYRA filed a 236-page memorandum in opposition to granting Baffert an injunction (read those legal arguments in detail here).

A new twist in the July 6 letter is that lawyers for NYRA wrote that they first want to have a conference among parties prior to filing the motion to dismiss.

The timing will be tight, as the judge had already set a July 12 court date for Baffert's motion to be heard.

“Plaintiff's Complaint asserts five causes of action: (1) preliminary and permanent injunction; (2) an alleged violation of 42 U.S.C. § 1983; (3) declaratory judgment; (4) tortious interference with business relations; and (5) an alleged violation of certain New York State laws,” NYRA's Tuesday letter to the judge stated. “Each of these claims are deficient as a matter of law and should be dismissed.”

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NY Seeks to Prevent Jockey Appeals That ‘Game the System’

The New York State Gaming Commission (NYSGC) unanimously advanced a rule proposal Tuesday that seeks to end the resource-draining practice of jockeys appealing riding infractions during big-money race meets like at Saratoga, then withdrawing those protests once the meet is over for the sole purpose of delaying a suspension until it is more convenient for the penalized rider to serve the days.

The proposed rule, which first must be published in the state lawmaking register and then be subject to a public commentary period before coming up again for a final NYSGC vote, would give the commission discretion to instead make the jockey sit out a suspension at a subsequent meeting at the same track.

It will not pass through that process in time to be in effect for the upcoming Spa season.

“Subjectively, this tactic appears to be most frequently used during the Saratoga race meet, where purses are substantially larger than at other subsequent meets,” NYSGC executive director Robert Williams explained to commissioners prior to the June 29 vote.

“Following the stewards' punishment for transgressions, experience has found that many jockeys seek a hearing, which administratively stays the penalty pending commission resolution of the matter,” Williams said.

“And while commission staff has been diligent in attempting to hear cases during the meet where the alleged transgression occurred, the full adjudication process can extend beyond such meeting,” Williams continued.

“As a result, the jockey can seek to game the system by requesting a hearing and then withdrawing the request at the conclusion of the meet, serving the suspension during a [different] meet [that] the jockey prefers.

“This tactic has real impact on commission operations, as staffing spends resources in arranging and preparing for a hearing that fails to be conducted,” Williams concluded.

According to a brief written by NYSGC general counsel Edmund Burns that was included in the informational packet for Tuesday's meeting, the former Racing and Wagering Board, a predecessor agency of the NYSGC, once had a “Saratoga policy” that allowed the agency to require a suspension for a violation that occurred at Saratoga to be served at Saratoga, even if the suspension had to be stayed to allow it to be served there the following year.

But, Burns wrote, “the New York Court of Appeals struck down the policy, concluding that it required formal rulemaking to be valid.”

A request for comment on the proposed New York rule emailed to Terence Meyocks, the president and chief executive officer of the Jockeys' Guild, did not yield a reply prior to deadline for this story.

The proposed language of the rule follows:

“If a jockey commits a riding infraction and the penalty of a suspension or revocation is not served during the same race meeting, then the commission in its discretion may order that the penalty be served, in whole or in part, at a subsequent race meeting at the same track.”

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Rice to NY Court: 3-Year Ban ‘Shocks One’s Sense of Fairness’

Seeking to overturn a three-year license revocation and $50,000 fine for “improper and corrupt conduct” levied against her by the New York State Gaming Commission (NYSGC), the legal team for trainer Linda Rice has filed a complaint in a state court alleging that the penalty is “so unduly harsh and so disproportionate to Ms. Rice's purported misconduct that it shocks one's sense of fairness and constitutes an abuse of discretion on the part of the Commission.”

In a complaint seeking a declaratory judgment that would either annul or vacate her penalties that went into effect June 7 for receiving race-entry information about rival horses from New York Racing Association employees while paying some racing office workers thousands of dollars in “gifts” between 2011 and 2015, the filing in Schenectady County Supreme Court alleges that “the overwhelming and undisputed hearing evidence demonstrated that the information Ms. Rice was given was not in fact 'confidential,' and that, as a result, there was absolutely nothing 'improper' about Ms. Rice having received that information.”

Culminating an investigation that stretched over five years, NYSGC members voted 5-0 on May 17, 2021, to agree with a hearing officer that Rice's years-long pattern of seeking and obtaining pre-entry information from NYRA racing office workers was “intentional, serious and extensive [and] inconsistent with and detrimental to the best interests of horse racing.”

Rice had testified during eight days of NYSGC hearings late in 2020 that she had, in fact, handed over cash gifts to various NYRA employees over the years.

But the veteran conditioner, who has been training since 1987 and owns seven NYRA training titles, also testified that she did not expect any special favors in return for that money, and that any entry-related information she did receive from NYRA employees was a type of disclosure that was routinely divulged to other trainers.

Rice's filing contends that “the Commission's Order must be annulled and vacated because it is 1) unsupported by substantial evidence; 2) premised on an unconstitutionally vague regulation, which must be invalidated; and 3) wildly inconsistent with precedent, rendering it arbitrary and capricious.”

The complaint lays out the following timeline:

“Over five years ago, in May 2016, Ms. Rice voluntarily attended an interview by the Queens County District Attorney's Office in connection with the purported misconduct at issue in this case. The Queens County District Attorney's Office declined to prosecute Ms. Rice.

“Over three years ago, on February 1, 2018, Ms. Rice agreed, without hesitation, to be interviewed by the Commission in connection with its allegations of misconduct. Nearly two years later, the Commission, which has known about, and never

prosecuted, similar behavior that is widespread in horse racing, charged Ms. Rice.

“Although the regulation upon which it is based…is extremely broad, subjective, and indefinite, the Commission's first charge against Ms. Rice accuses her of 'improper' receipt of certain 'confidential' race information…. The Commission's second charge against Ms. Rice accuses her of having paid bribes to receive certain race information.”

The filing notes that during the course of investigating the allegations, “The Commission did not summarily suspend Ms. Rice pending the outcome of its charges against her. Instead, the Commission permitted Ms. Rice to continue to train, which she has been doing now for several years without any noteworthy action having been taken against her by the Commission, and without any similar allegations of wrongdoing having been made against her by the Commission.

“In sum, Ms. Rice is currently training horses in good standing, and she has been doing so for the entire six-year period following the end of her purported misconduct in March 2015.”

One plank in Rice's legal filing asserts that during the time frame that was being investigated, “neither the Commission nor NYRA had promulgated any rule or regulation identifying what specific information about upcoming races could, and could not, be shared by racing officials, including entry clerks, or what specific information could, and could not, be requested or received by trainers.”

In actuality, the filing asserts, “The overwhelming and undisputed hearing evidence established that, as matter of practice well-known to the Commission for many years, the same information Ms. Rice is accused of having improperly received–and which the Commission now claims is 'confidential'–has been provided–unpunished–to trainers by racing officials, including entry clerks, on a regular and routine basis in efforts to 'hustle' trainers to fill race cards.”

Thus, the filing states, “The Commission's Order, which finds that Ms. Rice received 'confidential' race information, and that it was 'improper' for Ms. Rice to have that information, is therefore unsupported by substantial evidence, and it must be annulled and vacated as a consequence.”

The filing also appeals to the court to consider that a license revocation would deprive Rice of her only source of income and imperil the lives of the 55 individuals who depend upon her 75-horse stable for employment.

“The consequences of the Commission's determination to revoke Ms. Rice's license for three years would be, in other words, severe and irreversible,” the filing states.

“In light of Ms. Rice's unremarkable disciplinary history and otherwise stellar reputation, which even the Commission recognizes, the destruction of Ms. Rice's career is

substantially inconsistent with, and disproportionate to, Ms. Rice's purported offense.

“That is particularly true given that the receipt of race information from NYRA racing officials was a wide-spread practice not prohibited by any specific regulation and known to, and not prosecuted by, the Commission for decades,” the filing concludes.

As of 1:15 p.m. Tuesday, the case had not been scheduled for a hearing on the court's docket.

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