Bill Finley | Horse Racing Free Tips

With a Name Like That, How Can She Miss?

From a very young age, she wanted to be a jockey, maybe even one who someday got to ride in the GI Kentucky Derby. After all, she loved horses and both of her parents were exercise riders. Then there's her name.

Derbe Glass is a 23-year-old 10-pound apprentice riding this meet at Monmouth, where she is trying to make a name for herself (pun intended).

“I want to improve every day, get stronger, get smarter and learn the art of race riding,” Glass said. “Hopefully, we will do well.”

Actually, the name has a double meaning.

Glass grew up in a religious household and her mother was reading the Bible while pregnant. One day, she was reading the Book of Acts and took notice of the name of a town mentioned in a passage. According to Wikipedia, Derbe is notable because it is the only city mentioned in the New Testament where the message of the Gospel was accepted from the beginning by its inhabitants. She liked the name and thought it was a perfect fit for someone who was going to grow up in a horse racing family.

“She was reading it and thought it sounds just like the race,” Glass said. “We are a horse racing family and here was a racing name that is also a biblical name. That's why there is the funny spelling at the end with an 'E' instead of a 'Y.' That's because that is how the town is spelled.”

Though she gets asked some stupid questions–like, “Do you have a sister named Preakness Glass?”–Glass embraces her name. At the very least, it's one that trainers and owners won't soon forget.

“I get a positive response,” she said. “People think that it's cool. I grew up in horse racing and now I am riding races and have a name that fits the job description.”

She was born in Delaware and says she grew up on the backstretch at Delaware Park, where her father was the valet for Ramon Dominguez. With an early introduction to racing, she knew what she wanted to do, but her parents insisted that she take things slowly.

“My parents always told me you need to learn how to hot walk and you need to learn how to groom before they were ever going to let me ride. They wanted me to learn from the ground up,” Glass said.

As part of the process, she studied some of the riders she admired most, watching countless replays of their races.

“I grew up watching Ramon Dominguez and I always tried to imitate the way he rides,” she said. “Kendrick (Carmouche), Tyler Gaffalione, Laffit (Pincay, Jr.), they were my idols. I'd watch replays of them over and over again and try to copy their style.”

After working as a groom, she moved on and found work in Ocala breaking babies. She was just getting started. Along the way she would work for John Kimmel, Brendan Walsh and Barclay Tagg.

“The ultimate goal was always to ride races,” she said. “That's been my dream since I was a little kid. I really wanted to put in the time and years to really perfect everything before making my debut. I think the way I have done it definitely gives me an advantage. I think all young riders should get a really good foundation and learn about all the different sides of the industry. My advice to anybody who is galloping and wants to ride is that they should find a few jockeys that they really enjoy watching. You should watch them and learn from them and try to copy their style.”

She rode in two amateur races in 2019 and won with her first mount. She had intended to spend 2020 riding in more amateur races but they were canceled due to COVID-19. Instead, she came to Monmouth and galloped horses during last year's meet.

“I loved Monmouth Park,” she said. “I loved the atmosphere and the people here are so friendly and encouraging and supportive. The bug has been really hot here the last couple of years. So I made it a goal of coming here this summer.”

She rode in five races over the holiday weekend and her best finish was a second-place showing on opening day.

“I'm really excited and I feel very lucky and extremely blessed and appreciative that everyone here been so receptive and helpful,” Glass said. “I've gotten a lot of good feedback. I just want to do the best I can and enjoy it.”

Those may be modest goals, but she understands that you have to take things one step at a time. Derbe has a long way to go before riding in the Derby, but, then again, you never know.

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Letter to the Editor: Jerry Brown

First off, let me say that I have been fighting against the use of performance enhancers in racing longer than anyone reading this. When The Jockey Club took up the fight in 2008 I was one of the people they talked to, for that very reason. So, I'm not very happy being told that if I oppose a misguided piece of legislation, I'm somehow pro-drug (link to Bill Finley's Mar. 17 Op Ed).

I disagree with Victoria Keith's Op-Ed (link) on one point– horseplayers, not owners, fund purses, which ultimately fund everything in our industry, directly or indirectly. But I do agree with a lot of what she wrote. And while I don't believe the body given authority should be strictly made up of owners, they are at least industry stakeholders. If you tried, you couldn't come up with a worse idea than having a governing body that a) is not allowed by law to contain people from the industry; b) is not elected and can't be voted ou; c) but gets to decide how it gets funded.

The technical term for that last part is taxation without representation (see: Tea Party, Boston), and if there is any attempt to raise takeout to pay for this nonsense, I can promise you will see a full-scale rebellion, because I will be the guy out in front of it. But I'm not really worried about that, because I know the commercial breeders who are gung ho for this Frankenstein will be volunteering to fund it out of stud fees and yearling sales.

Owners and those of us who make a living in racing, including HPBA members, understand the relationship between handle and purses, and purses and everything else, and how our industry works as a business. The only people who want to see cheaters get away with it are the ones cheating, while the rest of us are all for good-faith, serious attempts to stop it.

A couple more points. First, the elephant in the room here is obviously Lasix, and the concern of many of us that an unaccountable body could make an uninformed, politically correct decision that could wreak havoc on the tenuous financial well-being of the industry where we make our living. It's already clear to those of us paying attention that a higher-than-usual percentage of horses running without Lasix in graded stakes are not running their races, though without scoping and the results being made public, it's hard to establish cause and effect. But as I have pointed out in these pages before, anything that makes racing less predictable and increases the value of inside information decreases bettor confidence, which hurts us all.

Finally, this: Most of you reading this are blissfully unaware that the industry is dealing with cancer (batch betting), and is about to get run over by a bus (legal sports betting). Batch bettors with electronic access are siphoning huge amounts out of the pools, and have made an already tough game unplayable by effectively raising the takeout for everyone else. And sports betting is giving cynical, disillusioned horseplayers a very viable, easy-to-play, low-takeout alternative, on games they grew up with–there's no learning curve. If the industry doesn't get its act together quickly, those who don't understand the importance of horseplayers to our financial health are about to learn a hard, and probably irreversible, lesson. The last thing we need is to make things worse.

Jerry Brown, Thoro-Graph Founder

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Letters to the Editor: Benard Chatters

Benard Chatters, Louisiana Owner-Breeder-Trainer, President, Louisiana HBPA

Bill Finley, in his Mar. 17th TDN opinion piece–“Horsemen's Groups Turn Their Backs on Honest Trainers, Owners”–criticizes the National HBPA for challenging the legality of a private non-governmental regulatory scheme for the horse industry, established by the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act (“HISA”). He wrote, “It's hard to imagine that there is one horseman anywhere who cares one bit whether or not HISA is unconstitutional or not.” Well, it doesn't require any imagination to understand why horsemen believe rules governing their livelihood and the well-being of their horses should be lawfully written and enforced by a responsible government agency.

Mr. Finley makes claims that are completely false. The statement that the “only reason to have HISA overturned would be that they prefer the status quo…that rewards cheats at the expense of the very people who make up the majority of their membership” is absolutely absurd. That particular claim is not true and it does a disservice to the thousands of honest trainers and owners represented by the National HBPA and its affiliates who are not among the 150 or so members of The Jockey Club, the principal lobbyist for HISA.

Mr. Finley, of course, is free to voice his opinion, but as someone once said, “you are entitled to your opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts.”

Is there cheating in our industry? Yes. Is it widespread? No. Unfortunately, Finley's fact-free opinion urging support for HISA ignores the objective evidence.

In the past five years, hundreds of thousands of pre-race and post-race drug tests throughout the country by professional accredited testing laboratories found that less than 0.06% were positive for drugs having no business being in a horse other than cheating. That is a far cry from the rampant corruption asserted by Mr. Finley in his support of HISA.

Let me end by saying the National HBPA has always condemned cheaters and believes they should be kicked out of the industry. And we support uniform medication and safety rules along with their strict enforcement. No doubt improvements can be made to the status quo, but an unconstitutional HISA is not the answer.

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Letter to Editor: Victoria Keith

This is in response to Bill Finley's editorial “Horsemen's Groups Turn Their Backs on Honest Trainers, Owners”.

I don't share the opinion that “every honest horseman should be 100% behind the Horseracing Integrity Safety and Integrity Act (HISA).” I do agree that every honest horseman wants to see our sport cleaned up and cheaters caught and removed. The points of disagreement in the HISA bill have been the removal of race-day Lasix and funding, which I'm not addressing here, and the makeup and selection process for the HISA governing bodies.

Any governing body including the one established in the HISA bill should be one governed by the owners. The owners are who finance the entire sport. They put up the money for the horses who are on the track. The owners are who govern other professional sports.

The HISA bill gives no governance to the owners. Instead, the two boards–the Nomination Board and Authority–specifically exclude owners.

The HISA bill gives tremendous power to the two boards. The Nomination Board will name the first members of the Authority and then nominate future members for the Authority. The Authority will rule racing on all drug-related issues with horses in training and racing. Both boards are self-appointed thereafter. Owners have no say, no vote. A board that is either incompetent or corrupt cannot be removed by the owners or anyone else in the industry. They can only remove themselves.

As things currently stand, we have to hope that those who had the power to name the first members of the Nomination Board did an outstanding job with their selections. We have to hope that the Nomination Board does an outstanding job in naming members of the Authority. And we have to really hope that as the Authority takes over, that they do an outstanding job not just initially but in the years and decades to come. As a self-appointed Authority, the industry is at their mercy.

With the passage of the HISA bill, I had resigned myself to hope. But with the lawsuit filed by horsemen's groups, perhaps there is a way to amend the means of governance in the HISA bill.

I propose a Board of Governors representing the various racing jurisdictions, put into power through democratic vote by all licensed owners in those jurisdictions. Instead of the Authority and Nominating Boards being self-appointed, they would instead be appointed by the Board of Governors.

This chart is what I would suggest. A jurisdiction would need to have a minimum of 1,000 starters to be represented by one Governor and larger racing states with over 5,000 starters would be represented by two Governors. It admittedly only factors in Thoroughbred racing and would need adjustment for other racing that would be governed by HISA.

With few exceptions, we do all want to clean up the sport. That never meant there isn't room for legitimate concerns regarding the HISA bill.

–Victoria Keith, Fox Hill Farm

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