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Uncertain Future for Arizona Racing Industry

At the Arizona Racing Commission meeting last month, representatives from the state’s flagship racetrack, Turf Paradise, announced that they wouldn’t be running their scheduled 2020-2021 race meet between November and May, blaming a variety of factors including health concerns due to the global pandemic, and economic question marks surrounding the operations of Off Track Betting (OTBs) facilities.

That decision has sown seeds of confusion and doubt among many involved in the state’s racing industry–a scenario complicated by ongoing friction between the horsemen and Turf Paradise management.

“Definitely a huge impact,” said trainer Jared Brown, who ordinarily is based in Canada during the summer and at Turf Paradise in the winter. Brown’s southern sojourn is usually a time for restocking his stable for the year ahead, but without that opportunity this winter, “it will impact my business a big deal,” he added.

With the next commission meeting looming this Thursday, perhaps the most pressing issue is this: What may happen to the 2020-2021 race dates, seemingly up for grabs?

“I don’t know what the future is,” said Kevin Owens, an Arizona-based breeder and former president of the Arizona Thoroughbred Breeders Association (ATBA). “I think it’s important to get Arizona open. Give some hope to the people.”

Tom Auther, an owner and partner in Arizona Downs, said that he has informed the Arizona Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Association (AZHBPA) that his track could be in a position to conduct a truncated meet this winter. But first, funding would have to be secured–another bone of contention thanks to a fight over who controls the funds in the purse account.

According to Vincent Francia, Turf Paradise general manager, the funds contractually belong to Turf Paradise. “The purse monies are for a specific purpose,” said Francia. “And that is for the horsemen that race at Turf Paradise.”

The horsemen, however, argue that they have control over the purse account. As per a prior arbitrated settlement, “that purse money belongs to the horsemen,” said Leroy Gessman, president of the National HBPA, who added that the account currently totals an estimated $2.1 million. “It’s the property of the HBPA,” he said.

The AZHBPA has asked the racing commission to make a ruling on the dispute, said Gessman, who added that the issue is an item on the agenda at the October racing commission meeting. However, “it is still unclear if they have the authority or not” to make that ruling, he wrote, in a follow-up email.

Indeed, according to Francia, such a dispute can only be settled through third-party arbitration, conducted separately from the commission. If the purse money is released to the AZHBPA, that would pave the way for Arizona Downs to possibly stage a truncated meet this winter, said Gessman.

For that to occur, the facility would need about two months of preparation to make it safe for training and racing, said Auther, who added that Dennis Moore, the Southern California-based expert in racetrack surfaces, recently visited Arizona Downs to examine the track surface.

“We’ve never raced in the winter before,” said Auther, explaining some of the racetrack surface safety issues that would need to be navigated. Ultimately, he added, ongoing uncertainty in the state makes planning difficult. “We just don’t know what’s going to happen,” he said.

What’s more, the door appears to remain ajar for Turf Paradise to reverse course and conduct a race meet this upcoming winter.

“I don’t want to give our horsemen false hope,” Francia said, stressing the unpredictable nature of the pandemic. “What I am saying is we’re keeping all of our options open.”

These developments form just the latest chapter in a fraught relationship between the horsemen and Turf Paradise. When the facility officially closed its doors at the beginning of May, for example, track management gave the AZHBPA 30 days to remove its belongings from its Turf Paradise office.

These tensions persisted prior to the August commission meeting, when the AZHBPA emailed the operators of Turf Paradise a list of 17 questions and demands surrounding such issues as the multi-year agreement that the HPBA entered into with Turf Paradise, stable area renovations, and contingency plans in the event of a second wave of COVID-19 infections this winter.

A number of horsemen interviewed for this story voiced concern about Turf Paradise management recently selling off track equipment and certain items of the facility–a possible indication, they said, of the track’s lack of long-term commitment to the sport.

“This is something we do every year,” Francia explained. “If we had to conduct a race meet, I would need a couple weeks to put it together, but we could do that.”

When asked if Turf Paradise is indeed for sale, Francia responded that Turf Paradise owner Jerry Simms is open to offers. “That’s certainly one of the options we’d look at,” said Francia. “But there are no buyers out there right now for Turf Paradise.”

Others have more immediate concerns. According to Arizona racing commissioner Rory Goree, stakeholders need to “put their differences aside” in order to thrash out a way forward “that works for all of us.”

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Delaware Stewards Suspend Trainer Gaffney Through Remainder Of The Year For Numerous Rule Violations

Stewards in Delaware have suspended trainer Hubert Gaffney through the end of 2020 and issued a $2,500 for conduct detrimental to racing last week. The Aug. 31 ruling cites a long list of Delaware Thoroughbred Racing Commission rules Gaffney allegedly violated, including entering/aiding in the entry of ineligible horses, assuming responsibility for horses not in a trainer's own active care, conduct/utterance which adversely affects public confidence in racing.

According to the ruling, Gaffney's license had been granted conditionally due to a prior violation.

“Mr. Gaffney will no longer be entitled to a license at Delaware Park,” the ruling read. “Hubert Gaffney is denied access to all grounds under the jurisdiction of the Delaware Thoroughbred Racing Commission.”

Sarah Crane, investigator and acting executive director for the commission, indicated Gaffney is appealing the ruling and therefore the commission could provide no additional details about the source of the alleged rule violations.

As reported here on Aug. 20, Gaffney's name came up in the course of an investigation by the Maryland Jockey Club (MJC) as its officials examined the activities of Wayne Potts. MJC determined Gaffney had been serving as a program trainer for Potts at several tracks where Potts was not permitted to participate.

The complete ruling is available here.

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Op/Ed: Owning Horses and ‘Buying’ a Dream

Sam Hoskins, an owner, breeder, syndicate manager and ROA board member, gives us his view of how the reduced prize-money will impact racing in Britain

From where we were back in the spring, to get racing back on was an incredible achievement and obviously everyone understood then that prize-money was going to be hit. Horsemen accepted that up to the point when it became clear that, despite media rights flowing, there was going to be largely no executive contribution from the majority of racecourses. The call for transparency over media rights payments has been around for a while now and it has become more widespread and vocal lately as horsemen have rightly sought to establish the full, if bleak, picture of this main source of industry funding–one that should be co-owned by racecourses and horsemen in my view. For a while now, the ROA board has been aware of the figures cited in Project Enable which points to an unaccounted sum of over £100m between the gross total media rights and the amount paid to racecourses. Hopefully this all becomes clearer in due course.

It has obviously been great to get a few owners back on track slowly but surely. Some racecourses have made a fantastic effort but there are others who’ve done the bare minimum and, frustratingly from my perspective, haven’t shown sufficient flexibility regarding badge allocation. I run two syndicates, Kennet Valley Thoroughbreds and Hot To Trot Racing, and the key to success isn’t always about winners–it is about giving everyone the best time possible and making it fun. The problem to date this summer, despite some wonderful television coverage by ITV and RTV/SSR, there has been little fun to savour on the racecourse. While we’ve done our best to convey that excitement via new communication platforms, ultimately mornings on the gallops and days at the races form a huge huge part of racehorse ownership, and indeed being part of a syndicate. At the moment, as well as running for peanuts, syndicates are being vastly restricted in terms of numbers being allowed on track while all owners are finding it tough to accept an owner’s experience with such limited interaction with trainer and jockey. Many are choosing to stay at home and watch it on TV, which is fine but a bit sad I feel. People do understand the restrictions have been imposed by government but with so many mixed messages it is getting harder to understand why racing, which is fundamentally an outdoor sport, has taken so long to welcome back crowds, even if they have to be reduced in number in the short term. I feel perception is winning the battle over common sense right now.

Hopefully the forthcoming racegoer test days will give rise to the above because ultimately we are an entertainment industry. To a certain extent you could say that prize-money doesn’t come into that part of the business, but there are many reasons why prize-money is important. Firstly, having some reward for your investment allows smaller owners and syndicate members to subsidise their reinvestment in the sport year after year. Then of course there is the competition we face from fellow racing nations such as France, Ireland, America, Hong Kong and Australia, where the prize-money pools are far greater. [Editor’s Note: The pilot project for fans at Doncaster’s St Leger meeting was cancelled after Wednesday’s card due to government directives.]

As John Gosden has already warned so eloquently, we run the risk of becoming a nursery for other nations, and it is clear that an increasing number of good horses are being bought to race on overseas. It is vital for Britain’s stature in the racing world that we are able to retain a far greater number of our better horses, not only to put on the best racing, but eventually for the best of them to join the breeding pool. Prize-money is also vital for trainers, jockeys and stable staff and without their percentages, training fees may be forced even higher than they currently are.

Most owners realise that if they have a bad horse they are going to win little or no money, but if you are lucky enough to have a horse rated 90 or 100 on the flat and you are running for £10,000 to the winner, then even if you win you’ve barely paid half of your annual training fees. This is very far from the situation experienced by owners in most other racing nations, where they can at least cover their annual costs with a decent win or two.

If owners felt confident that the racecourses, especially the big racecourse groups, were doing as much as they could to ease the situation then that would be fine, but there’s been a lot of uncertainty surrounding the funding mechanism and size of the growing media rights pot for years, not just since the onset of COVID-19. The lack of transparency over media rights and what the racecourses are actually being paid for owners running their horses at their tracks remains a sticking point. Some independent racecourses have commendably opened their books in recent times but the large racecourse groups continue to frustrate, not least as the business model for some of their tracks (i.e the all-weather tracks) hasn’t actually changed as significantly as it has for the majority who rely so heavily on crowds.

I know racing can be perceived as an elitist sport but we need people to be involved at all levels and for more owners to be brought into racing. For that, we need to support the grassroots of the sport and provide the appropriate aspiration to own horses and ‘buy a dream’. It will be interesting to see how the field sizes hold up this autumn when the fixture list resumes as normal. To be honest, a reduced pool of horses and resulting increased competition for runners going forwards could be a good thing as, while price elasticity isn’t exclusive to racing, it might force some tracks to prioritise executive contribution into prize-money.

From the syndicate members I have been speaking to, there is a concern about coming back in next year, especially if they feel that they will be unable to go to see their horse run, and at the moment, only a handful of syndicate members are granted access to a racecourse even if they have a runner.

I have a few shares in horses myself in France but I could never afford to do that here. In Britain, we are never going to have a Tote monopoly like they do in France, but there are a few things they do there that we could try here. For example, the Quinté + handicap which is run in France every day. I don’t see why that wouldn’t work here, to have a feature handicap that is a daily betting focal point, with a premier race and a secondary race, and guaranteeing 16 runners and good prize-money.

Ultimately, of course, it is so important that horsemen, racecourses and bookmakers all work together. It is very easy to criticise but it’s so much harder to come up with solutions. One point that I feel sure horsemen and racecourses can certainly agree is a push for levy to be collected on a percentage of turnover rather than profits and for levy to apply on overseas horse racing bets. That would make a huge difference, and it would benefit racecourses as well as horsemen.

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Bloodlines Presented By Gary Contessa’s Integrity Bloodstock: Authentic, Flawless Reward Blum’s Faith With Kentucky Derby Roses

In the normal scheme of Peter Blum's breeding program, he's quite as likely to be planning progeny of a female line he's had for four or five generations, perhaps more. To produce Kentucky Derby winner Authentic, however, Blum sent the broodmare Flawless, only a first-generation “Blum-bred,” to the high-class stallion Into Mischief (by Harlan's Holiday) back in the spring of 2016.

The breeder did note, however, that he “had some experience with this family that made me want to buy [second dam] Oyster Baby, who was a lovely mare” and one who produced a beautiful foal in Flawless, the dam of the Kentucky Derby winner.

Nor was this the only unusual factor in Flawless being a part of the Blum broodmare band. The decades-long experience that Blum has with racing and breeding has encouraged him to balance the books whenever possible, and he sells his better stock, especially colts, at premium sales around the country.

Since he typically keeps some of the fillies, Blum bought back Flawless for $285,000 at the 2008 Keeneland September yearling sale. It looked like a damned good idea after that good-looking daughter of leading sire Mr. Greeley had won her maiden impressively by 13 1/4 lengths at Belmont Park. Flawless, however, bowed a tendon in her second start, gaining no black type, and after Blum and trainer Bill Mott had rehabbed the filly and returned her to training, the tendon flared up again and made it necessary to retire her permanently. The mare's dam, the Wild Again mare Oyster Baby, was unraced and produced only three foals before her death at age seven.

As a result, Authentic went to the sales with two blank dams. This is the bugaboo of commercial breeders because nearly all buyers want to purchase performance, black-type performance, not its absence. Blum said, “People were questioning why I'd keep her: she didn't win a stakes, would catalog with two blank dams, and I told Bill Mott that I'd have a lot of trouble selling foals out of this mare, but he said, 'Sell all the other mares and keep this one.'”

Blum kept Flawless, in particular, he said, because “I've had some really good fillies over the years, but I've never had a filly who was as brilliant; as far as speed goes, nothing compared to Flawless.”

The 2017 colt out of Flawless, when he came to the sales, was a striking yearling. Even as a May foal, Authentic possessed the body mass and length to suggest that he was on the way to becoming a serious athlete. He had enough scope and presence to appeal to horsemen looking for athletic prospects, either to race or to resell, and once the bidding started for the handsome bay, it reached $350,000 before all others gave up and allowed a partnership of SF Bloodstock and Starlight West to sign the ticket for the colt.

Sent into training with Bob Baffert, Authentic won his debut on Nov. 9 last year at Del Mar and made his stakes debut on Jan. 4 of the new year in the Grade 3 Sham Stakes, which he won like a very good thing, indeed. To date, the bay colt has won five of his six starts and notably filled out his dam's lack of black type on the pedigree page.

Authentic is the fourth foal and third winner out of Flawless. The others sold profitably, but he was the mare's first foal to make a seriously impressive price at $350,000. That's a really good figure for a yearling with two blank dams, no matter what he looks like, and that sum also was the second-highest among all the yearlings sold on the second day of the September sale's Book 3 (session 8 overall) in 2018.

The Kentucky Derby winner has a 2-year-old half-brother named Mint (Bodemeister) who is yet unraced, as well as a yearling half-brother, also by Bodemeister, who has been named Push Button. Blum said that he was retaining the two half-brothers to race. Flawless was bred back to Into Mischief for 2021 and is in foal on a February cover.

That cover date guarantees that the full brother to Authentic will not be a May foal like the Derby winner. In an interesting aside to the biases of the commercial market, last year's Kentucky Derby winner Country House, first-place finisher Maximum Security, last year's English Derby winner Anthony Van Dyck, and this year's Kentucky Derby winner are all May foals.

When the foal from Flawless arrives in late January, Blum noted, he will go into exactly the same program as his big brother. He said, “Bridie, her family and staff, we've been together a lot of years. They deserve all the credit for raising Authentic and a lot of other fine horses,” Blum said. “She doesn't tell me what I want to hear, but we think a lot alike.”

And then Blum summed up what it means to breed a winner of the Kentucky Derby: “When he was in the winner's circle, it was a special moment. Winning the Derby isn't something you really think you're going to do. It's a once in a lifetime thing, but I don't know if I'd be any happier if I'd kept him. We breed and sell horses. To be able to breed and sell a Derby winner; you can't get a better endorsement than that. I don't believe I could be any happier.”

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