Jason Servis | Horse Racing Free Tips

West Point Founder Terry Finley Joins TDN Writers’ Room

Founder, president and CEO of West Point Thoroughbreds Terry Finley joined the TDN Writers’ Room presented by Keeneland Wednesday to discuss an array of industry issues and potential solutions. Calling in via Zoom as the Green Group Guest of the Week, Finley provided his insights on how the game can better attract new customers, whether or not racing’s drug problem is finally going to be cleaned up, the evolution of the owner partnership and much more.

Asked about how his friends who are casual observers of racing view the sport, Finley said he thinks the perception is improving thanks to the industry’s belated but united response to its equine safety and drug crises.

“The people we want to influence and impact are, by and large, reasonable, and all they want is for us to take these things that we’re not proud of as an industry seriously,” he said. “And I think we’ve shown over the last two years that we get it. We got our heads picked up. So I think they appreciate that. People come into the business and give us all a chance to show that we’re doing everything we can to give them a fair shot. I think we’re really starting to catch their attention in a sensible way and I’d like to think that we’re on the way to continuing to grow. I’m optimistic that we’re on the right track. I appreciate that a number of people and organizations have come to the table and compromised. When we’ve done that in the past, good things have happened, and I really think good things are on the way for us if we stay at the table and don’t get mad at each other. We all get frustrated at the pace of change in our business, but it’s all about an evolution.”

The discussion then turned to March’s FBI indictments and how Finley thinks the alleged cheating scandals have affected participation in the sport.

“I really hope that there are some trainers and vets and other people in our industry who haven’t slept in the last eight months because they’re waiting for that phone call,” he said. “We’ve got to take our medicine as an industry, because we let it happen. I think we got beat in seven graded stakes races by those two turkeys, where we finished second or third behind Jason Servis or Jorge Navarro. So when I’ve talked to people in the last eight months about the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act, I’ve said, ‘Listen, they’ve taken money out of my pocket and my partners’ pockets.’ We’ve lost partners in the last eight months because they said the industry has had a long time to clean this up. Now we finally did it and I was very proud of the job that The Jockey Club did. We’re going to keep after this. That’s the only thing I can see that’s going to be effective long term, is to just stay vigilant and try to identify the guys who are taking an edge and cheating.”

Elsewhere on the show, the writers talked about the latest coronavirus-related interruptions to the racing calendar, previewed a big holiday weekend of graded stakes, and in the spirit of Thanksgiving, revealed what they’re thankful for in racing. Click here to watch the podcast, click here for the audio-only version.

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The Week in Review: Before Feasting Upon Thanksgiving Fare, Chew On This

Last week’s headlines had little to do with on-track action. This coming week though, we awaken from the sport’s annual post-Breeders’ Cup snooze with an eye toward decent Thanksgiving weekend racing and on-the-horizon stakes that could add a touch of intrigue to the tail end of the 2020 season.

But before you feast upon the holiday fare, chew on these side dishes that anchored the last seven days of the news cycle (plus a few other tidbits that didn’t land on the front pages):

Last Tuesday we learned via federal prosecutors that more doping charges could be in the pipeline for existing and new defendants in the alleged years-long drugging conspiracy involving now-barred trainers Jason Servis, Jorge Navarro, and a wide-ranging cast of enablers that includes veterinarians.

A key takeaway from that Nov. 17 court hearing is that the lead prosecutor said he now believes that two of the alleged performance-enhancing drug (PED) suppliers were pushing at least some sham pharmaceuticals to Servis that didn’t really do anything to make a horse faster or stronger.

But, the prosecutor added, the government will still be treating those substances as if they were actual PEDs, because the true intent on the part of Servis was to allegedly pump horses full of illicit drugs.

The other main point gleaned from last Tuesday’s hearing is that this case isn’t likely to go to trial until the second half of 2021 because of the voluminous amount of evidence that is surfacing in the discovery process.

So it’s conceivable we could still be batting around this court case over next year’s Thanksgiving turkey.

Meanwhile, on the western front…

The day after the federal doping case hearings, TDN asked California Horse Racing Board (CHRB) equine medical director Rick Arthur, DVM, to identify what under-the-radar substance might be likely to next surface as drug of abuse.

Arthur replied in the Nov. 18 Q&A that “It’s not really under the radar. We are concerned with SARMs [selective androgen receptor modulators]. Those are a class of drugs that have anabolic-like activity, but they are not really anabolic steroids. We’ve seen some of them in testing already [and] that is a group of drugs that I think that we have to pay attention to.”

The following day, during the CHRB’s monthly meeting, Arthur brought up a separate topic about an abused substance that hasn’t been in the headlines lately: Thyroxine.

In introducing a new rule proposal Nov. 19 to curb thyroxine “to the point that it really will not be used any longer within CHRB facilities,” Arthur revealed that since the start of this year, veterinarians on the Southern California circuit alone have reported 287 prescriptions for thyroxine. Incredibly, he added that “over half of the prescriptions” were written for just two trainers, and 80% of that thyroxine was “prescribed by just three veterinarians.”

This despite a CHRB advisory against thyroxine that has been in effect for more than six years warning against its use in horses that don’t legitimately need it because of the drug’s nasty reputation for producing cardiac arrhythmias and atrial fibrillation. Arthur added that “while we cannot assert a cause-and-effect relationship, one sudden death already in 2020 occurred five days after the horse was prescribed thyroxine.”

The CHRB did not disclose the names of the trainers, veterinarians, or the horse that perished after receiving thyroxine. The motion to advance the rule passed, 7-0.

Fixed-odds experiment coming to NJ…maybe

Dennis Drazin, the chairman and chief executive of Darby Development LLC, which operates Monmouth Park and its sports book, predicted to the New Jersey Racing Commission (NJRC) last Wednesday that within five years, fixed-odds betting has the potential to comprise “a significant portion of the handle” in horse racing.

Several commissioners expressed fears about fixed-odds betting cannibalizing the existing pari-mutuel system. Yet despite their repeated lamenting about “last rites” to a model that “will lose out in the end if it has to compete” with fixed odds, no one on the NJRC inquired about what a realistic pricing structure might look like for the new model so it could benefit bet-makers, bet-takers and the horsemen.

Fixed-odds bookmaking, which allows a customer to lock in pricing at the time of the wager, does indeed have theoretical promise to revolutionize, reenergize, and even replace traditional straight wagering in this country (while leaving exotics to be better handled by pari-mutuels).

But when the NJRC voted 4-0 Nov. 18 to approve a fixed-odds pilot program for 2021 that would be limited to bets on out-of-state Grade I races, it didn’t even raise the issue of how the bets would be priced in terms of takeout so that the tracks that fund those races get paid for their product.

Granted, the pilot program wasn’t even the NJRC’s idea. It was handed down by the state’s Division of Gaming Enforcement, which has the authority to regulate fixed-odds wagers. The NJRC was only involved because a provision in the Interstate Horse Racing Act of 1978 requires approval from the receiving state’s racing commission before wagers can be taken on imported signals.

What’s in a name?

It’s great that a smaller track laden with no-frills charm like Fairmount Park will have its lifespan extended thanks to 2019 legislation in Illinois that granted it the privilege to host slot machines, table games and sports betting.

Not so enthusing was last week’s announcement that Fairmount’s corporate gaming partner is “rebranding” (read: obliterating) the name of the storied oval 12 miles east of St. Louis so it will now be known as “FanDuel Sportsbook and Horse Racing.”

Apparently, 95 years of history are getting tossed into the nearby Mississippi River. Sure, the corporate backer is putting up millions of dollars. But FanDuel wouldn’t be there in the first place if it wasn’t for Fairmount hanging in there long beyond most expectations for it to survive.

In the Nov. 16 press release that heralded the erasure of the Fairmount name, the partners also announced that the company will “fund the renewal and running of the $250,000 St. Louis Derby, the track’s signature event, which has not been conducted since 2006 due to financial constraints.”

Actually, the 2006 St. Louis Derby was the only edition of the race ever conducted. It was the legacy of the old Fairmount Derby, which was run inconsistently between 1926 and 1996, with decades-long gaps between some runnings.

But that one and only St. Louis Derby did produce a good trivia question. Can you name the winner of that 2006 stakes? He was a colt who won six straight races leading up to the GI Kentucky Derby. He ran 12th behind Barbaro, and it was discovered post-race that he had been hindered by an ankle chip. After surgery to repair it, this chestnut was pounded to 4-5 favoritism when returning to his winning ways at Fairmount on a muggy Saturday night in August.

Need another hint? A year later, that colt flourished as a Grade I force, sweeping both the Whitney H. and Woodward S. at Saratoga.

Lawyer Ron is the answer. I’ll be rooting for Fairmount to lure another high-profile horse to the St. Louis Derby in 2021.

I just won’t be referring to that appealing old track by its unimaginative new name.

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Ned Toffey Talks Into Mischief, Authentic, Monomoy Girl and More On Writers’ Room

Business is booming at Spendthrift Farm. The once-defunct stallion station has enjoyed a remarkable resurgence in the past decade, thanks in large part to a superstar stallion, a deep-pocketed owner and the steady hand of an experienced general manager. Ned Toffey has seen it all since B. Wayne Hughes purchased Spendthrift in 2004, and he joined the TDN Writers’ Room presented by Keeneland Wednesday. Calling in via Zoom as the Green Group Guest of the Week, Toffey talked about the explosive growth of the farm, what makes Into Mischief special, likely Horse of the Year Authentic (Into Mischief), the future of recent Spendthrift purchases Monomoy Girl (Tapizar) and Got Stormy (Get Stormy) and much more.

“Once we did some renovations here at Spendthrift, we brought Malibu Moon over and really thought that was going to be our flagship horse. And all the while there was this little son of Harlan’s Holiday we bought for $180,000,” Toffey recalled when asked about Into Mischief. “The first couple of years he was here, he was a very tough sell. One of the programs that we did, ‘Share the Upside’, was actually designed to help sell seasons to Into Mischief. But it turned out to be the opposite. Into Mischief made the program. He gave us credibility and has given us the confidence to start to go after other top horses. He’s done so much. He drives traffic to the farm. We’ll be fortunate if we can ever have another one as good as him. People give us a lot of credit for having ‘made’ Into Mischief. We’re happy to take that credit, but I think the credit goes to Into Mischief.”

Spendthrift made major waves at last week’s Fasig-Tipton November ‘Night of the Stars’, shelling out $9.5 million for champion topper Monomoy Girl, $4.2 million for MGISW Bast (Uncle Mo) and $2.75 million for MGISW Got Stormy.

“We wanted to have some marquee mares to breed Into Mischief, Authentic and even some of the stallions that came in within the last year as well,” Toffey explained. “We generally will move our own mares out of the way if we have clients that really need to get their mares bred. So oftentimes some of the mares that we start out planning to breed to some of these stallions, end up getting bred to somebody else. This year we wanted to have some mares that we just felt were really strong. We may not breed a lot to Into Mischief. Mr. Hughes usually likes to collect the stud fee and make room for our clients. But now we’ve got a handful of mares that will certainly need to go to Into Mischief, Authentic and the likes of those.”

Asked about the reasoning for retiring Authentic as a 3-year-old while bringing Monomoy Girl and Got Stormy back to the racetrack in 2021 as 6-year-olds, Toffey offered, “You’re talking about a little different price point. We were wide open in terms of what we might do, but his racing career just went so well and Bob [Baffert] said, ‘He’s done so much. He’s done everything that he really can.’ And our primary business is breeding. That’s what drives things here and the stallion complex is the epicenter of Spendthrift. That is our primary focus and everything we do revolves around that. He’s such a sound, talented horse, it was very tempting to go on and run next year, but again, this is such a central part of what we do, we felt like it was time for him to come and start his career here.”

Elsewhere on the show, the writers debated which Eclipse categories are still to be decided, appreciated strong 2-year-old performances from the weekend and, in the West Point Thoroughbreds news segment, broke down the latest developments in the indictments surrounding Jason Servis and Jorge Navarro. Click here to watch the podcast; click here for the audio-only version.

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Feds: More Doping Charges Could Be in Pipeline

The federal prosecutor leading the case against an alleged network of racehorse dopers underscored several times during a Nov. 17 court hearing that the government might not yet be done bringing new charges that could involve either existing or fresh defendants as it continues to investigate a purported years-long conspiracy to manufacture, mislabel, rebrand, distribute and administer performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) to Thoroughbreds and Standardbreds across America and in international races.

“There may well be other crimes as to the particular defendants in this case,” United States Attorney Andrew Adams said in response to a direct question on that topic from U.S. District Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil. “And [the government] is continuing to look at other people who are not currently charged.”

During the Tuesday morning teleconference, 14 defendants pleaded “not guilty” to updated charges in US. District Court (Southern District of New York) stemming from a Nov. 5 superseding indictment that replaced an original indictment filed after a wave of arrests in March.

The headline Thoroughbred industry defendants in the case are the now-barred but formerly above-norm-win-percentage trainers Jason Servis and Jorge Navarro.

A dozen other alleged co-conspirators either appeared via phone or had pleas entered by their attorneys on Tuesday. They include drug manufacturers, distributors, stable employees, and veterinarians allegedly involved to various degrees in the five counts listed in the indictment. They are: Erica Garcia, Christopher Oakes, Michael Tannuzzo, Marcos Zulueta, Rebecca Linke, Kristian Rhein, Michael Kegley, Jr., Alexander Chan, Seth Fishman, Jordan Fishman, Lisa Giannelli, and Rick Dane, Jr.

In addition, five individuals named in the original March indictment were not included in the superseding indictment, which has led to speculation that they could be cooperating with law enforcement authorities to widen the case in exchange for having charges dropped. Two other defendants pleaded guilty in September.

On Tuesday Adams revealed that prosecutors now believe that at least two of the alleged conspirators–Chan and Rhein–were pushing some fake PEDs to Servis that didn’t really enhance performance. But, the prosecutor added, the government will be treating those substances as if they were actual PEDs because Servis’s true intent was to allegedly dope horses.

Adams explained that the recently added wire fraud charges alleged against those three defendants were brought to light by investigators who uncovered “a false billing scheme relating to certain drugs being administered by Dr. Rhein’s veterinary practice, including to horses under the care and training of Mr. Servis.” He added that it amounts to false billing when “certain drugs were promoted or intended to be used as performance-enhancing drugs, regardless of the efficacy of those drugs.”

The prosecutor then elaborated: “That is, a drug that is promoted and intended to be a performance-enhancer but is, you know, a dud, is nevertheless [considered to be] a misbranded an adulterated drug for the purposes of this indictment…”

And because those allegedly false billing transactions purportedly were conducted via some form of phone, text, or email communications, they constitute wire fraud, the government is alleging.

When Judge Vyskocil asked Adams point-blank to name the victims who were allegedly defrauded via the five counts in the indictment, Adams did not hesitate to answer.

“Horse owners are among the primary or intended victims,” with regard to the wire fraud charges, Adams said.

“With respect to misbranding, the racetracks, racing commissions, owners [and other] competitors are all among people who were in the minds of the defendants charged with the misleading and deceit,” Adams added.

The news that more charges and/or yet another expanded time frame for the alleged crimes could be in the pipeline was not welcomed by defense attorneys, who have already lodged concerns about the massive volume of electronic evidence being introduced in the case and how an elongated discovery and pre-trial period is not in the best interest of their clients’ right to a speedy trial.

“We do continue to investigate and continue to look into all aspects of the case,” Adams said when pressed by the judge for some sort of timeline on potential future charges. “The wire fraud that has come down now is largely the fruit of investigations that straddled the original indictments. It was built on information from both before and after. And I don’t leave aside the possibility that that may happen again, with respect to other false billing practices.”

Servis’s attorney, Rita Glavin, said she wanted a more definitive answer so she could make the best defense possible for her client without having to start all over if new charges got levied against him. She asked Adams, “Does the government, as we sit here today, think it’s likely that there will be a superseding indictment in the next four to five months?”

Adams replied, “The government is not under an obligation to answer that question. And it frankly will not impact, in the government’s view, any timelines set for Mr. Servis.”

Glavin countered: “Today is the first that I’ve heard from the government a whisper that there may be another superseding indictment. And I understand the government’s representation that they don’t believe it would impact Mr. Servis. But I would have to see that when I see it. I don’t know what their current investigations are. But I certainly would be concerned about setting a schedule in the case if we’re going to see new charges come out.”

Despite the open-ended nature of the ongoing investigation and the mounting reams of evidence it is generating, Vyskocil declined to set a deadline for discovery. The judge did, however, aim to set a timetable for future proceedings that allowed the defense proper time to sift through all the relevant materials during the discovery period and to potentially file motions based on what attorneys uncover.

So a Feb. 5 date has now been set for the first round of what the judge termed as “dispositive motions” that the defense could file to put an end to some or all of the charges against defendants. The prosecution would then have a month to reply (Mar. 5), and the defense would get three additional weeks to counter those replies (Mar. 26).

A second round of motions dealing only with defense requests to suppress evidence or expert testimony now has a May 24 target deadline, but a status hearing scheduled 10 days before then will determine if that is a realistic date.

Vyskocil said at this point, it would be “premature” to even consider a pre-trial schedule that extends beyond the time frame of next spring.

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