Gulfstream Park has suspended five trainers for violating the Hallandale Beach, Fla., house rules concerning use of the bronchodilator clenbuterol. The track announced the suspensions after conducting out-of-competition tests, using both blood and hair samples, in 10 different barns – with five of the 10 trainers returning clean tests. A total of 12 horses from the five suspended trainers tested positive for the drug that is designed to treat airway obstruction but can have anabolic steroidal effects.
Suspended were Georgina Baxter, Rohan Crichton, Daniel Pita, Peter Walder and Gilberto Zerpa. The suspensions range from 10 to 40 days depending on the number of violations a trainer and went into effect Oct. 1. Gulfstream did not identify the length of each trainer's suspension. The trainers also have been fined $1,000 per violation, with the money going directly to support Thoroughbred aftercare initiatives.
Gulfstream Park enacted the restriction on clenbuterol as a house rule at the beginning of the 2019/2020 championship meet to further address and implement improved safety, transparency and accountability standards.
“As we have said before, individuals who do not embrace the rules and safety measures that put horse and rider safety above all else will have no place at any 1/ST racetrack,” said Aidan Butler, chief operating officer, 1/ST Racing, which owns Gulfstream Park, Santa Anita, Pimlico, Laurel Park, and Golden Gate Fields. “At 1/ST we are committed to achieving the highest standard of horse care and safety. We expect that the stakeholders who race and train at our facilities share in that commitment.”
Horses entered by the suspended trainers will be scratched and they will not be permitted to enter any horse they train for any race at 1/ST Racing venues until the completion of the suspension.
On Oct. 1, six horses were listed as stewards scratches, including three trained by Crichton, two by Baxter, and one by Walder.
To return to racing, the horses must also submit to follow up testing and have clean blood and urine samples. The twelve affected horses will be permitted to train as a part of their daily care and exercise routines.
Because of the absence of a racing commission and deregulation imposed by former Gov. Rick Scott, many of the rules that govern Florida racing are done by the racetracks in the way of house rules. It isn't clear if suspensions resulting from violation of house rules are automatically recognized by other racing states. Gulfstream Park did not indicate whether a suspended trainer's horses (those that did not test positive) would be allowed to race under the name of another trainer during the period of suspension.
Additional barns have been tested, with results pending.
Click here for the current Gulfstream Park Condition Book Rules.
Exactly two weeks from today, I will have finished my second dressage ride at the Thoroughbred Makeover. The last few months of training and competing with Blueberry have been preparation for two five-minute sessions in the enormous outdoor stadium at the Kentucky Horse Park normally resolved for much more advanced, professional riders and very expensive horses.
For those who aren't familiar, the Retired Racehorse Project's Thoroughbred Makeover is a training competition open to recently-retired off-track Thoroughbreds. Much like the Kentucky Derby, you're only eligible to do it for one year, because the purpose is to show off how much Thoroughbreds can learn in the first ten months or so of training for a new sport or 'discipline.' There are ten different horse disciplines running at the Makeover, and you may pick one or two to compete in. Blueberry and I will be competing in dressage, so the format for us is that we will perform two tests – a prescribed test which we must memorize and replicate as accurately as possible, and a freestyle where we have five minutes to ride in whatever sequence or pattern we choose to show off what he has learned. We'll get to do this in the Rolex Stadium, which is a giant arena with plenty of distractions so he'll also need to be calm and focused in order to do well. Our placing is determined by our combined score from the two rides.
The top five scores from each horse sport will return for a finals round to determine the winner from each discipline. Then, an overall winner is chosen from the various horse sports, with the judges favoring the horse who has proven the best example at their chosen second career.
While we have a few things we'll be practicing in our last two weeks, I think we're as ready as we can be. Reporters always grumble a little in the last days before the Derby as the field's trainers all give us very much the same quotes morning after morning. Their work is mostly done by those last few days. They're hoping to keep their horses happy and sound; you can acclimate them to the new track, you can school them in the paddock, but you're either almost ready to run 1 ¼ miles or you aren't. If you aren't, you're already out of time. There's not much else for a trainer to say in that situation, but it makes for boring copy. As a rider though, I get it.
Likewise, we will school in the big stadium, and we will practice making our trot-to-halter sharper, our right lead canter departs smoother and more correct…but the big pieces are in place. Since we began training in late April, Blueberry has gone to two shows as a non-competing entry just to check out the environment and four shows as a competitor. He has performed four different tests a total of six times, including one we'll do at the Makeover. He has seen chaotic show environments and spent a night away from home, handling all of that with the ease I'd expect from a horse who witnessed busy racing barns and spent lots of time on the road during his race career.
My conditions for whether we'd attend the Makeover were always two-fold: He must be sound and healthy (so far so good, but cross your fingers his front shoes stay on), and I must feel I've mentally prepared him for what the competition requires of him. I feel like I've accomplished the latter, which is an enormous task in itself.
There are hundreds of horses and riders coming from all around the country to compete at the Makeover, and nearly 100 pairs in my dressage class alone. I'm a competitive person, but I'm also a realist – our goals for this event aren't about where we finish, because we're not likely to appear in the finals. We'll be facing professional riders with horses who started their training months before us; while I believe that Blueberry is athletic and has a lot of potential in dressage, there will also be horses with more raw talent here than us.
And all of that is fine. Because we've already won.
An evolution of Blueberry's body condition and muscling through this year
In the five months we've had together, he has completely changed jobs and made it look easy. He has completely changed the way he uses his muscles, and built muscle in new places, keeping his little ears pricked even when I know I'm asking him to do something challenging. When we ride down the center line of a dressage ring at a show, a switch flips in his mental energy. With no previous experience, he somehow knows when he is competing, despite the fact his competitors no longer run alongside him. He stands patiently in the wash rack at home or the trailer at the show grounds like a horse who has done this all for years. He lets me kick my feet out of the stirrups in an open grass field and carries me carefully, allowing me to wobble as I work on my core strength and balance. He walks through puddles and over tarps, trots through ground pole exercises, and calmly ignores it when his friends in a nearby pasture start galloping and bucking while we're trying to finish up a schooling session. In many important ways, Blueberry is so advanced for a 4-year-old in this stage of training.
My mare, though I love her, was a tough ride. He has made dressage fun for me for the first time. He has taught me that patience can be rewarded. He has helped me retrain my own muscles to ride more correctly and quietly. He has given me so much confidence. And it's all just the beginning.
The Makeover was a bucket list event for us, but it'll only cap off our very first season together. We plan to have many more, with new goals. The way we'll ride a Training Level test in two weeks will be very different from the way we ride it in another year. But when we come down the center line to salute the judge, I will be so incredibly proud to present him. However he compares to everyone else, he is an absolute champion to me.
“Horses were not bred to run on the dirt,” said trainer Mark Casse. “They were bred to run on the grass, and Tapeta is as close to grass as you can get.”
Casse – inducted into the National Museum of Racing Hall of Fame this year after a 2016 induction in the Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame – is this week's special guest on the Friday Show, joining Ray Paulick and bloodstock editor Joe Nevills to share his extensive knowledge and strong opinions about track surfaces. This week, Gulfstream Park in South Florida became the first facility in North America to have three unique racing surfaces: dirt, turf and the Tapeta Footings synthetic track.
Other tracks could follow suit, Casse said. “I think New York may be flirting with synthetic tracks somewhere down the line,” he said. “And I think it would be great and I think it would pay for itself in no time.”
What about the anecdotal contention by some horsemen suggesting that, while synthetics may result in fewer fractures or fatal injuries, more soft-tissue problems develop on a synthetic track?
“That is the biggest bunch of hogwash that I've ever heard,” said Casse. “That's the most ridiculous statement. I can tell you we have far more soft tissue injuries on dirt than we ever do on synthetics. That's somebody saying things and they don't know what they're talking about. Whenever I hear that I just laugh.”
Casse also brings viewers up to date on some of his stable stars, including two-time Grade 1 Fourstardave Stakes winner Got Stormy.
This week's Woodbine Star of the Week is Pink Lloyd, the Canadian sprint superstar who scored his 24th career stakes win last week in the Grade 3 Bold Venture Stakes.
Watch this week's Friday Show, presented by Woodbine, below:
The performances that make me smile the biggest and appreciate the retired racehorses and the trainers that care so much for them at the Retired Racehorse Project Thoroughbred Makeover the most are not necessarily the ones that win ribbons or even make the Finale.
Don't get me wrong: as the announcer of the Thoroughbred Makeover since the annual marquee event for OTTBs was first held at the Kentucky Horse Park in 2015, I've been blown away by the talent that Thoroughbred sporthorses can show in new sports with less than a year of retraining after a racing career.
Like when Rosie Napravnik went into a gallop after a flawless jumping round in the eventing finale aboard Sanimo at the 2019 Thoroughbred Makeover to win the discipline. It was reminiscent of the jockey-turned-eventer galloping out after a flawless ride aboard Untapable in the 2014 Breeders' Cup Distaff, after which Napravnik announced her retirement from racing, only to embark on a new equine career, much like the OTTBs that she now rides.
Sanimo and Napravnik moved up to the Prelim level of eventing in 2021 with two top-three finishes that qualified them for the American Eventing Championships and a return to the Kentucky Horse Park.
Or when Carleigh Fedorka had a breathtaking dressage test to win the discipline at the 2015 Thoroughbred Makeover aboard Called to Serve, a horse ESPN's Gary West once described as “a bull in perpetual search of a china shop” because of his naughtiness during race training.
There have been countless other performances that bring out the immense talent of OTTBs, and I'm looking forward to more when I announce the 2021 Mega Makeover from Oct. 12 to 17.
However, at least as valuable to the goal the RRP has that the Thoroughbred Makeover is “intended to inspire good trainers to become involved in transitioning these horses to second careers” is seeing the rounds in each discipline where trainers create a positive experience for their horses based on where their training is, rather than pushing things to the max.
I smile when I see the barrel racer that trots the barrel pattern rather than sprinting all out. The rider pats the horse on the neck afterward. They both leave the TCA Covered Arena proud of their accomplishment.
I smile when I see the freestyle competitor recognize that their horse is overwhelmed by the atmosphere, adjust their routine, and the horse picks up confidence as a result.
I smile every time riders show gratitude for themselves and their horses that just making it to the Kentucky Horse Park is an accomplishment, regardless of where the horses are at in their retraining, because the Thoroughbred Makeover is only part of a long journey that the horse will hopefully embark on in a new life after racing.
Jonathan and Ashley Horowitz announce the finale of the 2018 Thoroughbred Makeover.
There is no doubt that the Thoroughbred Makeover is an elite competition, with $100,000 in prize money and top-level riders competing across ten disciplines on horses that will go on to be leaders in their new sport. In addition, what makes the Thoroughbred Makeover so special and important is that it is also addresses a cause that all professional sports now have to reckon with — the welfare of their elite athletes after they retire. Thanks to the RRP and the Thoroughbred Makeover, horse racing is moving in the right direction with this.
“Since 2015, the Thoroughbred Makeover has steadily grown into not only the largest Thoroughbred retraining competition in the world, but also the largest gathering of people with a professional interest in Thoroughbred aftercare,” RRP executive director Jen Roytz said. “Since then, we've seen more than 3,000 horses go through the process of transitioning from racing to their sport horse careers by preparing for this unique competition, and now we're seeing our Makeover graduates from years past starting to perform at the upper levels in their new equestrian disciplines.”
After coming together for a memorable week at the Kentucky Horse Park, the Makeover trainers, who have represented 46 states and four Canadian provinces, as well as England, can return to their hometowns and inspire others with what OTTBs can achieve.
“That's what works so well with the Makeover,” RRP program manager Kristen Kovatch Bentley said. “It manages to cater to not only the trainers who use the structure of that first year to prepare horses for careers in the upper levels, or take advantage of the visibility to market a horse for sale at the event, but for the one-time 'bucket list' trainers who are entering this competition with their forever horse. It's rare for one event to be able to bring together so many different facets of the industry in one week, but because everyone has had that same incredible experience of partnering with these amazing horses to undertake this transformative 10-month journey together, the competition becomes a celebration.”
The Thoroughbred Makeover inspired me to learn to ride, and my work with OTTBs has changed my life. My wife, Ashley Horowitz, and I currently run the Super G Sporthorses farm in Parker, Colo., where ten of the 16 horses on the farm are Thoroughbreds. Those ten were bred in seven different states.
“For those who don't have a background in or natural connection to equestrian sports outside of horse racing,” Roytz said, “this allows them to gain a deeper appreciation of not only what these horses can go onto accomplish after racing, but how much time, skill, effort, money and more goes into their care and training as they make this life-altering transition from racehorse to sport horse.”
I'm one of those people and appreciate that I now have gone from “talking the talk” as a broadcaster to “walking the walk” as an eventer on OTTBs thanks to what has inspired me at the Thoroughbred Makeover.
