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Churchill Downs Excludes Broberg After Track Says He Failed To Properly Care For Injured Horse

Churchill Downs has revoked stalls from trainer Karl Broberg and banned him from the entry box at its parent company's racetracks after an incident involving a voided claim. Broberg owns and trains 5-year-old gelding Rockandahardplace, who contested the second race on Churchill's Sept. 18 card.

The Kentucky track released the following statement to the Paulick Report on Sept. 24:

“On the night of Sept. 18, Karl Broberg's Rockandahardplace finished sixth of seven in a $10,000 claiming race at Churchill Downs. A claim for the 5-year-old gelding was voided after the race by rule when the horse was declared lame by a KHRC veterinarian at the test barn. The horse was returned to his stall by a paid hotwalker, but a subsequent investigation revealed that there was no responsible representative of the trainer on-site to make veterinary decisions or to take appropriate steps to protect the welfare of the injured horse. As a result of Karl Broberg's failure to properly care for the horse, Churchill Downs Incorporated has indefinitely revoked his stalling and entry privileges at all Churchill Downs Incorporated properties effective immediately.

“Churchill Downs and the horse racing industry is committed to improving accountability when it comes to horse safety and racing integrity. We place the highest priority on the health, welfare and safety of our equine and human athletes, and we expect the same from people who race and train at any of our facilities.

“Rockandahardplace did receive basic veterinary care on the night of Sept. 18. The following day, the horse was transported from Churchill Downs to a private farm for long-term care.”

Rockandahardplace has a record of six wins from 40 starts, with one win from 12 starts so far in 2021. Prior to the Sept. 18 race, the gelding had started Sept. 9 in an allowance contest at Remington Park, where he finished third.

For his part, Broberg disputes Churchill's assertion that he did not have proper care available to the horse.

“I am obviously appalled by the insinuation through the CD press release that Rockandahardplace was improperly cared for,” Broberg told Paulick Report publisher Ray Paulick via email. “Rockandahardplace was evaluated and treated with bute and banamine following the race by a licensed veterinarian at our request. He was correctly diagnosed as having a medial sesamoid fracture which x-rays confirmed the following morning. He was sent to a farm the following morning to recover and we can happily report aside from the injury he is in perfect health.

“We have kept the steward's office at Churchill apprised of his well-being.”

Broberg said that Churchill officials seemed focused on the fact the horse's injured leg was not wrapped or placed in a cast overnight after the race, but said wrapping wouldn't have been effective for a suspected sesamoid fracture. The horse was left in the Churchill receiving barn because he was too sore to step onto the trailer to make the trip back to the training center. He said the gelding is now at a facility in Bedford, Ky., and is sedated on stall rest under the care of a veterinarian. He expects Rockandahardplace will need at least six months off, and will then be evaluated for a return to racing or a start of a new career.

The trainer told the Paulick Report he was surprised CDI had taken this action against him and insisted there must be more to the story than the incident with Rockandahardplace. It's true, he said, that he did not keep his stalls at Churchill's training facility full and that he had been interested in claiming horses there. He also pointed out that Kentucky stewards had initially made contact with him and suggested they were conducting their own investigation into whether his actions constituted animal cruelty; he has since been informed by the stewards that they are satisfied and do not plan on issuing any ruling in the case.

“I don't understand how this has become what it currently is,” he said. “It just makes no sense to me whatsoever … they still haven't asked me any of the questions they should have asked. They didn't even get my side.

“Meanwhile they have [Marcus] Vitali at Presque Isle like nothing's wrong in the world. It just doesn't make sense to me … there has to be more to this.”

Broberg said he believes he's usually top ten in starters at the Fair Grounds meet, and plans to fight any attempt to ban him from the entry box there.

Broberg has been ranked first or second in North American trainer standings by wins each year since 2013, and has amassed 4,119 victories from 17,091 starts since he began training in 2009. His business model depends on keeping strings of horses in multiple states and relies heavily on claiming races. He is currently ranked ninth in North America by earnings and second by wins.

Broberg has also been a controversial figure at times, having been excluded from Remington Park in 2013 after The Jockey Club suspended privileges from him for having four medication violations in close succession. Broberg fought the Remington ban in court and was ultimately allowed back, but saw his stalls revoked again in 2020. More recently, the trainer spoke out about testing issues in Louisiana, where the state's laboratory detected found three drugs, including a Class 1 substance, in a post-race sample from one of his horses. Split sample testing was negative for all three substances.

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The Friday Show Presented By Monmouth Park: Talking Thoroughbred Makeover

Just as there are “baby” races at the track, off-track Thoroughbreds have their own kind of competition restricted to newcomers — the Thoroughbred Makeover, scheduled for Oct. 12-17 at the Kentucky Horse Park near Lexington, Ky.

The event, offering $100,000 in prize money and consisting of 10 different disciplines, brings together Thoroughbreds that are in their first year transitioning from the racetrack to a second career.

Jonathan Horowitz, who calls the races at Colorado's Arapahoe Park, has been the announcer at the Thoroughbred Makeover since 2015. Since January 2020, he's been documenting his new avocation in a series of articles at the Paulick Report, “Horowitz On OTTBs,” highlighting the challenges and triumphs that come with working with off-track Thoroughbreds.

“I appreciate that it's not easy to do,” said Horowitz, who joins publisher Ray Paulick and editor in chief Natalie Voss on this week's Friday Show. “I appreciate that when you get it, it's one of the most rewarding feelings. It's a sport where … imagine if you're a basketball player and the basketball had a mind of its own.”

While Horowitz will not be competing at this year's Thoroughbred Makeover, Voss will be in the dressage ring at the Horse Park with her off-track Thoroughbred, Underscore (fondly known as Blueberry around the barn). She's a tireless advocate for giving ex-racehorses the best chance possible for a second career that can be just as rewarding for the horse as a trip to the winner's circle.

Watch this week's Friday Show, presented by Monmouth Park, below:

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Breeders’ Cup Presents Connections: Against The Odds And Despite Her Doubters, Chichakly Is On Her Way

It's not an easy time to be a trainer of racehorses right now, let alone a new trainer. Amira Chichakly knows that as well as anybody, but she made the leap all the same, in the middle of a global pandemic and mass economic uncertainty.

Chichakly spent several years as an assistant to Gary Contessa, a longtime fixture on the New York circuit. When Contessa announced his retirement from public training in March 2020, he made it clear his departure was not the result of disillusion with the horses, but the headaches of running the business. Recent investigations by the U.S. Department of Labor have put a number of high-profile New York trainers in the crosshairs, adding time-keeping and record-keeping practices on top of the mountain of paperwork it takes to navigate a constricting federal visa program and recruiting skilled help.

“When I had 100 horses, I could absorb this, but when I have 40 horses and 20 of them are so-so, it's not enough to overcome what the Department of Labor is expecting of us,” Contessa said at the time. “There was a time when I was a 'super trainer' and I did very well. When you had the occasional owner who defaulted on you, you had the horses you got stuck with, you had Department of Labor audits, winning would overcome all of that stuff. But when you have a smaller stable — unless you do everything yourself — I don't see how you can do this.”

Into these woes walked Chichakly, who had long pondered putting out her own shingle.

“I pretty much got the choice of, I could take Gary's offer to take things on or be jobless,” she said. “Nobody was hiring anybody at the time. I don't like sitting idle, so I decided I was going full steam into this.”

When Chichakly got the call from Contessa, she had just learned she was pregnant with her daughter, though she wasn't yet sharing that publicly. The timing probably could not have been more challenging, but it also wasn't a good time to suddenly become unemployed. She had decided some time before that she needed at least eight horses to make a profit, and with Contessa's offer to transition previous owners over to her, she had 11.

In her time working for Contessa and Wayne Catalano, she had seen the glories of being a trainer but also the headaches. It seemed there were an awful lot of headaches, but like many people in this business, the lure of the horse made it seem worth it.

“Looking at it I thought, it's not so glorious to be a trainer,” she said. “But I do love figuring out horses, putting the pieces together and figuring out what works for them. I like to be able to find the best parts of the horse and making sure they're happy, too.”

Chichakly multi-tasks in the barn aisle

Chichakly has galloped for many years and still gets on her own string as often as she can, having discovered she can often feel little changes she doesn't always see from the ground. Her dressage training enables her to not only pick up on weaknesses and asymmetry, but also to work in stretching and bending to help correct those issues before they turn into big problems.

In addition to the usual woes of struggling to hire reliable help and get each the day's work done, Chichakly also believes there's a sense of jealousy toward new trainers on the backstretch.

“I think that's true for any young trainer starting out,” she said. “There's always doubters, people who are waiting for someone to fail. I don't think that's specific to me, I see it with other people too. Being a female trainer, too. There are people out there that say we can't do it. Number one word out there is 'crazy.' People love saying that word … I know another female trainer right now who's going through that. She feels like people are actively rooting against her and I don't think she's wrong, because I hear people talking about her or other young trainers. 'Oh they'll never make it,' 'Oh they don't know what they're doing,' or 'They won't last that long.' And it's sad, because we need small trainers for racing to survive. They don't understand their competition is not the person who's got five horses, it's the person who has 500 horses.

“If someone's passionate enough to be here every day, you should be rooting for them. Because there aren't that many left.”

A year and a half later though, things are coming together. Chichakly has saddled 11 winners and is already graded stakes-placed, thanks to Limonite, who picked up third in the Grade 3 Excelsior and second in the Stymie earlier this year. Now, her hopes are high for 2-year-old Our Tiny Dancer, who broke her maiden at Delaware Park Sept. 9 and is entered in the Joseph A. Gimma Stakes at Belmont on Sept. 24. The New York-bred filly was the first winner for sire Union Jackson.

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“Because of COVID-19 and being pregnant, then a new mother and a new business owner with little help, I really couldn't get to the sales early on,” Chichakly recalled. “Something I had been so excited for as a trainer, I had to miss. This year, I was getting really frustrated missing OBS and not having 2-year-olds and I knew I had to go to Maryland myself. I'm sure everyone was laughing at the dog and baby in tow but I brought them both to all the under tack shows.

“Right away the Union Jacksons stood out to me, despite not knowing him as a racehorse.”

Chichakly had her eye on several, but found herself either priced out or outbid. Contessa was also at the sale and tipped her off to the chestnut filly, ultimately acting as agent for the purchase as Chichakly signed her first sales ticket. Owned by a partnership including John Moirano, Pines Stables, John Irwin and Sallie P Thoroughbred Racing, Chichakly took a few starts to figure out exactly what the filly needed – soft turf wasn't her thing, and she missed her break in her first dirt start. She took a small string to Delaware Park for a week – with no staff – expecting there would be a place for the filly that would be a little friendlier.

“She delivered above and beyond my hopes for that start,” said Chichakly. “She's not magically a Breeders' Cup-type horse, but she packs quite a punch and should be quite capable in New York fields moving forward.”

One of Chichakly's watercolors

Never one to sit idly, Chichakly still does much of the hot walking, stall cleaning, and grooming herself in addition to the usual training responsibilities of setting schedules, reading condition books, dealing with the books. When she isn't doing the job of several people, she also dabbles in the visual arts. She sometimes helps photograph major race days for the New York Racing Association if she's not running horses, and paints watercolors – all while juggling care of her young daughter. On Whitney Day, she was marching up and down the track with a 9-month-old baby in a pack on her back.

“Someone got a picture I think, I had her on my back and one camera on one shoulder and the other camera on the other shoulder,” Chichakly said. “I think when you're a horseman you're a multitasker anyway. When I was assistant trainer for Gary, he'd leave me sometimes with 60 horses at Belmont when they were in Saratoga, and I was on the pony too and sometimes riding. To be able to watch everything and get through the day, to have people not show up you get really used to having one thought here and one thought there, and working it as you're moving. You don't think about how much you actually did until you sit down at the end of the day and realize how tired you are.”

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‘Go Outside The Lines’: Game Changer Delgado Built Her Own Role At Breeders’ Cup

Whether you watch this year's Breeders' Cup in the stands at Del Mar, in an owner's suite high above the track, or on television at home, you will spend much of the event surveying the work of Dora Delgado – you just may not know it.

Delgado was named last month to the Sports Business Journal's Game Changers list, which recognizes women with senior leadership roles in sports. Making the Game Changers list was a pleasant surprise for Delgado, who has worked for Breeders' Cup for 38 years.

“That was really unexpected,” she said. “It's rare that I'm at the forefront of things at Breeders' Cup and I prefer that. I prefer to be in the background, working on logistics and operations. I like to pick things apart and put them back together. I haven't really been front and center … so to get recognized by a publication like the Sports Business Journal was a thrill.”

In a way, inclusion on the list was the outside world recognizing Delgado for innovations she had led quietly within racing with relatively little fanfare.

Her formal title at Breeders' Cup is Executive Vice President and Chief Racing Officer, and if those sound like catch-all roles, it's because she juggles a wide range of tasks to make the event happen each year. Delgado's duties at Breeders' Cup include event logistics, operational set-up, coordinating with commissions and federal authorities, managing equine security, recruiting international competitors, promoting foal and stallion nominations, and overseeing the organization's Veterinary Panel and Field Selection Panel. Though many people may not realize it, it was Delgado who administers the Win and You're In Challenge Series which has become the dominant schedule-maker for summer racing.

All of this, from what was supposed to be a temporary job in 1983, the first year of Breeders' Cup. Delgado remembers taking on a role as administrative assistant for the organization when it was still housed in a few cramped rooms in the basement of the old Blood-Horse building in Lexington, Ky. The whole staff was just a handful of people then, and everybody did a bit of everything. She recalls sitting at the table in the kitchenette, helping D.G. Van Clief Jr., decide what to call the various divisions.

“We had a little bit of freedom because what we were doing was wholly original,” she said. “It was something that had never been done before, so it did give you a little bit of room to be inventive and creative and think outside the box.”

Still, Delgado admits few of them probably dreamed the event would grow in all the ways it did.

“We had really high hopes,” she said. “We knew it was a really good idea and so needed – a year-end championship to say, 'Here's the season-ending game.' The Super Bowl, the World Series, the Olympics all rolled into one … what we didn't anticipate, I don't think, was the long-lasting effect it would have on the racing schedules and racing calendars.”

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Delgado's grandfather had been a trainer, and the family often traveled to wherever he was on the circuit, so she knew the racing life. When she took the job with Breeders' Cup, she had just graduated from high school and was looking for summer employment. She had done clerical work at the local Thoroughbred auctions, but hadn't thought of racing as a career option – nor had she decided what she wanted to do. As Breeders' Cup grew, so did her position, providing her the chance to travel as she helped stimulate interest in the races from international contenders. At some point, the temporary role became her career path and she expanded it whenever she could.

“I'm a doer,” she said. “I've always been one to roll up my sleeves and get it done. The more responsibilities I take on, I like to have my hands in it.

“I think it's been critical to my success, my attitude along the way of taking more and more. Let me take that from you, I'll handle that, I'll do that. I say that to people all the time who come to me for advice and mentorship – don't stay in your corner. Go outside the lines. Take on more skills, learn to do other things. Be the person who volunteers each time. Not only does it give you a wide variety of skills, but it shows you're such a team player and you're helping everybody rise.”

While there are more women at the top in American racing than there used to be, it's not yet commonplace to see them in C-suite roles at major racing organizations or tracks. In the modern era, Delgado does believe women are treated differently than men, though she isn't sure there are many men in hiring positions who would consciously exclude a woman from advancing specifically or solely because of her gender. Delgado sees the ongoing gender disparity as coming from a different drive.

“Would it have taken a man 40 years to go from administrative assistant to chief racing officer? Probably not,” she said. “But there's a dirty little secret in all businesses that if you do a job especially well and you prove yourself invaluable in that position, there is a certain reluctance to move you out of that position because then who are they going to get to do that work.”

“I think it's probably a slower trajectory for women in this business, because she's so good at her job and what are we going to do if we don't have her there? I was really fortunate though, at Breeders' Cup. Pam Blatz-Murff, before she passed away, was a tremendous mentor to me and really gave me a lot of opportunities. Every president we've had has given me chances to advance. You've just got to be willing to take the leap and show you can do the job.”

That willingness to leap in at every opportunity does require Delgado to keep a lot of plates spinning at once. She jokes that she doesn't work 24/7, but 18/7 may be an accurate description – although she stresses those long hours are matched by a dedicated team.

Racing, alongside many other industries, is now having to face the fact that many people don't necessarily want 18/7 schedules. Delgado admits that it has come with sacrifices – time away from family being a big one. If anything, she hopes that the push toward remote work hastened by the COVID-19 pandemic will make it easier for new employees to commit to the weekend-heavy schedule that is working on a major stakes festival in racing. It has become more accepted now for people to catch up on weekend race results using smartphones while spending time with kids or spouses, or pursuing their own hobbies.

Delgado has her eye to the future. She is hopeful that more major events and tracks will begin using Breeders' Cup safety and integrity protocols as a base for their own best practices – something that has already begun happening. Also, at the age of 56, she is keenly aware that she needs to begin passing on her knowledge and perspective to the next round of industry professionals. That means making sure that people find a career at the Breeders' Cup as exciting as she did years ago when she realized that was her path.

“I know there's a lot of conversation in the industry about recycling people, that we just rehash the same ones over and over again,” she said. “There needs to be opportunities to learn from people, but there's also got to be equal opportunities to promote from within. You've got to prepare the way. You can't keep it at a certain age or a certain gender. If you don't keep expanding the ranks you won't have anybody left to try to take these jobs.

“It's very important that we create an environment that we're fostering younger minds and people that are going to take this over. It can't all rest in my head, it's got to be something that my racing staff and nominations staff and the whole company takes pride of ownership in.”

Delgado is hopeful the implementation of the Horseracing Safety and Integrity Authority (HISA) and continued efforts by racing stakeholders at improving diversity, equity, and inclusion can make people already in the sport feel good about trying to recruit young people to make their careers in it, too.

“I've been a little discouraged by the number of breeding families whose younger generations don't show a lot of interest in pursuing the sport and keeping it going,” she said. “We've got to keep building on the legacy those farms have created. If their younger families don't want to, we need to bring more people in. I love Thoroughbred racing. I don't want it to wither and die on the vine. It can't come down to two or three racetracks and three or four max trainers …

I think we're on the cusp of really revolutionizing Thoroughbred racing in a good way.”

It won't be the first revolution she has seen.

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