Viewers of the Grade 1 Forego Aug. 28 got a surprise in the stretch run when experienced competitor Firenze Fire reached over and attacked rival Yaupon around the sixteenth pole. The act of one horse attacking another is called “savaging” and while not completely unheard of during the running of a race, it's not exactly common.
Up until now, the most famous image of a similar incident was probably taken in the final strides of the 1980 Tremont Stakes, where Great Prospector reached over to bite at eventual winner Golden Derby. A black and white photo of the moment, shot from underneath the inside rail by Bob Coglianese, became the Eclipse Award winning image of that year.
Firenze Fire, a 6-year-old intact male with multiple graded stakes races to his credit, came at Yaupon with his teeth several times before jockey Jose Ortiz was able to straighten him out. If Yaupon was disturbed by the behavior, it didn't impact his performance, as he prevailed by a head at the wire. Local reports indicated Yaupon was unharmed by the incident.
Strangely, Firenze Fire has been on the receiving end of such treatment, too. During the running of the G3 Gallant Bob in 2018 he was bitten by Whereshetoldmetogo just before the wire — although he seems to have only gotten a single, somewhat discreet nip on the neck, rather than a teeth-barred facial attack like the one he dealt to Yaupon.
We asked a few equine behavior experts about Firenze Fire's behavior to learn more about what makes horses do this. Here's what we learned.
Dr. Sue McDonnell, founding head of the Equine Behavior Program at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine and Certified Animal Behaviorist:
I'm always wondering why this doesn't happen more often. That bite gesture seems almost a reflex response when horses are play or seriously chasing and running head to head.
I don't think it does have much to do with dominance, but of course can't be sure. I see this all day every day in the herd and I don't think it gains the perpetrator any advantage or dominance. I think it's a reflex gesture that communicates, 'Slow down and let's play fight!' I agree to people it looks vicious, and people often assume it's a dominance thing, but that's a big assumption, probably without much evidence. What I see doesn't support that at all.
I see this among foals playing, bachelors play chasing and wrestling, usually after a long run or “race” if you will, and they are tiring and ones seems to want to slow or stop and wrestle. In serious combat between stallions, that particular biting gesture is not seen. It's more of very serious lunge to take the other down to the ground.
My first thought is that the previous incident is likely coincidence. The only thing that I can think of concerning the possible relationship of having been involved previously is that Firenze Fire is the type of horse that is paying attention to the competitor horse in the sense of actually “racing” the other horse rather just running in response to the rider direction and training — a different motivational state, which is likely perceived among horses. And that in the previous incident where he was the receiver, that competitor horse was reflexively responding to Firenze Fire's natural racing motivation/behavior.
Firenze Fire #10 (R) with Irad Ortiz, Jr. riding overcame a bite by 2nd place finisher Whereshetoldmetogo (L) with jockey Jeremy Rose to win the $300,000 Grade III Gallant Bob Stakes at Parx Racing in Bensalem, Pennsylvania on September 22, 2018. Photo By Taylor Ejdys/EQUI-PHOTO
Dr. Nicholas Dodman, program director of the Animal Behavior Department of Clinical Sciences at the Tufts Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine and diplomate of American College of Veterinary Behaviorists:
Biting with ears pinned back is a typical behavior of an intact horse or a gelding given steroids. If you walk down track shed rows, you can pretty much tell the stallions by the way the horses lay their ears back and charge at people with teeth bared or they do it only to horses being hot walked around the shed rows. The walker knows to give them a wide berth from the stalls and needs to have their horse strong in hand when going by.
I doubt very much that Firenze Fire's biting behavior was a reaction to his being on the receiving end of similar behavior some years before.
Kerry Thomas, founder of the Thomas Herding Technique and THT Bloodstock:
[This incident is not necessarily about exerting dominance] because dominance and physical expression do not always go hand-in-hand by the laws of herd dynamics in nature. In this scenario I view it as more related to the manner of physical expression in what we at THT call a “close-space-fighter”, which means for us horses that have a tendency to exaggerate their physical expression during times of protracted competitive stresses.
It's more a re-direction of focus than a fracture. The same amount of emotional energy that was housed in the forward competitive aspect gets shifted to what the horse views as a close space infraction. This shift in emotional energy disrupts physical efficiency and subsequently affects physical pace. In short, what you have is the mental horse going one direction and the physical horse another for those moments.
By and large I view these as unrelated, separate incidents. However that said, Firenze Fire's herd dynamic rhythms and competitive nature in close space battles can lend itself to a variety of both dishing-out & eliciting of arbitrary expressions, most of which are subtle, some of which, as we have seen, not so subtle.
The emotional expressions of these athletes reminds us we should never underappreciate the beauty of their nature, nor undervalue the impact of it.
One of the first things I did after adopting Blueberry was to embark on a small online shopping spree for him (naturally, none of the draft cross mare's gear would fit him), followed by a small online shopping spree for myself. I found a t-shirt on Etsy which reads, “My OTTB ran slower than yours.” It made me chuckle, as the new owner of a horse who ran once and placed fourth.
Blueberry is by Uncle Mo, out of a graded stakes-winning mare. He had the mind of a racehorse, and we're told he showed such impressive speed in the mornings, his training team suggested he be nominated to stakes races at Woodbine before he'd even made a start. We joke sometimes about our “underachiever” who cost $400,000 as a yearling and won a little over $4,000 in return.
But the reality is, there's a little air of disappointment when racing people are asked about OTTBs. Many are eager to support aftercare in word and in deed, but there's often a wistful air if you ask them about a specific horse that has left their operation for a second career. 'Oh yes,' they may say. 'It's a shame they didn't work out.'
I get it; no one spends six figures in stud fees, or pays an Eclipse Award-winning trainer's day rates hoping to find out their horse is slow, or injury-prone, or briefly brilliant but eventually flat. Everyone wants to win the Kentucky Derby. Everyone wants to catch lightning in a bottle. Perhaps it's good that so many people in this sport wake every day with these stars in their eyes, continuing to breed, sell, buy, train, and care for the thousands of horses who support so many livelihoods. Everyone who has a role in a racehorse's life is subject to back-breaking work, long hours, lost money, and chasing sleep. There wouldn't be an industry to employ us all if we didn't have crazy dreams to make all of that worthwhile.
But the reality, which I know people understand just as keenly, is that there will be many more horses like Blueberry than American Pharoah. When I wrote about the challenges of aftercare in late 2019, 28 percent of Thoroughbreds born between 2005 and 2014 never even made it to the races. One Australian study found that about 40 percent of that country's racing population retired each year, with only 10 percent of those heading off to breeding careers. The 2020 American foal crop is estimated to be 19,010, but there were only 99 Grade 1 races held in North America last year – it's just a matter of logic that some horses will have a career on a breeding farm waiting them, but most of them will not.
The last few months of under saddle work with Blueberry have been a joy. I tell people that he makes me look a lot smarter than I am, because the level of dressage we're working on now is physically easy for him. Our trainer, Stephanie Calendrillo, told me at one point that she loves a horse who loves to work, who asks her when she encourages them to lift their backs and soften their jaws, 'How high do you want me to lift?' She said Blueberry does it for you and then asks 'Oh sorry, was that enough? Do you need me to do more?'
He loves going to work, but he's smart about it. I pulled him out of his stall for a morning ride this week – his first in a couple of weeks – and where others might have expended calories on exuberant bucks and hops, he was immediately quiet, focused, responding to the slightest twitch of my rein or heel. He does not waste energy (if anything, he can trend towards 'sleepy' rather than quick), and believes with all his heart he is a professional who has Done All Of This Before even when he hasn't.
Having known his mother, I'd hoped when I adopted him that he would have this mindset. I did not know, until about May when he began ground driving walk/trot/canter, how he moved, beyond having a very impressive walk at the Fasig-Tipton Saratoga Sale in 2018. In his first months with me, he was on 24-hour turnout while he recovered from some minor ligament desmitis and we awaited a stall and better weather at my trainer's main property. When I saw him stretch out at a trot and felt his floaty canter for the first few times, I used a few four-letter words. I hadn't just adopted a nice horse, I'd adopted a really nice horse.
I'm excited to bring him to the Thoroughbred Makeover next month, but I also recognize that it's just our first show season goal. There will be other seasons after this one, and I think he's just going to get better with time.
'I'm not surprised,' Stephanie told me. 'He's well-bred, and class is class, no matter what you're doing with them.'
Blueberry warming up at his second dressage show in July, where he would win his Intro C class and finish second in his Intro A class
I think it's time we change the conversation about these, the vast majority of the Thoroughbred foals born in this country each year. There were 27,700 races held in North America, which means there were fewer than 27,700 winners, but that doesn't mean that every horse who didn't win a race, or who found a non-breeding second career has failed – they were just a predictable part of the statistical picture of competitive racing.
By extension, we can also reframe the successes of the racing connections for those horses. Part of the goal of breeding Thoroughbreds is to create an athlete, and breeders Jay and Christine Hayden did that. One of the goals of a commercial consignor is to be a source for Thoroughbreds with a lot of potential, and Cara Bloodstock achieved that in selling him. One of the goals for responsible owners is to be caring stewards of their horses' welfare, and Godolphin did that, backing off on his training at the first sign of trouble and providing me a sound horse with no limitations on performance. One of a trainer's worries is ensuring that they keep their horses physically and also mentally sound, and Johnny Burke and Brad Cox ensured their staff preserved Blueberry's kind impression of humans, allowing me a relaxed 4-year-old gelding who sometimes gets groomed by my trainer's 4-year-old little girl.
Horses with second careers are simply those who found renewed purpose in a different job. When humans do this, it's called resilience. Let's give our OTTBs the same credit for finding their calling.
A week after her resounding success in the Grade 1 Jonathan Sheppard Handicap at Saratoga, trainer Keri Brion said the result still hadn't fully sunk in. Brion saddled four runners in the race, and trained all of the trifecta, led by The Mean Queen (IRE) and rounded out by Baltimore Bucko (GB) and French Light (FR).
“I didn't really allow myself to even start thinking about it,” said Brion. “A lot of people were saying it to me, but to be honest I just hoped one of them could get it done. I knew the pressure was on – on paper, mine were the ones to beat. It wasn't until the eighth pole I started yelling for French Light, 'Get up there!' to be third.”
The accomplishment was fitting, since Brion served as assistant trainer to Sheppard for 11 years and was part of his team for several of his 15 victories in the race, formerly known as the New York Turf Writers Cup.
For Brion, the past eight months since going out on her own have been a whirlwind. Brion had taken a string of Sheppard's horses over to Ireland in November 2020 and was still there when she got word in January that Sheppard was retiring. Brion had long hoped to open her own racing stable and had developed good relationships with many of Sheppard's owners, so she had expected at some point she may take the mantle from him but said it happened rather suddenly.
“I always planned to go out on my own, but maybe not in this way,” she said. “But everything happens for a reason, and everything's going pretty good now.”
Now, she is the leading trainer in the National Steeplechase Association standings by earnings and is tied with recent Hall of Fame inductee Jack Fisher for NSA wins. She got her first Grade 1 win in late July when Baltimore Bucko took the G1 A.P. Smithwick Memorial. Her jaunt to Ireland also helped her make history, as she became the first American trainer to win a hurdle race in the country (courtesy of The Mean Queen) and the first to win a National Hunt race in Ireland with Scorpion's Revenge. Brion said the level of competition in Ireland and England for steeplechase horses is considerably higher than in the United States, where there are comparatively few steeplechase horses.
The months spent in Ireland exposed Brion to new training styles to build better fitness and stamina, but also gave her the chance to develop an angle she hopes will bring new owners into the steeplechase scene in the States. Prize money has become a major problem in English and Irish racing, and Brion has found that a mid-level runner there can be tremendously successful in America, where steeplechase purses are much better.
“Obviously, over there jump racing is more prestigious, so they've got that going for them but the guys who are putting a lot of money into the sport don't even break even,” she said. “You can at least break even, maybe make some money here when you do it the right way. I have quite a few people intrigued by it.”
American jump racing is a great outlet for a runner who prefers firm ground, which they don't reliably get in Ireland.
Brion leads The Mean Queen back to the barn after a workout with Tom Garner up
Although steeplechase is most popular in East Coast areas known for all types of equestrian sport, like fox hunting and eventing, Brion said she wish more people understood that it really has more in common with flat racing than cross country.
“I wish the sport did a better job of advocating and teaching people about it because there are quite a few misconceptions about the sport, but it's only because you would have no way to know,” she said. “I think people look at us as a different entity. Flat racing, you look at them as athletes doing a sport. Steeplechase racing, I think people look at it like we're almost show horses which we're not. We're just as competitive as the flat, and there's money to be made in it. It could be supported just as well.”
Brion first came to horses not as a reformed show rider, but as a Thoroughbred fan from the age of 10. She started off working at Sylmar Farm in Christiana, Penn., and learned to gallop at the age of 13. Although she's known for her steeplechase success, Brion said she hopes to build a name for herself in the realm of flat racing also, the way Sheppard did with top runners Informed Decision and Forever Together.
Perhaps contrary to popular belief among flat racing fans, Brion said the training process for a steeplechaser really isn't much different from a flat horse. Hurdlers also don't actually travel much slower than flat horses and need just as strong a closing kick, they just settle over a greater distance first.
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Brion also sees potential in a certain type of flat horse to make a transition over hurdles, and is hopeful she can help more owners see the potential in that type of second career.
“You look for horses – whether they're turf or dirt – that are running long, they're coming late, and just missing,” she said. “Horses that look like they want more ground. I don't mind dirt or turf, either way. You want to see horses that are finishing third or fourth and are galloping out strongly. Every horse jumps, it's just a matter of how good. You can teach them to jump. Even a $10,000 claimer who just runs out of room or is just very one-paced and has a high cruising speed, those are the horses that do well [steeplechasing]. And it's always good to remind owners, horses get their maiden conditions back over jumps.”
Brion aboard Grade 1 winner All The Way Jose
The summer season has been a busy one for Brion, who bases out of Fair Hill. The Fair Hill base is perfect for her program, which allows horses regular turnout and the chance to gallop over rolling hills, but it still means a lot of time on the road. Brion is sending horses to Virginia, New York, and Pennsylvania at regular intervals, so her days are long ones. Brion spent some time as a jockey (she was champion apprentice jump jockey in 2017), and still gallops as many of her own string of 30 as she can. This fall will bring more commuting, as there are steeplechase meets every weekend through mid-November. Race days like the G1 Jonathan Sheppard make the long days worth it.
“I have quite a few nice 2-year-olds in my barn, so I'm hoping they will fire and I can get my name out there,” she said. “I've got a bunch of new owners from overseas and I'm looking forward to getting new horses in. My success in Saratoga has really helped me, and I have some exciting new clients.”
In late July, a grainy video circulated on Twitter, purporting to show the impetus for the two-year suspension issued to trainer Amber Cobb by Delaware Park stewards for “improper or inhumane treatment” of an animal and conduct detrimental to racing. The ruling had puzzled racing fans and media when it was published, since it did not describe the nature of the incident that prompted such a serious penalty.
(The Paulick Report received a clearer version of that video in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request in late August. It is embedded below.)
The video shows a chestnut horse tied either to the back wall or to the metal grating over a window of a stall, while a woman shouts obscenities at the horse and strikes at the animal with a plastic pitchfork until the horse, a 2-year-old unraced filly, rears and stumbles, then falls to the ground with the wall tie still attached to either her bit or her halter. She tries to rise and falls again, finally lying still while breathing heavily until someone unclips the tie.
Many people wondered, after watching the video clip, what prompted the Delaware Thoroughbred Racing Commission to shorten Cobb's suspension from two years to 60 days after an appeal hearing held July 14. A recording of the appeal proceeding, which stretched for nearly five hours, revealed the decision came down largely to the perceived credibility of the accused and a whistleblower.
The video in question, along with a Live Photo captured on a previous date, were both shot by Lisa Whittaker, former groom for Cobb, sometime in February 2021 at a private farm in New Jersey. (The Paulick Report did not obtain a copy of the Live Photo. Whittaker testified she intended to take a video but didn't switch her phone's camera settings quickly enough and ended up with a live photo, which shows a short burst of action and a still image.) Whittaker provided both the photo and video along with a written statement to stewards in May 2021, after she said she had secured employment in another barn and was no longer afraid of being fired by Cobb.
Whittaker painted an unsettling picture of life in Cobb's barn. She worked for Cobb in November at Delaware Park, and then again at the New Jersey farm beginning in January or February, and continued with Cobb through the time that she sent a string to Delaware Park for the start of the new racing season. Whittaker said she saw treatment from Cobb that began to concern her – both at her time on the farm, where Cobb was starting young horses, and back at Delaware Park.
“Her methods are brutal,” Whittaker told the commission. “She is very heavy-handed. If they are slightly out of line, and these are young horses, she's screaming at them to whoa and hitting them with a whip. They don't understand why. She flips horses over all the time. She'll pull on their mouths when they're ground driving. She's screaming at them, she's whipping them, and there's nowhere for them to go but up.”
At the beginning of the 2021 Delaware Park meet, Whittaker recalled a horse – a bay colt – who was being taught to use the automatic walker. The horse broke loose and ran around the Delaware Park property for an extended period of time. When they finally caught him, the overwrought horse didn't want to go into his stall. Whittaker testified that Cobb beat the colt in the head with a chain shank to get him to back into the stall. She also said Cobb told her to withhold feed from the horse for four days afterwards.
Whittaker said the live photo she took was the day before the video and depicted the same horse.
“If you look, she's pulling this horse down,” she said, looking at the photo in the appeal hearing. “That's what she does, she'll drive them forward and she'll pull so hard, they have nowhere to go but up … This horse reared up, hit her head on the wall, and came down and broke a tack box.”
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On the day the video was shot, Whittaker said Cobb had tried ground driving the horse, an unnamed filly out of Bluegrass Ellie, outside in an open area for the first time, four days into her ground training.
(Ground driving is a common practice in a horse's early training and usually involves tacking the horse with saddle and bridle and attaching a driving line on each side of the bit. The handler will walk behind the horse or, for work at a trot or canter, may stand while the horse travels in a circle around the handler. The practice is a good way to introduce a horse to steering and the feel of the lines on the horse's sides can prepare them for a rider's legs brushing them.)
The filly bolted, and at some point, got loose. Whittaker recalled Cobb brought the horse back into the barn and tied her to the wall in the stall while Whittaker kept mucking a nearby stall. When Whittaker heard scrambling and commotion, she rushed over and began filming Cobb's outburst.
For her part, Cobb did not deny that she is the person shown in the video, or that she hit the filly with a plastic pitchfork. Beyond that, her and Whittaker's interpretations of what takes place in her barn differ. Cobb denies that she ever instructed food be withheld from any of her horses for days; she recalled the colt who was loose at Delaware but said she told Whittaker to withhold food only until the colt was cool to prevent colic. She denied ever hitting any other horses.
Prior to the video, Cobb said both that the filly had been very tough but also that she had been responsive and reasonably compliant over their prior three days of ground driving inside the barn. The Live Photo from the previous day, Cobb and another witness said, showed the filly spooking at the noise from a car outside the barn, and Cobb disputed that the filly had fallen over, saying she broke the tack box with one of her feet as she regained her balance and was uninjured.
On the day in question, she said the horse became agitated when she got into the open field, seemingly with no provocation, and bolted. Cobb let one of her driving lines go almost immediately and struggled to hold the horse with the other.
“Eventually I didn't have anything but to let her go because she was so tangled up,” Cobb said. “I didn't want her to trip or hurt herself so I let go and she freaked out and ended up rearing up so bad, she got tangled up in the ropes. It wasn't anything I did, she just lost her mind.”
Once she caught the filly, Cobb said she brought her inside to Whittaker, who was told not to tie the horse to the wall. The filly, Cobb said, had previously demonstrated a propensity for “climbing the wall” or scraping and striking it with her front hooves.
When Cobb discovered Whittaker had tied the horse to the wall anyway, she said, she went in to release the horse. Then, Cobb said the horse tried to kick her – that was not shown on the video. The video recording began, Cobb said, when she made a second attempt to enter the stall to release the horse, first by standing in the doorway with the pitchfork and yelling.
“I was upset and I don't want to say 'stressed' because that's not right, but I didn't want anything to happen,” said Cobb. “I just didn't want anything to happen. So when I tried to get her to move over my fear and anxiety overtook me. I didn't want to hurt her, I just wanted her to be OK.”
Whittaker didn't see the incident the same way.
“That was her losing control of her temper,” said Whittaker. “She was mad at the filly. She lost control and went after the filly. That's pure anger. The filly, you see she's standing tied to the wall. She tried to say she was kicking at her, and the filly is standing calmly and had turned her head to her. She showed no aggressive behavior whatsoever.”
Indeed, commissioners appeared shocked by the behavior in the video. One can be heard muttering during the first replay of the video, “Jesus. Shit. I can't see this.” When a commissioner asks a staff member to confirm whether there is any further video evidence, a commissioner mutters, “That's enough.”
Commissioners did press Cobb on her motives for approaching the filly the way she did, focusing particularly on the moments early in the clip where the horse appears to be standing calmly before Cobb begins brandishing the fork at the horse.
“I know she looks calm,” said Cobb. “She's come at me numerous times. I'm scared that she's going to come over on me again. I kind of wanted to set my barrier.
“I wanted to say, hey, I'm dominant here. I need you to submit a little bit to me here. She's fighting me tooth and nail.”
Cobb was asked whether she could have anticipated that threatening the horse would be more likely, not less likely, to result in the horse flipping over in the stall.
“Yeah, but I didn't hit her that hard,” Cobb said, who attributed the horse's fall to slippery stall mats.
Cobb said she'd never had another horse flip over with her before.
But in fact, she has. In June 2020, an unraced 2-year-old named Sky High Interest flipped over coming out of a wash rack at Finger Lakes and sustained a head injury requiring euthanasia, according to a report from the New York State Gaming Commission.
“Oh,” Cobb said when asked about Sky High Interest. “I forgot about her. I try to forget about her. She bolted off the wash rack and flipped over. It was an older horse … they think it was semi-heart attack related. She was an older horse.”
Commissioners also focused on the time lag between when the video was shot and the time it was reported to stewards in Delaware. Alan Pincus, attorney for Cobb, brought up the whistleblower's personal life as a possible motivator, suggesting that Whittaker's ex-boyfriend had an affair with Cobb (who said she has been in a long-term relationship with jockey Jamie Rodriguez for the past decade). Whittaker laughed, seeming bemused by the suggestion when questioned by Pincus. That laughter, for two commissioners, spoke a thousand words.
“Quite frankly I found her to not be a credible witness,” said secretary-commissioner Ed Stegemeier, citing her laughter as “nervous.” “She's not on trial but if she really cared passionately about animals, which she does to a degree, why do you wait months to do something?
“I want to support our stewards … but I really feel we need to reexamine the decision that was made … Maybe this was an isolated incident. But God help you if in the future this ever happens again.”
At the same time, Stegemeier said, the horse's reaction suggested it wasn't an isolated incident.
“When the horse saw you had a pitchfork, the horse immediately reacted to you coming in, which said to me this has happened before,” he said. “This was not the first time.”
Character witnesses for Cobb questioned Whittaker's professionalism while praising Cobb's, reiterating that they'd never seen horses without food or water in her shedrow. Rodriguez also testified to corroborate Cobb's version of events. He can be heard at the end of the video, telling Cobb the filly is dangerous and needs to be removed from the barn.
By contrast, several commissioners remarked during public deliberations that they were impressed with Cobb, who studied equine business for two years before embarking on a series of internships at breeding facilities and training operations and sustaining a brief career as a jockey before a horse she was riding flipped over on her and injured her knee.
“You were articulate,” said chairman W. Duncan Patterson Jr. “You were an excellent witness. I believe you were scared but I don't know what was inside your head, that's just what I'm surmising. I believe you acted irrationally and I cannot ignore the video. It's too damning. I concur with what my fellow commissioners said that the stewards were correct in their ruling but the penalty goes much too far. I think that would put you out of business. But maybe being out of business for a couple months, three months might be a good thing. Let you clear your head. I know what this business is like because I've been in it.”
“I believe Miss Cobb is one of the most articulate people that I've heard from the back end of Delaware Park,” said commissioner Richard Levine. “Everything we heard about her was excellent except for one witness who I personally think was very flawed and had not-friendly motivations. But the film does show what the film shows. All the evidence we have is that it was a single incident.”
The stewards also could not corroborate any of the accusations Whittaker made in her written statement about other abuses, either in New Jersey or Delaware. William Troilo, acting chief state steward, said that the decision of the stewards was based only on the evidence provided to them, since Cobb disputed the majority of Whittaker's statement.
All commissioners agreed that two years would end Cobb's career and should be shortened. Per the official rules of meeting order, the group worked its way down from a two-year suspension until they could find a length of time that was acceptable to the majority. They settled at 60 days.
Henry “Jim” Decker was the lone holdout and abstained from the final vote, which without him was 4-0 in favor of lowering Cobb's suspension to 60 days. They also required that Cobb demonstrate proof of completion of a certified anger management program, apparently not realizing that the stewards' ruling had already included that requirement.
“Cruelty to animals, whether it's a one-off or not, is unacceptable anywhere,” said Decker, who had suggested a one-year suspension. “The fact that something is a death sentence for a racing career, I don't believe should have any bearing on what the penalty should be. The penalty should be commensurate with the crime, so to speak.”
Cobb appealed the 60-day suspension into the Delaware court system, but through her attorneys voluntarily dismissed that case on Aug. 24. She has not saddled a horse since July 21.
Cobb and Rodriguez said the filly was sent back to her breeder, Saratoga Glen Farm, with the recommendation she not complete the breaking process over fears she was too dangerous. As of late June, Troilo said she was turned out in a field. She did not appear to be physically injured by the incident.
