pennsylvania horse racing commission | Horse Racing Free Tips

Keystone Integrity Teams Sweep Presque Isle To Parx

Uncovering loaded needles and syringes to apprehending an assistant starter who was in possession of a controlled substance, seasoned integrity teams conducted searches and seizures last week across a pair of Keystone State racetracks.

Led by the Pennsylvania State Horse Racing Commission staff, the sweeps took place first in Erie at Presque Isle Downs before spending three days downstate at Parx Racing in Bensalem through Saturday's GI Pennsylvania Derby.

As part of their integrity program, the Commission once again put together a group of investigators–this time from nine states, plus representatives from England–and set them to work policing the barns and stable gates.

“We do this as part of our commitment to the integrity of horse racing in the Commonwealth and for the safety and security of the horses involved,” said Director of Enforcement, Jason Klouser. “The Commission is able to assemble such a large team of investigators through the contacts made from the Organization of Racing Investigators, whose members are the best and brightest when it comes to enforcement at their local tracks.”

The Organization of Racing Investigators, known as ORI, is a membership organization composed of specialists who are employed by state racing commissions and racetracks. The members' tradecraft helps protect the sport and perform a myriad of duties from combating allegations of race fixing, stopping horse doping, and breaking up nefarious activities in the barn areas. Their network fights a host of other offenses which are committed against equine athletes. The Pennsylvania Racing Commission is a regulatory agency, however, ORI members in various other states are commissioned law enforcement agents. No matter their standing, all investigators are essential when it comes to enforcing the rules.

In the lead up to the big day at Parx, the Commission's integrity teams moved across the state in an effort to maintain the integrity of horse racing in the Commonwealth.

Car search at Parx Racing | PSHRC

“The Commission utilizes all industry assets at our disposal to ensure a level playing field for all participants,” Klouser said.

Conducting enforcement operations in the barn area and searching vehicles entering the stable gate at both Presque Isle Downs and Parx yielded results.

Based on updates through the Commission's website, Ruling No. 23096PI was handed down to trainer William Joseph Dowling, when a search found him with two loaded needles and syringes. The 6-year-old dark bay state-bred gelding Saketumi (Maclean's Music) was scratched from the seventh race Sept. 18 and a summary suspension was issued by the board of stewards Sept. 21.

Shifting the search to Parx last Friday and Saturday, Assistant Starter Luis A. Gonzalez Jr. was found in possession of a controlled substance and paraphernalia. Ruling No. 23254PP indicated that Gonzalez was in possession of a methamphetamine pipe containing residue and marijuana. He was summarily suspended by the Parx Board of Stewards Sept. 22.

“The Pennsylvania Horse Racing Commission is incredibly proactive at the state level and will continue to liaise with organizations in order to strengthen the integrity of horse racing and the health and safety of the equine athletes,” said Klouser. “The Racing Integrity Team was a collaborative effort between the Pennsylvania State Horse Racing Commission, Parx Racing, Presque Isle Downs, and the Pennsylvania Thoroughbred Horsemen's Association.”

Click here to access the state's rulings portal.

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HISA’s Medication Control Program Reportedly Delayed Again

The Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act (HISA) Authority's Anti-Doping and Medication Control (ADMC) program, which was expected to go into effect May 1 after twice having its start delayed this year, is reportedly now not going to be implemented for an additional three weeks, until May 22, according to comments made by Tom Chuckas at Tuesday's Pennsylvania Horse Racing Commission meeting.

TDN is attempting to confirm that news with the HISA Authority after hearing the new ADMC start date discussed at the meeting.

Chuckas, the director of Thoroughbred horse racing for the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, brought up the ADMC's latest delay during his monthly briefing to commissioners about HISA and the Horseracing Integrity and Welfare Unit (HIWU), which is the entity that will operate the ADMC.

“Relaunch was scheduled for May 1,” Chuckas said. “I was contacted [Apr. 21] by HIWU to be advised that based on the Triple Crown, based on multiple tracks opening, that May 1 would not be the launch date. It would be May 22.

“From a commission standpoint, the commission staff, the livestock workers, the vets, and assorted personnel are in place and will continue to do whatever is necessary to maintain Pennsylvania racing,” Chuckas said.

A HISA spokesperson did not respond to email and voicemail requests for an explanation prior to deadline for this story.

Initially, the ADMC program had a Jan. 1, 2023, start date. In mid-December 2002, that date got scrapped when the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) declined to approve the rules that would make the program operational, citing legal issues.

The HISA Authority then ramped up for an expected Mar. 27 start date after receiving FTC clearance. The ADMC went briefly into effect for four days, but on Mar. 31, a federal judge in Texas issued a 30-day injunction that suspended the program. That ruling is part of a long back-and-forth struggle between pro- and anti-HISA forces.

The order out of United States District Court, Northern District of Texas, Lubbock Division, was in response to a motion filed by the National Horsemen's Benevolent and Protective Association (NHBPA) arguing that the rule violated a provision of the Administrative Procedures Act (APA), which governs the process by which federal agencies develop and issue regulations.

But the court only addressed that 30-day rule required by the APA, and not the NHBPA's larger claims that HISA remains unconstitutional despite recently added clarifying language.

Back when the Mar. 31 order was issued, Lisa Lazarus, the HISA Authority's chief executive officer, said, “Obviously we're disappointed by the decision out of the Lubbock court, but it has to do with the FTC process; it's not strictly related to HISA. As a result, we're going to suspend operations for a few days, and get ready to go again on May 1, and hand it over back to the states to essentially run the programs….

“At this point, it's just 30 days, so we can plan for that, communicate that. So in weighing all the interests, we thought it was best to accept the decision, communicate it, plan for it and use this 30 days to continue to improve our processes. The ruling does make it clear that as of May 1, we're operational again,” Lazarus said back on Mar. 31.

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Penn National Slices 16 Dates in ’23 to Preserve Purse Structure

Penn National will slice 16 dates off its 2023 racing schedule (from 150 to 134), Parx Racing will add four dates (from 150 to 154), while Presque Isle Downs will remain level at 100 dates, according to a master calendar approved Nov.29 by the Pennsylvania Horse Racing Commission (PHRC).

“The reduction in days at Penn National was based on a mutual agreement between the horsemen and the racetrack, to try to maintain the current purse structure,” Anthony Salerno, a spokesperson for the PHRC, wrote in an email to TDN.

Penn National in 2022 had been approved for a nearly year-round 150 dates, running three-day weeks over 50 weeks, with week-long breaks in April and September. But in 2023, Penn National has scheduled “dark” periods during the first week of January, for two weeks April, the final week of September, and for three weeks in October, according to a calendar provided by the PHRC.

The Parx slate looks roughly the same compared to the 2022 template. Three-day race weeks will extend over 50 weeks, with a two-week break in August and five Saturdays and Sundays added to the mix. In 2022, when Parx added weekend dates, Wednesdays were usually trimmed from the schedule. But for 2023, those will instead be four-day racing weeks.

Presque Isle will begin its season one week earlier in 2023, on May 1. But the first three weeks of the year will be reduced from four-day weeks to three before Presque Isle rounds out the season with four- and five-day race weeks before closing Oct. 19.

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Op/Ed: That Burton Sipp is Still Racing is Indefensible

Take the time to read colleague Dan Ross's extensive and detailed story on the sordid career of trainer Burton Sipp and you might conclude that, in horse racing, enough is never enough. The story is about a lot more than the many controversies that have shadowed Sipp throughout his career, it is about how racing somehow always let Sipp back in, to give him a third chance, a fourth, fifth chance. It is about the sport's inability to police itself and its failure to permanently ban someone who has no business training horses.

Yet, on Monday night, Sipp, who has sent out 117 starters so far this year, will have two runners in at Mountaineer Park. This is the person that, in a 1993 story I penned for the New York Daily News, was called the “most deplorable person I have encountered on the backstretch of a racetrack,” by former Pennsylvania Racing Commission commissioner Hart Stotter. That he is still actively training is a beyond embarrassing. Worse yet, it plays right into the hands of racing's many critics who argue that the sport doesn't do nearly enough to keep the horses safe or to rid itself of its worst elements. When it comes to Sipp, how do we defend against that? We can't.

The latest firestorm surrounding Sipp involves allegations that he knowingly funnels his horses into the slaughter pipeline. That could have led to his permanent banishment from Mountaineer, which, in 2010, notified horsemen they will lose stalls and may be excluded from the track if any horses racing at Mountaineer end up at the Sugarcreek auction in Ohio, which is frequented by killer buyers who send horses on to slaughter. Proving such allegations can be tricky, but there's no evidence to suggest that Mountaineer racing officials have so much as launched an investigation. Perhaps they just decided to look the other way.

Ross reached out to James Colvin, the director of racing at Mountaineer, about the recent scrutiny on Sipp and got a non-answer answer. “I have no information for you to discuss on Burton Sipp, the WV Racing Commission has licensed Mr. Sipp and has also investigated him and to my knowledge have found no wrongdoing as to date,” Colvin wrote in an email.

Ross had more questions for Colvin, but he did not respond to subsequent emails.

With the allegations that Sipp sent horses to the auctions frequented with killer buyers gaining more and more traction, Churchill Downs Inc. took action, announcing on Tuesday that it was banning Sipp from its tracks. Sipp has started 25 horses this year at Presque Isle Downs, which is owned by Churchill. The company is to be commended for taking action against the trainer, but it's fair to ask them what took them so long. It's also fair to ask how they could have banned Bob Baffert for two years for nothing worse than medication overages while, until this week, taking no action against Sipp.

Sipp has been training since 1968. He carved out a niche for himself, winning a lot of races on the leaky roof circuit. He won a career best 272 races in 1981, but he would soon become embroiled in a controversy that should have meant the end of his career. In 1984, Sipp was indicted by a grand jury in New Jersey on charges of inflating insurance claims on nine horses who died in his care over a four-year period. Sipp eventually pled guilty to the lesser charges of witness tampering and was fined $7,500 and sentenced to five-years probation. When interviewed in 1993, Gregg Shivers, the assistant Burlington County prosecutor at the time, said that his office could have easily proven the earlier charges, but that the plea bargain was driven in part by the anticipated cost of the trial, expected to be one of the most expensive in Burlington County history.

Insurance fraud is a serious offense and so is witness tampering. Sipp had also been charged around the same time with forging a scratch card on another trainer's horse. Collectively, the industry acted and Sipp did not start any horses between December of 1984 and September of 1993.

“From my experience as Director of Enforcement for the Pennsylvania Racing Commission, I am aware of a number of actions and activities (Sipp) was involved in, all of which are a matter of public record,” Roger Marciano told me in 1993. “I thought and fully expected that he would never race again or be involved in any way with pari-mutuel racing.”

But Sipp never gave up on the idea of making a comeback and in 1993 found a racing commission willing to give him a license. With a license in hand from the Pennsylvania Racing Commission, he was back, entering horses at the track then known as Philadelphia Park. Ken Kirchner, the executive secretary of the Pennsylvania Racing Commission said that Sipp “deserved a second chance.”

After making 136 starts in 1994, Sipp disappeared, and it's not clear why. He did not return to racing until 2004. It appears that he spent some of that time operating Animal Kingdom, a 32-acre zoo and pet store in Burlington, N.J. According to a Philadelphia Inquirer article, Sipp was under investigation by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) for alleged animal welfare violations at the zoo. According to the Inquirer, citations stemmed all the way back to 2002, when five emaciated giraffes reportedly died at the zoo.

Having returned to training, Sipp settled in at Suffolk Downs. When asked by a Boston Globe reporter in 2005 why Sipp had been licensed Suffolk Downs steward Bill Keene said: ”There's nothing in the rule book that keeps him from getting a license because he has a past.” That Keene believed that a person's past transgressions should have no bearing on them getting a license says a lot of about the sport's attitude toward rule-breakers. Of course a person's past matters.

Sipp has been operating ever since resurfacing at Suffolk Downs. But it appears that there are some racetracks that have refused to accept his entries as all of his 2021 and 2022 starts have come at Mountaineer, Presque Isle and Thistledown. In at least one state, he has been permanently banned. Since the mid 1990s, Sipp has been barred from applying for a racing license in New Jersey.

On the surface, Sipp is a nobody. He is 78, competes only at low-level tracks and has won just eight races this year. His stable has earned just $112,861. When he makes headlines it is only for the wrong reasons. Perhaps the tracks that have allowed him to run thought no one would pay attention. But that hasn't been the case. There are plenty of good people who care and plenty of good people who want to see Burton Sipp permanently banned from every racetrack in the country. That that hasn't happened yet is simply inexcusable.

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