Racing Diversity: Why We Must Do Better, And Why Horses Are Counting On Us

I spend a lot of time these days thinking about Gene Carter. I was fortunate enough to meet the 'last man to ride Man o' War,' as he was billed by myself and others, before his death last fall. Carter had an undeniable magic with horses, which was still evident when I spoke to him just after his 93rd birthday. He was working his retirement gig, showing the likes of Funny Cide, Point Given, Go For Gin, and others at the Kentucky Horse Park's Hall of Champions.

I had the impression that Carter's only real regret about his long career as an exercise rider and groom in Central Kentucky was that he was never able to get a jockey's license. He won his lone start, an amateur race on a farm. The margin wasn't close. From what he told me, it was helped that he knew his horse like the back of his hand because they'd spent many mornings together.

I knew that horse racing's early history had included many black jockeys (though I didn't realize just how many until I researched Edward Brown, who eventually became one of several successful black trainers also). I also knew that I didn't see so many in the saddle these days and couldn't remember reading about many after about the 1920s. I had never been too sure why that was, so I timidly asked Gene about it.

Carter told me that in the days he was longing to enter the starting gates in a race, Jim Crow was alive and well. Black riders could not get licenses in the 1950s and 1960s in some places. Successful jockeys could make real money, and he suspected that wasn't something the sport's white gatekeepers were comfortable with, especially in the South. He did have a trainer who, impressed with his work in the mornings, pledged to take him to New York and vouch for him to be licensed there. Unfortunately, the trainer died of a heart attack the week before they were scheduled to make the trip, and there went his opportunity.

So many of us want to believe we are horse whisperers, but too often we're not as good as we wish at either speaking or listening to them. The best most of us can hope for is to sharpen our skills with practice, but we can never quite match someone with the natural gift. I've only ever seen a handful of horsemen who possess an innate aura of calm authority that instantly softens a horse's eye and relaxes them. Those are the people who can, seemingly without trying, soothe the nervous horse and coax out the cautious. I didn't see Carter ride, but he did tell me about how he figured out the key to difficult horses very early – by speaking to them, and assuming they could understand him. Not a popular concept at the time, and one that enabled him to get on the barn's tougher horses with success. If his ground work is anything to go by, he would have been one of those riders I envy and one horses love.

That Carter wasn't allowed to get his jockey's license for something as arbitrary as the color of his skin was and is outrageously wrong and unfair to him. It was also a great loss for the sport, and more importantly, a great loss for the horses who could have benefitted from having a partner like him in a race. Horses, after all, care about what's in your heart and what's in your brain, and not your race or ethnicity.

Since the time when Carter was refused a license, most people say there are fewer and fewer black jockeys and trainers (though they are by no means absent). Through the years, newspaper and magazine writers have questioned why that may be, and whether black horsemen have felt excluded by the sport.

As with any complex question, there is no single answer. Some interview subjects told stories of their experiences with overt racism in the Thoroughbred industry, while others said they never felt singled out or treated differently.

The children of Will Harbut (who would become Gene Carter's father-in-law) remember how famous Harbut's connection with Man o' War was. But, in a Lexington Herald-Leader feature from 2001, one of them also remembered that Harbut was asked not to attend Man o' War's 21st birthday party.

“They said, 'Will, you eat first,' [separately from others attending the dinner]” Tom Harbut told writer Maryjean Wall. “Well, it's embarrassing. That shows, 'I can tell hello to you but I don't want to sit down with you. My mother wouldn't go. In those days, the only time they wanted to see you was when you were working. Otherwise you hide yourself.”

Tom followed his father into the horse business, working as a groom and exercise rider and eventually serving as stallion manager at Spendthrift Farm.

Wall also interviewed Dick Spiller, who worked as a groom and got his trainer's license in California while working for Cy White. Although Spiller remembered how harrowing it was to ship horses around the country in a time of segregation, he felt respected by the horsemen he worked with.

“To tell you the truth about it, I wasn't bothered about segregation too much because the people I came under, like Cy White, I never did feel like a segregated person,” Spiller told Wall. “And he didn't consider me segregated. He was a wonderful man to be around.”

A report from the Louisville Courier-Journal in 2000 highlighted the career of William Skiles Sr just before his retirement from Churchill Downs, where he started as a waiter in 1946. Kentucky tracks didn't hire black mutuel tellers for another two decades, and according to the article, Skiles was the first. Still, he didn't consider himself a pioneer.

“I was treated no differently than any other clerks,” he told writer Mark Coomes. “If [white co-workers] felt different about me, they didn't show it.”

According to a report in the Daily Racing Form, the first black head starter wasn't hired in America until Rick Walker was named to the position at Thistledown in 2004. The track also saw the country's first black racing official in 1982, and its first black steward in 1986.

That wasn't so long ago.

Recent comments from well-known bloodstock agent Tom VanMeter have sparked a new discussion about race in horse racing. They're proof that racist sentiments are still present in our sport, as they are in the greater world. Jim Crow may be gone, black riders can be licensed as jockeys, but that doesn't mean our sport has resolved its issues with race. I can't pretend to understand all the reasons why there are fewer black horsemen in our sport than there once were, but I would venture to guess racing may not feel like a comfortable environment for some. There were likely children who grew up hearing about their parents' experiences as trainers, grooms, exercise riders and justifiably thought, 'That doesn't seem like a space where I'd be valued.'

First and foremost, those in power in horse racing (who are almost uniformly white men) should care about this because they should want people to be treated with respect and kindness in our little corner of the world. They should recognize that diverse viewpoints and experiences at all levels can only make our sport better. Besides basic human decency, we should also want to do the best we can for the horse, who is supposed to be at the center of everything. It does the horse no good for generational knowledge to be lost or for good horsemen not to be given opportunities to rise through the ranks to become trainers, owners, board members, track management.

Everyone can play a part in making our sport a more welcoming place for all. For us at the Paulick Report, that means continuing to tell the stories of BIPOC (black/indigenous/people of color) in our industry, bringing their forgotten history to light, and seeking to amplify BIPOC voices when we look for contributors to our publication. We have done some good work on these points, but we can and should do more. I challenge others to think about what they can do to increase diversity in their segment of the sport. Do it for your fellow human, and do it for the horse.

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Beat Ray Every Day At Del Mar: And You Can Do It … For FREE!

With apologies to the late actor and horseplayer Mickey Rooney, I lost $20 on my first visit to Del Mar in 1979 and spent the next 41 years trying to win it back.

Maybe in appreciation of that dedication, along with the “taking one for the team” selfless attitude that has kept me coming back to the Southern California seaside track every year, my so-called friends at the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club hoodwinked invited me to be the sucker centerpiece for an online contest that begins today and runs each day throughout the summer meet ending on Labor Day, Sept. 7.

Here's the deal.

It's free to play. Sign up here. Now. All you have to do is bet a mythical $100 each day on the selected contest race in win, place or show bets on any horse or horses. You can read the specific rules here.

If, at the end of the summer meet, you wind up with the highest bankroll of your accumulated bets, you'll win two VIP tickets to the 2021 Breeders' Cup at Del Mar. There are other prizes for top 10 finishers and anyone who has a higher bankroll than me at the end of the meet (dream on!) will be entered into a drawing for additional prizes.

Anyone who can beat me, given my decades of losing playing Del Mar, will own the deserved title of Beach Boss.

To make things more humiliating for me interesting, Del Mar is enlisting some celebrity handicappers to see if they have what it takes to out-handicap me. Every Saturday  at 11 a.m. PT on Del Mar's social media accounts (Facebook, Twitter, Youtube), I'll join television host Michelle Yu and and a guest handicapper for some friendly conversation and analysis of the day's contest race. First up this week is Larry Collmus, who is subbing for longtime track announcer Trevor Denman this summer. Thankfully, they've thrown me a patsy on this first week.

I'm going into this petrified brimming with confidence that all these years of experience are going to pay off. Bring it on!

 

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The Friday Show Presented By Woodbine: Diversity In American Racing

In the wake of the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, the topic of racial disparity has been all over mainstream news outlets. Questions about diversity, inclusion, and racism in horse racing have been simmering since the start of Black Lives Matter protests earlier this summer.

This week, the topic took center stage in horse racing news after a bloodstock agent was condemned for making racist posts on social media. Keeneland later announced it was ruling Tom VanMeter and his associated companies off its property while the organization investigates. VanMeter has apologized for his comments.

In this week's edition of The Friday Show, editor-in-chief Natalie Voss sat down with Alicia Wincze-Hughes, career turfwriter and now communications director for the National Thoroughbred Racing Association, to get her thoughts on where the sport stands with diversity – and how it can improve. Hughes recently authored a column on the topic for the Thoroughbred Daily News which is available here.

Watch the Friday Show below and share your thoughts.

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Attorney For Baffert Claims Human Back Pain Patch Caused Drug Positives For Gamine, Charlatan

Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert claims that two horses in his barn were “unknowingly and innocently exposed” to a banned substance that wound up in their post-race test samples from May 2 at Oaklawn Park in Hot Springs, Ark.

Information leaked from initial testing by the Arkansas Racing Commission's contracted laboratory in late May indicated that Gamine and Charlatan both tested positive for the Class 2 drug lidocaine. Gamine won a May 2 allowance race by a neck. She subsequently won the Grade 1 Acorn Stakes at Belmont Park on June 20 by 18 ¾ lengths. Charlatan won a division of the Grade 1 Arkansas Derby and shortly thereafter suffered a minor ankle injury that will have him sidelined until after the Sept. 5 Kentucky Derby. Both horses are unbeaten in three starts.

Split samples, sent at Baffert's request to the Equine Analytical Testing Laboratory at the University of California-Davis, confirmed the findings, according to published reports.

Lidocaine is used by veterinarians during lameness examinations to “block” or numb a horse's limbs. It is also commonly found in ointments and analgesic treatments and patches to alleviate pain in humans.

A statement from Baffert's attorney, Craig Robertson, said both Gamine and Charlatan were exposed to the lidocaine from a patch worn by a member of the trainer's staff suffering back pain while tending to the horses at Oaklawn.

“Even though lidocaine is a lawful, widely available therapeutic medication, it was never intentionally administered to either Gamine or Charlatan,” the statement reads. “When test results indicated that trace amounts of lidocaine were found in both horses after their respective races on May 2, Bob Baffert and his team were shocked. Leading up to May 2, both horses were healthy and worked hard to earn their victories that day.

“After investigation,” the statement continues, “it is our belief that both Gamine and Charlatanwere unknowingly and innocently exposed to lidocaine by one of Bob's employees. The employee previously broke  his pelvis and had been suffering from back pain over the two days leading up to May 2. As a result, he wore a Salonpas patch on his back that he personally applied. That brand of patch contains small amounts of lidocaine. It is believed that lidocaine from that patch was innocently transferred from the employee's hands to the horses through the application of tongue ties by the employee that was handling both horses leading up to May 2.

“What I want to make clear are the following three points: 1) This is a case of innocent exposure and not intentional administration; 2) the levels of Lidocaine found in both Gamine and Charlatan that day were extremely small – 185 picograms for Gamine (in race 7), and 46 picograms for Charlatan (in race 11). A picogram is a trillionth of a gram. 3) It is our understanding that the trace amounts of Lidocaine found in both Gamine and Charlatan would not have had any effect on either horse – much less a performance enhancing one. The extreme sensitivity of modern-day testing can now pick up trace levels of innocent contaminants that have no effect on a horse. This is an issue that regulators of horse racing need to account for and address.

“Based on these facts, we intend on defending the cases involving Gamine and Chalatan before the Arkansas Racing Commission.”

Jimmy Barnes, assistant trainer for Baffert, saddled the horses at Oaklawn in the trainer's absence. He suffered a fractured pelvis in September 2017.

Recommended penalty for a Class 2/Category B penalty drug like lidocaine is a minimum 15-day suspension and $500 fine for a first offense under Association of Racing Commissioners International Model Rules. A second offense has a 30-day penalty and $1,000 fine. Some racing commissions consider simultaneous violations of the same drug as a mitigating factor and do not increase penalties for a second offense.

The Model Rule also calls for disqualification, meaning the owners would lose the purse money from the races (Gamine earned $36,600 and Charlatan $300,000). In the case of Charlatan,  the 100 qualifying points earned for the Kentucky Derby would be transferred to Basin, the second-place finisher (if the case is resolved before Sept. 5).  Currently sidelined Gouverneur Morris finished third, Winning Impression fourth and Anneau d'Or fifth. Points for the Arkansas Derby division are awarded on the basis of 100-40-20-10 to the top four finishers.

Gamine is owned by Michael Lund Petersen. Charlatan is owned by the partnership of SF Racing LLC, Starlight Racing, Madaket Stables LLC, Stonestreet Stables LLC, Frederick Hertrich III, John D. Fielding and Golconda Stables.

An even bigger financial stake for the owners of Charlatan may be in the sale of breeding rights to Hill 'n' Dale Farm announced several days after the  Arkansas Derby. Depending on the language and when the contract between the parties was signed, the sale price may have hinged on Charlatan being a Grade 1 winner. If the Speightstown colt is disqualified from the Arkansas Derby – his stakes debut – the sale price could be reduced by millions of dollars unless and until he officially becomes a Grade 1 winner in the future.

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