With disgraced former trainer Jason Servis sentenced to four years in prison, the federal investigation into racehorse doping – involving more than two dozen trainers, veterinarians, and drug distributors in Thoroughbred and Standardbred racing in multiple states – has come to an end.
Servis was the last to be sentenced of those named in a March 9, 2020, indictment from the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Like most of the others, including former trainer Jorge Navarro (who received a five-year sentence), he pleaded guilty. The only jury trials, involving Florida veterinarian Seth Fishman and his employee, Lisa Giannelli, resulted in guilty verdicts. Fishman was sentenced to 11 years in prison and Giannelli 3 1/2 years.
In this week's Friday Show, Ray Paulick and Paulick Report edit0r-in-chief Natalie Voss review the story that rocked the racing world and likely set the stage for federal legislation that in December 2020 created an independent agency, the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority, to regulate U.S. Thoroughbred racing's drug and safety policies on a national basis.
How did the cheaters get away with illegally doping horses for so long without getting caught? What did some of the documents and wiretapped conversations reveal? Why would anyone entrusted with the care and well-being of horses administer some of these substances, with contents largely unknown? And why did the number of indictments not grow, despite the stated presence of voluminous information collected by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, including customer lists for some of the banned substances?
Watch this week's episode of The Friday Show below:
At the start of the 2022 summer meet at Del Mar, few people in Southern California had ever heard of jockey Hector I. Berrios. But his brilliant winning ride in the Wickerr Stakes aboard Argentine-bred Irideo for trainer Marcelo Polanco caught the attention of horseplayers and horsemen alike. Going a mile on turf, Berrios allowed Irideo to settle at the back of the pack while saving ground, found room along the rail into the stretch, swung out to split horses with a furlong to run and won by three quarters of a length going away, paying $65 to his backers.
Two weeks after the Wickerr, Berrios struck again, winning the Grade 1 Clement L. Hirsch Stakes aboard Blue Stripe, another product of Argentina's breeding program from the Polanco stable. This one was not as big a surprise, Blue Stripe paying $12.60 as the 5-1 third choice in a field of five. Berrios finished the summer meet with 18 wins from 127 mounts, putting him a surprising fifth in the standings.
For Berrios, a 36-year-old native of Santiago, Chile, the 2022 Clement L. Hirsch was his first graded stakes victory in North America. But it was far from his first big-race triumph. With over 2,500 wins in his native country, including eight victories in Chilean classic races, he was used to getting top mounts. But carrying that resume to the United States didn't translate into immediate success.
Berrios first rode in the U.S. in the spring of 2011, starting out in Florida and moving his tack to Southern California midway into the summer meet at Del Mar, where he won three races from 11 mounts, including the CTT and TOC Stakes aboard Peruvian-bred Private Affair for trainer Ruben Cardenas. After enjoying some success at Santa Anita and in South Florida in 2011-'12, he returned to Chile, riding there five years before returning to Florida in July 2018. He continued to win races at Gulfstream Park, but never got much of an opportunity with top-level horses.
By last summer, Berrios was ready to try California again, teaming up with agent Michael Burns. The numbers confirmed it was the right move. At year's end, Berrios' mounts won 68 races and earned $3,872,506 – by far his best year earnings-wise.
And 2023 has only gotten better.
Berrios has added seven more graded stakes wins to his ledger this year, including last weekend's Grade 1 Bing Crosby aboard California-bred The Chosen Vron and the Grade 2 Eddie Read Stakes with Irish-bred Gold Phoenix. Those horses keyed riding triples for Berrios on both the July 29 and July 30 programs.
Through the first seven racing days at Del Mar, Berrios is atop the rider standings, tied with the current Southern California leader Juan Hernandez, each with 11 wins. Only one of the 11 wins by Berrios came aboard a betting favorite, compared with four for Hernandez. All but two of his wins were on turf, but his ride in the Bing Crosby showed he can get the job done on dirt as well. His $3,993,330 year-to-date mount earnings have already exceeded last year's total, with a lot of big races yet to come.
He's definitely one to keep an eye on.
By The Numbers
Through the first two weeks of the meet (seven days, 70 races), average field size is 9.7 runners per race (9.0 on dirt, 10.7 on turf). There have been 40 races on dirt and 30 on turf. The Ship & Win program is working, but the racing department deserves credit for putting together excellent, competitive cards so far.
Average parimutuel payoff is $13.61, with a median of $9.80. Not much difference between turf and dirt, with turf average payoff $13.21 and $13.92 on dirt.
The percentage of winning favorites overall is 27.1 percent (30 percent on dirt, 23.3 percent on turf). Larger fields make for fewer winning favorites.
Front-runners have not fared well so far, on dirt or turf.
Of the 40 dirt races, only four winners led at every call. Sixteen winners pressed the pace or were forwardly placed, with 12 racing in midpack, and eight closing from the back end of the field.
Of the 30 turf races, only one horse went wire to wire (and that was in a two-turn race). Six winners pressed the pace or were forwardly placed, 11 were in midpack, and 12 closed from the back.
It's been a pattern in recent years that front-runners on turf are more successful as the meet goes on. Keep that in mind as you handicap the Jimmy Durante grass course.
Two jockeys – the aforementioned Berrios and Umberto Rispoli – have been especially dominating on turf, winning 15 of the 30 races run so far (Berrios nine, Rispoli six).
Among trainers, Phil D'Amato has won seven turf races, with one victory on the main track.
Overall, 38 trainers have won races this summer at Del Mar, with D'Amato's eight victories leading the way. Doug O'Neill and Bob Baffert are tied with six wins apiece, with Peter Miller winning four.
The following “Open Letter To The Industry” was distributed by the National Horsemen's Benevolent and Protective Association. Author Donald Smith D.V.M. has been an equine veterinarian practicing at Northern California racetracks since 1983. He graduated from Princeton University in 1973 and the University of Georgia College of Veterinary Medicine in 1979. His practice today consists of mostly other performance horses and about 10 percent racehorses. Dr. Smith is a vice president of the North American Association of Racetrack Veterinarians (NAARV).
I am in the twilight of a career spanning more than 40 years practicing veterinary medicine at racetracks. With great sadness I question whether any of today's vet school graduates — if they even choose to be a “horse doc” at the track — will have the option of working in the racing industry in another 40 years. Horse racing faces many problems, but the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act (HISA) and its resulting Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority (the Authority) is not the solution and, in fact, is exacerbating the complex problem of keeping horses sound.
I have witnessed dedicated care and concern for horses from the people who are with them all day, every day. I have seen the commitment to their health and welfare by the trainers, grooms, veterinarians, riders, officials, owners and devotees of horse racing. I have seen that commitment lead to ever increasing standards of care of the horses which I examine and treat daily. These increasing standards have percolated upward from the horse-racing constituency to the horse-racing regulatory bureaucracy. They have been discussed and argued among the stakeholders in this industry. And they have been accepted because of the consensus of those involved.
The democratic ideal is for regulation to derive from consensus. If compliance is the goal, there must be consensus among the participants. Imposition of standards from a self-selected “Authority” is more consistent with autocracy than democracy. By ignoring the consensus of the racing industry, this Authority will sow more disarray, confusion and inadvertent non-compliance than uniform racing conditions. Its oppressive nature will further weaken an industry which is already contracting and dwindling in its significance. The latest example: the announced closing of Golden Gate Fields, the home base of my racetrack practice, at the end of the year.
In addition to its lack of consensus, the most telling revelation of the insincerity and oppressive nature of HISA is the refusal to release financial information. Public institutions in the United States are designed to be transparent in order to comply with the goals of democratic governance. Information is the essential nutrient of democracy.
HISA is not really about the high-minded ideals it touts; it is really about power. The power of a small, self-selected group of people to impose their opinions and standards on a much larger group of people. The power to subvert the Constitution, the basic law of the United States, by denying to its subjects the rights and protections of the Constitution. The power to collect taxes from its subjects without their consent or representation. The power to conduct its business and spend its resources without any effective review, oversight or control by its constituents.
HISA's oppressive reporting requirements, prohibition of clinically effective medications and devastating punishments for clerical errors is discouraging veterinarians from committing to racetrack practice. This is in addition to the serious shortage of qualified regulatory veterinarians facing HISA. As the supply of veterinarians willing to comply with HISA standards dwindles, the availability of medical care for our horses will dwindle. HISA's windblown pronouncements of commitment to equine welfare are hypocritical in light of the facts. HISA professes to be interested in the welfare of horses but is actually charting a path towards decreasing care of our horses.
Recently I scoped two horses who bled a significant amount (3 on a scale of 5) — an amount that has been shown to interfere with their ability to oxygenate their blood, and provides an ideal medium for growth of pathological organisms. An amount which has been shown to compromise the lung tissue so that bleeding will worsen in the future. These horses were ineligible for the anti-bleeder medication Lasix due to California regulations and they are ineligible under HISA rules. Yet HISA claims to be concerned with horse welfare. Lasix has been repeatedly shown to reduce the incidence of bleeding. It is cheap. Its administration is effectively controlled. Its duration of effect is only 45 minutes. The safety and efficacy of race-day administration of Lasix has been established from 50 years of empirical experience and scientific studies.
It appears HISA, through the standards set in the Act itself, seems vigorously committed to prohibiting Lasix. In fact, the establishment of HISA, with its expensive and oppressive regulations and requirements, can be traced directly to the manic efforts of a few zealots to prohibit Lasix. Since I began practicing medicine 44 years ago, they have been repeatedly rebuffed by multiple regulatory agencies and professional associations to institute a ban on Lasix. It was only by surreptitious passage of the HISA legislation tucked into the 2020 COVID emergency relief bill that they will be able to accomplish their goal. Of course, this comes with all the inflated federal controls and expenses mandated by HISA.
I have enjoyed many pleasurable and gratifying experiences during my time caring for racehorses. It is a wonderful occupation. It is beyond my ability to describe the emotional rewards that come from close daily contact with horses. I am lucky to have known them.
However, I am discouraged by the indifference of veterinary students and young veterinarians to racetrack practice. I hope that this will change. I hope that our Courts and industry leaders can replace HISA with a common-sense piece of legislation built through consensus and veterinary science. Uniformity that can be responsive, representative of the industry as a whole, and will be able to shepherd horse racing into more future rewards.
As a kid growing up in the Midwest, I'd entertain myself during the long winter months memorizing pitching and batting statistics for Major League Baseball players.
Trainer Leonard Powell had a similar hobby during his childhood in France. Except, instead of baseball players, Powell and his brother memorized pedigrees of important horses, or commit to memory every runner – including sire and dam – and where they finished in major races like the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe at Longchamp.
Decades later, those mental exercises are paying off for Powell, who is quietly and steadily ascending the trainer rankings on the Southern California circuit. In 2022, the 46-year-old won five graded stakes with four different runners and his 32 victories overall and $2,131,523 in earnings represented his best year to date.
Powell got off to a quick start at the Del Mar summer meet, winning three races from seven starters opening weekend. Anisette, a Great Britain-bred 3-year-old filly by Awtaad, was the stable star, winning the Grade 2 San Clemente Stakes impressively, drawing away from her 13 rivals by 2 ½ lengths under jockey Umberto Rispoli. Owned by Eclipse Thoroughbred Partners, Anisette is unbeaten in her two U.S. stars this year after winning one of three in England as a 2-year-old. She will be pointed to the Del Mar Oaks on Aug. 19, a race that gave Powell his first Grade 1 victory in 2018 with French-bred Fatale Bere.
Like Fatale Bere and Anisette, many of Powell's best runners are European imports whose bloodlines trace back to those he memorized in the late 1980s and '90s.
Anisette and jockey Umberto Rispoli winning the San Clemente
“It's helped me quite a bit when I get horses from Europe,” Powell said. “When I look at prospects I know some of the first or second dams and always look at their traits – horses that did well on firm ground or had speed.”
This fascination with pedigrees and the traits of horses was passed on to Powell by his late father, David Powell, a U.S. citizen who was a man of the world by virtue of his own pedigree. David Powell's mother was a Jewish woman who fled Nazi Germany before World War II. His father was a U.S. citizen who worked at the U.S. Consulate in Argentina. David Powell was born in Buenos Aires as an American because of his father's citizenship.
The Powells eventually moved to the United States, but the marriage didn't last and David Powell went with his mother when she returned to her native Germany. There he began taking horse riding instructions from a native of France who would become his step-father. At the stables he met a young Frenchman whose father was a diplomat in Berlin; his name was Andre Fabre, who would go on to a legendary career training Thoroughbreds in France.
But it wasn't Fabre who influenced David Powell to move to France and embark on a career in Thoroughbred racing and breeding. After Powell moved with his family back to the U.S. he met another Frenchman, the famed Daily Racing Form cartoonist Pierre Bellocq, better known throughout the racing world as PEB, who convinced David Powell – then a student at Columbia University in New York – to move to France to learn more about the industry.
David Powell wore many hats: racing journalist, breeder, owner, racing manager, and trainer. He attended bloodstock sales around the world and took meticulous notes on every horse he saw go through the ring. Those notes on conformation and personality traits went onto index cards that became part of a voluminous library of pedigree and racing information at the Powell home in Normandy.
It was on the family's farm that young Leonard and his siblings learned the value of hard work. “We were raised with expectations,” Powell said. “When you're raised on a farm, it's very important to be there when needed.”
After high school, David Powell encouraged his son to hold off on college and instead set him up working for trainer Richard Mandella in California. It was a move that's had a long-lasting influence on Powell's career.
“I was 18 when I worked for Mandella, so I was very much a blank page,” he said. “He has a strong work ethic and is very rigorous. He really pays attention to details.”
Powell maintains a relatively small stable (usually 25-30 horses), which allows him to be hands on with his horses.
“During morning training it's important to stay very focused, because that's when you catch the small details that make a difference,” he said.
Following his 18 months with Mandella, he returned to France and served a compulsory term with the French army.
“And then I did a bit of university to make my mom happy,” he said with a laugh.
Following school, Powell took on another apprenticeship, this time working for John Hawkes in Australia, where he said trainers really push their horses hard to get them fit, but then give them time off periodically. “They treat the horses a bit like elastic bands,” he said. “You pull and give, pull and give, so it doesn't break.”
Late in 2003, Powell set up shop in Southern California with a handful of horses. He went over a year before recording his first win in March 2005, but patience has been the trainer's strong suit. Powell recorded his first graded stakes win in 2008, but his breakthrough came with the California-bred gelding Soi Phet, which he claimed for $16,000 at Hollywood Park in May 2013.
Soi Phet and trainer Leonard Powell
Soi Phet ran off four consecutive victories for his new connections, then ran third behind Mucho Macho Man while making his stakes debut in the Grade 1 Awesome Again Stakes. The popular gelding never could secure a graded stakes victory, but he'd win another 10 races for Powell from 2013 to 2019, retiring at age 11 with just over $1 million in earnings.
“Soi Phet was the horse that put me at a higher level,” Powell said. “It gave confidence to owners that we could do a good job with good horses. He won stakes on dirt, turf, and synthetic.”
How did Soi Phet remain sound and competitive in stakes competition for so long?
“We gave him breaks every year, about six weeks off at a farm,” Powell said. “We didn't wait for an injury or for something to go wrong.”
Powell said it's not always easy to convince owners that horses may need time off when they're going in good form, but that it's the right thing to do for the long-term benefit of the horse.
Married with three daughters, Powell said the days are long during the Del Mar meet, but the family takes advantage of the seaside location, spending time on the beach when time allows.
“I like getting on boogie boards and riding the waves with my daughters,” he said. “The races don't start until two o'clock, so you really get a chance to enjoy family time.”
When it comes time to celebrate victories like last weekend's San Clemente, it's usually a quiet family dinner at home with a “nice bottle of wine,” Powell said.
“Racing days end late in Del Mar,” he added. “By the time the horse is cooled out in can be 8:30 at night, and the alarm still goes on at 3:45 the next morning.”
