The Paddock | Horse Racing Free Tips

A Note Of Thanks From Our Editor

On this Thanksgiving Day, we at the Paulick Report have a lot to be grateful for. I am approaching my tenth anniversary of full-time work here(?!), and am thankful each day that I work for a publication where I've been supported and encouraged to let my curiosity guide the reporting I do. It's given me the opportunity to ask diverse questions from 'What do you feed a ferret, anyway?' to 'Where did all those Louisiana zilpaterol positives come from?' and bring you the answers I've gotten.

We get a lot of reader emails on holiday weeks, and I find myself most thankful for the readers who have questions or thoughts on something complicated I've written. We don't just appreciate the fact we have readers, but we appreciate how engaged they are.

Of course, we're also thankful for our advertisers, without whom none of us would be able to spend long hours doing this work.

I have a particular soft spot in my cold reporter's heart this year for our Patreon supporters. When we launched our Patreon earlier this fall, we really didn't know what to expect. I'd immersed myself in understanding how different reader support models work at mainstream news sources, and trying to decide what would best suit our audience. We were looking for a way to let people support us directly if they wanted to without paywalling people who didn't want to. We were also looking for a little more freedom – a revenue stream that wasn't subject to the same whims and pressures as the commercial Thoroughbred market.

I'm thrilled to say it has been a success. People seem to be enjoying the bonus content they can access there from our staff, and I'm curious to see what top tier subscribers will think of the PR logo cap they'll be getting when they hit their three-month subscription anniversary.

What we've heard from many Patreon supports though, is that they're just happy to chip in to keep the lights on at the publication they read every morning, regardless of what the perks may be. And that's really touching.

If you don't already subscribe to our Patreon stream and want to support the work we do, we'd be forever grateful. If not, no worries. We're just happy you're here, reading this.

Find our Patreon here.

Here's to turkey sandwiches with your stakes races. Happy Thanksgiving to one and all.

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Del Mar’s Bing Crosby Season: Tip Of The Hat To Fall Turf Festival

Tezzaray winning last year's Grade 3 Jimmy Durante Stakes by a nose was a headline writer's dream – but somehow we all missed it.

Durante may be best known to racing fans as the namesake for this race and the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club's grass course (the street that fronts the racetrack is also named for him), but those who remember his days in vaudeville, Broadway, television, radio or the big screen may fondly remember Durante by the nickname he gave himself – “schnozzola” or “schnoz,” a slang term for big nose.

Durante had a very big nose.

So when Peter Miller-trained Tezzaray edged Awake At Midnyte by the narrowest of margins under Irad Ortiz Jr. in the 2021 Jimmy Durante, the headlines could have been something along the lines of: “Tezzaray Takes Durante By A Schnoz.”

Well, at least a few of us would have understood what it meant.

Naming a race after Durante (it was formerly known as the Miesque Stakes when inaugurated at Hollywood Park in 1990) is keeping with the Hollywood theme of the Bing Crosby season (Hollywood, as in Tinseltown, not just the defunct racetrack from which Del Mar inherited racing dates and many fall stakes).

The autumn season kicked off with the Let It Ride Stakes on opening day, and who doesn't love that 1989 movie starring Richard Dreyfuss about a horseplayer having “a very good day” at the betting windows?

The meet continued with the Kathryn Crosby Stakes, which honors the widow of track founder Bing Crosby, followed by added-money races named for celebrities and racing enthusiasts Betty Grable, Desi Arnaz, Cary Grant and Bob Hope.

The day after the Dec. 3 Jimmy Durante is the G3 Cecil B. DeMille Stakes, named for the legendary movie producer who also happened to be the grandfather of Del Mar CEO Joe Harper. The DeMille shares the Dec. 4 marquee with the G1 Matriarch Stakes, a filly and mare turf race that has been dominated in recent years by East Coast shippers.

The Fall Turf Festival rolls out on Thanksgiving Day with the first of eight graded stakes run over the final two weeks of racing, the G3 Red Carpet for fillies and mares, 3 and up, going 1 3/8 miles on the Jimmy Durante Turf Course. The Festival continues on Friday, Nov. 25, with the G2 Hollywood Turf Cup for 3-year-olds and up going a mile and a half on grass. The big race on Saturday, Nov. 26, is the Seabiscuit Handicap for 3-year-old and up turf runners at 1 1/16 miles. The G3 Native Diver on Sunday, Nov. 27, is the lone main track stakes during the festival, featuring 3-year-olds and up going 1 1/8 miles.

Closing weekend features the Dec. 3 Jimmy Durante for 2-year-old fillies as the supporting stakes to the G1 Hollywood Derby for 3-year-olds at 1 1/8 miles on turf, with the curtain coming down on Sunday, Dec. 4, following the Cecil B. DeMille and Matriarch.

With limited turf racing this late in the season back east, the Fall Turf Festival often attracts out of towners, and this year figures to be no different, making the stakes more competitive and challenging to handicap.

Back to Jimmy Durante. He was one of many old-time Hollywood celebrities who enjoyed a day of racing at Del Mar and had a house on the beach near where Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball also spent their summers. Durante was honored by Del Mar Aug. 22, 1958, and San Diego's CBS 8 television captured the schnoz and other entertainers who turned out that day. See the video below.

Durante died more than 40 years ago, in 1980. Betty Grable passed in 1973 and Desi Arnaz and Cary Grant both left us in 1986. Bob Hope hit the century mark when he died in 2003, while Cecil B. DeMille has been gone since 1959. All are legends in the annals of Hollywood in its heyday and their work lives on forever.

There could be a touch of Hollywood in this year's Fall Turf Festival, starting with the Red Carpet Stakes. Duvet Day, an Irish-bred filly trained by Michael McCarthy, is entered in the race and she is owned in part by music man Burt Bacharach, 94, who still owns a house in Del Mar. Bacharach, a longtime horse owner, has won numerous Grammy Awards, three Oscars, and the Gershwin Prize for popular song from the Library of Congress, among many other honors. He's also won a San Diego Handicap, a Del Mar Oaks and finished second in the 1995 Pacific Classic with runners from his stable.

Perhaps Duvet Day can provide some additional hardware for his trophy case.

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Migliore: New York Stewards ‘Need To Really Crack Down And Lay Down The Law’ On Dangerous Riding

Award-winning retired jockey-turned-broadcaster Richard Migliore has been increasingly frustrated by the stewards' lack of action against the New York jockey colony, he told the Thoroughbred Daily News this week. In the wake of an accident that will keep jockey Trevor McCarthy out of the saddle for up to 10 weeks, Migliore said he believes the stewards ought to be cracking down on dangerous riding.

New York stewards suspended jockey Jalon Samuel seven days for his role in that accident, which left McCarthy with both a broken pelvis and broken collar bone.

“It's beyond my comprehension that that is the punishment,” Migliore told TDN. “If you cause an accident you should be suspended for as long as the rider who was injured is out with his injuries. Are we going to wait until someone gets killed? The other day you could have had that scenario. Then a jockey gets busted up and a guy gets a week off. Am I crazy or is that absurd?”

The laxity of Samuel's punishment is a symptom of the larger issue, Migliore said: New York stewards are not strictly enforcing rules that will protect the entire jockey colony.

“You can watch the races on a daily basis and there are guys who change paths without clearance, and it goes beyond herding,” Migliore continued. “It's like they have a disregard for the horses and riders around them. It's very difficult for me to watch, especially when someone goes down and gets hurt. It's irresponsible on the part of the rider but they are not being held accountable. When that happens, it's human nature. The more you can get away with the rougher it's going to get. The stewards need to really crack down and lay down the law. No more nonsense.

“It shouldn't matter who it is, what day of the week it is or what kind of race it is. It has to start with the governing body. You have to be strict. Right now, they're not.”

Read more at the Thoroughbred Daily News.

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Ask Your Veterinarian Presented By Kentucky Performance Products: Dr. Larry Bramlage On Bisphosphonates In Young Horses – Where Are We Now?

Veterinarians at Rood and Riddle Equine Hospital answer your questions about sales and healthcare of Thoroughbred auction yearlings, weanlings, 2-year-olds and breeding stock.

Question: You first raised the alarm about the potential drawbacks of bisphosphonate use in young racehorses several years ago now. Where are we with these drugs now?

Dr. Larry Bramlage, Rood and Riddle Equine Hospital: In 2016, we began talking to our clients about a phenomenon that we were seeing more and more frequently in young racehorses. The problem was being seen in all common bone injuries that we encounter in the racehorse from dorsal cortical stress fractures to condylar fractures to the very common subchondral bone inflammation/bruising of the distal cannon bones. In some horses, orthopedic injuries were not healing or healing very slowly compared to what we expected. Clinical experience, retrospective studies of success rates, and published papers has given us pretty solid evidence of what to expect as the healing time with the treatment of the commonly encountered racehorse conditions. But suddenly some horses were taking three or four times the time expected to heal and a few never fully healed. The number of these slow healing injuries continued to grow during 2015.

As we began assessing the histories of horses where the aberrant healing was occurring, many had a history of bisphosphonate use as yearlings to improve the radiographs for sale or as a racehorse during a bout of lameness. So, we began discussing the findings and informing veterinarians, trainers, and owners of the possible detrimental side effect of bisphosphonate use. Veterinarians in many locations were making the same observations of disturbed healing and possible increased injury rates in young training horses of several breeds.

Bisphosphonates were approved in 2014. In 2015 we began to see storms of slow healing fractures and slow healing distal cannon bone subchondral bone inflammation/bruising. That led to the suspicion that bisphosphonates may be the reason.

Bone healing is a two-phase process. The bone bridges the fracture gap with new, poorly-organized bone that can be formed very quickly. Then it remodels the stabilized fracture back to the bone's pre-fracture architecture. Once the fracture gap is filled, the bone damaged by the fracture and the newly-deposited bone are removed and replaced with the appropriate trabecular or cortical bone, depending on the structure involved. This process involves two cell types — osteoclasts which remove bone and osteoblasts which make bone. As the osteoclasts remove the weak bone, the osteoblasts follow immediately behind to reconstruct the normal bone. The anatomy varies depending on which bone is injured and where it is injured, but bone is one of the few tissues capable of perfectly replacing itself when injured.

Bisphosphonates kill osteoclasts. It bonds to the surface of bone and when the osteoclasts try to remove the bone that needs to be replaced, they die after ingesting the bisphosphonate. This arrests the remodeling process and stalls bone healing by stopping the remodeling phase of healing. This is true for macro injuries such as fractures and for micro injuries which result from routine training. The injured bone can make new bone but it can't be remodeled without osteoclasts to clear the way for the osteoblasts.

Osphos, one of two bisphosphonates FDA-approved for use in horses four years old and up

So what good are bisphosphonates and why were they developed? Bisphosphonates were developed to arrest the hormone-driven bone remodeling which is common in post-menopausal women who get too little exercise. The hormonal driven remodeling removes an inappropriately large amount of bone and weakens the skeleton, especially the vertebrae, which when weakened can result in the “dowager's hump” spinal deformity. The bisphosphonates were given to prevent the removal of the bone by killing the osteoclasts.

But bisphosphonates also have another effect. They cause non-specific pain relief, analgesia, in bone. This led to their use to manage pain in bone tumors in people, especially in cancer of the spine. The mechanism is still unclear, but the analgesia is significant and non-specific so if you give it systemically it will help manage the pain no matter where the tumor is located. This analgesia led to the use of bisphosphonates to manage lameness in horses. The proposed mechanism is that it stops excessive bone remodeling in sites of lameness by arresting bone removal. Whether blocking bone re-absorption or a primary analgesia is the mechanism of action is still debated. The blocking of bone re-absorption led to use to try and increase the density in the skeleton by stopping bone loss to the remodeling process. So, bisphosphonates gained popularity to try to increase the density of bone in bone remodeling sites such as sesamoids and navicular bones. And, they became popular as the perfect lameness treatment; it is effective if the lameness originates in the bone, and you don't even have to know the site of origin.

But there is a price to be paid. Killing the osteoclasts prevented the normal bone remodeling necessary to maintain a developing skeleton (e.g., the young training racehorse). This retards adaptation to training, potentially increasing the susceptibility to injury, and it nearly arrests the remodeling process that is the second phase of bone healing in a fracture or in trauma to the bone.

The difficulty is if a horse is given bisphosphonates it binds to the interior surfaces of bone and can persist two years or more. So many horsemen weren't even aware, when a horse arrived for training, that there was a history of bisphosphonate use.

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To their credit, most horsemen and veterinarians quickly understood the risks of bisphosphonate use and the use rapidly declined over the next two years in young training horses. The drug still has a place in certain conditions in older horses, but it does not in the young training athlete. It can be dangerous to the horse's career and their resistance to injury. It is approved by the FDA for horses with navicular disease who are four years old or older.

So, where are we now? Sales companies and racing jurisdictions have stepped in and outlawed the use of bisphosphonates in most venues. Currently we still see an occasional horse with a fracture that shows disturbed healing but there is nowhere near the incidence of the problem that was occurring in 2015 and 2016. Veterinarians, owners, farm managers and trainers appear to have mitigated the use of bisphosphonates and should be credited with their response to protect the health and welfare of the horses. Sales companies and regulatory agencies have done their part and the current situation appears to be generally free from bisphosphonate use in the young growing and training horses. A horse that we suspect is showing signs of bisphosphonate treatment in the past still presents occasionally, but not regularly any longer. I suspect bisphosphonates are still intermittently used when a horse does not respond to common treatments.

To all of our credit, this has been a positive response to an initially unknown complication of treatment that was detrimental to the racehorse. For all of the things we wring our hands about that we have trouble changing, this is one we could, and did, circumvent for our good and for the good of our athletes.

Larry Bramlage is a 1975 graduate of the Kansas State University College of Veterinary Medicine (DVM) and received a Master of Science degree from Ohio State (MS) in 1978. He holds a Diploma of the American College of Veterinary Surgery (Diplomate ACVS).

Bramlage is an internationally recognized equine orthopedic surgeon, and is a senior surgeon at Rood and Riddle Equine Hospital in Lexington, Kentucky. He is a past President of the American Association of Equine Practitioners, and of the American College of Veterinary Surgeons.

In recognition of his dedication and contribution to Thoroughbred racing, Bramlage was awarded the 1994 Jockey Club Gold Medal for contributions to Thoroughbred Racing in the United States. He is also a past chairman of the Research Advisory Committee of the Grayson-Jockey Club Research Foundation and serves on the Board of Directors for that organization. His additional honors include the 1997 Tierlink Hochmoor Prize for his work regarding the internal fixation of fractures, the 1998 distinguished alumnus award from The Ohio State University, Alumni Fellow Award from Kansas State University, a British Equine Veterinary Association's Special Award of Merit, and the American College of Veterinary Surgeons Legends award for the development of the fetlock arthrodesis procedure for horses in 2009, and the Thoroughbred Club Testimonial Award in 2014. He has received the American Association of Equine Practitioners Distinguished Service Award twice. He was elected to membership in the Jockey Club in 2002 and to Distinguished Lifetime Membership in the American Association of Equine Practitioners in 2010.

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