Tag: The Paddock

Del Mar’s Bing Crosby Season: Motion Goes From Coast To Coast

Trainer H. Graham Motion sent two horses west to Del Mar over the summer from his base at the Fair Hill Training Center in Maryland and came away with two stakes victories on consecutive days. Eclipse Thoroughbred Partners' Sister Otoole won the CTT and TOC Stakes by a half length going 1 3/8 miles on turf under Umberto Rispoli on Aug. 19. The next day, Gainesway Stable's Spendarella, making her first start since a second-place finish in the Group 1 Coronation Stakes at Royal Ascot in June, dominated a dozen other 3-year-old fillies in the Grade 1 Del Mar Oaks, winning by 4 1/2 lengths under Tyler Gaffalione.

“It's going to be tough to keep that streak that going,” said Motion, who figures to have a presence throughout the ninth Bing Crosby Season that kicks off on Friday with an eight-race card with a 12:30 p.m. PT first post.

The 48-year-old native of Cambridge, England, has been sending runners to the seaside track north of San Diego since the first Crosby meet in 2014.

“It just works out really well after Keeneland,” Motion said of the Lexington, Ky., track's fall meet. He also likes the availability of grass racing, which goes into hibernation late in the year at many tracks in the East and Midwest. “It's so unpredictable around here this time of year,” Motion said from Maryland. “That's a big reason I've done this the last few years. And Del Mar has been extremely accommodating.”

Del Mar, located just north of San Diego, is cooler during the Bing Crosby Season than in summer, but rain in November remains relatively rare and few races are washed off the grass.

“And it's not a tough sell for the help to go out there,” said Motion's wife, Anita, an important part of the team working together at Herringswell Stables.

Indeed, who doesn't love coming to Del Mar?

Motion said assistant trainer Alice Clapham and a stable foreman traveled West for the meet to accompany the four runners flown out in time for opening day. More horses will be sent as the meet progresses, he said, with a focus on the stakes run over the final two weekends of the Crosby Season.

In Friday's opening race, a 1 1/16-mile maiden contest on turf, the stable will be represented by Eclipse Thoroughbred's Sareeha, an Irish-bred maiden coming off a second-place finish under Flavien Prat in a Sept. 18 race at the Belmont at the Big A meet in New York. Flavien Prat rides the 8-5 morning line favorite.

“It's been frustrating trying to get Sareeha in a maiden race around here so we decided we'd wait for Del Mar,” Motion said.

In the opening day stakes, the Let It Ride at a mile on turf, he'll have 3-1 morning line favorite Script, a Stone Farm homebred to be ridden by John Velazquez. The Algorithms colt won a Keeneland allowance last out Oct. 12 after eight months on the shelf.

“Script I always thought highly of,” said Motion. “In the spring he just didn't come around to be the horse we thought he'd be, but we found a touch of non-symptomatic pneumonia. He's come back really well after getting the summer off. Last out he showed some of the potential I always thought he had.”

Other horses from the Motion stable Del Mar fans can expect to see include Madaket Stables' Wootton Asset, winner in 2021 of the G3 Virginia Derby. The French-bred gelding is being pointed to the G2 Seabiscuit Handicap at 1 1/16 miles on turf Nov. 26. He also has Sister Otoole penciled in for a Del Mar return in the G3 Red Carpet Stakes on Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 24. The trainer said Madaket's. G Laurie, scratched from the G1 Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf, could be ready in time for the G3 Jimmy Durante Stakes on Dec. 3. Another possibility for the meet is the 2-year-old Irish-bred colt Disdainful, who was a good second in his U.S. debut at Keeneland in late October. He races for Eclipse.

Jose Ortiz guides Wootton Asset to victory in the New Kent County Virginia Derby

Motion has enjoyed success during Bing Crosby Season, particularly in 2016 when he won four stakes: the G1 Matriarch with Miss Temple City; the G2 Seabiscuit with Ring Weekend; and the G3 Jimmy Durante with Happy Mesa. French-bred Aries, a fourth stakes starter from Motion's eight runners during that meet, finished second in the G3 Red Carpet.

Two years ago, the Motions made a decision to cut back on the number of horses they oversee, selling one of the two barns they operated out of at Fair Hill.

“Numbers wise, we're running fewer horses,” said Motion. “We've had two rebuilding years after making a conscious decision to cut back and concentrate on quality over quantity.

The Fair Hill barn has 70 stalls and another 10 horses are stabled at a  small farm the couple purchased about a mile from the training center.

“Alice (Clapham) is always on the road with a string, so it adds up to about 100 horses when we're busy,” he said.

Despite being down in numbers, 2022 has been a strong year for Motion, with purse earnings through Oct. 10 of $6.6 million from 373 starts, higher than any of the previous four years when he's had as many as 574 starts. The stable peaked in terms of yearly starts in 2014 with 782.

Looking beyond the Bing Crosby Season, Motion said he is entertaining the idea of maintaining a stable at Santa Anita during winter. “I'm ambivalent about it,” he said. I think about it every year.

“It's a huge commitment,” he added. “Once you're out there you're a long way from home. The pluses are the turf racing. The turf course is terrific, the weather is usually pretty good and so is the money. It's very appealing.”

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Commentary: The Problem With … The Race To The Breeding Shed

Editor's Note: This is the first in a series of commentaries, all of which will begin under the premise of “The problem with …” Rather than to complain, however, as the introductory phrase might suggest, the purpose of these articles will be to present the big picture of a major racing issue and create a dialogue about what is best for the sport's future.

The problem with horse racing at its highest level in the United States is that it has become a marketing tool rather than a sport and that the people with the most power to help the sport grow don't make the actual sport their priority.

In a span of 24 hours, Flightline's victory in the Breeders' Cup Classic on Nov. 5 showed both the greatest opportunity and the greatest challenge American horse racing faces.

First, the greatest opportunity …

Before the Breeders' Cup, the comparisons were already starting to fly between Flightline and Secretariat. “Is Flightline the Greatest Thoroughbred Since Secretariat?” was the headline of a New York Times article published the day before Flightline's Classic victory.

Flightline's resume entering the Breeders' Cup: five wins from six furlongs to 1 ¼ miles by an average margin of victory of more than 12 lengths, with his most recent race being a 19 ¼-length defeat of 2022 Dubai World Cup winner Country Grammer in the Pacific Classic at Del Mar.

“Take a good look at this because you're not gonna see this too often,” announcer Trevor Denman said in the homestretch of his race call of the Pacific Classic.

Trevor was right in the most literal way. We'd see this exactly one more time at Keeneland in Flightline's win by the largest margin of victory in the history of the Breeders' Cup Classic, 8 ¼ lengths, made even more impressive because it came as part of one of the best fields in the history of the Classic. All eight runners were Grade 1 winners.

With Secretariat already on people's minds, the race played out like the 1973 Belmont. Life Is Good, a generational talent in his own right, pressed to the lead in the Classic like Sham did in the Belmont. These pairs had their respective dance floors to themselves. Secretariat rose to another level because of Sham, and Flightline did the same because of Life Is Good to produce a victory that will be talked about for decades to come. Announcer Larry Collmus punctuated his race call by exclaiming that it was a “Secretariat-like Breeders' Cup Classic win.”

Then, less than 24 hours later, Flightline would be retired to stud, and now horse racing is faced with its greatest challenge …

Just when the sport presents its best to the world on one of its biggest stages before an audience that could include potential new devotees, those stars fade away. The previous five horses of the year – Gun Runner in 2017, Justify in 2018, Bricks and Mortar in 2019, Authentic in 2020, and Knicks Go in 2021 – raced a grand total of two times in the calendar year after they won the Eclipse Award for Horse of the Year. Gun Runner ran in the 2018 Pegasus World Cup and Knicks Go in the 2022 Pegasus World Cup.

That's it. Everyone else was a “candle in the wind.” Imagine if Elton John retired after his first No. 1 hit. Or, if Muhammad Ali hung up his gloves after winning the heavyweight title. Or, if Michael Phelps never swam in a race after his first Olympics. Or, if (pick your favorite sports team) disbanded after its first championship.

Why did Flightline retire so suddenly? We all know the answer, and, sadly, we've become numb enough to accept it as inevitable whenever there's a truly great racehorse in America. Flightline's value is too great as a stallion to risk. On Nov. 7, a 2.5-percent interest in Flightline sold for $4.6 million in a unique auction at Keeneland. That doesn't make him worth $184 million as some have suggested, but he's worth a great deal more than the $1 million he brought at a 2019 yearling sale. His initial stud fee has been set at $200,000 for each foal he sires.

Horse racing now exists for owners of historic horses like Flightline or Justify or American Pharoah to cash in on their value after they finish racing. In that sense, racing exists to bring out the value in these horses and market them for what their real end goal is, the breeding shed. I lost count of the number of commercials for stallions that aired during NBC Sports' coverage of this year's Breeders' Cup.

After one year of racing brilliance – whether that comes at age 3 during a Triple Crown run like for American Pharoah in 2015 or Justify in 2018 or at age 4 like for Flightline in 2022 after a stall accident delayed the start of his racing career – owners choose to retire their superstars at a time when racing could grow from the fans these horses attract.

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We (speaking as a fan that became hooked as a teenager in the 1990s and 2000s by horses like Silver Charm, Daylami, and Skip Away) understand that horse racing is a business, but it's also a sport in need of stability and a message for the future. The owners of the recent horses of the year that could captivate current and new fans have instead made the highest level of the sport a stock market for cashing out their investment and then repeating the process by investing big at the next yearling sale.

The bait will be there for the taking. Another inexperienced youngster will emerge in their stakes debut, and we'll wonder if that horse is the next Flightline or Justify or American Pharoah. In that sense, horse racing has become about having a one-night stand with its superstars.

So, what solutions are out there for developing a longer-lasting relationship? Here's a far-fetched one: allow breeding of Thoroughbred racehorses to model other racing breeds with artificial insemination and embryo transfer. That could allow for simultaneously reaping breeding revenue while still extending a racehorse's career.

I get that any attempt to tamper with the Thoroughbred breeding status quo, such as The Jockey Club's limiting stallions to covering 140 mares in a year, will be met with the same reaction as to New Coke, but just consider this stat. Remember how the last five Thoroughbred horses of the year have collectively run in two races after being voted that award. The last five Arabian horses of the year have run 72 times since their first year achieving the sport's highest honor. Two of them – Paddys Day from 2015, 2016, and 2017 and Quick Sand AA from 2018 – are scheduled to race against each other in the Arabian Stallion Stakes at Lone Star Park on Dec. 10 and are contenders for horse of the year once again.

Paddys Day now has offspring running and has even raced against one of his sons. Paddys Day's connections were collecting on him in the midst of his three-straight horse of the year seasons, and that doesn't seem to have affected his racing ability.

Seeing familiar Arabian racing stars has increased the popularity of the sport, including among Thoroughbred racing fans. For instance, the first time Paddys Day ran in the UAE President Cup, the richest Arabian horse race in the United States, in 2016 at Churchill Downs, the race handled $207,869. On the same Downs After Dark card the next year as the same race number with the same wagering menu and one fewer betting interest, the 2017 UAE President Cup handled $275,330.

When Paddys Day and Quick Sand AA matched up in their first UAE President Cup when the race moved to the Preakness in 2020, the race handled $1,163,255. The next year, the handle for the race increased to $2,367,749 in the same position as the last race on the card with the same number of betting interests. The 2021 race was run in May instead of October, and the handle did include $502,973 for a Daily Double and a Pick 3 that was not part of the wagering menu in 2020.

Another solution could be to put more of a spotlight on the state-bred stars that return to their home tracks and develop a fan following year after year after year. For example, the Colorado-bred Collusionist capped a five-for-five season at Bally's Arapahoe Park in 2022 with an eye-catching win in the Butch Gleason Classic on Oct. 4. It was his 13th career stakes victory in his home state since 2018.

After not being part of Arapahoe's closing day card in 2020, Collusionist has run in the Butch Gleason Classic, the meet's final stakes race, in 2021 and 2022. Handle on that race in 2021 was $55,184 and in 2022 was $88,305, although the 2022 amount does include $10,133 for a Pick 4 and a Pick 5 that were not part of 2021. Total handle for the two closing day cards featuring Collusionist increased from $303,963 in 2021 to $327,444 in 2022. Those are positive trends.

Sure, Collusionist can't hold a candle to Flightline. His success has been confined to Colorado. However, he brings fans out to Bally's Arapahoe Park to watch a local star. I challenge you to watch his “Silky Sullivan” debut and tell me that's not a cool horse that you'd want to continue watching.

Other major racing countries also keep their stars around more frequently than the six times Flightline ran in two years. Anamoe, also 4 years old and based in Australia for Godolphin, has made 21 starts and won 11 races, including seven Group 1s. He lost his most recent race on the same date as the Breeders' Cup. It's alright to lose, unless you're worried about maximizing stud value, and unfortunately, that's what mainly influences whether we see American racing stars.

Hopefully, owners and trainers in America might take the approach like Bjorn Nielsen and John and Thady Gosden did with Great Britain's champion stayer Stradivarius. Stradivarius finally retired to stud in 2022 at 7 years old.

“He still loves his training and racing, and it's exciting for everyone to have him for another year,” Thady Gosden told Racing TV at the end of 2021.

Hopefully, an owner and trainer of an American horse of the year will have the guts to say that in the future.

Jonathan Horowitz is a longtime racing fan who is now a track announcer and an off-track Thoroughbred eventer.

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Voss: Where Were The Veterinary Boards In The Grasso Case?

There's a lot to be mad about when reading prosecutors' pre-sentencing reports (PSRs) in the ongoing 2020 federal doping case.

For defendants who have entered guilty pleas and avoided trial, as most of them have to this point, I've learned the government's PSRs are among the most interesting documents in the whole file. In lieu of having to present evidence against the defendant, it's the prosecution's last opportunity to get a few shots in as they advocate for their preferred prison sentence. Sometimes, as they did in the case of Jorge Navarro, they'll whip out a few particularly stomach-churning details from their wire taps and intercepted text messages when they can show how little remorse the defendant had for their actions in the moment.

Read our coverage of the prosecutors' PSR on Navarro from December 2021 here.

This was certainly the case with Dr. Louis Grasso, one of the veterinarians indicted alongside a number of harness horsemen with similar drug adulteration and misbranding charges to the vets and trainers in the Navarro indictment.

Texts between Grasso and unidentified horsemen reveal that he's well aware that he had a stormy persona in the racing world.

In a text message to an unidentified person, Grasso wrote he has “ALWAYS been the bad guy so that's [his] reputation” that he “plays into it because it keeps the persona where [he] likes it!!!” and “all it does is make [his] business even larger [because] people seem to like the bad guy LOL LOL.”

In an intercepted communication with co-defendant and horse trainer Thomas Guido III, Grasso discussed the death of an unidentified horse of Guido's, which Grasso attributed to an injection of “pure N-butyl alcohol.” It's not clear whether Guido got the N-butyl alcohol from Grasso or what he thought he was using it for.

“Guarantee [N-butyl alcohol is] what killed him … guarantee you didn't shake it up enough, you grabbed too much N-butyl alcohol pure and you fucking killed him. I've seen that happen twenty times,” Grasso said, according to the PSR.

Read our coverage of the Grasso PSR here.

So, he considered himself a villain who clearly knew the risks of allowing or encouraging laypeople to inject substances of questionable origin but sold and distributed those things to them anyway, despite having trained as a veterinarian.

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I can be disgusted. Clean trainers and honest veterinarians reading how Grasso bragged about lying to racing commissions on two occasions to get trainers out of valid post-race positive tests can be repulsed. We can wish the very worst for him, not that he's likely to lose sleep over it.

But one particular group of people reading his words should be embarrassed – state veterinary boards.

At the time he was arrested in 2020, Grasso still held an active veterinary license. In fact, that's the basis of some of his behavior that triggered the federal charges. Prosecutors say Grasso allowed co-defendant Donato Poliseno to use his veterinary license number to purchase drugs that Poliseno then sold – mostly, it seems, to laypeople. (Poliseno was neither a doctor nor a pharmacist.)

The thing is, Grasso built his self-described bad boy reputation over the course of years. There was the 1992 incident in which he was discovered distributing anabolic steroids to bodybuilders and arrested on federal charges. Then in 2000 he was arrested again for distributing controlled substances in Delaware, despite having no license to practice there. He was found with a variety of drugs and plastic baggies filled with pills in his car after fleeing to evade the police officers who'd showed up to arrest him.

In that case, the Delaware Board of Professional Regulation issued a warning to him, making clear that he wasn't licensed to distribute drugs there, and he continued on with his behavior anyway.

In both those cases, Grasso managed to work deals for himself lessening the charges he pleaded guilty to and their associated penalties. He lost his DEA license after the second case, which reduced his ability to prescribe certain types of medication. And still, even at this very moment, Louis A Grasso is listed in the license verification system with the New York Office of the Professions as having a registered license to practice veterinary medicine. He also has an active veterinary license in New Jersey, where it had previously been suspended for five years following the 1992 incident with the anabolic steroids.

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(I should say that to their credit, New York Gaming Commission officials revoked Grasso's license years ago after they found out he was violating pre-race drug guidelines and giving out blank scratch forms. The case in Delaware was also tied in with racing authorities, who alerted law enforcement that he was treating racehorses. So in this situation at least, it seems state racing authorities were on top of a situation that state veterinary boards were willing to ignore.)

I wrote about what is, quite frankly, the total ineptitude of state veterinary boards back in 2018.

You can read that piece here.

I learned at the time that there are several problems with this regulatory system. Vet boards are almost exclusively made up of current and former veterinarians who don't like to be seen as lashing out against one of their own. Most of them are also unwilling to take any action against a licensee at the center of a criminal case until after that case has completely reached a conclusion – which, since Grasso hasn't been sentenced yet, is probably why his licenses still appear valid. After that conclusion is reached, some of them are legally required to conduct their own “investigations,” even if that means just reviewing another agency's legwork.

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The boards also may be hogtied by their own laws; some may not have catch-all regulations allowing them to immediately suspend or revoke someone's license if they're arrested or enter into plea agreements on charges related to their professional activities.

Perhaps most disturbingly, state vet boards aren't typically putting a lot of effort into investigation and enforcement; they wait to get complaints from members of the public or law enforcement and use those as the basis to start an investigation on someone. One state spokeswoman even told me they sometimes find out about a potential violation of veterinary practice law from members of the media asking them questions, which I find astounding. I like to think I'm a good reporter, but I should not be one of the public's primary lines of defense for an entire profession; by the time I'm looking for a comment, damage has already been done to someone, somewhere.

But in Grasso's case, the boards did know he was a bad actor. In 2012, an investigation from the New York Times took a look at Grasso, who by then had had his racing veterinary license revoked. The story revealed that he was working away at training centers in New York, and was the veterinarian for a barn that had five positives for oxymetazoline, a component of the human nasal spray Afrin. The trainer said Grasso had been putting it in a nebulizer treatment he gave to most horses in the barn. Oxymetazoline is banned by FEI and is not approved by the FDA for use in animals, though Grasso claimed its use was common in racehorses at the time.

The Times contacted the New York Education Department's Office of Professional Discipline, which oversees its vet board and was told in part: “We have recently taken affirmative steps to have the Racing and Wagering Board share data following their review of racetrack veterinary medicine practices.”

This, I infer, was sort of a non-responsive suggestion that the vet board can't possibly know what a racing veterinarian could be doing wrong unless the racing commission tells them. But of course, Grasso had a history of federal charges that should have told the story well enough. Did the Delaware case really not violate New York's practice law? Did his provision of veterinary paperwork (scratch forms) to non-vets really cross no lines? What about his distribution of controlled drugs? And if none of that behavior was illegal under the vet board's regulations – shouldn't they change that?

That neither New York or New Jersey's state boards were willing to take a hard look at a repeat offender is appalling. The board members in both states carry a responsibility for the risks taken by horses subjected to his unethical and uncaring behavior for years up to his arrest. Think about how many horses that must have been.

Grasso did speak with the Times for its story saying, in part, “anything that goes wrong in harness racing they point to me” and accusing regulators of having a vendetta against him.

“Veterinarians out in the field are out there to help horses, not hurt them,” Grasso told the Times. “We are probably the only ones who have the horses' well-being in mind.”

Some more than others, it seems.

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The Friday Show Presented By Woodbine: Breeders’ Cup Locks And Longshots

Undefeated Flightline is expected to be the shortest-priced runner in this year's Breeders' Cup world championships when he faces seven others in Saturday's $6-million Classic at Keeneland race course in Lexington, Ky. But are there can't-miss “locks” in any of the other 13 championship races that begin on Friday?

In this week's special Breeders' Cup edition of the Friday Show, publisher Ray Paulick and bloodstock editor Joe Nevills are joined by Andrew Champagne, whose public selections for Saratoga appear every summer in the “Pink Sheet.” They've each combed through the past performances and watched countless replays in an effort to identify that one horse that just can't lose.

Paulick's pick is in the first Breeders' Cup race, Friday's Juvenile Turf Sprint. Champagne found a can't-miss runner in Saturday's Dirt Mile and Nevills likes a most familiar runner in Saturday's Turf Sprint.

In addition to their “locks,” the trio picks one longshot they like in the Breeders' Cup, with Nevills finding an upset special in the Filly & Mare Sprint, Champagne in the Juvenile Fillies Turf, and Paulick's longshot special coming in the Turf.

Watch this week's episode of the Friday Show below:

 

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