Tag: The Paddock

Dr. JoAnn di Filippo, PhD is a racehorse owner of Thoroughbreds and Quarter Horses and has served as a business and education consultant to governments, Tribal communities, non-profits, and institutions of higher education.

Rillito Racetrack in Tucson, Ariz., is more than a Pima County-owned property hosting horse racing and other sporting events. For over 79 years, Rillito has served as the American West's backbone racetrack for Quarter Horse and Thoroughbred racing.

Rillito Racing, LLP, the current racetrack operator under contractual agreement with Pima County, has worked continuously for the past six years to establish accountability standards and create a live learning environment for students from the University of Arizona's Race Track Industry Program (RTIP) working in collaboration with industry and horse racing professionals. The working relationship between a local community racetrack, industry professionals, and a world-renowned educational partner is unique to our industry. Everyone is working together to improve the sport of horse racing and set accountability standards that can be implemented nationally.

As previously reported, opening weekend at Rillito was a welcomed event after a nearly two-year hiatus from horse racing due to the pandemic. As with any competitive sport accidents can happen, and we saw two horse breakdowns and one freakish accident in the paddock. While these accidents are never acceptable, they bring out the naysayers who have competing interests over valuable land use. Rillito Racetrack is located on some of the most valuable property in the City of Tucson and is landlocked to any future expansion.

Competing interest holders fighting for use of Rillito's valuable land, cause havoc, display bias, and openly express discriminatory statements about the sport of horse racing and its participants to the public and the Board of Supervisors — creating major disruption prior to the start of each racing season. Yet, it's the community and the racehorse owners, trainers, jockeys, grooms, and supporters who save Rillito from opposition and destruction every time a race contract goes up for renewal with the Pima County Board of Supervisors. It's a never-ending battle facing stiff opposition from the soccer groups and developers all clamoring to get their hands on this valuable property.

Thus far, Rillito Racetrack has been saved from the chopping block. What we need to remember is that Rillito is more than a racetrack … it's a cultural event and learning laboratory unlike anything you've ever experienced! This year Rillito celebrates 79 years operating as an historic racetrack and the birthplace of Quarter Horse racing.

The purses this year are the highest ever – up from $25,000 in 2020 to $100,000 per race day. The live handle for the first two weekends of racing nearly tripled over prior years. The University of Arizona Race Track Industry Program operates on the racetrack grounds providing student interns a hands-on experience including providing the record of safety with the Equine Wellness Program — a nationally recognized equine accountability standards program. With the initiation of the Equine Wellness Program in 2016, Rillito saw a drastic reduction in track incidents (2019 – 1 incident; 2020 – 2 incidents) both well below the national average. The track has hired three veterinarians to assist with pre-race checks.

And, Rillito has one of the best track maintenance operators, Vic Oliver. Any track owner would be lucky to have his dedicated expertise. Racing professionals and enthusiasts have often referred to Rillito as the “best little track in the West,” and we as horse racing professionals are committed to upholding accountability standards to ensure the safety of everyone including our horses.

At both the national and local levels, our industry professionals need to learn to work together to understand the rules of civility and accountability. Horse racing professionals need to be held to accountability standards. By working together, we present a united front combatting voices of opposition before they destroy our industry and our livelihoods.

The key to our industry's survival is working together; not against each other. We need to think about the impact of words used before blasting statements to the media — statements that can intentionally be used against our industry to destroy it for the sake of advancing competing self-serving agendas.  In the meantime, we need to take a close look at how this little community racetrack in Tucson is setting the stage for accountability standards that can be adopted nationally to ensure safety for both the two- and four-legged investments we so thoroughly cherish and protect.

Dr. JoAnn di Filippo, PhD – Tucson, Ariz.

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The post Letter To The Editor: Rillito Racetrack Setting Stage For Accountability Standards appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

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The Los Angeles Times' John Cherwa believes that the newest member of the California Horse Racing Board, Thomas Hudnut, may be the deciding “swing vote” between the two ideological extremes which currently populate the board.

A longtime head of Harvard-Westlake private school and former fractional owner of racehorses, Hudnut replaces Alex Solis on the CHRB.

Cherwa describes the first of the two CHRB groups, including Vice Chair Oscar Gonzales, Wendy Mitchell, and Brenda Washington Davis, as a set which is fairly open to new ideas and strict penalties which help to increase safety.

The second group, consisting of Chairman Greg Ferraro, Dennis Alfieri, and formerly Solis, preferred a slower version of change and a softer touch with the racetracks.

The seventh member of the CHRB, Damascus Castellanos, Cherwa describes as the “ideological center,” though he adds that Castellanos typically votes with the second group of commissioners.

Cherwa doesn't indicate which end of the spectrum he thinks Hudnut might lean toward, and Hudnut admitted he hadn't listened to many meetings before his appointment.

In his statement to the LA Times, Hudnut said: “The case can be made for California that it is the national leader in drug testing, horse and rider safety. Just look at the data over the last three years.”

Read more at the Los Angeles Times.

The post Opinion: CHRB’s New Thomas Hudnut Could Provide Pivotal ‘Swing Vote’ appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

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A barn fire is every horseperson's worst nightmare.

The barn is our safe haven. Those scents and sounds of clean shavings, fresh hay, and happy horses immediately center our minds and calm our souls.

Memories are woven across every inch of time-worn wood: horses' names painstakingly etched across the fronts of the stalls, the revered old bridle of a treasured mount hanging from tack room's corner hook, and a faded old photograph with a dusty ribbon on the shelf. 

For all those reasons, we will never forget the morning of Feb. 27, 2022, when River View Stables, a 36-stall boarding operation based at Stone Place Farm in Prospect, Ky., burned to the ground. 

Neighbors said it happened fast, flames engulfing the facility in the early hours of the morning before the fire department could arrive. The fire claimed the life of one horse; an unfathomable loss.

It also claimed the contents of four tack rooms: tens of thousands of dollars worth of equipment and the bits and pieces of triumph and heartache embedded therein. 

What's more, the fire threatened to take away that feeling of peace we each found every time we stepped through those barn doors.

To stand with our friends around still-smoldering embers of that sacred place, gazing across the contorted sheets of blackened metal, the scorched earth and that acrid smell, knowing the full extent of the destruction… it should have been devastating.

And yet, in the midst of all that tragedy, we found that our support of one another meant more than what we had lost.

Horse people have such an incredible capacity for caring, albeit usually for our four-legged friends. In the face of heart-shattering adversity, we turned that caring toward one another and became a family.

Everyone focused on how to move forward; we came together instead of falling apart.

Even before the fire was out, the farm's part-time employee loaded up his truck and trailer for a 12-hour haul to pick up temporary stalls. Our neighbors showed up immediately to provide us with basic supplies like halters and water troughs. Horse owners and farm managers alike came out to spend the day helping care for the horses, theirs and their friends', holding onto borrowed lead ropes while each horse was brought out of its field to be fed and checked over individually. 

A large hay shed was cleared out, and by early the next morning limestone had been delivered and was being spread across the dirt floor base. A long-time farm employee built us a brand-new wash rack near our new temporary home. Volunteers and their non-horsey family members helped set up the stalls in record time. The local feed shop donated shavings, and dozens of other local horse people donated buckets and hoses and wheelbarrows and pitchforks and hay.

The donations continued: blankets, bridles, saddles, brushes, anything and everything a person might need to care for their horse. The outpouring of support was incredible; from physical donations to acts of service, nothing was left undone.

By the second morning after the fire, all the horses had a clean, dry stall to come home to, and our barn family had organized a potluck dinner for that same evening as a way to say thank you and to celebrate the life of the mare we lost.

We remain incredibly grateful, beyond humbled by the support of our friends, our families, and our community.

“Overwhelmed is my new most-used word,” said head coach/barn manager Deborah Snyder, voice heavy with emotion as she addressed the entire group that evening. “I am overwhelmed by love, gratitude, and gratefulness. 

“I'm sure you all were scared or upset and shed some tears, but you must have done it behind closed doors because (co-manager) Sarah (Younger) and I didn't see a single one. You all let us lean on you, and we just want you to know that we couldn't have gotten through these last 48 hours without you.

“I am continually impressed by everyone who has gone above and beyond so that we didn't feel the loss. Instead, we feel like there is nothing that will hold us back!”

The post ‘Overwhelmed By Love, Gratitude, And Gratefulness’: Kentucky Community Comes Together After Heartbreaking Barn Fire appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

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With the weeks dwindling down to a precious few before the final round of races offering qualifying points for the Grade 1 Kentucky Derby on May 7, the options for trainer Bob Baffert and the various owners with horses in his stable are coming into focus.

There are legal and logistical challenges ahead on more than one front.

Baffert is facing a 90-day suspension that could begin as early as next week if Franklin Circuit Court Judge Thomas Wingate affirms a Kentucky Horse Racing Commission decision to deny Baffert a stay of that ban. The suspension stems from a failed drug test of Medina Spirit, who has been disqualified from his victory in the 2021 Kentucky Derby. Both the DQ and Baffert's suspension have been appealed.

If Wingate overturns the KHRC decision, Baffert will be able to continue training for as long as the case is under appeal. But that doesn't resolve eligibility for Baffert horses in the Kentucky Derby or any other races at Churchill Downs racetrack, whose parent company has exercised its private property rights and imposed a two-year ban that applies to all Churchill Downs Inc.-owned racetracks through the spring of 2023. Along with that exclusion came a decision not to award Kentucky Derby qualifying points to any horse trained by Baffert. Baffert has sued Churchill Downs over the ban, but that case won't be resolved in the courts any time soon.

So what's an owner to do if he or she has invested millions of dollars in racing prospects in hopes of hitting the jackpot by winning the Kentucky Derby and scoring a stallion deal worth tens of millions of dollars?

There are a few potential scenarios.

They could just deal with the Churchill ban while the lawyers run up their meters, race at tracks where the Baffert stable is welcome, and find other Grade 1 races to build a stallion resume.

But, if Wingate affirms the KHRC decision to deny a stay and Baffert begins his suspension next week, California Horse Racing Board rules may block what we've seen happen in many other instances of trainer suspensions: namely, that the stable is turned over to an assistant and it is pretty much business as usual while the boss goes on vacation or trains from his living room.

CHRB Rule 1843.3 states, among other things, that horses may not be transferred to licensed family members or, in cases where a licensee is suspended for more than 30 days, horses may not be transferred to “any other licensee who has been an employee of the suspended licensee within the previous year.”

Also, the rule states: “Licensed trainers suspended 60 days or more shall be banned from all inclosures under the jurisdiction of the CHRB. In addition, during the period of suspension, such trainer shall forfeit all assigned stall space and shall remove from the inclosures all signage, colors, advertisements, training-related equipment, tack, office equipment, and any other property.”

This means that assistant trainer Jimmy Barnes or any other employee of the Baffert stable may not take over and run the horses in their name.

The owners could choose to move top 3-year-olds like Messier, dominating winner of the G3 Robert B. Lewis Stakes, to another active trainer. But as Clark Brewster, one of a bevy of attorneys hired by Baffert to fight his legal battles, told the KHRC during his appeal for a stay: “Mr. Baffert has in his barn 88 horses presently. He serves as the employer to over 70 families' principal earners. Many of these families' earners have been with him for 30 years. … This stewards ruling would require that he disband that barn and disperse these horses in an incredibly disruptive and damaging way, irreparably damaging.”

Maybe. Maybe not.

There doesn't appear to be anything in the rules to prevent the entire Baffert stable from being temporarily turned over to a retired or former trainer who can get licensed, apply for the same stalls that Baffert currently has, and hire the same people who now work for Baffert – from assistant trainers to exercise riders and grooms. Under that scenario, the horses wouldn't have to move, and they would be handled by the same people who care for them now. The horses, including Triple Crown prospects, presumably could run in the name of the new trainer, earn Kentucky Derby points in races like the Santa Anita and Arkansas Derbies, and race at Churchill Downs on the first Saturday in May – if the tracks that provide stabling and put on the races agree to a potential scheme like this.

And if that's the case, we may need another asterisk for this year's Kentucky Derby.

That's my view from the eighth pole.

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