Tag: The Paddock

What Did You Read? Paulick Report’s Top Stories Of 2021

As we prepare to close the book on 2021, it's time for our traditional look back on the most popular stories of the year by traffic. We've done this for six years now (see previous editions of 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020).

This was the year of the litmus test for Thoroughbred racing: from the ongoing federal doping case against Jorge Navarro and Jason Servis to the actions of the sport's top jockeys, as well as the ongoing drama surrounding Kentucky Derby first-place finisher Medina Spirit.

We at the Paulick Report could not do the work we do without our readers and our advertisers. Thank you this holiday season (and always) for your support. 

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A Christmas Tradition: Gin Fizzes, Turkey Dinner And Daily Racing Forms For Santa Anita’s Opening Day

I married into a horse racing family. No, Carol's parents weren't major owners or breeders (they did dabble with a few claiming horses), but you would be hard-pressed to find two people who were more dedicated to the sport and enthusiastic about the challenge of picking and betting on winners than Bill and Helen Watts.

They seldom missed a day at Santa Anita – weekdays or weekends. Bill was employed as a trader at Merrill Lynch in downtown Los Angeles and was free to head to the track in Arcadia when the markets closed at 1:00 p.m. Pacific. Helen's job, it seems, was going to the races. She drove 15 miles from their home in Covina to Santa  Anita and was always there well in advance of the daily double. She'd give Bill a report on the first couple races when he arrived from work (though, in those days, you could keep up with the results on KNX News Radio, which played the stretch calls and gave the payouts of every race).

They were delighted to learn their daughter was dating someone she met at the Los Angeles office of Daily Racing Form, where Carol and I both worked in the 1980s. It may have had something to do with the fact we could grab a couple of extra copies of the Form when it was hot off the presses and not yet in distribution, saving them each $1.50.

A couple years later, when we decided to marry, Carol and I were told in no uncertain terms that the wedding would not take place during the Santa Anita winter-spring meet, the Del Mar summer meet, or the Santa Anita fall meeting then run by the Oak Tree Racing Association. That left late April-June and November-December during Hollywood Park, or September during the Los Angeles County Fair race meeting at Pomona. We set Sept. 25, 1983, for our wedding date.

Bill and Helen's lives were organized around the sport. Vacations – sometimes group tours to visit racetracks, breeding farms and training centers overseas – had to fit into those same time slots as our wedding. Social events with friends or business associates on race days were highly discouraged and avoided as much as possible.

One of their favorite days of the year was Christmas, not so much because of the religious aspects or good cheer of the holiday. It was due to the anticipation and excitement of what came next: opening day at Santa Anita. (One of their other favorite days each year was the mid-July opening day at Del Mar, which they also never missed.)

I have to laugh when I hear someone complain about awkward Christmas dinner conversations with in-laws. Questions like, “When are you going to have kids?” or, “Have you thought about a career change?” never came up in our dinner table discussions.

It was more like, “Who do you like in the double?” “Do you want to put in a Pick 6 ticket with us?” or, “How big do you think the opening day crowd is going to be tomorrow?” (Note: this was back when opening day attendance of 50,000-60,000 was common and leaving the track could be a traffic nightmare.)

The Watts family Christmas Day tradition began with gin fizzes and the opening of a few presents, and then on to a feast of turkey with all the trimmings. Once the dinner  table was cleared, the Daily Racing Forms came out and the serious business began. We'd go through every race, each of us giving our picks, and why.

There may have been a better time for Southern California horse racing than the early to mid-1980s, but I never experienced anything more exciting. The jockey colony – Hall of Famers Bill Shoemaker, Laffit Pincay Jr., Chris McCarron, Eddie Delahoussaye, Sandy Hawley, Darrel McHargue and a newcomer named Gary Stevens – was the best I will ever see. Hall of Fame trainers like Charlie Whittingham, Laz Barrera, Gary Jones, Richard Mandella, Robert Frankel and an upstart from the Quarter Horse world named D. Wayne Lukas seemed to dominate the big races. It was the Golden Era for me.

Bill and Helen have both passed in recent years, but I know if there's a heaven above with a newsstand selling the Daily Racing Form, they'll start handicapping the daily double as soon as Christmas dinner is over. And some how, some way, they'll find a place to make a wager. They never met a race they didn't like, especially on opening day at Santa Anita.

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View From The Eighth Pole: Soul Searching, Restitution In Order For Owners Who Supported Jorge Navarro’s Stable

From Jan. 1, 2016, through March 8, 2020, trainer Jorge Navarro won 741 races from 2,468 starts. That's a win percentage of an unfathomable 30%.

The owners of those runners earned $24,360,514 in purse money.

That's 741 wins and millions of dollars in first-place money that, in my opinion, rightfully belongs to someone else. The judge who sentenced Navarro to five years in prison agrees. She has ordered Navarro to pay restitution of $25,860,514, an amount he surely doesn't have unless the owners who benefited from his cheating are willing to fork it over.

Here's just a few examples.

There's the $180,000 that Lael Stable should have received for a win by the stable's Divining Rod in the Grade 2 Kelso Handicap at Belmont Park in 2017. The Arnaud Delacour runner had to settle for $60,000 after finishing second behind what we can only assume was a juiced Sharp Azteca, who raced for the Gelfenstein Farm of Ivan Rodriguez. Divining Rod, a son of Tapit, was deprived of a G2 win, something that also would have had ripple effects on the catalogue page of his family female.

Another horse cheated out of a graded stakes win by Sharp Azteca was Brittlyn Stable's Forevamo, trained at the time by Al Stall. The Uncle Mo gelding finished second in the G3 Pat Day Mile Stakes at Churchill Downs in 2016. He would have earned $141,050 for first place but instead received just $45,500. His owner didn't get the glory of standing in the Churchill Downs winner's circle with the Hall of Fame jockey for whom the race is named or get new hardware for their trophy case.

It is about the money, but it isn't JUST about the money.

I learned that from Josie Martino, who with husband Salvatore Delfino raced Wildcat Red in the colors of their Honors Stable Corp. The son of D'Wildcat won six of 22 starts for trainer Jose Garoffalo, including the G2 Fountain of Youth Stakes at Gulfstream Park in 2014.

Two years later, Wildcat Red finished second in the Sunshine Millions Sprint Stakes at the South Florida track, earning $29,100. The winner of the $90,210 first-place prize was X Y Jet, who at the time was racing for Gelfenstein Farm and trained by Navarro. The trainer would later admit to injecting the horse with illegal performance enhancing drugs.

X Y Jet dropped dead two months before Navarro was taken into custody as part of the sweeping FBI investigation that led to indictments against more than two dozen trainers, veterinarians and drug suppliers.

No owners have been charged, though those who gave horses to Navarro to train may have benefited the most from his cheating.

Martino and Delfino hit it big with Wildcat Red, a $30,000 OBS 2-year-old purchase who earned $1.1 million in 22 starts. He was one of the first horses campaigned by their small stable. Yet even with the horse's success, Martino said in a phone call to the Paulick Report, she and her husband feel cheated by having to compete against a juiced Navarro runner in the Sunshine Millions. “We are speaking out in Red's honor,” said Martino, an admitted animal lover who was stunned by Navarro's callous treatment of horses. “Red can't talk, but he deserves to be heard. What happened wasn't right and it wasn't fair to the horse.”

In virtually every one of the 741 races won by Navarro from 2016-'20, there are similar stories of horses, owners, trainers and jockeys being deprived of a victory and higher purse money. It might be a claiming race or a stakes, on dirt or turf, in New York, New Jersey or Florida. Cheating is cheating at any level.

The owners of horses trained by Navarro who gained financially by his serial doping might benefit  from some serious soul searching. If it's only about winning, if that's why they sent horses to someone so brazen that he had a customized pair of shoes with #juiceman printed on them in big letters, this game would be better off without them. It will survive.

In the now-famous video filmed at Monmouth Park in the summer of 2017, when Navarro and one of his owners, Randal Gindi of Monster Racing Stables, joked about Navarro being the “juiceman,” the trainer had a brief moment of candor.

“We f – – k everyone,” Navarro said.

He wasn't kidding.

That's my view from the eighth pole.

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Racing Responds To Bullying Hearing Outcome: ‘Boys Will Be Boys’ Vs. A ‘Force For Change’

Reactions to the outcome of the jockey bullying case in Britain have run the gamut from unwavering support of the accuser, female rider Bryony Frost, to a hard-lined denial that anything is wrong, either with the behavior of the now-banned Robbie Dunne or the culture of the jockeys' room itself.

Racing Post editor Tom Kerr wrote:

“The virtues of the weighing room, although real, have become distorted to the extent they have allowed something awful to take place. A preoccupation with self-sufficiency has allowed a poisonous relationship to fester like an untreated wound; an earthy and unaffected approach to banter has failed to distinguish between bickering and bullying; unwavering support for one's colleagues has become an inability to call out or even recognize wrongdoing.

“It is understandable that those who treasure the weighing room feel defensive of it, but we must hope senior riders past and present can find the perspective to recognize that whatever their affection for the man, Dunne's behavior was indefensible and the culture that permitted it was unhealthy. They should recognize that participating in a dangerous sport does not give license to ignore modern standards of behavior. They should make amends with Frost. And the code of silence must be replaced by a robust and respected code of conduct.

“In bringing and persevering with this case, [Frost] has shown remarkable resilience and courage. She dared to break the omerta of the weighing room, she refused to be cowed by her tormentor or the closed ranks of her colleagues, and she put herself in the firing line when it would have been simpler, and so much easier, to keep her head down.

“Should this case bring about the change it ought to, Britain's most successful female jump jockey will have, at considerable cost to herself, done her sport a tremendous service.”

On Thursday, the British Horseracing Authority issued an 18-month ban of jockey Robbie Dunne for conduct the BHA considered prejudicial to the integrity, proper conduct, and good reputation of horseracing by bullying and harassing a fellow licensed jockey, Bryony Frost.

In issuing the ruling, disciplinary panel chair Brian Barker said: “The tenor and type of language that we find was used towards Ms. Frost is totally unacceptable, whatever the frustrations about her style and whatever the habits of the weighing room. They fall squarely within the ambit of the prohibition set out in the rule.

“Secondly, in reviewing the evidence given and their approach by jockeys of repute as well as by the valets – who probably find themselves in a difficult position – we have real concern that what was referred to by Mr. Weston as the 'weighing room culture' is deep-rooted and coercive, and in itself is not conducive to the good health and the development of modern day race-riding.”

The Professional Jockeys' Association, of which both Frost and Dunne are members, released a statement shortly after Dunne's ban was handed down. Portions of that statement include:

“We do not believe Robbie Dunne has been subjected to a remotely fair process.”

and:

“The PJA does not accept the disciplinary panel's findings in relation to the culture within and collective behavior of the jump jockeys' weighing room. It is a grossly inaccurate and wholly unfair representation and a conclusion we believe is at odds with the evidence presented.

“The PJA and its members are appalled by the BHA's characterization of it as 'rancid.' This, and the BHA's conduct throughout this process, is incredibly damaging.”

PJA chairman Jon Holmes spoke to Racing TV about the case:

“I understand how it's been portrayed in the media and so on, and I understand the reasons behind that. Of course I do, I'd be stupid if I didn't.

“What I can tell you is that in the main these are professional, hard-working, decent people and there is obviously, in this case, there may be isolated incidents. I'm not going to go into that because there may be an appeal going, and we also have to look forward to where we're going to.

“I accept that she felt bullied, absolutely, and as I say, this is subject to appeal, so I can't go into the case, but of course I accept it.”

The PJA also issued a press release on behalf of an undisclosed number of anonymous female riders:

“Really disappointed with the way us and our male colleagues have all been portrayed by the BHA and subsequently reported in the media.

“It is sad that whilst one woman is being praised for speaking her truth, the rest of us have been shamed for doing the same. At no point have we condoned what is alleged to have happened – we just haven't been able to give any evidence to support it as we don't have any.”

Greg Wood wrote at The Guardian:

“Well before the verdict arrived in the British Horseracing Association's case alleging bullying and harassment of Bryony Frost by her fellow jockey Robbie Dunne, the battle lines were already being drawn for the aftermath.

“These clearly placed many – and conceivably the overwhelming majority – of Frost's weighing-room colleagues on one side, with the full support of retired champions including Richard Johnson, who gave evidence in Dunne's defense, and Tony McCoy. McCoy issued a tweet in support of weighing-room valets on Tuesday, shortly after it emerged that three valets who also gave evidence had refused to work for Frost at Fontwell that afternoon. His colleagues on ITV Racing, Alice Plunkett and (former jockey) Luke Harvey had already pre-judged the decision on the channel's Opening Show program by repeatedly insisting it had 'nothing to do with sexism.'

“The full extent of the fury – or perhaps, more accurately, the denial – within the weighing room became apparent only on Thursday, however, when the Professional Jockeys Association responded to the panel's finding that all charges against Dunne had been proved, and that a weighing-room culture of self-policing disputes 'is deep-rooted and coercive, and in itself not conducive to the good health and development of modern-day race-riding.' The PJA's statement was as willfully incendiary as it was sullenly defensive.

“The PJA's statement acknowledged only that Frost had 'felt bullied' by Dunne, not that she had been bullied, as the panel decided. Regardless of the possibility of an appeal, at best this showed an astonishing lack of awareness of how its choice of words would be perceived.”

Speaking after riding at winner at Newcastle on Thursday, jockey Alain Cawley told Sky Sports Racing:

“I think Robbie has been hard done by, (being) found guilty of everything he has.

“I've been in the weighing room a long time and I've never heard anyone say (anything) but how good it was in there (for all the) young people coming along.

“Going back when all the older boys were there, especially when I was starting – it helped me out.

“For me the weighing room is a great place to be. I haven't heard many people say that it wasn't.

“I feel sorry for Robbie. Hopefully it'll get looked into again – I don't think it's right.

“We're all adults, or the majority of us are adults. We've all had tussles and bustles about people – how many married people go home and swear at each other and have rows every night of the week.

“Swearing is part of life and it's a tough sport we're in. We risk our lives when we go out there.

“Foul language is used everywhere. I'm not saying it's right to use it in certain ways, but we're grown people – men and women in there. We're tough people to be out there in that game.

“It's a tough sport, but it's for everyone – whoever wants to come into the game, we're open to everyone coming into the game.”

Newmarket-based trainer Gay Kelleway, the first woman to ride a winner at Royal Ascot, told Sky Sports Racing:
“This is 40 years too late, this is what I had to suffer back in the day when I was riding and it has taken quite a few decades for a clearer vision of what lady jockeys go through.
“This is not just Bryony, a lot of lady jockeys kept schtum about a lot of things. I know one particular Flat jockey told me about her experiences, but she was too scared to say anything. At last they've heard Bryony and I'm delighted with the verdict.
“I think she can move on from this – look at her, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, going through all this she won the Tingle Creek and she won today, that's how she does the talking. She's carried on like a professional, but thank God she had the courage to speak up.”
Twelve-time champion jumps jockey Ruby Walsh told ITV Racing: 
“Based on the evidence surrounding this case, to say that the culture is rancid is an easy accusation to make. Do I think that's the culture of the entire weighing room? Certainly not.
“That said, you have a room full of competitors and rivals. They're not all friends, nor should they be, but they represent the image of the sport and they have to uphold that. There will be rows but at times somebody has to tell somebody else to sit down and shut up. That doesn't appear to have happened. That's what went wrong.
“You have to use words like 'I'm sorry.' That's part of any altercation and in sport they will always happen but you have to go back and apologize. They're simple words. Then somebody has to reassure the person who was heckled not to worry about it. That's how the weighing room should work but it stopped working, which is the problem.”

BHA chief executive Julie Harrington told the Racing Post:

“We understand that for the vast majority of those who work in the weighing room, it's a positive, supportive and welcoming place, and we express our respect and admiration for the skills and courage of our participants.

“However in any environment there are going to be some people who don't feel comfortable and there are going to be times when lines are crossed.

“It's essential that when something does go wrong that people feel supported in calling it out and we call on everyone within the industry to recognize this.”

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Graham Cunningham at sportinglife.com:

“Dunne must face up the prospect that his long career in the saddle could be over, while angry observers now have a bad guy to vilify and an entire sport to demonize as rooted in a past where women need to know their place.

“That's where we are in 2021. Complex issues are reduced to one crude hero/villain scenario before the content cannon sets its sights on another target.

“Frost has put it all on the line by refusing to put up with the sort of abuse that women trying to make their way in the workplace have been subjected to for decades. Time will tell how that works out for her. But there is only one victim here. And it ain't Robbie Dunne.

“Rid of the cloying need to pretend all is rosy, this case represents a vital river that needed crossing so racing can be genuinely proud that it pits men and women against each other in 'safe in the knowledge that the standards universal in other walks of life will apply.'

“History will reflect that the BHA's independent panel refused to tolerate Dunne's egregious bullying. Now it's time to see whether racing can tolerate a milestone change in its culture.”

The Sun's Dave Kidd wrote:

“Racing is a rare sport in which men and women compete against one another as equals – which ought to be a strong selling point.

“Yet an old-school, outdated, boys-will-be-boys culture still pervades it.

“Dare we suggest a touch of 'Small Man Syndrome' with too many of these little fellas intimidated by the presence of strong, successful women such as Frost?

“Dunne has now been suspended for 18 months and shamed as a confirmed bully.

“Even if some fellow jockeys continue to shun her, Frost's courage in speaking out is likely to be a significant force for a long-term culture change.

“For while Dunne represents racing's past, Frost is her sport's future.”

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