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Empire Racing Club Launches Third Season

Kicking off its third season, the Empire Racing Club (ERC) will offer a reduced price of $400 through the official re-launch date of May 15. In a departure from the first two seasons, 2021 membership is open to both licensed and unlicensed racing enthusiasts looking to enjoy the social and educational benefits of the Club. The 2021 ERC season will be limited to 200 members. The ERC will once again be managed by famed race-caller Tom Durkin. Training the current team of runners for the 2021 season are Hall of Famer Mark Casse; Hall of Fame nominee Christophe Clement, the leading trainer at Aqueduct's 2020 Fall meet; and Grade 1-winning trainer Tom Morley, based year-round in the Empire State and husband of NYRA TV personality Maggie Wolfendale.

Team runners currently include stakes winner stakes winner Proven Strategies (Sky Mesa), maiden turf filly Community Adjusted (Summer Front), and the team newcomer, unraced 2-year-old filly Boom Roasted (Practical Joke). Winner of Woodbine's Toronto Cup last season, Proven Strategies, campaigned by the Empire Racing Club and Leonard and Jonathan Green, is a 10-1 shot on the morning line for the $100,000 Elusive Quality S. at Belmont Park Saturday. Also running during Belmont's opening week, Community Adjusted finished fourth for Hall of Fame nominee Christophe Clement, who trains for the Empire Racing Club and Rob Masiello. Boom Roasted, also competing for the ERC and Masiello, is expected to join Tom Morley in New York in the coming week.

“I am really looking forward to seeing the members in person again–at the workouts, the races, and at our social gatherings where we can renew old acquaintances and share the experiences of up close involvement in racing,” said Durkin.

Spearheaded by the New York Thoroughbred Horsemen's Association (NYTHA) in 2019, the ERC is a non-profit organization designed to introduce new fans to racehorse ownership.

One benefit of ERC membership is the ERC Educational Series, regular Zoom meetings for members which have featured leading professionals from all aspects of the industry, including Todd Pletcher, Christophe Clement, Spendthrift's GM Ned Toffey, jockey Tyler Gaffalione, Linda Rice, Starlight and StarLadies' Jack and Laurie Wolf, TVG's Caton Bredar, DRF's Mike Welsch and David Grening, etc. Topics covered during the first two seasons of the ERC included breeding, sales, racing partnerships and syndicates, the claiming game, equine health and veterinary care, Thoroughbred retirement, and handicapping.

“I'm really excited to kick off the new year with our members,” said ERC Board member Rob Masiello. “We were able to adapt to the challenges that last year presented and create a series of virtual meetings with our members that included several leading owners, trainers, and bloodstock agents.”

ERC members receive regular updates about their horses via conference call, email and social media. Once fans are welcomed back to the track, the Club will offer the opportunity to visit the backstretch for morning training and the paddock when the ERC horses run, and will host dedicated ERC events.

For more information, visit www.empireracingclub.wildapricot.org.

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Mangini Pleads Guilty in Doping Case

Scott Mangini, who, along with Jason Servis, Jorge Navarro and others was indicted in March 2020 for his involvement in a horse doping scheme, has pled guilty to conspiring to unlawfully distribute adulterated and misbranded drugs with the intent to defraud and mislead, it was announced Friday by Audrey Strauss, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York. He faces a maximum sentence of five years.

Mangini, 55, became the third person involved with the case to enter a guilty plea. The list includes Mangini's business partner, Scott Robinson. It is unknown whether or not Mangini and Robinson are cooperating with authorities and providing them with lists of additional clients who were not named in the original indictments.

Mangini will be sentenced Sept. 10 by Judge Paul Oetken. Robinson was sentenced to 18 months for his role in the scheme to use performance-enhancing drugs on horses. He also had to forfeit $3.8 million.

Mangini used several websites, among them “horseprerace.com” and “racehorsemeds.com,” to sell drugs, including illegal medications he called “Blast Off Red Blood Builder,” “Extreme Explosion,” “Oral Epo,” and “Green Speed.”

“Scott Mangini created and flooded the supply side of a market of greed that continues to endanger racehorses through the sale of performance-enhancing drugs,” Strauss said in a statement. “Mangini designed and created dozens of products intended for use by those engaged in fraud and animal abuse. His products were manufactured with no oversight of their composition, in shoddy facilities, despite prior efforts by state and federal regulators to shut down Mangini's operation and strip his license. Mangini's guilty plea underscores that our Office and our partners at the FBI are committed to the prosecution and investigation of corruption, fraud, and endangerment in the horse racing industry.”

The government contends that from as early as 2011 through the March 2020 indictments, Mangini manufactured, sold and shipped millions of dollars worth of adulterated and misbranded equine performance-enhancing drugs. Mangini is a former pharmacist whose license was suspended in 2016.

Many of the drugs sold by Mangini fell under the category of “blood builders,” which were used by trainers to increase red blood cell counts and improve a horse's endurance. Other drugs were used to deaden a horse's nerves and block pain in order to improve a horse's race performance. In addition, Mangini told his clients that no tests were available for the drugs he was selling. For example, Mangini's pain-numbing product “Numb It Injection” was advertised as a “proprietary formula and without question the most powerful pain shot in the market today” and as something that could not be found through post or pre-race tests.

According to the U.S. Attorney's office, Mangini was selling drugs that were manufactured in non-Food and Drug Administration registered facilities and they carried significant risks to the animals affected through the administration of those drugs.

Mangini operated out of Boca Raton, Florida.

Sarah Izhaki, also a drug distributer, has also pled guilty but has yet to be sentenced.

This case is being handled by the Office's Money Laundering and Transnational Criminal Enterprises Unit. Assistant United States Attorneys Sarah Mortazavi, Anden Chow, Benet Kearney, and Andrew C. Adams are in charge of the prosecution.

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Gormley Represented By First Winner at Keeneland

2nd-Keeneland, $59,524, Msw, 4-23, 2yo, 4 1/2f, :51.75, ft, 2 1/4 lengths.
HEADLINE REPORT (c, 2, Gormley–Green Eyed Cat, by Tale of the Cat) was pounded into debut odds of 30 cents on the dollar and did his best work through the wire to become the first winner for his freshman sire (by Malibu Moon) Friday at Keeneland. Off slowly beneath John Velazquez and immediately under the pump, the bay quickly made up for lost time and was on even terms with La Belleza Negra (Cairo Prince) as they hit the top of the stretch. He struck to the lead outside the eighth pole and kicked on nicely through the final sixteenth of a mile to stop the timer in solid time. Conagher (Jimmy Creed) completed a Spendthrift-sired exacta. A half-brother to SW Little Kansas (El Kingdom), Headline Report was purchased by Eddie Woods's Quarter Pole Enterprises for $160,000 at the Fasig-Tipton Select Yearling Sale last September. He was recently hammered down for $550,000 at the OBS March Sale after breezing a bullet eighth of a mile in :9 4/5. Headline Report's second dam was the dual Grade I winner Critical Eye (Dynaformer), who also serves as the granddam of MSW Critical Value (Bodemeister). The third dam includes Klaravich Stables' talented turf runner Takeover Target (Harlan's Holiday). Green Eyed Cat has a yearling filly by Mo Town and was most recently bred to Catalina Cruiser. Sales history: $160,000 Ylg '20 FTKSEL; $550,000 2yo '21 OBSMAR. Lifetime Record: 1-1-0-0, $36,724. Click for the Equibase.com chart or VIDEO, sponsored by TVG.
O-Breeze Easy LLC; B-Ledgelands LLC & Andrew C Ritter (KY); T-Wesley A Ward.

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With Ontario Extending Stay-at-Home Order, Woodbine Opening Up in the Air

The Ontario government announced earlier this week that a province-wide COVID-19-related lockdown has been extended to at least May 20, dashing hopes that Woodbine will be able to open for business any time soon. The meet was supposed to begin Apr. 17.

“There is a crisis right now in the Toronto area and we're right in the middle of it,” said Woodbine CEO Jim Lawson. “They are running out of intensive care beds and the numbers are not going down. The good news is that more vaccines are coming in May, which will help a lot. People keep asking me when we are going to open, and I tell them to remain optimistic, but people are getting tired of Jim Lawson telling them he is hopeful.”

On Friday, health officials in Ontario reported more than 4,500 new COVID-19 cases and another 34 deaths linked to the disease.

Though he is hoping the track will be permitted to operate after May 20, Lawson says he cannot be certain that Woodbine will be allowed to race on that date. If the COVID situation does not improve in Ontario, the lockdown could be extended again. Another possibility is that the lockdown will be lifted but the Toronto area will fall into the “gray zone” category, under which racing is still not permitted. The Woodbine meet was cut short last year, ending on Nov. 26 when Toronto was declared a gray zone area.

“If the province comes out of the stay-at-home order and goes back to the same restrictions we had previously, then horse racing would not be permitted,” Lawson said. “Gray is the most stringent color code. When they go back to the color-coded system, Toronto would likely fall into the gray zone, and that would be a problem for Woodbine Thoroughbreds.”

Since the track closed early last year, Lawson has been pleading Woodbine's case, arguing that it is hypocritical to allow the NHL, where the games are played indoors, to operate while horse racing, an outdoor sport, is not allowed. Lawson said he has had talks with the local health department and representatives of the province, but has not been given the answers he was looking for.

“I'm banging my head against the wall,” Lawson said.

After there was just one case of COVID-19 all last year at Woodbine, a recent outbreak has occurred on the backstretch. Woodbine confirmed last week that 15 people working in the stabling area have tested positive for COVID-19.

With so much uncertainty surrounding the meet, the fear is that a large number of horses will leave Woodbine in order to race in the U.S. and may not come back. Another concern is that trainers who had been planning to race at Woodbine will instead stay home. Lawson said that Graham Motion was planning to have a string at the track this year, but has informed the racing department that because of the shutdown he will not be coming.

Woodbine's leading trainer, Mark Casse, has shipped some horses to Woodbine, but fewer than he normally would have at this point.

“We have about 35, 40 horses there and normally we would have about 75,” Casse said. “We have stopped sending horses up. There's been talk of maybe pulling some more horses out of there, which we probably will do. I could see us possibly sending a few to New York, but with a lot of the horses I have [at Woodbine], it's because they are Canadian-bred or owned.”

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