With USADA's announcement, HISA is in shambles and picking up the pieces will be a daunting, if not impossible, task. USADA's involvement was the reason so many people were so enthusiastic about HISA's passage. USADA and its CEO Travis Tygart are the gold standard when it comes to anti-doping and they get results. Just ask Lance Armstrong. While it's true that HISA covers other areas and issues, none seem that important at the moment. This was always about bringing in USADA and letting them accomplish what the sport is incapable of doing on its own.

Now what?

The Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority, the group overseeing the implementation of HISA, said, in a press release last week, that it is evaluating options for engagement with other leading independent enforcement agencies. I suppose that's what they had to say, but the statement does not address the realities of the predicament they are in. The statement indicates they will simply move on to Plan B. Except there is no Plan B, no alternative to USADA. And if they somehow do come up with another agency to handle drug testing and enforcement, it's not going to be an entity that has anywhere near the bona fides that USADA does.

There's only one way to solve this mess, and that's a reconciliation between USADA and the Authority.

In their respective press releases, neither USDA nor the Authority gave any indication as to what exactly was the problem that caused a divorce before the two were officially married.

“After months of negotiations, we have been unable to enter an agreement in line with the requirements of the Act, and one which would have given us a reasonable chance to put in place a credible and effective program,” Tygart said in USADA's statement, not exactly answering any of the questions so many now have.

The most likely reasons USADA and the Authority could not come to terms?

It could be about money. It was never going to be cheap to have USADA come in and provide the manpower and expertise needed to police an entire sport, one that has far more competitors and moving parts than even the Olympics. And it was never made clear where the money to pay for USADA was supposed to come from. Tygart might have asked for more than the Authority was willing to pay.

There may have also been a disagreement regarding rules and regulations, what USADA could and could not do. It's easy to see Tygart walking away if there were roadblocks put in his way that he could not accept.

Or it could be something else.

Whatever the reason may have been, Authority Chairman Charles Scheeler and his crew and Tygart and his team need to lock themselves in a room with the understanding that no one can come out until they have reached an agreement that will bring USADA back into the fold. That may mean that it will be the Authority that has to blink first, that it will have to find a way to give Taggart whatever it is that he is looking for. Horse racing needs USADA a lot more than USADA needs racing.

Maybe the relationship between the two is beyond repair and nothing can be done to salvage it, but racing has to try. The alternative is that everything goes back to the status quo and that, without USADA, the bad guys continue to run amok. HISA, without USADA's involvement, becomes so irrelevant that the act might as well be repealed. That depressing possibility should be considered unacceptable by the Authority, The Jockey Club and everyone else who has been trying so hard to bring meaningful change to a sport that needs just that.

There has to be a way. Make it happen.

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“After months of negotiations, we have been unable to enter an agreement in line with the requirements of the Act, and one which would have given us a reasonable chance to put in place a credible and effective program.  While we are obviously saddened by the outcome at this stage, we tried our absolute best to find a way forward but without success,” wrote Travis Tygart, USADA CEO, in a statement.

In a separate statement Thursday, the Authority confirmed the news. “As mandated by the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act of 2020, USADA and HISA had been engaged in good faith negotiations but were unable to reach final terms,” the Authority wrote.

With the act scheduled to go into effect July 1 next year–provided it survives legal challenges in the interim–this announcement throws into disarray a crucial component of HISA.

That's because, with only six months left on the clock, the million-dollar question now is: What entity or entities will be responsible for overseeing HISA's laboratory accreditation, drug testing and enforcement program?

The law dictates that if USADA is not the contracted enforcement agency, the Authority must enter into an agreement “with an entity that is nationally recognized as being a medication regulation agency equal in qualification” to USADA.

In Thursday's statement, the Authority wrote that it is “evaluating options for engagement with other leading independent enforcement agencies.”

Furthermore, there will be a temporary delay in submission of the Anti-Doping and Medication Control draft rules to the FTC until a “new independent agency” can be identified and an agreement nailed down.

“This will allow HISA and another independent enforcement agency to reach an agreement and build on the progress that has been made to-date with USADA. HISA anticipates this process will permit the full implementation of the final ADMC rules in early 2023.”

According to the Authority, the draft Racetrack Safety regulations that were submitted to the FTC earlier this month will be implemented on July 1 next year, following the requisite review, public comment and education periods.

For many, this announcement will come as a bolt out of the blue.

Indeed, A little more than two weeks ago at the latest Race Track Industry Symposium at Tucson, Charles Scheeler, chairman of the Authority, unveiled a key development for what was to be the working mechanics of HISA's drug testing program.

According to Scheeler, individual states were going to continue conducting race-day testing and sample collection come July 1 next year. At the same time, USADA would manage the out-of-competition (OOC) testing program.

However, when the 2023 season rolls around, USADA was expected to assume responsibility for both race-day and OOC testing. That arrangement is now obviously defunct.

“While we desperately tried to reach an agreement to implement the program, without compromising our values, we have always said the passing of the legislation and the finalization of uniform, robust rules are huge victories for the horses and the equine industry,” Tygart wrote, in Thursday's statement.

“We are honored to have been involved with these efforts to restore the integrity of thoroughbred horse racing. Though we are unsure what the future holds for USADA–if any–in this effort, we have offered to assist the Authority and others in the industry to ensure that the sport gets the program it needs and that the horses deserve,” Tygart added.

In a statement Thursday, Scheeler said “We are deeply grateful for USADA's hard work, expertise and leadership in working with HISA's Anti-Doping and Medication Committee to develop comprehensive draft rules in a remarkably short period of time.”

NHBA President Eric Hamelback released the following statement, “The National HBPA continues to stand steadfast behind our belief that the HISA Act is an unconstitutional delegation of authority to a private organization. With that said, after the events announced today we hope members of the Authority take into strong consideration partnering with an enforcement agency that understands the nuances of the horse-racing industry and recognizes the significant positive strides this industry has made in both safety and integrity. Now would be a perfect opportunity for the Authority to mesh the safety regulations that have been put forth with the best of the model rules currently established throughout the United States.”

The TDN requested in-person interviews with both Tygart and someone from the Authority about the reasons underpinning Thursday's announcement, and where HISA stands now. These requests remain pending.

In the meantime, the news leaves dangling many key questions pertaining to the practical implementation of HISA. Among them are the following:

1 – Realistically, what entity or entities could step into the role of the enforcement agency?

Could a group like the United States Equestrian Federation pick up the reins? Or is there still a place for USADA to jump into the saddle?

2 – The issue of cost has been an albatross hanging around the neck of HISA from the start.

And so, when it comes to selecting any enforcement agency moving forward, is there a viable, affordable option for the industry that can still meet HISA's statutory needs?

3 – USADA has already put together and published several key materials outlining things like the prohibited substance list, the results management process, sanctions, and the equine sample collection procedure.

But how much of these materials is proprietary, meaning, the Authority would be forced back to the drawing board?

4 – Drugs are broken into two broad categories. Primary substances are those prohibited at all times. Secondary substances–like therapeutic medications–are prohibited just on race-day.

USADA's system was expected to do away with the current Association of Racing Commissioners International (ARCI)'s alphanumeric classification system for regulated drugs–class 1 through 5, and A through D.

Will the primary and secondary substances lists–the latter USADA hadn't publicly released–still be adopted as part of HISA's anti-doping and medication control rules program?

Or could we see a scenario where the ARCI's model rules remain in place? This last question leads onto the next.

5 – Could today's news facilitate a long-term expanded role for the Racing Medication and Testing Consortium (RMTC) under HISA, considering the agency already performs several key tasks under the Act's anti-doping and medication program?

For one, laboratories currently accredited by the RMTC were expected to be given interim accreditation for the last six months of 2022 as it was.

Furthermore, the ARCI's model rules are built upon the RMTC's scientific groundwork.

6 – As per USADA's results management program, a “National Steward Panel” would be responsible for hearing secondary substance violations, while “Impartial arbitrators” would hear those for primary substance violations.

This system was warmly received within the industry as an important break from the status quo.

But without USADA at the helm–and currently no firm idea as to who the enforcement agency will be–what is the likelihood these panels will be in place even by the start of 2023?

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Flay made a huge splash at the 2014 Tattersalls October Sale when going to 1,250,000 guineas (around $2,122,050 U.S.) to purchase a regally-bred daughter of Galileo (Ire)–the highest-priced filly sold in the Northern Hemisphere that year–he named White Hot (Ire). But the filly never made it to the races. Flay could've cut his losses and sold the mare back at auction, but instead held onto her to breed, putting trust in her pedigree, and she rewarded him with a Breeders' Cup winner as her first foal.

“She has a lights-out pedigree,” he said. “She's by Galileo, she's a half to Pour Moi (Montjeu {Ire}), who won the English Derby, and that's just the beginning of the pedigree. It goes on for pages. It's a Coolmore family. And one thing about buying into a Coolmore family, those guys are so focused on making their families better and better that they're going to spend money all over that pedigree until the end of time. So I made that bet. I took a leap of faith and it didn't work out. The horse never ran, just wasn't good enough. But I knew I was going to keep this horse for the rest of her life. My feeling was, at some point, the blood will show up. If it's that good, something has to happen, directly or indirectly, that's going to help your family. But you have to be patient. You may have to invest more money actually to continue to breed, but at some point it will work. And I obviously did not expect it to work with the first foal, but it did. It's all gravy from here on out.”

Flay has become a breakthrough celebrity and, as a result, a de facto ambassador of racing. He was asked about how receptive people in his world are to the sport and what can be done to introduce more potential owners and bettors into the game.

“There's only one way to do it. You have to expose them to it,” he said. “If you ask me for a recipe and I just hand you a piece of paper or tell you to go download something off a website and you make it, it's going to be one way. But if I actually show you how to do it, it's going to come out differently and probably better, because I'm showing you as opposed to telling you. It's the same thing for racing. If I tell people about my experience, they're like, 'Oh yeah, that's great.' I take people to the big events, because I want them to see racing at its best, see the best horses and the biggest crowds, and then they're hooked. They're like, 'I can't believe I've never done this before.' I hear that all the time. Every year, I take about 25-30 people to the Belmont Stakes. Half of them have never been to a race before. They become racing fans.”

Elsewhere on the show, which is also sponsored by Coolmore, West Point Thoroughbreds, XBTV, Lane's End and Legacy Bloodstock, the writers discussed their takeaways from last week's interview with Travis Tygart and Tessa Muir of USADA, debated whether or not Lasix-free racing is a big deal anymore and addressed potential remedies for the wagering public in situations like the Breeders' Cup Juvenile Turf mess. Click here to watch the podcast; click here for the audio-only version or find it on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

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As the one who got the ball rolling in a 2004 Op/Ed in The Blood-Horse by urging industry members to consider a way of hiring the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency to oversee drugs in horseracing, I must at this early juncture in the start-up of the Authority register my fears regarding the ultimate success of the new entity and its potentially sweeping changes.

Germination for wishing to get USADA involved in the struggle to rid cheaters from the game was to use CEO Travis Tygart and his team to devise a plan to form an investigative unit capable of discovering through traditional and new-wave policing methods which designer and human drugs were being used to tilt the playing field in North American racing.

If the world of international sport had learned one thing from the 2002 Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative (BALCO) it was that testing was best used not to apprehend suspects but to confirm that they were cheating. The gold standard in catching the crooks was by finding the actual illegal substances first, then developing a test and using that test in the future to nail the bad guys. Testing without knowing what one was testing for was like trying to find a needle in a haystack.

Good old-fashioned cop grunt work and sophisticated FBI-style surveillance is required for the best results. In the eyes of those individuals who formed and drove the Water Hay Oats Alliance, it was foremost in mind that Tygart would use his agency's skills to offer relief to racehorse owners who played the game straight and true.

However, other initiatives, introduced by other stakeholders with alternative agendas, have gotten in the way and now threaten to derail the Authority from their original appointed rounds. And adding further insult to injury, everybody with an agenda is making noises about the Authority widening their sphere of influence by tackling such areas as pari-mutuel wagering.

The last thing HISA needs is to be accused of overreach by encompassing an agenda that goes too far afield from its original mandate. HISA was never envisioned as a so-called “league office” or end-all and be-all to govern the entirety of racing.

HISA is basically divided into two aspects of racing: integrity (preventing cheating) and safety (protecting the horse). While I am extremely interested in protecting the welfare of racehorses, I was personally disappointed in its inclusion in the final legislation, as I thought it could be handled better outside the confines of the law and because it detracted from the focus on cheating with drugs.

I daresay that very well may have been the intention of those proposing and supporting the safety element of the legislation. But I fully understand that with any sort of seminal legislation there must always be compromise and I am positive that without the safety aspect, Churchill Downs would never have been able to use its influence to convince Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell to back the bill.

In reviewing the Authority's releases so far and in reading reports in the media as well as interviews with key members of the Authority, it seems likely to me that testing for illegal substances is being given too much weight, as opposed to investigations. If this turns out to be the case, it would be a misguided, potentially detrimental and disheartening.

I understand why the “safety” advocates pressed so hard to have their initiative appear to be on an equal footing with “integrity.” By shifting the focus away from a single-minded attempt to zero in on drugs, the “safety” crowd hoped that racing would not be placed in a negative light. I get it. I do not agree with this gambit, but I understand it, especially where a major racetrack is concerned.

But unless the industry as a whole is ready to tackle cheating with drugs head on, the specter of altering the results of racing will never cease.

So this is my pitch to members of the Authority, no matter what side of the fence you are on, no matter how you managed to get your seat on the boards and committees and no matter what your agenda: please do all in your power to make sure that Travis Tygart is given adequate funding to carry on investigations that will yield the type of results those of us who have committed our lives to cleaning up the game can feel that all of our work has been worthwhile.

This message is not directed at USADA. It is not directed at Travis Tygart. It is directed at those individuals who may seek to over-fund their own aspects of the legislation.

Without a robust investigative force that is fully funded this entire initiative will fail and HISA will go the way of all other alphabet soup groups in racing. This is our one last chance to get horseracing right, correct the wrongs on the racetrack and clean up the game enough to present it as a viable sport to fans and horseplayers. We owe them that much.

Barry Irwin is the founder and CEO of Team Valor International

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(Quotes from this story were taken from Tygart and Muir's appearance on the TDN Writers' Room podcast and from Dan Ross's coverage in the TDN and his Q&A with Tygart and Muir.)

With Thursday's release of the details, there was a lot to digest. Here's what resonated with me:

(*) USADA is not going to rely solely on drug testing, which has been proven to be a woefully inadequate way of catching cheaters. There are always a number of potent drugs out there that can't be detected by standard drug tests. USADA may not have all the tools, including wiretaps, that the FBI had when it took down Jason Servis, Jorge Navarro and others, but Tygart made it clear that there are more ways to catch cheaters than just through drug tests.

“Can you bring a case if you don't have a positive test?” Tygart said. “In some states today, I don't think that's even possible under the rules. But if you look at Article Two of the rules, it identifies about 12 different types of violations. Only one or two of those includes a positive test. So possession, trafficking, complicity, attempted administration, retaliation against a whistleblower, those are things that can be anti-doping rule violations.”

He said that scientific evidence will be combined with “buckets of evidence”, much like what you see each week on shows like Law and Order and NCIS.

Tygart said they will also rely on a tip line that is already receiving calls. All of which is a step in the right direction. Neither Navarro nor Servis had any serious violations on their records that were the result of testing, which just goes to show that a lot more beyond testing needs to be done.

(*) USADA appears to understand the importance of going after more than just the trainers. It stands to reason that in most cases where performance-enhancing drugs are used, a veterinarian is involved. And what about the owners? It's hard to imagine they don't know what's going on when their trainer is wining at 30% and 50% off the claim. They should have to pay the price when their trainer is caught.

“When the horse is in training, the owner, the veterinarian, anyone else involved with the horse, they can be held accountable if they're complicit and part of a doping or a medication issue,” Tygart said. “The strict liability of the positive test doesn't apply to them. So there will be a slightly different way that this is prosecuted, but they absolutely can be held accountable under these rules.”

He added: “It's not just the trainer training the horse that has responsibility for this culture of a clean sport. Everybody within the sport should have a responsibility to ensure that it's being done the right way.”

(*) One thing that was not addressed last week was the obvious problem of having a trainer turn the stable over to an assistant once they are suspended. Life goes on largely uninterrupted for that stable with the head trainer getting what amounts to a vacation. There's not nearly enough of a deterrent here. At least with the more serious violations, the stable should be penalized along with a guilty trainer.

(*) USADA is going to rely heavily on out-of-competition testing and trainers must let USADA know at all times where a horse is located. He also said that out-of-competition tests won't be done on a random basis. For obvious reasons, the focus will be on trainers whose results suggest they might be using something to get an edge.

“It's what we call intelligent testing,” Tygart said. “It's not random. Some call it smart testing. Some call it target testing. We will use data.”

(*) You might want to call this one the “Baffert Rule.” While USADA will distinguish between violations that involve performance-enhancing drugs and overages of therapeutic medications, Tygart believes that there is a point where enough is enough when it comes to overages. Four minor infractions or therapeutic overages within five years could result in a sanction of up to two years.

(*) Just because a horse passes post-race urine and blood tests doesn't mean that they can't be caught later on. If someone uses something illegal and a new test for that substance comes around after the fact, they could get nailed. This is another welcome development.

“We will have the ability to do what is called retrospective testing,” Tygart said. “Samples will be put into storage. And then when you develop new tests in the future, we're going to be able to bring those samples out of storage and actually then analyze them with the new methodology for those prohibited old-time substances. That's also a great deterrent to people using things where they say you can't detect it. But in the future, when those technologies and the capabilities are enhanced and changed, then we can go back and you will still be subject to sanction (for a positive test).”

(*) More than six months after the race, the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission has still not acted when it comes to this year's GI Kentucky Derby and the reported betamethasone positive on winner Medina Spirit (Protonico). That, Tygart said, will not happen after USADA takes over.

“I was pretty stunned to hear that (Medina Spirit's) Kentucky Derby case hasn't been resolved yet,” Tygart said. “That's not going to happen on our watch. I mean, it's crazy that it's taken that long to get to a final resolution, particularly when someone is competing the entire time.”

Lawsuits have been filed by horsemen's groups and six states to shoot down the Horseracing Safety and Integrity Act (HISA), which is what created the need for a new method of policing the sport, and USADA has yet to sign a contract with the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority. Both factors could mean that the projected start date for HISA, July 1, 2022 will not be met.

But if and when HISA goes into effect, USADA will be ready. Tygart called the new rules a “gold standard program for the industry.” He's got that right. It's time for a new era.

The post The Week in Review: Tygart, USADA Out to Clean Up the Game appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

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Earlier this week, in consultation with the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, led by CEO Travis Tygart and Dr. Tessa Muir, USADA's director of equine science, HISA published a draft set of definitions, medication protocols and a list of prohibited medications.

The public has an opportunity to comment and offer feedback on those proposed rules before they go to the Federal Trade Commission next month for a second round of public comment and eventual approval by the FTC.

It's clear, from the proposed rules and comments by Tygart and Muir in a series of media interviews, that racing is in for some significant changes.

Gone will be the good old boy community of racing commissioners with conflicts of interest involving some of the people they are regulating. It is hoped the cavalcade of attorneys appealing fines, suspensions and disqualifications on behalf of trainers will grind to a halt as well, with strict, understandable and loophole-free regulations in place when the transition to the Authority occurs next July.

But first, some caveats.

USADA has yet to sign a contract with the Authority as the enforcement agency for when HISA goes into effect. Tygart and Muir have been instrumental in meeting with HISA committees and staff in developing the rules, and Tygart said USADA is ready to become the enforcement agency IF the final regulations approved by the FTC are “good rules that we can stand by.”

In other words, Tygart is not going to risk USADA's brand or his own good name on a mission if it is hijacked by people who are successful in watering down the rules.

There are also the lawsuits by horsemen's organizations in opposition to the federal legislation that created the Authority. These have yet to be resolved in court. Tygart calls them obstructionists who hope to delay implementation and cause the Authority to burn through limited financial resources.

“We fully anticipate those groups or individuals who have always been opposed to a new uniform policy being in place and independent, robust enforcement of those policies, that they're going to continue to try and obstruct it at every turn,” Tygart said.

If the legal challenges are defeated and USADA becomes the enforcement agency, this will be a different, cleaner game played on a more level field.

For starters, no medications will be permitted by statute for 48 hours prior to race day. A robust out-of-competition testing program will be phased in with “whereabouts” requirements for all horses registered with the Authority. That means if horses are removed from a racetrack stable area, a trainer must notify the Authority where that horse is going so that out of competition testing can be conducted. Violations of the whereabouts rule will be dealt with severely.

So will positive tests for prohibited substances that are now dealt with in many states with a slap on the wrist. For example, primary substances – those that should not be in a horse's system at any time – found in post-race or out-of-competition samples may result in suspensions of up to two years. Included in that group are anabolic steroids, blood-doping agents and clenbuterol.

Non-steroidal anti-inflammatories would fall under secondary substance rules that can be met with a 30-day suspension and fine. However, trainers who pick up four of those violations over a five-year period may be suspended up to two years.

And any positive drug test will result in automatic disqualification of that horse from a race.

“For the integrity of racing from the results standpoint, the disqualification of the horse is automatic,” said Muir. “We would take into consideration any mitigating circumstances, with respect to the fine or suspension.”

The days of Bute overages being looked upon as minor violations akin to a parking ticket will be over. Trainers who have been willing to take an edge or have sloppy medication oversight will need to clean up their acts.

A key element of HISA's anti-doping program will be intelligence and investigations that result in “non-analytical” cases where the evidence is something other than a positive drug test.

“The Navarro indictment showed that they were using things they know or believe not to be detectable by current testing methods,” Tygart said. “So if you say you have to have a positive test to be held accountable, you've just given a license to people to go use things there aren't tests for, because science is limited to a certain extent.”

Tygart and Muir both believe whistleblowers will be an important part of the program and said USADA has been receiving tips on wrongdoing for several years since the agency was first mentioned as part of the federal legislation. The draft regulations include language protecting whistleblowers and charging anyone who intimidates a whistleblower.

“The principle there is it takes a community of people who benefit from having good rules that protect their rights,” Tygart said. “Hopefully they will trust whoever the enforcement agency is. If it's us, we will work hard to gain that trust like we have in our human sports to bring forward information and then act appropriately based on that information.”

Long delays in the resolution of cases is another problem the current system has permitted through appeals to the commission and the civil courts. Under HISA, all “covered persons” (including trainers) will need to register with the Authority and in so doing agree to the rules, including an arbitration process that Tygart said has worked well with human athletes. USADA enforces medication rules for Olympic athletes and UFC fighters, among others.

“There are so many loopholes in how the current system works and (trainers and their attorneys) can win,” Tygart said. “Part of this process is to shut the legal, technical loopholes that people can exploit. My guess is a lot of the defense counsels out there who have made a living out of trying those cases are going to be frustrated because they are not going to win many cases, as they shouldn't. Justice should be served, and we don't look at that as a win or a loss.”

As such, under the proposed rules, if a trainer and USADA do not come to a mutual agreement on a resolution and sanctions for any violations, the case goes to an impartial arbitrator or independent steward panel, to determine an outcome.

“We resolve 95% or more of our cases in the human program (without going to arbitration),” Tygart said. “That's historically true because people know that if you break the rule, we're going to be fair in the ultimate consequence and take into consideration the individual facts to get to a fair outcome. People recognize that if you do something wrong, the best thing that you can do, honestly, is to take responsibility for it and not waste your time or their time to get to the inevitable. … People are willing to forgive and move on. What people don't like is those who make excuses or continue to lie or try to cover up their doping, and I think that principle will play very well here because the rules are not going to allow people to exploit them in the way they are currently being exploited.”

Tygart added, “When you sign up to be a 'covered person,' you agree to the rules of the game. If you don't like the rules, you don't have to play.”

Racing has needed a new sheriff for some time. It may finally have found one.

That's my view from the eighth pole

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As prescribed by the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act of 2020 (HISA), USADA has led the drafting process for the Anti-Doping and Medication Control Program. Three of the six documents pertaining to the Anti-Doping and Medication Control Program, including the proposed Equine Protocol, Prohibited List and Definitions, have been posted for public comment. The remaining documents, which include Equine Arbitration Procedures, Testing and Investigation Standards, and Standards for Laboratories and Accreditation will be published over the next two weeks.

In addition, and separate from USADA's work, the Racetrack Safety Program, which is made up of expanded veterinary exam protocols, enhanced racing and training requirements, minimum standards for surface maintenance and testing, and uniform reporting requirements has also been posted to the Authority's website for public review.

USADA and the Advisory Committees will review and incorporate relevant public feedback on the recommendations and submit them to the Authority's Board of Directors for approval. Following the Board approval process, the Authority will present its final proposed rules to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in early December. This will then initiate a formal notice and comment rule-making process during which stakeholders and the general public may once again weigh in by submitting comments for a 60-day period, after which the FTC will publish final regulations.

“We are honored to be involved at this stage to help draft and ultimately finalize gold-standard rules on anti-doping and medication control for the equine industry,” said USADA CEO Travis T. Tygart. “We are excited with where this process is headed and with proposed rules being published for two additional rounds of public feedback.”

“The rulemaking process is still underway, and we encourage experts, other industry stakeholders, racing fans and the general public to review and comment through our website. Although the final decision on which regulations will be approved and implemented ultimately lies with the FTC, we want to ensure that any interested party has the opportunity to offer their perspective and input,” said Charles Scheeler, Chairman of the Authority's Board of Directors. “While the FTC will authorize the final set of rules for the official launch of the Authority in July 2022, it is the Authority's full intention to continue to work with the industry to evolve and improve the rules beyond that time.”

Please visit hisaus.org to view and weigh in on the proposed regulations and follow the Authority on Twitter and Facebook to keep up with the latest developments.

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“Looking back over the last quarter and even the last half of last year, we were trending five, six, seven percent up over the prior year,” Waldrop said of the increase in handle the sport has seen. “So those trends are very positive. I do think they are related to the fact that new people are coming into the business. They're seeing horse racing as a viable option for the first time. I think that is attributable to a lot of the marketing dollars that were spent in 2020 to get eyeballs on our racing for the first time. And I think that's the way we keep this going. We continue to show our races on television, get more people in front of TV sets, mobile screens, all the distribution channels that we have out there, which are many now and are growing. That's the way to continue to grow.”

“Another way that I think we have to look at in 2021 is to get on more sports betting platforms,” he continued. “Sports betting is spreading across the country. It's a huge and growing business. If we can just get 5% of the number of people who are now betting on these mobile sports betting apps, that would be a huge win for horse racing. And I think in 2021, this is the year to really focus on what we can do to to piggyback on the success of sports betting in this country. To grow our visibility even greater.”

Asked about the tricky issue of funding HISA, Waldrop said that replacing the inefficiencies of racing's current patchwork regulation system will lead to savings on its own.

“HISA and the Authority, is all about centralizing the administration of medication control and racing safety matters. Putting it into one office. There will be significant savings. There'll be efficiencies when you compare costs that we now have for 30 state agencies,” he said. “I think 10 years ago we were spending almost $30 million a year on post race drug testing. That's an astronomical number. I don't think people realized we were spending that much money on drug testing. We're spending more than that now under the 30 state agencies. The second thing to remember is that HISA contemplates a broader-based and more equitable contribution from all industry participants, so not just one group or one tax will be paying for the costs of regulation.”

Elsewhere on the show, the writers reacted to a strong weekend of stakes at Fair Grounds, highlighted some key points from last week's exclusive interview with USADA CEO Travis Tygart and, in the West Point Thoroughbreds news segment, analyzed the passage of a historical horse racing legalization bill in the Kentucky House of Representatives. Click here to watch the podcast; click here for the audio-only version.

The post NTRA CEO Alex Waldrop Joins TDN Writers’ Room appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

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Tygart revealed that USADA had handled a drug positive case with a cyclist who fell under the organization's jurisdiction and gotten information about the distributor of the drugs the cyclist was using. USADA became aware that the unnamed distributor also had connections to horse racing, and Tygart said the organization subsequently passed that information along to the FBI.

Tygart said USADA is still on a learning curve as it prepares to oversee anti-doping programs in horse racing, but he is confident a lot of the same principles will carry over from the world of human athletics. Like many equine drug testing experts, Tygart said post-competition testing should not be the only tool for an integrity program, and touted USADA's tip line, which it uses to help direct out-of-competition testing. Tests from tip information have a 22% positivity rate, according to Tygart — much higher than the typical rate for post-competition sampling.

Read more and listen to the full interview at the Thoroughbred Daily News

The post Tygart: USADA, Cycling Played A Role In Federal Indictments appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

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Armstrong was a cheater, and his extensive involvement in an explosive doping scandal tarnished his legacy forever, stripping him of nearly all of his fraudulently-gained athletic accomplishments. The revelations from that scandal rocked the sports world and marked one of the most staggering falls from grace in recent memory. And it likely wouldn't have happened without the United States Anti-Doping Agency and its CEO, Travis Tygart.

Racing has suffered a fall from grace of its own in the past few years. Once a staple of American culture, the game's public support has steadily waned since its peak in the mid-20th century. But two massive scandals, one involving the spate of fatal breakdowns at Santa Anita in 2019, the other a bombshell series of FBI indictments alleging reprehensible and widespread drugging of horses that came out last March, plunged the sport into an existential crisis. These tragic public relations nightmares finally shook racing out of the inert fog it had operated under for far too long, and presented a crossroads: either clean up your business, or have it all come crashing down once and for all.

Enter Travis Tygart.

Late last year, the United States Congress, within an omnibus spending bill that included aid for coronavirus relief, passed the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act. It is a plainly groundbreaking piece of legislation for racing, but its most notable provision is that drug enforcement, which has frankly been a running joke in the sport for decades, will soon fall under the purview of USADA and Tygart, arguably the most respected anti-doping authorities in the world.

So what, exactly, does that mean for the future of racing and how it will operate in the new HISA era? In his first public interview since USADA was tasked with an entirely new sport to regulate, Tygart sat down with the crew of the TDN Writers' Room podcast presented by Keeneland Wednesday. Calling in via Zoom as the Green Group Guest of the Week, Tygart participated in an expansive, candid, illuminating discussion on the transformation we should expect to see in the coming years as he and his crew take the regulatory reins.

“It's obviously a huge responsibility, but one that we're fully ready to embrace to learn the nuts and bolts of the industry that we don't know,” Tygart, who grew up near Ocala, said about USADA entering a new domain in racing. “We're honored to be part of it. We feel like it's a tremendous privilege. We recognize that we're going to have to work every day and every night to prove that we're the right organization for this. Cheating, honesty, ethics, and the rule of sport are the same across all sports. So while some might want to say there's a difference between equine anti-doping and medication control programs and what happens in humans, the mentality of cheating and trying to get an advantage against the rules, is the same. So we're really looking forward to putting in a gold standard program that people in the industry can have a lot of satisfaction and pride in, that it's being done at the highest levels, with an equal opportunity to win playing by the rules, which is all any athlete–whether you're a trainer, owner of a horse or a human athlete–can ask for.”

Tygart was invited to speak at the 2012 The Jockey Club Round Table, soon after the Armstrong scandal broke, where he was first introduced to the flimsy anti-doping rules that have proved so inefficient for the sport in America.

“I really started looking at the policies around anti-doping and medication control within the industry and they were just completely antiquated,” he recalled. “They were years behind what the human world, as well as the equine and Thoroughbred horse racing industry around the world had done as far as uniform policies. Other places don't have 38 different racing jurisdictions run by the states, with frequently conflicted people that have an interest in the outcome without transparency, without good quality testing, without laboratory accreditation that is uniform. It actually reminded me of, and I drew the comparison to, what the Olympic world looked like prior to us coming into existence. So having a uniform policy, where you can have confidence that when a horse runs in California, it's going to be running under the same rules and allowances and free of drugs as in Kentucky and in New York too, is going to be a game changer I think, right out of the gate.”

Tygart then explained in detail the process that USADA has put in place for human sports, which it will try to replicate in racing. He outlined two keys to its efficacy in particular: getting ahead of new drugs so that trainers can't just move from doping agent to doping agent before regulators catch up, and a tip line from affected parties in the industry.

“I think it's really important that we begin the education with the industry on this, and I always get the question,'Well, how's the testing going to be different?'” he said. “Just to look at testing is, again, an antiquated, old way of looking at modern anti-doping. How you professionalize and ensure that the athletes' rights and their health and safety are going to be protected, it has to start with education. That's going to be uniform, education about the rules across the country. It's going to have to have a research component involved to ensure that things that might not be tested for today in a robust way can be tested for. Any new drugs that are coming out that would tempt trainers or owners to give their horses, for example, are going to also be able to be detected. Then you also have to have a results management process, because we know the science is limited. It's a complex matrix looking at some of these drugs, some that are endogenous or natural to a human body or a horse body. So, distinguishing what's synthetic versus what's endogenous, is sometimes a difficult thing. You have to get that right from a scientific standpoint. That means you have to also have an investigative and an intelligence gathering model.

“We have a whistleblower line. We're the first to say it takes a team to be successful. So, make the call. Last year in our human world, we had close to 500 tips to our whistleblower line. We have a robust internal process where we investigate each and every one of those. When we direct tests off of that information, we have close to a 22% positivity return, clearly indicating that when the information comes in, it's handled appropriately, it leads to detection and that feeds what we're ultimately after, which is deterrence. We don't want people to cheat, but if it's too easy to get away with, and there's no consequence if you get caught, then people will take advantage of that. That's what we have to stop.”

Tygart undoubtedly faced an avalanche of institutional pushback from the cycling powers that be when he and USADA were working to uncover Armstrong's doping. He reportedly received death threats during the investigation and had to have additional security provided for him by the FBI. Asked about what kind of resistance he expects from people in racing, he said he has been encouraged by the industry's response thus far, and noted that there will be an adjustment period for those currently breaking the rules to fall in line.

“We've had a lot of interaction over the last eight-plus years with wonderful people in the industry, trainers, owners, breeders, all sides of it, who have asked really tough questions and really good questions, who have embraced the effort,” he said. “The deaths out in California, and then the indictments, I think created this perfect storm that finally loosened some of the entrenched positions, so I think we feel very good that the industry wants this to happen for the most part. There will obviously be those who like the status quo, because it's been very profitable for them. They're eventually going to either be weeded out, or change their behavior. They'll be given a fair opportunity. The rules will change and the enforcement is going to change, but you'll be given adequate time to change behavior in order to comply with those new rules and prove that you can win the right way.”

Elsewhere on Wednesday's podcast, the writers previewed a strong holiday weekend racing lineup. Then, in the West Point Thoroughbreds news segment, they analyzed the continuing positive handle trends and the passage of a historical horse racing reinstatement bill in the Kentucky Senate. Click here to watch the podcast; click here for the audio-only version.

The post Writers’ Room Exclusive: USADA CEO Travis Tygart Explains How His Anti-Doping Team Will Clean Up Racing appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

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