Summer means an increased focus on 2-year-olds, most notably at some of the country's most prominent meets.
Each week, we'll look at a race of interest to those looking for horse racing's next rising stars.
On this week's episode, Emily White explores a maiden special weight at Saratoga that features the debut of none other than the younger half-sibling of fan favorite Cody's Wish.
That colt isn't the only one with pedigree, though, and we take a look at some of these blue-blooded young horses.
Watch this week's 2-Year-Old Spotlight video below:
Private stables once ruled the racing world. Owned by wealthy families with names like Galbreath, Kleberg, Mellon, Phipps, Vanderbilt, and Whitney, these stables bred Thoroughbreds to race them, developing female families over generations and sticking to mostly proven stallions, relying on one trainer and often having a jockey under contract to ride all of their horses.
Only a handful of them remain today, but almost all of the onetime private stables still operating have had to adapt their business models.
Craig Bernick, president and CEO of Glen Hill Farm, is the grandson of the racing and breeding operation's late founders, Leonard and Bernice Lavin. In 1967, the Lavins created the breed-to-race stable that primarily ran its homebreds in Illinois and California while breeding and raising them at Glen Hill Farm in Ocala, Fla. Glen Hill Farm has maintained a longstanding relationship with the Proctor family, with the stable's horses trained by the late Willard Proctor for many years, then by his son, Tom. Harry “Hap” Proctor, also a trainer, was longtime farm manager.
Since taking over the operation in 2008, Bernick has diversified Glen Hill. It still maintains a racing operation (with Tom Proctor as U.S. trainer), but auction purchases and partnerships in Europe and North America supplement the stable, some horses are bred for the commercial market, and Bernick created a division to invest in stallions and stallion shares.
Bernick is this week's Friday Show guest, discussing how economics, combined with a more commercial breeding and racing industry, necessitated diversification.
Watch this week's episode of The Friday Show below:
After a tough weekend of racing at Saratoga which saw two fatalities and a last-minute blunder for horseplayers, David O'Rourke, CEO and president of the New York Racing Association, appeared on NYRA's Talking Horses broadcast Wednesday to address the controversial events.
O'Rourke extended his condolences to the connections of Maple Leaf Mel, who suffered a gruesome catastrophic injury in the stretch of the Grade 1 Test Stakes and acknowledged that the accident was unsettling for him.
“Forty-three thousand people were here and in a moment we were about to see triumph and it turned to tragedy,” said O'Rourke. “It shook me, it shook the entire racing world. It's nothing I've ever experienced before and hopefully never will again.
“It doubles down on our commitment to safety and everything we do is about safety.”
O'Rourke also addressed a last-minute surface change that upset horseplayers during Sunday's card. The track saw another fatal breakdown, this time of Ever Summer on the inner turf course in Race 4. After Race 5, O'Rourke said the jockeys requested a meeting with the racing secretary to discuss the conditions of the turf course and expressed concerns about the course's safety. Out of an abundance of caution, Races 7, 9, and 10 were moved off the turf, which had a significant impact on bettors who had already placed multi-race wagers including those turf races.
O'Rourke indicated that the original intention for NYRA had been to refund multi-race tickets but for some reason, it was unable to do so.
“The stewards ultimately make decisions about what are in the rules and what are not and sometimes you'll find gaps for strange situations, so we were not able to refund but we had made the decision to take them off the turf,” he said. “Now they're loading into the gate for the sixth. There was a request for time, we weren't able to get time, so now we're in the worst-case scenario where they're [the tickets] are becoming 'alls.' And there's no excuse for it.”
Andy Serling, who hosts Talking Horses ahead of each Saratoga race card, said horseplayers felt like “they got robbed” due to this last-minute change. O'Rourke apologized to bettors and indicated NYRA plans to reassess its communication protocols and to seed some pools in future to try to make up for what Serling called a “debacle.”
With disgraced former trainer Jason Servis sentenced to four years in prison, the federal investigation into racehorse doping – involving more than two dozen trainers, veterinarians, and drug distributors in Thoroughbred and Standardbred racing in multiple states – has come to an end.
Servis was the last to be sentenced of those named in a March 9, 2020, indictment from the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Like most of the others, including former trainer Jorge Navarro (who received a five-year sentence), he pleaded guilty. The only jury trials, involving Florida veterinarian Seth Fishman and his employee, Lisa Giannelli, resulted in guilty verdicts. Fishman was sentenced to 11 years in prison and Giannelli 3 1/2 years.
In this week's Friday Show, Ray Paulick and Paulick Report edit0r-in-chief Natalie Voss review the story that rocked the racing world and likely set the stage for federal legislation that in December 2020 created an independent agency, the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority, to regulate U.S. Thoroughbred racing's drug and safety policies on a national basis.
How did the cheaters get away with illegally doping horses for so long without getting caught? What did some of the documents and wiretapped conversations reveal? Why would anyone entrusted with the care and well-being of horses administer some of these substances, with contents largely unknown? And why did the number of indictments not grow, despite the stated presence of voluminous information collected by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, including customer lists for some of the banned substances?
Watch this week's episode of The Friday Show below:
