Two weeks ago, 60 Minutes aired a segment on horse racing and the many problems that remain prevalent in the sport. The Jockey Club chairman Stuart Janney III, who was interviewed during the 60 Minutes segment, spoke to the Thoroughbred Daily News this week to share his thoughts on the final product.
“There are a lot of people who say let's have more nice stories about horse racing,” Janney told TDN. “I agree with that. I'd love to have more of those stories out there. But there are other stories that are going to be a part of the landscape until we get to a better place on some of these issues. Let's not be fighting with each other about that. We have to understand that is the reality. I thought we were going to get a much more positive story. But I think it could have been worse. It could have been a lot worse. I have a view that some people seem to disagree with. In today's world you have to deal with the realities that news organizations are going to do what they're going to do and there's no running away from that. Had we not participated, the story would have been worse.”
Janney explained that The Jockey Club chose to participate in the 60 Minutes segment when approached by CBS in April of 2023. CBS pitched a story about how The Jockey Club hired 5 Stones Intelligence, a leading intelligence and investigative company, to look into the sport of horse racing, which led to 5 Stones getting the federal government involved and a serious of high-profile arrests and convictions.
Between that initial round of discussions in April and when Janney was ultimately interviewed in June, there was a highly-publicized spate of breakdowns at Churchill Downs and another breakdown on the Preakness Stakes undercard. After Janney's interview and prior to the story being aired, there was another rash of high-profile breakdowns at Saratoga.
Thus, the story ultimately had a much higher focus on the sport's breakdown rate than Janney had hoped.
“I would have liked them to have emphasized the story of what has taken place with our industry,” he told TDN. “What was reported was, basically and arguably, true. They did oversimplify the reasons that horses break down. They came to some conclusions early on. A lot of the questions they asked me were about trying to find a simple solution to the breakdown issue. I pushed back and thought I had won that argument, that horses break down for a variety of reasons and that it would misleading to say there was just one thing or that it was because of performance-enhancing drugs. It can happen for a lot of reasons. There's not one simple solution to that problem.”
Read more at the Thoroughbred Daily News.
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