What's Going On Here : racing

Punish the Cheaters - by Eric Mitchell

aspradling — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 14:20:00 GMT

(Originally published in the August 18, 2012 issue of The Blood-Horse magazine. Feel free to share your own thoughts and opinions at the bottom of the column.)

By Eric Mitchell - @BH_EMitchell on Twitter

Amidst all the celebration of The Jockey Club’s recent marketing efforts and increased TV exposure for Thoroughbred racing, one message came through clearly at the Aug. 12 Round Table Conference: Racing as a sport will continue floundering and may not survive if it doesn’t punish the cheaters.

One of the more sobering slides shown during the annual state of the industry conference Aug. 12 was part of a presentation by Matt Iuliano, executive vice president and executive director for TJC. The slide entitled “Crime Pays” showed the total purse money earned by trainers who had violated drug rules from 2005 through 2011 compared with total fines they had received. The trainers earned $15.4 million in purses and paid out $1.4 million in fines. Penalties are no longer deterrents; they have become merely a cost of doing business.

While some will debate whether the industry is closer to uniformity on drug testing than is believed, no one disputes the significant disparity in enforcement. During the same 2005 to 2011 period, 20% of the violations that resulted in a fine in one state were handled with a warning in another. The fines for comparable violations also varied as much as 500% from state to state.

The good news is that the worst offenders are a relatively small group. Among 12,801 licensed trainers between 2005 and 2011, only about 200 (1.5%) were cited for committing four or more drug violations, and these trainers were responsible for 33% of all violations during the seven-year period.

TJC chairman Ogden “Dinny” Phipps was right to ask those attending the Round Table if they were happy with allowing 1.5% of the licensed trainers tarnish the public perception of the sport.

Tougher penalties are a key feature of TJC’s recently proposed “Reformed Racing Medication Rules” that includes a new penalty structure based on points. The more points a trainer accumulates, the more severe the penalties become for each subsequent violation.

One of the most significant changes in the new system is that every violation requires a redistribution of the purse money. The goal is to start changing behavior. Iuliano noted that one of the most frequent violations is with non-steroidal anti-inflammatory painkillers. Research done by TJC shows one out of four trainers cited for an NSAID drug violation will commit another. Under the existing rules a trainer could have up to seven drug violations and not lose any purse money or even serve any sort of suspension. In an example offered by Iuliano, one trainer with seven adjudicated drug violations earned $130,545 in purse money and paid fines totaling only $5,250. Under the new proposed penalty structure, this same trainer would lose all the purse money, be fined $30,000, and have to serve suspensions totaling 307 days.

With so few trainers committing most of the violations, all of racing’s shareholders should adopt the same attitude of Olympic athletes who have largely embraced out-of-competition testing that is conducted at their homes, at training centers, or even while they are on vacation.

“Some say it is over-the-top and intrusive, but this is what the athletes have said they want,” said Travis Tygart, chief executive officer of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency. “They want the right to compete by the rules.”

Racing must put real teeth into its rules.

The Round Table was part pep rally. A presentation on marketing efforts and new online fan initiatives wrapped up with a high-energy video of action on the track before and during the Triple Crown, all set to the adrenaline-fueled music of Van Halen.

The multimedia hype will certainly attract attention, but the efforts will ultimately fail if people believe our sport is soft on cheaters.

Protecting the Brand - by Eric Mitchell

aspradling — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 14:14:00 GMT

Perception is reality. Over and over we hear this phrase as it relates to politics, business, and even Thoroughbred racing. These three words are used so often because the concept is real and powerful.

Unfortunately, racing is dealing with its own shady perceptions. At the forefront is a belief that North American horses need race-day medication to compete. Race-day medication means allowing a horse to run on the anti-bleeding drug Salix.

Having horses running on drugs is not sitting well with people in this country; heck, it’s not even sitting well with our fans.

The “Driving sustainable growth for Thoroughbred racing and breeding” study done this year by the international management and consulting firm McKinsey & Co. indicated only 46% of racing fans would recommend horse racing to other people. By comparison, 82% of baseball fans, 81% of football fans, and 55% of poker players are evangelists for their sport of choice. Then when McKinsey asked how many racing fans considered themselves “proud to be a fan,” only 35% said yes compared with 66% for other sports.

Can we blame Salix for the bad perception? We can blame a big part of it. In the same study 78% of horse racing fans said medication was an issue negatively affecting the sport, and 36% said it was among the top-three issues facing the industry.

Part of the perception problem is the general public does not distinguish among Salix or cocaine or anabolic steroids. Drugs are drugs.

Salix does help horses with exercise-induced pulmonary hemorrhaging, known more commonly as bleeding or the rupture of capillaries in the lungs due to the tremendously high level of air pressure while horses race. But not every horse is a bleeder, and not every horse requires Salix on race day. We know this because horses are running without it on race days in every other racing jurisdiction in the world.

So now we are caught in a war of rhetoric. The pro-Salix camp says the North American racing industry will collapse if we don’t keep race-day Salix use—field size will diminish, and owners will abandon the sport. The anti-Salix camp says the breed will weaken and the sport wither because fans old and new will not support horse racing if racing on medication persists.

Fans are racing’s customers. Fans also become bettors and owners. If we don’t deal aggressively with the perception that horses must race on medication, then the reality is we’ll have fewer owners, bettors, and fans.

Dealing in Facts

One of the biggest challenges in the debate on medication use has been squaring comments with facts. We had a question raised about a statement made by trainer Rick Hiles, a member of the Kentucky Equine Drug Research Council, during a KEDRC meeting in May. Hiles relayed a story from an unnamed individual who wanted to know why an unnamed European country had reported no positive test results for phenylbutazone, a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug called Bute. The reason, the individual told Hiles, was that the country doesn’t test for Bute, and we repeated Hiles’ story in this column (The Blood-Horse of June 4, page 1515). We followed up with Dominique de Wenden, secretary general of the International Federation of Horseracing Authorities. He said by e-mail: “We are not aware of any Western European country not testing for Bute.” When Hiles was contacted and asked about De Wenden’s comment, Hiles said his source was referring to England and that the source had actually talked with someone in a lab overseas. The reason for no positives, Hiles said, might be because the threshold is high enough that no one crosses it.

The bottom line of this tale is that all Western European countries do test for Bute and the level is far lower than the 2 micrograms/ml allowed in the United States. Dr. Rick Sams, director of the HFL Sports Science testing lab in Lexington, said the level of detection in Europe corresponds to the same level at which Bute can no longer be detected in urine, so any amount detected is considered a positive. We couldn’t find an exact threshold for Bute, but Sams said it is in nanograms/ml. A nanogram is 1/1,000th of a microgram. One reason England does not have any positives is the recommended withdrawal time for oral and intravenous Bute is seven days, according to the European Horserace Scientific Liaison Committee. To be below the 2 microgram/ml threshold in this country, horsemen cannot give 2 grams of Bute within 36 hours of a race.

Navigating the complex world of medication use in racehorses is tricky enough even when all the facts are known. Let’s hope everyone serving on an industry board, council, or committee dealing with medication has a renewed commitment to shining light on the truth rather than clouding the issues with hearsay.

Looking Forward to Flat By Eric Mitchell

aspradling — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 15:14:00 GMT

(Originally published in the January 8, 2011 issue of The Blood-Horse magazine. Feel free to share your own thoughts and opinions at the bottom of the column.)

By Eric Mitchell - @EJMitchellKy on Twitter

Despite all the science that proves otherwise, we’re hoping the world is flat. The Thoroughbred world in 2011, that is.

The year will be considered successful if auction prices hold steady, handle remains where it is, and purses don’t drop further. Flat is good.

A flat market is not an unrealistic expectation for the public auctions. The 2-year-olds in training sales were up collectively in 2010, and the yearling market fared much better than most had anticipated. We can expect to see hundreds of fewer horses passing through the auction ring, which should go a long way toward balancing supply with demand. Sellers who have the option will be more selective about what they take to a sale, and those equipped to race what they have may find themselves spending more time on the phone with their trainers.

Where flat will be much harder to achieve is with purses and handle. Year to date through November 2010, purses dropped 8.45% and handle fell 7.8%. Complete statistics for 2010 were not available at press time.

Purses have the best hope of achieving status quo with the Aqueduct casino project finally having crawled free of New York’s political arena and now in the hands of contractors. About 1,600 slot machines of the 4,500 approved should be ringing by springtime with the rest up and running six months later. Chaos continues to swirl around the Maryland racing industry, but purse growth fed by additional slot machines is also expected in late 2011. The Cordish Co.’s Maryland Live! casino near Arundel Mills mall is expected to be open in late 2011 with 4,750 machines. Purses will also continue to grow in other racino states such as New Mexico, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Florida, where Hialeah just got the legal go-ahead to implement slot machines.

The question is whether these growing areas can offset declines in states such as Kentucky, California, and Texas. Then there is the still unanswered question of whether slot machines serve the best long-term interest of Thoroughbred racing. For the short term, they’re essential.

Getting the North American handle to flat may be the toughest nut to crack. With the auction market soft, we can expect to see some horses racing longer, not only in 2011 but probably in 2012 too. The breeding market will take its sweet time rebounding, so racing fans should get to see many of their favorites perform longer.

Given the state of field size at many tracks, keeping horses in training—sound and able-bodied, mind you—should also be positive for the sport. Larger fields provide more value for bettors and attract a larger handle. But the number of horses staying in training will not be enough to offset the declining North American foal crop, which has dropped 11.4% between 2005 (38,359) and 2009 (estimated at 34,000). Of the foals of 2006, about 54% started in a race in 2009, representing 20,613 starters. If the same percentage applies to foals of 2009, then we’ll have 18,360 starters in 2012, or 11% fewer starters. The projected foal crop for 2010 is 30,000, which means the number of 3-year-old starters in 2013 will be about 16,200.

The average number of starts per 3-year-old in 2009 was 6.3, which has not changed much in many years, so either we’re facing significantly shorter fields in the next couple of years or we need to have fewer races. The Monmouth Park experiment did show us that a shorter, higher-quality meet will increase the handle.

Now is the time for racetrack operators, horsemen’s associations, and legislators to take a serious look at their racing calendars and legislative mandates regarding racing dates and prepare for reductions. We can’t keep demanding the same number of dates if we won’t have enough horses to present a viable product to the racing public in the very near future. With fewer races, the average purse goes up, the average field size goes up, the racing becomes more competitive, and the handle also goes up.

We’ll begin to see the effects of the declining foal crop this year, when the number of 2-year-old starters (roughly 30% of a foal crop since 2007) will be about 1,000 less than those that started in 2009.

So to see real growth, we need fewer races. But for 2011, we’ll just hope for flat.

Moments in Time - By Evan Hammonds

aspradling — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 21:16:00 GMT

(Originally published in the November 20, 2010 issue of The Blood-Horse magazine. Feel free to share your own thoughts and opinions at the bottom of the column.)

By Evan Hammonds

Though we don’t begrudge the continued, passionate interest in the outcome of the Breeders’ Cup Classic (gr. I) or the ongoing, sometimes vitriolic debate over who should be Horse of the Year, the other Breeders’ Cup races Nov. 5-6 produced some fine—and not so fine—moments.

Goldikova proved once again the best things sometimes come in plain brown wrappers. The world’s top miler doesn’t have the Amazon good looks or size of Zenyatta, but she’s just as relentless. Her kick in the stretch is reminiscent of the late flurry of punches delivered by Muhammad Ali following several rounds of his patented “Rope-a-dope.”

Juveniles also accounted for some memorable victories. Few 2-year-old colts in recent years have impressed as much as Uncle Mo, with his bounding, effortless stride. Uncle Mo’s emphatic racing style matches the big personality of his owner, Michael Repole, the New York entrepreneur and one of racing’s Young Turks, several of whom scored big on racing’s biggest days. Since teaming up with trainer Todd Pletcher, Repole reckons to be a force on the racing scene.

Like Repole, celebrity chef Bobby Flay has paid his racing dues and finally reached the top with More Than Real in the Juvenile Fillies Turf (gr. IIT). Flay’s excitement in winning a Breeders’ Cup race nearly matched Repole’s, though the red-headed New Yorker stopped short of hugging the trainer, who happens to be the same Pletcher whom Repole clasped in a bear hug after the Juvenile. Recently elected to the Breeders’ Cup board and no stranger to the yearling sales, Flay is enamored with racing and obviously can participate at a meaningful level.

Kevin Plank, another of racing’s Young Turks, watched his Shared Account pull a shocker in the Emirates Airline Filly & Mare Turf (gr. IT). The founder of the ultra-popular Under Armour clothing line and his family had their own jubilant winner’s circle celebration, where they figure to show up more frequently in the future. Plank’s victory, along with his purchase three years ago of historic Sagamore Farm in Maryland, means he is in the game for the long term.

Racing people often decry the lack of mainstream media attention. But one incident received plenty of coverage—the nationally televised fisticuffs between jockeys Calvin Borel and Javier Castellano after the Marathon (gr. III). The jockeys were fined for “conduct unbecoming” and Castellano was suspended for careless riding. While some argue the angry confrontation had no place at racing’s biggest event, others wonder if it didn’t show racing’s human side and its very real dangers.

Some other danger spots from the Breeders’ Cup:

• Since when does a $3 million purse draw a collective yawn? In what we hope is not a downward trend, the field for the Emirates Airline Breeders’ Cup Turf (gr. IT) for the last two years has been light on talent and lighter on entries.

The defection of the lone legitimate star, Workforce, the day before this year’s race didn’t help matters, but one horse does not a Breeders’ Cup race make. The non-exotic mutuel pool for the Turf, an anemic $3.46 million, topped only the first three BC races on the Saturday program.

Perhaps the Hong Kong Jockey Club and its early December International Races program does a better job of recruiting horsemen in Europe than does the Breeders’ Cup. Here’s hoping the racing team at the Breeders’ Cup will be able to round up a full gate next year.

• Unfortunately, the Breeders’ Cup was marred by the death of Rough Sailing following the running of the Juvenile Turf (gr. IIT). The colt slipped on the turf course, and the subsequent discovery of a broken shoulder resulted in his being euthanized. Our condolences go out to Jack Smith and his partnership group, trainer Mike Stidham, and jockey Rosie Napravnik, who thankfully was uninjured.

•The lowest point came at the end of the first night’s program.

A lot of things didn’t add up in the Life At Ten debacle prior to, and during, the running of the Ladies’ Classic (gr. I). The race’s second choice was clearly not herself in the paddock, in the post parade, or during the warm-up. Jockey John Velazquez told a national television audience she wasn’t warming up well but apparently said nothing to the state vet. Breaking from the rail, Life At Ten obviously had no interest in running and was eased after a half-mile.

The racing public—especially those who bet her down to 7-2—should demand nothing short of the truth...but that might not happen based on the fact she wasn’t administered a post-race drug test.