Keeping Pace: Disrupt The Existing Economic And Political Model That Fuels 'Kill Pens'

Furious industry opposition to that proposal pushed the USTA to grudgingly allow both microchips and branding on horses, though the association cannot bring itself to advertise or promote branding. Nor has the USTA ever apologized for the atrocious way it has treated Ellen Harvey, a harness horse lifer, who led the opposition to the USTA’s microchip plan. The arrogance we see from USTA leadership in its opposition to meaningful racing integrity reform is present in the way they blew off Harvey’s advocacy, steamrolling her and other dissenters. The fact is: freeze-branding can help save the life of a Standardbred in ways microchipping cannot.

The third way for the horse community to shore up its aftercare programs is through more industry-wide collaboration. For context, I reached out last week to WInnie Morgan Nemeth, the Standardbred Program Director for New Vocations Racehorse Adoption Program. “Horses that go through New Vocations have a lifetime return policy and can always come back into the program at any time,” Nemeth told me. “I work directly with trainers and owners sending their horses, so we are not rescuing horses from auctions and kill pens. The majority finding their way [to kill pens] are more than likely coming from the Amish communities. The Amish pay high prices to buy Standardbreds, which makes it harder for owners to be able to afford not to sell.”

The significance of Amish purchases is not lost on Ellen Harvey. Last week, she told me: “Since 2017, I have been working with the Amish community in south Central Pennsylvania to hold what will be on this Saturday our fifth workshop on care for the driving horse. We have a grant from the AAEP (horse vets) and the time is absolutely right to disrupt the existing economic model and work directly with the Amish community to transition horses that can’t do the job for them anymore. Cut out the middleman, all the wrong people are getting rich here. The horses will have been spared the vagaries of the auction pipeline, be in much better condition and take far less money to rehabilitate for a new home.”

Nemeth agrees: “An idea to help the Standardbred rescue community to better coordinate efforts would be to offer a placement for retired buggy horses. Instead of taking them to the sales, it would be nice to have a place that could step in and offer a solution for the Amish to donate their horse somewhere…,” Nemeth says. “We work with The Right Horse Organization and they offer funding to organizations who can implement and execute different ideas to help unwanted horses find homes. The Standardbred Transition Alliance has been set up to accredit and grant organizations placing horses.”

Nemeth presses the case for more coordination; “It may be a good place for those in the rescue sector to work on getting accredited first, to make sure they are set up properly to financially care for the horses they are saving and then educated enough to make the decision to see if the horse is able to go on and find a home or not. Our racing community is made up of wonderful people who have the best intentions but there has to be a strategy plan for the horses being saved and it has to be executed properly to make sure the horses have the care they need for a lifetime. It cannot fall on one owner or one organization to provide that care."

Nemeth says New Vocations is open to the idea of coordinating Standardbred rescue efforts with advocates like Michelle Crawford, the owner and operator of Crawford Farms, a major harness breeding and racing operation. Crawford has spent a great deal of time and money supporting Standardbred rescue efforts – including going to Capitol Hill with Fred Hudson, the Director of Equine Welfare for the Animal Wellness Action group, to lobby Congress to enact the SAFE Act. Crawford told me last week that she, too, thinks more coordination within the Standardbred community is needed.

In a perfect world, dogged advocates like Nemeth, Harvey, and Crawford would hold a summit meeting on Standardbred aftercare with rescue organizations like the Standardbred Retirement Foundation to try to hammer out a comprehensive plan for cinching the safety net even tighter on behalf of our racehorses. Such a meeting would be bolstered by participation from members of the Amish community who buy and sell Standardbred horses. There has to be a way to keep more horses from “bail pens” or “kill pens,” I’ll have a lot more to say on this topic, including a look at alleged problems with the Standardbred Transition Alliance, in the weeks to come.
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A trainer is suspended, his horse wins a stakes race days later

Federal regulators provisionally suspended a trainer March 29 but allowed the horses already entered in his name to race. One of those horses, Masqueparade, won the $200,000 Temperence Hill Stakes at Oaklawn on the same day he was suspended. Robertino Diodoro, the leading trainer during the 2022-'23 Oaklawn meet, was nabbed for alleged possession of the banned substance levothyroxine, a thyroid medication. Without getting into the specifics of the case, this result raises a few obvious questions, the biggest of which is: If there was enough evidence to suspend the trainer, why weren’t the horses under his care scratched? I asked HISA.

The response from a HISA spokesperson: “Following feedback from horsemen and discussions with HISA’s Horsemen’s Advisory Group, HISA updated enforcement guidance related to Provisional Suspensions in July 2023 to give commissions and/or racetracks discretion to allow trainers to run horses entered in their name prior to implementation of a Provisional Suspension. Originally Oaklawn believed there was no discretion allowed on HISA’s policy of letting already entered horses run. On Saturday, March 30, HISA communicated to Oaklawn that Oaklawn had the discretion to decide whether or not Diodoro’s horses already entered could run.” And so his horses were subsequently scratched by the track.

The episode is a good example of one of the challenges federal racing officials face as they begin to enforce a new law. Track operators (and trainers and jockeys and vets) are going to be confused at times about what they can and cannot do. There are going to be misunderstandings and errors and omissions and the best way to fix them is for the feds to communicate quickly and clearly as they did in this instance. “You have the power to scratch this guy’s horses,” HISA essentially told Oaklawn, and now Oaklawn (and every other track) understands that. The scenario undermines one of the lamest arguments against HISA: That the feds control all.

The good and the bad about HISA. Over at Horse Racing Nation, Tom Rooney, CEO of the National Thoroughbred Racing Association, had this to say about the new federal racing regulations. “The bad is that we’re still going through growing pains. The good is that HISA knows that. I think Lisa (CEO Lisa Lazarus) is absolutely the best person we could have gotten for that job, because she wants to get it right. She also recognizes that, sometimes to get it right, you get it wrong in the process, and then you fix it. It was not a perfect product to start with, but there’s also a willingness by her to get there. I hear a lot of people complain about it.”

Rooney continued: “I hear a lot of people talk about the expense and this, that and the other. And I get that. And she does, too. She just put out a request for people to join her horsemen’s advisory group. The biggest kind of opposition to her has been elements of the horsemen groups. She’s trying to bring them in to advise her. If I was part of that group, I would take her up on that rather than just continually put out information about how bad it is and gin people up to thinking that there’s somehow going to be a reversal.” That’s a great message: Take the energy you are spending complaining about HISA and use it to make HISA better.

NOTES

Accentuating the positives about first-quarter wagering data. Race days and wagering were both down in the first quarter of 2024 but the good news is that “average wagering per race day was up 4.75% to $3,439,724,” the Blood-Horse reports. Here is even more good news, from my boss Ray Paulick: “Wagering on U.S. Thoroughbred horse racing increased by 0.99 percent in March, compared to the same month in 2023, despite a decrease in race days and races. Field size also showed a slight increase of 0.82 percent.

Speak up! Speaking of direct involvement in the future of horse racing, today is the deadline for filing comments with the Federal Trade Commission about the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act. Last time I checked, there were only a handful of public comments. The comment section relates to HISA’s recent request for FTC approval of certain new rules. Meanwhile, if you want to better educate yourself about the new federal regulations, there’s an online webinar on April 18 sponsored by the New York State Bar Association. Lisa Lazurus is one of the panelists, along with a state racing official and New York Racing Association executive.

Help wanted. The United States Trotting Association is looking to hire a “multi-media content specialist.” The deadline for applications is April 15. The first question any worthwhile candidate should ask USTA officials is: Do you want to continue to toss out worthless propaganda on your social media sites or do you want to meaningfully engage with USTA members and the general public? My fear is that anyone who would be good at this job would have the strength and courage to tell USTA leadership that it has to change the way it interacts with the world – and that anyone who stands up to USTA leadership in that way would have no shot at the job.

Good for Paulick Report’s Joe Nevills for calling out my former employer, 60 Minutes, for its disparate treatment of Thoroughbred racing. “I'm not going to rail against the media en masse and call for a circling of the wagons,” Nevills wrote. I'm also not going to use a picture of someone hugging a horse as a shield and pretend everything is alright. None of these are productive in solving the problems we have in front of us, or convincing the outside world that we're serious about solving them. I'm going to work toward keeping my side of the street clean, in hopes that the next time a major news outlet comes knocking, they'll want to talk about the elder members of the scene, the current stars, the kids who will one day take their place.”

What do we think about what’s about to happen in Kentucky? I thought there would be more public debate within the racing community about legislative plans in Kentucky to replace the state’s horse racing commission. State Sen. Damon Thayer is behind the legislation, which means many in the industry will trust it. But will the new system be measurably better than the old one? Email me with your responses (the address is below). Finally, leave it to Bill Finley (and Barbara Livingston) to find the world’s oldest Thoroughbred horse. He’s 38 years old and still going strong, Finley reports for the Thoroughbred Daily News.

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