Recent rulings from the Pennsylvania Horse Racing Commission (all emphases mine):
“On Sep 19, 2025, personnel for the Pennsylvania Horse Racing Commission were conducting searches at Presque Isle Downs. Owner/Stable Employee Miguel Alberto Olguin was found to be in possession of an Electrical Device in his vehicle. Olguin is hereby summarily suspended…for potential violation of 7 PA CODE SECTION 305.273 (h): ‘It shall be unlawful…for a jockey, an owner, trainer or other person authorized to handle the horse, to be in possession or control of any electrical, mechanical or similar type of stimulating or shocking device.’ And HISA RULE 2273: ‘No electrical or mechanical device or other expedient designed to increase or retard the speed of covered horse, other than the riding crop…shall be possessed or applied by anyone to a covered horse….'”
How about that HISA rule – no on shocking, yes on beating.
“On Sep 19, 2025, personnel for the Pennsylvania Horse Racing Commission were conducting searches at Parx Racing. Personnel searched owner Angel M. Cuello, dba AC Racing Stable, and his vehicle. Cuello was found to be in possession of needles and loaded syringes. Cuello is hereby summarily suspended…for potential violation of 7 PA CODE SECTION 401.61: ‘No person, except a Commission vet, racetrack vet or vet licensed by the Commission, may possess or use a hypodermic needle, hypodermic syringe capable of accepting a needle and injectable substances of any kind….'”
Both these scumbags will remain suspended pending disciplinary hearings.
RIP
Electrocution is part of the game.
Like the ubiquitous doping, it’s just a fluke if someone gets caught.
Every wonder why horses for certain trainers always break a length in front of all the other horses????
expensive horse + high voltage gate training = wire to wire winner
Speaking of beating horses with the whip, Paco Lopez has been suspended for his numerous violations of the whip rule. He beat on a very young and underdeveloped colt before the finish and AFTER crossing the finish line. More recently, he struck BOOK’EM DANNO more times than the rules allow and he used the illegal method of whipping the horse by raising his wrist above his head; also, numerous times.
Paco Lopez clearly prioritizes winning the money more than any consideration for the horses. He evidently gets off on abusing horses because he can and because he gets paid for it.
Paco Lopez should be in jail for Animal Cruelty and so should the trainer/s who hired him.
In an Idaho Farmer-Stockman Journal magazine in the late 1960s, there was a bit of information that said if you find one rat on your farm/ranch, you have at least one-humdred rats on your farm/ranch.
When this fundamentally abusive and corrupt business known as “horseracing” finds one violator carrying/hiding an illegal electric shock device to be used on racehorses to manipulate the outcome of a race, it makes me think there are MANY MORE VIOLATORS who are too sneaky to get caught by whatever “oversight” there is in this fundamentally corrupt business. Same with the illegal injections of illegal drugs/substances into racehorses to manipulate the order of finish.
Who in horseracing cares about the well-being of the gambling chips anyway when all they (the people participating in this inhumane so-called sport) care about is winning the purse money and/or the gambling payouts. The punishment should be jail time but I won’t hold my breath.
September 25, 2019..in memory of Bridget Maloney and all the other sacrifices.