The Racing press is celebrating – yes, that’s the right word – a decline in California fatalities last year. According to BloodHorse, the 71 deaths (it’s actually 72: see Bowies Hero) is the lowest total in California in 10 years.…
Back in November, I reported on the goings-on in Oregon, where Grants Pass owner and coffee mogul Travis Boersma is hoping to install slot machines (he calls them “Historical Racing Machines”) to prop up the state’s only remaining commercial racetrack.…
A recent column in Saratoga Today by attorney and owner William G. Gotimer Jr. shows that there are still plenty of clear-eyed folks within the racing ranks. The piece, a general assessment of the industry heading into the new year,…
A timely follow-up to yesterday’s post on the different types of racing people… At first blush, this seems a good story, and indeed the end – a horse being saved from slaughter – is. But then there’s the rest of…
I’ve come to believe that horse-racers fall into one of three categories. In the first, surely the majority, are the grinders – those who race as career, for paycheck. Whether they were raised in the industry or came to it…
Last year, we were featured in an ESPN online piece “Racing on the Edge.” After it came out, I took the network to task for what I saw as the piece’s many shortcomings. Part of my issue centered on the…
The vile Jorge Navarro is back in the news. The animal abuser is to be sentenced this month for his part in a doping ring that resulted in various federal indictments in 2020. He faces up to five years in…
As I wrote yesterday, Laurel Park is the latest track to come under the gun for killing horses, with racing temporarily halted there while the track surface gets dissected – which is all, as we know, for show. Look, I…
The lede in a Rock Hill Herald article yesterday says it all: “A retired race horse worth thousands of dollars was found shot to death Sunday at a boarding farm near York [South Carolina], officials said.” That a sentient being…
Fasig-Tipton held its “Night of the Stars” breeding-stock sale in Lexington yesterday. The numbers are staggering: 149 horses were sold; gross sales, over $100 million (average sale, almost $700K). 26 individual horses sold for $1 million-plus apiece. The 11-year-old “broodmare”…
The jockey Miguel Mena was struck and killed by a vehicle Sunday. I have nothing to say on that other than I’m sorry for his survivors. No, this is about the aftermath. Of course, the racing community is agush with…
Former congressman Tom Rooney has been tabbed to succeed Alex Waldrop as the head of the National Thoroughbred Racing Association. (Waldrop, you might remember, infamously admitted to USA Today that multiple thousands of his industry’s beloved “athletes” are being bled-out…
