As all familiar with this site know, I estimate that upward of 2,000 horses are killed racing or training across America every year. One of the factors affecting my estimate is the missing data on morning training (some states claim…
Last Wednesday, Ray Paulick penned an opinion piece in his eponymous Paulick Report entitled “Horse Racing At The Crossroads: Reform Or Die.” Sounding the alarm (again), Paulick rightly points out that the media is swarming and not letting go. “We’ve…
At the April California Horse Racing Board meeting, the vice-chair, Madeline Auerbach, was rude and condescending, suggesting activists take up children’s causes instead. Oh, and she also said this: “Our horses do not go to slaughter.” As I wrote at…
I have from the outset argued that death on the track is inevitable; while the numbers will fluctuate from meet to meet, track to track, state to state, death for the industry in the aggregate is unfailingly constant and, more…
It’s not just the horses who are running scared: “I am terrified that one horse – one we did five exams on, and the track was perfect, and everything was going good – could go down. We could be one…
When I last wrote about the Jockey Club’s “Equine Injury Database” (EID), I pointed out, among other things, how grossly misleading it is. Today, I build on that a bit: In 2017, according to the EID, Saratoga Race Course, one…
The Albany Business Review ran a piece yesterday on the shortage of H-2B visas (for seasonal workers) and how said shortage will impact the upcoming NYRA meets. Says star trainer Todd Pletcher: “This shortage will have devastating consequences on our…
In the wake of the assault of Accolade at Delaware Park last Thursday, his owner, Glenn Fagan, gave this statement to WDEL: “As the owner of ACCOLADE, the 3yr old gelding that was beaten in the head by the assistant…
Following “public outcry,” says the racing publication BloodHorse, the case of the miscreant trainer/owner who left one of his horses in a stall with a broken leg for almost an entire month was reviewed by the Pennsylvania Racing Commission and…
On the surface, the recent suspension of a Pennsylvania trainer for failing to provide proper care for one of his charges reads like the racing industry taking care of business – policing and punishing a delinquent. Looks good to the…
Some odds and ends… Australian jockey is suspended two weeks for this: Two weeks. BloodHorse reports that veterinarian Kyle James Hebert was found guilty this week for providing dermorphin to multiple trainers in Louisiana in 2012. Dermorphin, also known as…
As the dead horses pile up – 17 as I write – at Saratoga, the industry responds with utterings ranging from the befuddled to the just plain loathsome, with a (typical) dash of duplicitous thrown in. From Sunday’s Times Union…
