I’ll start with what I see as the difference between opinion and fact. Let me use the death penalty as an example. People who favor the death penalty may cite the need for the ultimate punishment for the ultimate crime. People who don’t favor the death penalty may make some moral argument or cite the cost of going through all the appeals. There are some facts involved – we can calculate what it costs a state to deal with the appeals – but whether that cost is too much or not problematic will rest on individual opinion. Facts are tangible – they lay before us. Opinions are not – they reside within us.

One of my readers sent me this and I thought I’d share it. It is from a Richard Feynman lecture on quantum electrodynamics.

“I’d like to talk a little bit about understanding. When we have a lecture, there are many reasons why you might not understand the speaker. One is, his language is bad – he doesn’t say what he means to say, or he says it upside down – and it’s hard to understand. Another possibility is, especially if the speaker is a physicist, is that he uses ordinary words in a funny way. Physicists often use ordinary words such as “work” or “action” or “energy” or even, as you shall see, “light” for some technical purpose. Thus, when I talk about “work” in physics I don’t mean the same thing as when I talk about “work” on the street. During the lecture I might use one of these words without noticing that it is being used in this unusual way. I’ll try my best to catch myself – that is my job – but it’s an easy error to make.

The next reason that you might think that you do not understand what I am telling you is, while I am describing to you how nature works, you won’t understand why nature works that way. But you see nobody understands that. I can’t explain why nature behaves in this peculiar way.

Finally, there is this possibility: after I tell you something you just can’t believe it. You can’t accept it. You don’t like it. A little screen comes down and you don’t listen anymore. I’m going to describe to you how nature is – and if you don’t like it, that’s going to get in the way of your understanding it. It’s a problem that physicists have learned to deal with: They’ve learned to realize that whether they like a theory or don’t like a theory is not the essential question. Rather, it is whether or not the theory gives predictions that agree with experiment. It is not a question of whether the theory is philosophically delightful, or easy to understand, or perfectly reasonable from a point of view of common sense. So I hope you can accept nature as she is – absurd.”

After the articles on Kellyn Gorder’s fine and suspension for meth use came out, there was a thread started on a site called Pace Advantage. Some of the intitial comments were predictable. Here are a few

• Accidental contamination? Yeah, that is what it was, I’m sure. Probably from those unmarked drugs.
• in addition to the meth the article said “Gorder also has been suspended another 60 days for illegal injectables and hypodermic syringes having been found in his barn.” I guess these were planted.
• dudes pic looks like he’s on meth

And this exchange:

• Player A – I dont see an explanation for that [the discovery of syringes and unmarked medication in the stable area] coming in the near future and if it does come, I do think one of the normal sabotage-esque excuses will be used.
• Player B – Wrong. Gorder gave an explanation the afternoon after this was first reported. It had to do with medicine prescribed a particular horse and he admits that it should’ve been long ago been thrown away instead of being found still sitting in his office.
• Player A –If thats the case I stand corrected and hadn’t seen that. That being the case, the explanation you mentioned was in response to injectable medications, syringes, needles and oral medications not properly labeled being found? All of these things had to do with one particular horse and they were just left in his office? You find this believable?

I’m not trying to pick on anyone, but these sort of posts make a couple of important points.

• horseplayers have achieved a cynicism that goes beyond simple concern.
• they can be unnecessarily mean. Was it really necessary or even humorous to suggest Gorder’s file photo looks like he is on meth, the implication being he was probably sharing it with his horses?
• It is common for the comments to start right after someone reads the headline, and less often the meat of the story.
• and looking at the last exchange, the presumption the trainer is guilty, with likely not a reasonable explanation or mitigation, weighs strongly in the minds of the people who post. The last guy even divined a connection between the syringes and unmarked medication that were found and the meth positive, even though the two things were unrelated.

Eventually someone referenced my posting on Gorder, which was different than the stories that appear in the Bloodhorse, DRF or Paulick because I interviewed Gorder at length, talked to officials, looked for feedback from the people who do the testing, and I made an effort to write a complete, factual story. The comments then started being posted on my story. This wasn’t necessarily typical, but it was one of my favorites

“this dudes credibility went right out the window when he stated only three scientists in the world believe global warming isn’t caused by humans. At that point he became just another ass clown.”

If you didn’t read my piece, I was making a point about how opinion has become the equivalent of fact, and I used the example that despite nearly universal agreement by scientists on the existence and cause of global climate change (climate change, not global warming, a passe term), it is somehow equivalent to say, nope that’s not the case. By the way, my attempt at humorous hyperbole was in fact over the top because the actual number of articles published between 1991 and 2012 that do not reject human caused global warming was 13,926, while the number that DO reject the idea of human caused climate change is 24. So the guy had a point, although it wasn’t that I am an ass clown. Sorry – it’s more than three scientists. I was wrong.

Now before anyone else wants to take off about climate change, there are plenty of things that could be argued. Are the models the scientists are using to predict change accurate? How much is actually related to human activity? The one thing that we cannot argue is what has been published. It is a documented, unequivocal fact that 99.9% of the articles that have been published supported the idea of human caused climate change. I don’t care if you buy climate change or not, the number of publications is what it is. Perhaps the 13,926 scientists (or more) responsible for those articles are also ass clowns, but it doesn’t change the fact that is what they published.

Once the bloodletting began, it was pretty unmerciful. I won’t go into all the detail, but in general somehow or another I was put in the category of favoring drug use (not the first time that has erroneously happened) and being some sort of paid lobbyist for horsemen or a horsemen’s group. Eventually the discussion got into my presentation of studies on milkshaking and cobalt which was:

• milkshakes may increase performance, but generally such improvements are seen in high quality male horses and aren’t going to be more than 2%. Studies have also found that some horses will run worse after milkshaking. Studies on cobalt show it does not have the same effect on horses that it had on humans and so far hasn’t been shown to be performance enhancing. HOWEVER, I FULLY SUPPORT STANDARDS FOR BOTH, AND ESPECIALLY COBALT, THAT ARE BASED ON FINDING LEVELS ABOVE THAT WHICH COULD BE DEEMED “NATURAL” IN A HORSE. In other words, performance enhancing or not, I don’t have the slightest issue with setting a standard and nailing the scofflaws. Given both things are so easy to detect, a trainer would have to be self-destructive to try it anyway. As proof I cited the RCI statistics that listed 14 TCO2 violations (most of which were not milkshaking) and 6 cobalt violations in 2014. Both these substances are likely to be distant memories in a short period of time.

I got stuff like this.

“So you talk to vets and phamacologists and we are suppose to believe all these vets and what they say just because you talked to them?”

“Let me tell you something straight up pal. Milkshakes and cobalt make horses run faster and longer. They are performance enhancing. You can slice and dice it anyway u want, but those 2 things help a horse immensely. Fact……”

“All im saying is milkshakes and cobalt are performance enhancers. You keep ur head in the sand and think they are not.”

The honest truth is that I’ve never given a horse cobalt or a milkshake, I haven’t talked with a  trainer who has, and I don’t have first hand evidence about the impacts of those treatments. All I know is what I read, and if that is revisionist crap, well I guess I’ve got my head in the sand. But, what does 6 cobalt violations say to you, because it says to me, we’ve got this one under control. If you are on Pace Advantage, look at the thread. It’s horrific.

Back to my original concern, that opinions trump facts. The posters say the studies are wrong, because they really know the truth – cobalt improves performance and its use on the backside is rampant. Pages of saying what I said above just fell on deaf ears.

The more disturbing part of the conversation goes something like this

• the alchemists are five or six steps ahead of the testers;
• of course we don’t know what these alchemists are using because we don’t know what to test for.

To be fair, at one time milkshaking and cobalt were the magic elixirs that trainers were using. We knew about them, but we didn’t know exactly how they worked biochemically on horses and whether they needed to be regulated. Testing was done, and the glacial wheels of regulation development turned, and eventually they were regulated. Now that they are regulated, the argument goes, the alchemists have found something else. And when the authorities get on to that, they’ll go to something else. We are expected to believe there is a bottomless well of undetectable, performance enhancing substances ready to find their way into race tracks everywhere, and if we don’t we are deniers, naive, or just idiots.

It reminds me of the folks peddling the acai berry. The pitch goes, for thousands of years it has cured everything from aneurysms to zoonotic hookworm, and now it is available to you. Being the head in the sand skeptic I am, I asked, if this juice actually did everything you said it did, don’t you think Big Pharma would have wrapped up the world supply of the berry? Still waiting on the answer.

My questions, which I think are relevant questions, are

• give me a sense of what these unknown substances could be chemically. Are they blood doping agents? Are they amphetamine-like agents? Are they steroidal-like agents? Do they affect heart and lung efficiency? I’ve been on the backside – secrets don’t last long in that little village.
• How come we, the bettors, know who these alchemists are, but the racing commissions either don’t know who they are or are just choosing to ignore them? Trainer A goes from unknown bum to super trainer, and the commissions ignore it?
• given the ability of modern mass-spectrometers to find picogram levels of over 1,800 substances, give me an idea how trainers are getting away with it?
• Given we haven’t busted any underground compounding labs making joy juice for horses, does that mean the racing jurisdictions are not looking for them or are just befuddled?

General answers are.

• We don’t know what the substances are, but when a trainer improves a horse by X points, that’s anecdotal evidence they exist. We can’t find them because we don’t know what to test for.
• Racing commissions can’t find the the bad-guy trainers because they don’t have enough money for enforcement (despite having the money to perform 324,000+ blood and urine tests post race).
• There were testing devices in the 90’s and trainers were beating them, so it makes sense they are beating the current crop.

I’ve acknowledged the existence of substances that can improve a horse’s performance, but the fact I am not willing to rest my case on anecdotal evidence that seems to cast me as an apologist or worse someone who favors drug use. Let me be clear on my position. ANY TRAINER WHO KNOWINGLY USES PERFORMANCE ENHANCING DRUGS IN AN ATTEMPT TO IMPROVE THE PERFORMANCE OF HIS HORSE SHOULD BE FOUND AND PUNISHED. If you remember nothing else from this article, remember that. I’d even go so far as to say, if they get caught using a poisonous substance at levels beyond the natural level in a horse, such as cobalt, regardless of whether or not it is performance enhancing, they should be punished.

I’m not sure how much more anti performance enhancing I can be. I do write about trainers that have been, in my opinion, treated far more like crooks than the evidence suggests, and I will continue to identify those situations. Frankly, I think my positions are perfectly consistent. Of course, that is just my opinion to which I am entitled.

The idea that there is a rush to judgement when the 200 word blurb appears in one of the racing sources, or that there is a wide perception that while there are some honest trainers (Graham Motion) there are a lot of cheating trainers on the backside, should be concerning to all of us. I for one would repudiate any argument that commissions are underfunded to do proper investigations. Say you are testing the first and second place finishers of every race on a ten-race card. Say in one race you decide to only test the winner and “save” the other test you might have done for your enforcement efforts. Zero extra cost. If you have enough money to do 324,000 tests a year, you have enough money to test horses from the suspected bad apples. I believe racing has a responsibility to respond to out of the ordinary statistics, like a trainer going from 15% to 30% winners, or consistently improving horses by 10 points. They need to tell the betting public, we’ve looked and here’s what we found.

You’re never going to convince all the people. But when you have the SUPPORTERS of the game convinced there is hanky-panky all over the backside, you have a real problem that has to be addressed NOW. When you have people who follow horses writing that they KNOW milkshakes or cobalt use are rampant, you have a responsibility to address that innuendo. When you have anyone asking legitimate questions getting pilloried, you’ve got a problem.

Whatever RCI or the states are doing, it isn’t having an impact on the public perception that cheating is an inherent part of the game. So I’m going to do my part to help.

IDENTIFY TO ME TRAINERS YOU BELIEVE ARE WINNING THROUGH CHEATING. I will pick one, investigate and report my findings here. No punches pulled. 

A user on PaceAdvantage.com named thaskalos posted a reply to my piece on Kellyn Gorder. First, I want to compliment the poster for taking the time to craft a thoughtful response. It took time and effort and was appreciated. If we are to have an elucidating debate on any issue, it can only occur if all parties are willing to agree to be civil. His comment is posted below. My response follows.

So…according to Mr. Halvey, there is no drug problem today in horse racing. It’s all the fault of the “governors of the sport”, who create the perception of rampant cheating in order to “secure their jobs”. Only a tiny percentage of blood and urine samples come back positive…and almost all of the violations are for legal, therapeutic drugs. In fact, Mr. Halvey suggests that the only problem with the drug situation today is that the drug tests are too PRECISE, and innocent, hard-working horsemen like Mr. Kellyn Gorder inadvertently get caught up in this maddening web which is as likely to punish the innocent as it is to punish the guilty.

But then we get this:

“We are not idiots. Of course there are cheats, and I imagine there are drugs that are a step ahead of the testing protocols, but I want to know. Where are the labs making the drugs? Why isn’t racing spending money finding these Breaking Bad actors and closing them down? How many veterinarians are willing to lose their livelihood just to make a few bucks injecting horses with secret potions?”

Only a few of the horsemen engage in cheating practices of this sort, Mr. Halvey assures us…and it would take only a modest effort to round these undesirables up, and drive them out of the game. But it’s those dastardly “governors of the sport” again…who refuse to clean up the game because they supposedly have so much to gain from presenting the drug problem in the sport as a much bigger issue than it currently is.

Mr. Halvey ignores a few pretty important facts in order to strengthen his hypothesis, of course. He ignores that there are plenty of reports put out by esteemed veterinarians which suggest that powerful illegal drugs DO exist out there which “greatly increase a horse’s locomotion”…while other reports clearly indicate that there are indeed veterinarians out there who are willing to jeopardize their livelihood in order to illegally make some quick bucks. One doesn’t have to go far to encounter these reports; some of them have appeared on the pages of this very board…and we have talked about them plenty.

Do the “governors of the sport” gain anything by greatly distorting the drug problem in the game today, and blowing it out of proportion…as Mr. Halvey suggests? What possible benefit could come to these governors of the sport, by them giving the perception to the public that this game is nothing but a den of thieves? Aren’t these the exact same “governors of the sport” who have concealed the truth behind every single scandal that has ever come down the pike in this game’s long and checkered past? Hasn’t every jockey race-fixing scandal, every trainer arrest, and every past-posting incident in this game gotten covered up, and brushed under the carpet…in an attempt to protect the so-called “integrity” of the game, at the expense of properly informing the public…who have faithfully supported this game for DECADES? Wasn’t it Andy Beyer who declared in print a few years back, that it was common practice in California to “punish” the connections of the positively-tested winners of prestigious races, with hushed-up suspensions and slap-on-the-wrist fines…in a well-orchestrated attempt to keep these incidents out of public view, thus protecting the “integrity” of the game?

And we are now supposed to believe that these same “governors of the sport”, who have fought tooth and nail to keep racing scandals of all kinds away from public view for all these years, are now making a determined effort to exaggerate the drug problems in this game…because it somehow offers them the benefit of added “job security”?

I’m sorry Mr. Halvey…but I just don’t see it. I really can’t believe that these “governors of the sport” are overstating the drug problems that are currently plaguing this game. Overstating problems of this magnitude isn’t what these people are really about. If they could…they would brush the whole thing right under the carpet. THAT’S what these folks are really good at!

It is unfortunate your interpretation of my piece was that there is no drug problem in horse racing. More accurately, my points were

• There is not a rampant or performance enhancing drug problem in racing. This is borne out by the statistics gathered by the Association of Racing Commissioners International. I’m not sure how you could interpret the documented statistics otherwise. One-half of one percent of tests have a positive and almost all of them are for approved therapeutic medications. 47 positives out of over 324,000 are for class 1 and 2 substances, and of those 47 all but a handful were again for misdosed therapeutics or environmental contamination. There is not an absence of drugs in racing. But considering almost 99.6 percent of horses test clean, and almost all the violations are related to therapeutics, what other conclusion could you come to other than the problem is not rampant?
• I also concluded that the current program of post race testing is effective at discouraging use of illegal, performance enhancing drugs.
• I certainly did not suggest the tests are too precise. I read my piece a couple of times and simply couldn’t find anywhere where that was a conclusion. In fact though, if you want to know my opinion AND the opinion of Dr. Steven Barker, the pre-eminent equine pharmacologist in the United States, the precision that the new mass spectrometers have has led to the adoption of inappropriate standards and associated overreaching enforcement. In the case of Kellyn Gorder, it is unlikely there is a pharmacologist or veterinarian who would not conclude the highest likelihood for the positive was cross contamination. As I said in a previous piece, if you took every single person on the face of the earth, all 7 billion or so and weighed them, they come up near a trillion pounds. 48 picograms would be the equivalent of one four year old boy somewhere among the other seven billion folks. Let me make this absolutely clear. The machines are not too precise. I have no criticism of the ability of a mass spectrometer to measure the amount of a substance. The issue is zero-tolerance in the face of seeing contamination level or non-performance enhancing level positives.

Kellyn Gorder is caught up in the zeal of Commission directors to impose an agenda that often ignores fairness and justice. Even if you believe a picogram level positive is enough to punish a trainer, do you think a year was the right punishment? In the real world, 48 picograms is insufficient to convict a human of most drug violations precisely because the likelihood it is a contamination positive is just as high as if the substance was ingested. The major point of the article was that Gorder was convicted based on never identifying for certain just how the horse got 48 picograms in its system, and was given a punishment that can hardly be seen as justified, in my estimation. If you are among those who believe there is no need to prove anything beyond the existence of an illegal substance at even a minuscule level, we’re going to have to agree to disagree about Gorder. I believe if you are going to take a man’s livelihood away for a year, you should be damn sure he actual did something to deserve it.

Let’s focus on the issue of home labs making powerful and illegal drugs. First, you have to believe that the mass spectrometers that can test for over 1,800 substances at a trillionth of a gram are not capable of identifying these drugs. That is almost always not the case. Second, most of what you refer to as “powerful, illegal drugs” are in fact legal drugs that are illegal to administer to horses in certain doses and at certain times. Heroin is an illegal drug. Stanozolol or fluphenazine are legal drugs that have a standard for horses. Your statement that “powerful and illegal drugs do exist” and that such drugs “greatly increase a horse’s locomotion” is true even in the absence of anyone using them. If your point is that these drugs are being regularly used by trainers and vets, again, the statistics do not bear this out. You reference reports without citing any, and this is at the very least not helpful. Give me documented cases that substantiate the accusation that “powerful and illegal” drugs are being administered on some wide basis.  Big, big difference between “illegal substance” and “illegal level.”

In any case, this is entirely different than my point, which was that there is speculation that there are alchemists one step ahead of the testers, and all I asked for was some sort of proof they exist and the commissions are making an effort to identify them. And I will advise you that for the most part, the pharmacologists do not consider veterinarians expert in the chemistry of drugs. I would agree that vets are experts in the administration and the efficacy of drugs. I know quite a few pharmacologists and vets, and I think they both would agree with those statements.

I have not purposely ignored whatever the reports by esteemed veterinarians are that you would like me to reference. In any case, you are conflating two issues – the existence of performance enhancing drugs and their manufacture by underground labs. My “hypothesis” was (1) knowing as much as I do about compounding medications, it is difficult to believe it is going on in underground labs and in large proportion, and (2) if it was going on we’d have stumbled onto one of them sooner or later. We hear about meth labs being busted all the time. When was the last underground equine pharmacology lab that got busted? I’ve already conceded there are strong, performance enhancing substances. If they come from pharmaceutical manufacturers they are detectable. We know them and their chemical makeup. And if someone thinks they are boutique, designer drugs, undetectable by highly sophisticated machines and manufactured in uncertified labs, I’m just asking for a bit of proof, not anecdote as in, that trainer improved a horse by 10 points after a claim so he must have some undetectable, performance enhancing juice. Once again, nobody seems to be able to come up with more than a handful of isolated incidents. Two or three trainers just doesn’t constitute an avalanche.

I ignore no fact. Reports saying drugs exist do not refute the facts of the RCI post-race testing. Considering only a handful of the 47 Class I and 2 violations were for illegal drugs that increase locomotion, I’m going to say what I said in the article. The number of cheating trainers and veterinarians cannot be very significant, unless you think they are conspiring to administer secret, undetectable amphetamine-like drugs. And if they are, just tell me the commissions are making every effort to find them.

I’ll offer you this. One trainer injecting his horse with cocaine does not constitute a runaway drug problem, especially if he is found and punished.

I really can’t respond to the cover-up suggestion. There are web sites that list every administrative and medication violation on a trainer’s record. Frankly, I can tell you which trainers brought their horse late to the paddock and got fined. The racing commissions are public agencies with sunshine requirements. I’ve not had any trouble finding information on trainer convictions. I’m not sure what a hushed-up suspension looks like. It’s in the minutes, it’s in the hearing record, and it is in the databases. Whatever Andy Beyer said many years ago, I’m not seeing it today. The rules have changed in favor of transparency.

But again you conflate your issue – commissions covering up violations – with my issues – commissions adopting inappropriate standards, standards NOT based on good science, standards that wind up convicting trainers that are hardly guilty of a conscious attempt to defraud, and then emphasizing the great job they are doing catching these trainers. Surveys show that perhaps 30% of racegoers believe drugs are rampant in racing. How do you suppose they got that idea in light of statistics which say the problem is manageable and being managed? You can believe everything is being swept under the rug, but you need more than your offhanded opinion to prove that point. The racing commissions have changed 180 degrees from some point in the past. Many believe drugs are the reason racing is in decline, and they have made a conscious effort to find violations, punish them and let the world know they are on the case. If you want to convince anyone otherwise, you need to find a RECENT case where a trainer was caught red-handed and the commission covered it up. That’s how you convince people, not by inflaming with anecdote.

I’ve written about Doug O’Neill’s conviction for oxazepam in NY, almost certainly a case of cross-contamination. I’ve written about Ferris Allen’s conviction for stanozolol in MD because the commission (erroneously in my opinion) adopted a zero-tolerance standard. I’ve written about Bill Brashears conviction (http://halveyonhorseracing.com/?p=1351) for banamine overages that would have never occurred had the RCI adopted a standard based on their own scientific testing instead of being arbitrary and adopting a standard they knew would result in a high number of positives. All these are on the blog. You want proof they would like to pad statistics – there it is.

The answer to your question of how the governors of the sport have been fighting tooth and nail to keep racing scandals away from the public while exaggerating drug problems is not one I could address since I never suggested they have been engaged in cover ups. Perhaps it happened at one point, but it ain’t happening today. Commissions see their “aggressive” and public enforcement as inspiring new public confidence in the sport. Today, commissions are issuing press releases about scoflaws. Today, Ray Paulick and the Blood Horse and the DRF are all over these things. If ever there was a case that screamed for cover up, it was Kellyn Gorder. Highly respected, very clean, de minimis amount of meth – what better case to sweep under the rug. It just isn’t happening anymore. READ the stuff the RCI and RMTC are putting out. They think they are the only guardians of the sport and they have said, they want to get all drugs out of racing, including a lot of therapeutics. I’m not making it up – it is documented and available on the internet AND referenced in the Bill Brashears article.

You can believe the conspiracy of silence if you want, but don’t suggest I do. I don’t. And don’t suggest your anecdote trumps my facts. Of course, instead of taking my word for it, do what I have done – talk to a cadre of horsemen who believe that is exactly what they are up against.

In fairness, I have a network of objective, highly regarded experts at my disposal. I have done extensive research which means I don’t have to resort to anecdote. I have talked to numerous racing commissioners and executive directors. This is something I know a lot about. Not necessarily everything. But a lot.

Most of all I would urge you to focus on the major point of the article. Kellyn Gorder may or may not be guilty, but given the paucity of evidence and lack of investigation, does he deserve to lose his livelihood for 14 months?

I posted your response on my blog. How about you do the same on PaceAdvantage.

In 1999 Colorado’s Ocean Journey opened amid big fanfare. After all, to be a first class city it is necessary to have every sort of museum, including an aquarium. The facility opened in June 1999 and by 2002 the aquarium declared bankruptcy.

People raised an uproar. You’d have thought the Broncos said they were exploring moving to North Dakota. Of course, when the same people were asked how often they visited the aquarium, they’d give answers like, once a year or three times total. Perhaps it didn’t occur to them that there was a direct connection between actually going to the aquarium and its economic survival.

The problem was solved in 2002 when the aquarium was sold to a restaurant chain and reopened as the Denver Aquarium, complete with a restaurant, bar and large ballroom. If you can’t make a living as a cultural attraction, go for the entertainment value.

I thought about that when the announcement was made that TVG was operationally merging with HRTV. In reality, TVG was going to be in charge and would make the decisions on personalities and programming.

TVG was in nearly twice as many homes as HRTV, and had the deep pockets of Betfair Group to rely on. HRTV was destined to struggle and it was a good business move for the Stronach Group to cast the network off. HRTV had the advantage of exclusive rights to some tracks – most notably this winter Gulfstream Park – but without the viewership TVG had, HRTV was always running harder just to keep TVG in sight.

Based on the social media response, HRTV was beloved and TVG seen as some sort of huckster operation. I’ll admit I rarely watched either of them, preferring the direct track feeds, but I’ve viewed both often enough to see the points on both sides. HRTV had more of a workingman’s feel, while TVG had a slicker operation. Remember Ken Rudoloph? Mr. Giacomo himself? As a handicapper he looked good in a suit. Since Bob Baedeker was given the boot in 2011, I’m not sure TVG has the murderers row of handicapping talent.

It appears that the TVG is designed to appeal more to beginners and perhaps the coveted younger generation that is just as concerned with having hosts entertain them as with expert selection advice. I’ve mentioned this before – the only people with the time to watch TVG all day and the money to bet are in a generation or two older than Gino Buccola and Britney Eurton. I have a feeling that if TVG looks to appeal to the older generation, it is through Super Beta Prostate commercials.

Let’s be realistic. TVG is owned by a betting company with the express purpose of getting people to part with their money through their betting site. Much of their content focuses on making selections. Just before a race is going off they will do what I often do when someone asks me about a horse thay are going to bet – I’ll agree with the other person, although with varying degrees of conviction. It’s a lot easier and you keep more friends than you would by laughing at their pick. TVG will also make a case for five or six horses, including some hopeless nags. TVG is  especially promotional when it comes to complex vertical picks, the real betting moneymakers. Did you ever notice the only time you ever hear how TVG did with their Pick-4 advice is when they hit a ticket? And that is not a daily occurrence. I’ve written at length how the multi-race wagers are often poor choices for handicappers looking to make longer term profit, but many horseplayers find it hard to stay away from the lottery style bets. The first time you exhibit discipline and avoid playing a Pick-4 ticket, it’s going to come in and pay four figures.

Last week TVG ecstatically tweeted out that Simon Bray had nailed two Pick-4 tickets on the same day. In the first one he invested $37.50 to catch a $77 payoff. In the second he invested $32 to collect $50. I responded to their tweet that in the first case, Bray would have collected $104 by betting $37 on his single to win and that in the first case he was collecting 6/5 on his investment, in the second case 3/5. To Bray’s credit he favorited my response, although I’m not sure if he was just tickled someone noticed or he appreciated me pointing out the folly of those bets.

HRTV seemed a lot more about the horses than the on air talent. You get the sense HRTV was more interested in the older, experienced handicappers, while TVG was looking for more of a novice crowd. Let’s face it – Jeff Seigel from HRTV was never going to compete for the “cute in a suit” award, but he was a better handicapper than TVG has used on air for a while. Both networks had their place, and that is really the downside of the merger. They weren’t the same and the loss of choice is not good for horseracing.

Horseracing has always been schizophrenic. It’s gambling…no, it’s a sport. It is caught up currently in a great fight for long term survival and the one thing it cannot do is alienate a segment of its betting population, even if that segment is less of a daily target. If TVG wants to capture the imaginations of the young and the old, the novices and the experts, then they need to provide programming that doesn’t too often deteriorate into banter.  They need to help the novices to move toward expert and convince the experts they have insight and information that will supplement their own. They need to be less California oriented and give equal enthusiasm to big and small tracks across the country.

There are still two channels. They have to find a way to use them to build the sport as much as build the revenues of Betfair. It won’t be easy, but anything worth doing rarely is.

Horsesplayers have only one power – to bet or not to bet. If we refuse to exercise the power not to bet, then we have no power at all. 

I don’t know if anyone else said that first, but it’s critical for all horseplayers to remember. Our power lies in our willingness to support or not support the industry.

Racetrack management sees themselves as the most important piece of the pie. Without their willingness to run a racetrack we’d have no sport.

Owners and breeders see themselves as the most important piece of the pie. Without their willingness to breed and race horses we’d have no sport.

The are both wrong. Horseplayers are the most important piece of the pie. Without them there would be no need for racetracks. Breeders would have little reason to produce 20,000 thoroughbreds each year. Owners would have little reason to pay the upkeep on a race horse that doesn’t race. We create the demand for racing facilities. We create the demand for horses to run at them. We are the basic economic unit for the sport.

Horseplayers are great at recognizing the problems and offering solutions. We’re spectacular when it comes to complaining. What we’ve not been effective at is creating change.

Simply pointing out the problems hasn’t worked. If we are to make change for the better we have to send a clear and unequivocal message: we will not support management that ignores horseplayers or does not operate in a way that promotes our interests. We are not asking for ridiculously low takeout, but we are tired of 30% rake on a trifecta bet.

There is only one way we have the power to be treated as the base of the racing structure. We have to vote with out pocketbooks.

Boycotts have been tried. They haven’t worked because if they had, there would have been real change. Oh, I know the CDI boycott apparently resulted in lower handle, and a boycott in California had the same result. But did they change their take-out as a result of the boycott? Did they suffer in some obvious way? CDI showed an increase in profit last year. It seems like that boycott isn’t discouraging them.

Boycotts haven’t worked because horseplayers will not unify in sufficient numbers to make them work. There is some horse in the 7th race they simply have to bet. They want to go to the track, and by golly nobody is going to tell them to stay home. We are the ultimate in independent contractors, emphasis on independent.

For a boycott to work we all have to agree to act in our real self-interest. We have to give up one day of racing and betting to make long term gains. It has to be well publicized. It has to be printed in the major racing publications. Everyone, even the big money whales has to agree to go in on it. The rolling cascade effect simply hasn’t worked. It will take a fully unified action to change the unchageable.

It is the one thing that would cause racetracks to take us seriously. They would know that at any time, players can unite to protest a just cause. It would reinforce the notion that our issues can’t be easily dismissed. It would make them recognize that they are, in fact, vulnerable, and they do need to not only listen to our issues, but effectively act on them.

It doesn’t have to be on Kentucky Derby day or the Breeder’s Cup. Some Saturday in February would be good enough.

Horseplayers still have a choice. They can exercise their power or continue to complain and hope for change. As Ben Franklin said,

We must all hang together, or assuredly we will all hang separately.

The January 30 issue of ESPN the Magazine did a cover story on Alex Rodriguez. There seems to be no residual doubt Rodriguez was deeply involved in using performance enhancing drugs. I don’t mean therapeutic drugs like butazolidin. I mean drugs that had only one purpose – to give him a physical edge.

Earlier in the issue writer Mina Kimes did one of those pieces that writers often do. I call them, if only someone as smart and clever as me was in charge, all the sport’s woes would be fixed pieces. It’s amazing how many people not in charge apparently should be in charge. I should know. I write enough of those pieces.

Her proposal was for a sports czar so that sports teams couldn’t blackmail their home cities into giving them millions of dollars as a payoff to not move their operations to another city (usually Los Angeles). Another great idea that we can add to the trash heap of good ideas coming from frustrated writers with all the answers and none of the power.

Whether or not my stuff compares to Mina’s stuff, I’m sure her editor is light years better than mine.

Speaking of A-Rod, I’ll bet you didn’t know that MLB allowed him to treat his low testosterone with injections of the synthetic version. It was the illegal juice on top of the legal juice that did him in. If you watch enough of TVG or HRTV, you start to wonder how you ever managed to make it this far without testosterone supplements, super beta prostate, Cialis or some other wonder treatment that will restore you to the peak of performance. Just be thankful you aren’t a racehorse subject to the protocols of trainers and the subsequent criticisms of the naturalists. I’ll take my Cialis and sit in a disconnected bath tub on top of a plateau watching sunsets without hearing about it, thank you very much.

Lately I’ve been stuck in a rut writing about the tussle between trainers trying to stay clean but getting pinched by racing’s own version of Torquemada, the Association of Racing Commissioners International and the Racing Medication and Testing Consortium.

I understand the water, hay, oats people. Their position is simple – horses should be running only if they are healthy and drug free. They want to see the animals competing based on their inherent talent and ability, not some artificially induced state of euphoria. In their minds, what could possibly be wrong with that?

If they win this battle, they might make their next mission to go after the cortisone, torodol and, what the hell, baking soda taken by professional human athletes. I don’t think I’m going to ever convert over to WHO. I honestly believe that whether the athletes are human or equine, there is a way to safely and effectively use therapeutic medications, and not punish trainers who use them they way they were intended to be used. A trainer who winds up with a picogram medication violation and points for a legal drug (fluphenazine) that the owner administered in the correct dosage 53 days  earlier has, in blunt terms, been screwed by his chosen profession.

There are abusive trainers out there. There are trainers willing to “cheat” to get an edge. The unfortunate thing is that they are probably known to other trainers who have their own version of the “blue line” and refuse to turn them in to track authorities. Trainers willingness to tolerate the bad guys only winds up putting all of them in the same bucket, giving ammunition to the anti-medication crowd. We need to get the real bad guys out of racing, but that is a much smaller percentage than the anti-drug folks would have you believe.

I had a fascinating conversation with someone on Twitter about something called epigenetics. Epigenetics is an emerging field of research that is looking to tie environmental factors to genetic responses. I know. This sounds a little more complicated than whether horses peak third off a layoff. This explanation comes from Manolis Kellis from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“The epigenome is the additional information our cells have on top of genetic information. It is made of chemical tags that are attached to DNA and its packaging. These tags act like genetic controllers, influencing whether a gene is switched on or off, and play an instrumental role in shaping our bodies and disease.”

These epigenomic tags are attached as a result of exposure to environmental factors, potentially including drugs we put into our system. This field of research has excited the WHO folks, who are hoping epigenetics “proves” that Lasix has weakened the breed.

There’s only one problem. I asked Manolis Kellis if it was possible that running on Lasix has weakened the breed by somehow passing along these epigenomic variations. He said,

“Trans-generational inheritance of epigenomic marks is still a hotly debated area. Our cells go through two rounds of reprogramming specifically to erase epigenetic marks, both during gamete formation, and during pre-implantation development…Thus, it is highly unlikely that the epigenomic marks we study here escape these two cycles. There is some evidence of trans-generational inheritance. Some of it could be environmental. Some could be mechanisms that escape these processes”

I’m sure the epigenetic folks will focus on hotly debated. I’m focused on highly unlikely. Whatever genetic triggers Lasix may stimulate while the horse is racing, the probability these are passed on is very low. We know this anecdotally because we have not seen dramatic or chaotic genetic changes in humans, horses, or any other animal for that matter. What we’ve seen is the effect of environmental exposures on individuals, leading to things like high blood pressure or diabetes. It perhaps makes sense that if a respective gene is passed along and the progeny are exposed to the same environmental factors, they may wind up with the same conditions, but that underscores the more likely culprit if you believe the breed is weakening – lack of diversity in the gene pool.

That will be a discussion for the next blog.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.  The Who

I used to say that whatever job you have, the first thing you demand is that your boss be the person in the company most qualified to be the boss. Even if you are a customer of the company it is critical to believe the person in charge is capable of making sure the company provides the best customer service possible.

The boss walks a fine line between keeping his employees and shareholders happy and making customers believe the company also has their best interests at heart. When either group has complaints, even if those complaints are off the wall, the groups expect the boss to at least listen. They expect the boss not to be arrogant or dismissive. They expect the boss to be measured and wise in his response. They realize that they may not always get their way, but they will respect decisions that are made with sincerity, thoughtfulness, and fairness.

If you follow the public media, taking potshots at racetrack management  is a common occurrence. If Twitter had been around since the 50’s the documented list of complaints, real or imagined, would be volumes longer.

Management has done plenty right. As is normally the case, good decisions rarely get mountains of praise, but bad decisions will unleash a volley of negative response. But it is different now than it was in the 50’s. Then the sport was still closer to the summit than the base. The big three (baseball, horseracing, and boxing) were still the big three. Football and basketball were years from becoming the mega-sports they are today.

If you told track management in the 50’s that by 2015 they would be a minor sport struggling at many levels, you’d have been laughed out of their offices. Why is attendance lagging? What are the real problems? Drugs? Too many tracks? A balkanized structure in which states govern with a myriad of different rules? Takeouts that are too high? Too many overlapping post times? An aging customer base? In-breeding that has weakened the breed?

If you did a survey, all of those things would show up on the list, and they are problems, but the basic issue is that the racetrack experience is no longer an essential part of horseracing. On any given day, the percentage of dollars wagered at locations other than the racetrack approaches 85%. Except for the boutique meets like Saratoga, the on-track experience in 2015 is often not much different than it was in 1955, other than warehouse sized video screens and better betting machines. In fact, racing in many cases is taking place in the same facility it did in 1955. Racing has lost its appeal as a gathering place for race fans and has been reduced to its one critical element – betting. How did you fall in love with horseracing? Was it no more complicated than you could bet a horse? Or did it have something to do with the atmosphere of the track? That first time you heard thundering hooves. The smell of cheap cigars. Surly tellers.  We’ve lost the one thing that hooked us. We loved being at the track. It was the place we felt at home. How do you attract new fans, young fans, when the experience has no more romance than a video game?

I’m not suggesting we go back to the 50’s when you could only make a bet at the track, but there has to be a place where the racetrack experience becomes real to budding fans. Horseracing has to be different – better – than a lottery ticket or a slot machine. The stars of the sport must become an essential part of the experience; it must rival the other sports for fan attachment.

It is rarely marketed as a sport, especially on the racing channels. If you knew no better you might think he raison d’etre for racing channels is to promote their affiliated betting sites. How much of the day is devoted to education? How much of the day is devoted to the beauty of the athletes? As long as racing makes its sole line of promotion gambling, it misses the opportunity to promote itself as a sport. The NFL may be as popular as it is in part because of betting on games, but it doesn’t market itself as gambling but as a sport with team loyalty and star power. There is a lesson in there somewhere.

The irony is racing is trying to attract a younger generation by marketing the sport to them as an opportunity to spend money they don’t have. Despite a society that venerates older people by giving them discounts on everything as if they were on the edge of a financial cliff, the reality is that there is no generation so financially well off as the one comprised of people looking in the rear-view mirror to watch their disappearing middle age.

The medication rules being promoted by ARCI  and RMTC will help some people believe in the integrity of racing, but all the medication rules in the world are unlikely to ever satisfy the animal rights people who firmly believe the one thing a horse was born to do, run, must ultimately end up as abuse if the running occurs on a racetrack. And as I have pointed out, despite the ARCI promises of fair medications rules, the implementation in places like Maryland hasn’t been quite so smooth.

The solution to balkanization can take many forms. There is a faction that believes there must be a central authority for all tracks with a uniform set of rules, sort of a Roger Goodell for horseracing. There is a faction that believes over time if we do nothing in particular the small tracks will continue to fade away until there are only the mega-jurisdictions left. Sort of a Darwinian approach – the strong will survive.  There is a faction that believes the entire idea of horseracing should be taking a back seat to the real gambling money-maker, casinos. The one solution I never hear is some form of revenue sharing, much like the National Football League does to ensure small market teams have an equal financial ability to compete.

The high takeouts? This is in fact complete ignorance and disdain on the part of states. Despite the studies that consistently show lower take means higher profits, it is harder to sell than space heaters on the equator. This is really the place where bettors can influence tracks. Player boycotts have generally been ineffective because bettors will simply not give up playing the high takeout tracks en masse. If you are betting tracks in Pennsylvania with a trifecta takeout at 30%, YOU share equally in the criticism. Stop betting there and perhaps they will change.

Perhaps the most difficult problem to solve is the betting menus at many tracks. Unless a track is handling Belmont, Gulfstream, Saratoga, Santa Anita or Del Mar type money, the first thing a track should look at is consolidating pools. There should be no separate show pool but a combined place/show pool that plays to the first three horses across the line. There should be no races with separate quinella and exacta pools, but one exacta pool. A $1 exacta box is the equivalent of a $2 quinella. And if someone whines they would be lost without a $1 quinella, perhaps they are undercapitalized to be betting, The minimum bet for most of the 20th century was $2, even when middle class people were only making $80 a week. Now that even the minimum wage pays four times that much, bettors still demand a ten cent minimum on some bets. You figure it out. Smaller tracks often do a bang-up job of discouraging betting by having pools too small to provide an incentive to act. Unfortunately, unless some group of major bettors gangs up on management, those in charge are unlikely to change the betting menu.

There are a lot of really smart people who care deeply about the game out there. If the bosses are smart, they will find them and listen to them and change the things that should be changed.

Even if you are on the right track, you’ll get run over by the train if you just stand still.

Scott Lake, once THE mega-claiming trainer in the Mid-Atlantic, was initially suspended for 60 days by the Maryland Racing Commission for having a horse test positive for the steroid stanozolol, sold as  Winstrol.  Maryland recently adopted the Racing Commissioners International (RCI) rules developed under the National Uniform Medication Program (NUMP). You know how each state has rules for how many points a driver can accumulate before losing his license? NUMP is the same concept except not only does each violation accumulate points, it also comes with a suspension. The more points you accumulate, the longer each subsequent suspension is.

Lake had a stanozolol positive at Penn National in June, which earned him four points on the NUMP scale. The second positive at Laurel in December earned him another four points, jumping the initial 60 day Maryland suspension to  120 days.

Lake appealed, although his main argument seems to be with the fairness of the cumulative aspect of the penalty. Lake suggests that the same violation should get the same penalty for all trainers, apparently irrespective of previous violations.

It’s an interesting topic for argument, but I have two issues I’d rather discuss. First is the inconsistency regarding regulatory levels in the various jurisdictions. I’ll give you a real life example.

A trainer (nameless for the moment but one that I will eventually doing a big story about) was found in violation in Pennsylvania for the drug fluphenazine, a class 2 medication. The drug is used to calm down horses  with behavioral issues. The particular horse in question had flipped on multiple occasions during training and the stable veterinarian recommended fluphenazine. Fluphenazine, sold as Prolixin, is an anti-psychotic drug used to treat schizophrenic type behavior, and while you can argue about whether it is the best choice given other treatment options, it is a relatively cheap and effective treatment for the type of behavioral problems this horse had.

The horse in this case responded well to the treatment. The trainer then decided to look for a race for the horse, but first checked with his vet to make sure he wouldn’t violate any medication rules. The vet, Maryland based, assured the trainer that Maryland rules required only a seven-day waiting period after the treatment. The trainer entered the horse in Maryland 21 days after the treatment, and the race didn’t fill. He then found a race in West Virginia and again the race didn’t fill. Finally he found a race in Pennsylvania, 35 days after the horse was treated. Unfortunately, the vet wasn’t fullly familiar with Pennsylvania rules regarding fluphenazine, and the trainer didn’t do any research, so he assumed 35 days would be plenty of time between treatment and race. The horse won, was tested and came back positive for fluphenazine.

The problem was that in Pennsylvania there was a zero-tolerance rule for fluphenazine. In the hearing the trainer was told there was a 180 day waiting period for the drug. In almost all horses, fluphenazine will completely metabolize in 45-90 days, so while the people in Pennsylvania provided advice that was a bit too conservative, it is likely under a zero-tolerance policy any horse would almost certainly test positive after only 35 days. Was it the trainer’s fault he didn’t know the rule? Technically, yes. But the fluphenazine had long since stopped having any real physiological effect on the horse, and having adjacent states with such disparate standards has to drive trainers in the Mid-Atlantic crazy. The fluphenazine made the horse capable o racing where it wasn’t previously, but it didn’t make horse run faster.

Once again, I’m going to go into a lot more detail about this in a comprehensive future report, including some surprising opinions from leading equine pharmacologists, but at this point the trainer is stuck with a Class 2 violation even though the horse almost certainly won on its own ability. Pennsylvania’s rule in this case was the equivalent of getting a speeding citation for going a quarter MPH over the speed limit.

The second issue is that there is a substantial difference between a positive for theraputic drugs and drugs that have no other purpose than to either enhance or depress performance. The drug Lake was cited for, stanozolol, is an accepted theraputic medication, although as a steroid it can have performance enhancing effects. In humans it is known as a “cutting” drug, meaning it builds lean muscle mass while reducing fat. In horses it is often used to stimulate appetite. The injectable version has a half-life of about 24 hours, meaning it would be a while before a horse’s system was completely clear of the drug. In fact, it would show up well after the drug had stopped having any measurable physiological effect.

ALL DRUGS ARE PERFORMANCE-ENHANCING and given modern measurment technology that can detect picograms (trillionths of a gram) it may take months before some drugs become unmeasurable. If you took ibuporfen for a headache yesterday, it would be detectable tomorrow even though four hours after you took it the headache returned.

Many owners, especially at the smaller tracks, simply can’t afford to take essentially clean horses out of training for an extra three months while the picograms reduce to zero.

I don’t want to blame the storytelling press – after all, they just report the news, not make it – but they are not fully doing their job when they don’t report the level at which the violation was measured and the likelihood that level was performance enhancing or depressing. It is important that the racegoing public understand when a positive is technical and when it is substantive. Trainers are pilloried for positives, but how often do you see a story taking a racing commission to task for punishing a trainer for a positive at a no more than a trace level? I know I’ve written about Doug O’Neill and the oxazepam violation that would have been laughable had it not been so costly.

Too many trainers are winding up with violations that are for trace levels of theraputics and that do not impact performance in the way a high level of a Class 1 opiate would. Subsequent violations result in excessive penalties. Too many trainers wind up with “points” for violations that no trained equine pharmacologist would call performance-affecting.

I don’t know enough of the details surrounding Scott Lake’s violations for stanozolol to know if he is a “cheat,” he got caught up in not paying close enough attention to medication standards in the different states, or if he just pushed the medication evelope a little too hard. Fining and suspending trainers who are trying to keep their horses on the track with legal, theraputic medication, and who are racing them well after the theraputic effects have dissipated is not in the best interest of racing. It creates the appearance of rampant drug abuse.

Racing commissions rightfully work to keep the game clean, but there is no shame in reserving the harshest punishments for only the truly guilty. In a subsequent post I’ll go into detail about how racing commissions can do a fairer job of only punishing those who deserve harsh punishments. In the meantime, let’s expect more than a regurgitation of the racing commission press releases from the mainstream press. Let’s provide enough detail to know whether we’ve been protected or a clean trainer has been caught up in the system.

I was reading about the alleged rape at the University of Virginia in which the members of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity were accused of staging a gang rape initiation ritual. The story appeared in Rolling Stone and the outrage that emanated after the publication was no surprise. There is inevitably a rush to judgment in such cases, and the fraternity paid by having their house trashed, windows broken, and being forced to move to hotels. Pretty much the same thing that happened to the Duke Lacrosse team. Considering the non-stop media coverage of the Rolling Stone story and the vitriol spewed on social media sites, the guilt of the frat boys was a forgone conclusion.

The only problem was none of it was true. The members of Phi Kappa Psi realized within 24 hours of the story being published that not only were they innocent of the alleged charge, the incident never occurred. At that point, the fraternity decided to not say a word for fear of making things more difficult. They shut-up and took a public pounding. Much of the credit for exposing the fraud goes to T. Rees Shapiro from the Washington Post, who did what Rolling Stone did not – finally talked to the fraternity members. Sabrina Rubin Erdely, the Rolling Stone reporter, blithely ruined the lives of innocent people in the name of sensationalizing what may be a legitimate problem, just not in this case.

We’ve all watched old Westerns where a mob insists on instant justice for someone accused of a crime. We’ve read and seen real pictures of black people who were lynched in the 20th century. Lately we’ve watched video of groups like ISIS beheading hostages guilty of little more than not being a zealot bent on ruling the world. In each of those cases the vast majority of us are repulsed, and immediately see the wrongness of pronouncing someone guilty before knowing all the facts or because they are in some way different. We know mob justice is wrong, but sometimes we are helpless to stop ourselves against the tidal wave of public opinion. If you were one of the people who thought Phi Kappa Psi deserved to be stoned the day after the story came out, you might be feeling, at the least, sheepish. Given an opportunity, the system would have properly investigated the allegations, found the facts, and meted out any punishment. Unfortunately, the only crime in this case was committed by the fake victim and the reporter who didn’t do her job.

Yet in horseracing we are often quick to rush to judgment when it comes to trainers. David Jacobson generates such enmity that over a thousand people signed a petition asking that he be thrown out of New York. Jacobson was suspended in 1981 for failing to provide a horse named Hugable Tom with proper care and was kept out of racing until 2007. Since he has been back he has been the poster child for everything wrong with racing. The petition cites his three medication violations for phenylbutazone and clenbuterol and his numerous fines for “failing to conduct business in a proper manner.” Let me tell you, the list of transgressions meriting a fine by the stewards is almost endless and I’ve previously mentioned things like a male stablehand being fined $50 for using the ladies bathroom because, in his mind, the men’s facility was disgusting. The fine would have been higher except he did remember to put the seat down when he was finished.

Jacobson’s heinous instances of failing to conduct business are usually not specified by New York, but in one case necessitated the scratch of his horse resulting in the cancellation of a race (at the winter meet at AQU by the way). That’s right, it was Jacobson’s fault that AQU had to cancel a race. His other offenses included things like

• not having the proper colors for his horse in the paddock;
• not having the proper foal papers;
• using an unauthorized blinker;
• a turf shoe violation.

He also ran a horse in Pennsylvania in violation of New York state racing rules. Figure that one out.

Oh, and his drug violations for clenbuterol and phenylbutazone – they occurred in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Maryland, not New York. That’s right, he hasn’t violated New York’s medication standards since 2007. In a subsequent piece I’m going to go into great detail about the failures of laboratory testing and how the results are misued by racing commissions.

The petition also cites five horse deaths as the final nails in Jacobson’s coffin. However, not once does it mention the evidence that the deaths of these horses was clearly a result of Jacobson’s negligence. They died, Jacobson was the trainer, he needs to be ruled off the track.

So what has the New York State Gaming Commission figured out? Well they haven’t figured out what medications he is abusing. They haven’t figured out how Jacobson was culpable in the racetrack deaths of his horses. And believe me, New York has looked at Jacobson the way CSI looks at evidence. In fact, the most New York has on Jacobson is that he is guilty of the equivalent of a series of parking tickets in that state.

Am I defending Jacobson? I am defending his right to due process. I am defending his right to be judged on the facts of his transgressions and the severity of the violations by a proper authority, not a mob of people hopped up on their own righteousness. He may be innocent or guilty, but there is a right way to go about proving that.

Jacobson is not a sympathetic figure. His father, Buddy Jacobson, was famously quoted as seeing horses as nothing more than machines, a way to make his living. He felt no great attachment to them in the way many horse lovers do. While David has been circumspect enough to not express the same negative feelings toward the animals, he is stained with the unavoidable problem of being Buddy’s son. New York never forgave Buddy Jacobson for leading the nine-day strike by stable workers, and it is not a stretch to suggest some folks still carry a grudge. Jacobson does seem to run his horses at short intervals, and to many who are not licensed trainers that is all the proof they need to label Jacobson as abusive. Ignore the fact that the horses are checked by the state vet before being allowed to start. The state apparently shares no culpability in the mind of the mob. New York dealt with trainers like Jacobson by installing a 14-day rest rule for the AQU winter meeting. That wasn’t enough for the mob. Nothing short of the death penalty will be punishment enough.

Do you know how much pressure there is on trainers, especially those with sizable stables, to fill out fields at AQU in the winter? Do you know about the bartering that goes on between the racing secretary and the trainers? Enter Horse A over here, and I’ll write a race for Horse B. As much as New York may dislike trainers like Jacobson, they need them to run a successful meet.

If the mob had petitioned NYRA for a proper investigation and hearing, fine. If the mob had asked for a public meeting to discuss Jacobson, fine. Frankly, I’m tired of those who may even sincerely believe they are the defenders of the sport calling for summary justice against those they have convicted in their minds. You aren’t helping by singling out trainers. You are reinforcing the notion that cheaters abound in racing. You provide the cynics and the haters with one more reason to oppose the sport. Do it the right way. Investigate cases. Find the evidence racing commissions have ignored.

If Jacobson is abusing horses, running them when he knows they are hurt, or improperly medicating them, I am going to be the first to call for racing to deal with him. Just show me the incontrovertible evidence. But until then, my focus will be on the fairness and competency of the racing commissions, many of which hide behind the absolute insurers rule and do ridiculously poor investigations. I will not be part of the mob who follows the ironic dictum of Sheriff Cobb in the movie Silverado.

“We’ll give him a fair trial, followed by a first class hanging.”