Keeping Pace: Say No Again, Congress, To This Terrible Horse Racing Bill

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19-05-2025

Dear Congress:We want you to pass a new federal horse racing law to replace the current one, which is only a few years old and which we've never accepted. Why wait to see if the U.S. Supreme Court upholds or strikes down the current federal racing law? That ruling is about a year away, at least, and it's more likely than not that the justices in Washington, D.C., will vote to affirm it anyway. No, sir, what you need to do is to replace the current law with a new one, right now, this session. Don't worry, the fact that your elected colleagues from big racing states like Kentucky and New York and California don't support the measure doesn't mean that you shouldn't.If you enact the Racehorse Health and Safety Act to replace the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act you'll be endorsing a state compact system with rules and regulations negotiated between bureaucrats and other interested parties. Don't worry! Many of the same people who failed to solve some of racing's biggest problems over the past few decades are the ones who will be running this state compact. They are sure to get things right this time! The good news is that the RHSA will bring many more unelected bureaucrats into the process because, Lord knows, the more bureaucrats in an industry the smoother the industry runs.By asking you to endorse RHSA, we are asking you to go back to a system of racing rules and regulations that made the sport less safe for racehorses. It's true. Jurisdictions now operating under HISA have measurably better horse safety numbers than do the jurisdictions that have rejected the current federal law. So, sadly, more horses are likely to die when HISA dies. But you can tell your constituents, especially the animal lovers, that you promise that horses will ultimately be safer under RHSA, too, because the bill is aligned with some veterinarians who believe that they should be allowed to give more drugs to more racehorses closer to race day.Signed: Desperately Seeking Sponsors
The RHSA is back, like a doomed creature that won't die, just in time for Triple Crown season. As I have written before, again and again, the RHSA takes some of the worst components of the failed state racing commission system, amplifies them, and pretends the past is the future. The arguments against this awful bill were sound two years ago, long before we knew for a fact that HISA has made racing safer. Those arguments are even sounder now. Congress shouldn't let horse racing in the U.S. wiggle its way out of the timely and meaningful regulation it's getting now in the form of the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority and the Horseracing Integrity & Welfare Unit. Congress shouldn't step back from the bold leap it took in passing HISA.Here's how Daily Racing Form's Matt Hegarty wrote up news of the RHSA's return: 'The bill would establish the Racehorse Health and Safety Organization (RHSO), with a board appointed by state racing commissions, using an interstate compact. Under interstate compacts, state agencies can band together to pass common rules. While the RHSO would devise and approve the rules, state racing commissions would continue to enforce the regulations. Prior to the creation of HISA, the racing industry consistently explored the possibility of creating an interstate compact to align the rules in most U.S. racing states, without any success.'
Indeed, the idea of an interstate compact to govern horse racing isn't a bad one. There was a time, until maybe a decade or so ago, when it might have been worth a shot. Now it's too late. The state racing commission system, with its uneven rules and regulations and medication standards, has failed so utterly to make racing safer and fairer for the past half century that it's ruined whatever confidence any of us might have had about the solution set forth in the RHSA. HISA exists today because enough members of Congress, and enough Thoroughbred industry stakeholders, recognized years ago that a state-oriented solution was really no solution at all.Give the bill's sponsors credit for candor on one point anyway. The 'RHSO will be granted the power to investigate rule violations, but the state racing commission of each participating state will retain enforcement power unless it requests the RHSO to assist with enforcement,' the bill's sponsors conceded last week. What they are saying here is that any state racing commission that doesn't want to aggressively investigate doping or other rules violations doesn't have to. What that means is a return to the same failed system Thoroughbred racing used to have (and harness racing still has) where state regulators simply aren't up to the job of regulating. It's rare to see a statute include such a self-own that this one does.There are three sponsors of the RHSA. One sponsor is from a state (North Carolina) that does not have Thoroughbred racing, another is from a state (Louisiana) that successfully sued to avoid being regulated under HISA, and the third is from a state (Arkansas) that wants to get out from under HISA control. The press release issued last week in announcing the legislation, replete with quotes from its congressional sponsors, was almost laughable for its description of HISA. But the new bill has one thing going for it. The same propaganda machine that has torqued up horse people to oppose HISA will torque them up again to support the RHSA.
None of this means that HISA has been an unqualified success. There are legitimate concerns about contamination positives, which federal regulators have begun to address, and there are still questions about how to allocate the costs of the federal program. Tougher enforcement measures have angered 'covered persons' for the same reasons regulations throughout history have always bothered and annoyed the regulated. What do the HISA and HIWU folks have to show for their labor? Headline after headline that says that Thoroughbred racing in the U.S. has become safer since the feds took over from state racing commissioners.But it's much harder to oppose federal legislation when: 1) it's shown to be working in a key metric, and; 2) the alternative being proposed has already proven to fail. What part of the proposed 'state compact' in the RHSA will be free from many or any of the institutional problems that doomed state racing commissions? Are the bureaucrats working in these commissions suddenly going to aggressively enforce high standards of medication rules? Of course not. The folks backing the RHSA think that the feds' medication standards are too strict. Are the state bureaucrats who for decades looked the other way at doping cases suddenly going to become braver than the FBI and ferret out cheaters? Of course not.(article continues below)
Dear Congress:If you want to clean up horse racing, and keep it clean, thank the sponsors of the RHSA for their time and then toss their piece of legislation in the garbage where it belongs. Any state system of racing is a failed system of racing. Any system pushed for laxer medication rules is no system you want to defend to your constituents. The way to protect the industry from itself, and to protect horses from those within it willing to hurt them, is to continue to back the work of federal regulators, and HISA and HIWU, as the law enters a crucial year before Supreme Court review. Y'all backed the right horse three years ago when you passed HISA. Y'all backed it again when you tweaked the initial law to make it better. Don't switch off now.
NOTESThe Preakness. Great race. Courageous horse. Nice connections. No catastrophes that I know of. Good coverage. The video of Bob Baffert fixing D. Wayne Lukas' handkerchief ought to be played on a loop at the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. Meanwhile, we learned a day before the race that the whipping controversy surrounding Junior Alvarado and his ride on Sovereignty in the Kentucky Derby is actually a broader story of an industry reluctant to be regulated in this area. From a smart USA Today piece, we've learned that the 'crop rule' has been enforced by HISA more than 2,500 times in less than three years.You could look at that astonishing figure and ask: Why are so many jockeys willing to violate that rule? Is the sanction not high enough? Should the regulators allow jockeys eight hits on their horses instead of 6 or ten strikes instead of eight? Or you could look at it and ask: When so many people are violating a rule in this fashion perhaps it is time to review whether the rule should be in place at all? Alvarado's lack of remorse isn't just disappointing and self-defeating. It's also quite telling and it points to a broader problem for HISA: How do regulators disabuse jockeys of the notion that striking a horse in the middle of a race doesn't hurt the horse? I look at that 2,500 figure and see a world in which jockeys continue to use their whips as often as they think necessary to push their horses to go faster and then worry about the fines afterward. And you don't have to be a sociologist to acknowledge that there are still many people within the racing industry, including trainers and jockeys, who fundamentally disagree with the idea that there should be any limits on whipping. The argument that jockeys need their crops for their own safety and for the safety of their horses doesn't even fly with Jerry Bailey, the Hall of Fame jockey, who says "the reins are the best thing to use for safety by far.''
Maryland, my Maryland. Sara Gordon posted a great piece in Thoroughbred Daily News on Friday about The Maryland Thoroughbred Partnership, an initiative designed to promote the sport long after the bugle has sounded on the Preakness. 'We're not marketing something that you can really measure,' said one of MTP's founders. 'Instead, we're putting out there to the people of Maryland this sort of underappreciated component of their everyday lives. That is the horse farms that they pass, where they may stop and pull in the driveway to see a foal, but they really don't know what goes on behind the scenes, behind the gates of those farms,' he said.'We have the best stories in sports. We should be promoting our stories more, letting people know what goes on every day and what the industry does. From the number of people who are employed, to the economic benefits for open space and the environmental impact, with land being the best filter that the Chesapeake Bay has,' another MTP founder told TDN's Gordon. 'I've never seen an industry that sells itself so well to itself and doesn't sell itself to anybody else.' I am rooting for MTP's success. There should be a similar initiative in every racing state, a group that can work with horsemen's groups to better market and promote the sport.
Commish. Let me just add a few words to the chorus sounding off on NBC Sports' Mike Tirico's comments about the Triple Crown and the need for a 'commissioner' in racing. Here is the Tirico quote that has drawn so much attention from within the Thoroughbred industry: "But if you can't follow this idea with anything that works right now in the sport, then we're hurting the sport. So it would behoove everyone involved. The problem is Maryland does its own thing. So does Kentucky, so does New York, so does California, so does Florida. You talk about college football needing a commissioner? This sport needs a commissioner.'It would be great if there were a commissioner over racing with the power to force all of the many and disparate industry stakeholders to give up some of their power and authority for the greater good of the game. I just don't see it happening, for all of the reasons I have discussed over the decades we've argued about it. But that doesn't mean Tirico is wrong. He is right as rain about the need to change the schedule of the Triple Crown to conform to today's training practices and take advantage of the marvelous marketing opportunity a new schedule would bring. Good for him for having the courage to speak out.
There a national database of job listings for judges and stewards and vets. I got a nice email last week from Keeping Pace reader Eddie Arroyo, who responded to my note last week about the shortage of stewards, vets and other racial officials. I lamented the lack of a national database of job listings and I was wrong. There is such a database, Arroyo told me, via the Racing Officials Accreditation Program, which offers it on their webpage. Arroyo should know. He's the chair of ROAP. Here is the list of actual job postings as of this past weekend. The most impressive part is the list of sponsors at the bottom of the page. ROAP is a program endorsed by both HISA and the USTA, for example, proof that there is always room for common ground.