Posts Tagged ‘bloodhorse’

According to sources, Eric Mitchell, formerly the head of digital media, will be replacing Dan Liebman as the company’s top editorial executive overseeing the weekly magazine and most of the other print and digital editorial products. Liebman will be responsible for producing the weekly magazine and, in a reversal of management roles, will now report to Mitchell. Evan Hammonds, formerly responsible for putting together the magazine each week, will take Mitchell’s old position in charge of digital products, including the bloodhorse.com website. He will also report to Mitchell under the new scheme.

The new titles and responsibilities are expected to be announced Thursday in a press release that could outline new job titles for other editorial staff members.

I hired all three individuals during my tenure at the company. Liebman joined the Blood-Horse first as research director, Hammonds was then brought on as managing editor and Mitchell later joined the company, first as a senior writer and then moved on to other positions, including research director, editor of the TBH MarketWatch newsletter and finally head of digital media.

When I parted ways with the Blood-Horse in 2007, Liebman was named my replacement as editorial director of the company and editor in chief of the weekly magazine. In the ensuing 24 months he has had to reduce staff and slash expenses as a result of declining advertising revenue.

Mitchell brings outstanding skill sets to his new position, both journalistically and as someone acutely aware of the migration of many readers from print to online resources. He has a very good overview of the Thoroughbred industry, in part because of his experience as a writer who covered many of its most complex issues on the racing side of the business, and from his years as editor of MarketWatch, which examines stallions, breeding and the marketplace.

If anyone worked harder than Mitchell during my years at the Blood-Horse, it was Evan Hammonds, who while responsible for producing the weekly magazine as managing editor was also instrumental in developing many of the online features at Bloodhorse.com. I would look for his full-time input at Bloodhorse.com to be very productive and creative. Liebman, whose strengths are his breeding industry knowledge and good network of sources in Kentucky, has his work cut out in filling Hammonds’ shoes in producing the weekly magazine.

All in all, I view these changes as very positive—for the company and its many dedicated employees, and for the industry in general, which benefits from a healthy weekly trade magazine. There’s no guarantee Mitchell will be able to turn around the company’s fortunes, but I don’t think there’s any doubt it has a much better chance of doing so under his leadership.

Copyright © 2009, The Paulick Report

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By Ray Paulick
“What kills a company is not competition, but arrogance. We control our fate.” So said Eric Schmidt, the chairman and CEO of online giant Google in an article in the New Yorker magazine last year. 

Stacy Bearse, the president and publisher of Blood-Horse Publications, apparently doesn’t share that belief. In a staggering show of arrogance, Bearse recently sent a letter to members of the board of trustees of the Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association, which owns the company, urging them to shift their advertising dollars away from Blood-Horse’s competition, specifically Thoroughbred Times and Thoroughbred Daily News, and spend their money with him. He made a similar plea to undermine his competition during a TOBA board meeting in Lexington in April. (Click here to read his recent letter.)

(Fortunately, he didn’t tell TOBA trustees, many of whom are associated with major stallion farms that make up the bulk of the advertising market, not to advertise with the Paulick Report, the horse industry’s fastest-growing web site. Please feel free to contact us to learn more about our cost-effective advertising opportunities!)

“The market is simply not large enough to support two profitable weeklies,” Bearse wrote to the TOBA trustees. “There’s a very good chance that one won’t survive this downturn. It may come down to who runs out of cash first.”

I contacted Joe Morris, publisher of Thoroughbred Times, to see if he had any comment about Bearse’s assertion. Morris disagreed that the market couldn’t support two magazines but said he wasn’t going to get caught up in a fight and instead chose to "go out and sell something."

Bearse said declines in advertising revenue have caused Blood-Horse to reduce the company’s workforce and cut salaries and benefits. Among those let go in the most recent round of layoffs were writers Amanda Duckworth, the inaugural Joe Hirsch Scholarship winner and a graduate of the University of Kentucky’s journalism school, and Ryan Conley, a top-notch reporter with extensive industry experience, knowledge and contacts. Both were dedicated professionals, but many other good people have lost their jobs at the company in the last 18 months. Thoroughbred Times and Thoroughbred Daily News have not had to take such drastic measures.

“My job is to ensure that your magazine – The Blood-Horse – is the last one standing, and that it emerges from this dark period strong and successful,” Bearse wrote.

That’s good news, I thought, as I read the letter to the TOBA trustees. My old boss (I was Blood-Horse editor from 1992-2007) surely must have a plan to improve the efficiency of the staff or make the product more timely, interesting or relevant to readers. The last thing I want to see are more of my former colleagues out of work, and less coverage of Thoroughbred racing and breeding, whether in print or in digital form. The Paulick Report believes competition is good for any business.

Apparently, that isn’t the case with Stacy Bearse: his plan is to kneecap the competition.

“But for us to succeed,” he wrote to the TOBA trustees. “I need your support. If you advertise in TDN or Thoroughbred Times, consider shifting your dollars to The Blood-Horse. If you divide your advertising, consider consolidating your investment in The Blood-Horse. If you board your mares or own a controlling interest in a stallion, encourage the farm manager to support The Blood-Horse.”

Then came Bearse’s most chilling comment: “You don’t need two weeklies to cover this market.”

That is exactly why the Paulick Report was launched, to prevent the consolidation of news and analysis for this industry into one, Pravda-like, party-line publication, and to ensure that it has an independent voice.

As someone else pointed out to me, Blood-Horse and the Thoroughbred Record (now merged into the Thoroughbred Times) both survived the Great Depression and the Times and Blood-Horse made it through the severe horse industry slump from 1985-92. Following that same logic, would the horse industry be better off with just one large stallion station instead of all the competing farms, or one auction house?

I think Eric Schmidt was right: It’s not the competition that kills a business.

Copyright © 2009, The Paulick Report

In the first Good News Friday installment, appropriately on the day the Christian world knows as Good Friday, we tell the story of Father Catesby (Chris) Clay Jr., a member of the Kentucky family that owns and operates Runnymede Farm near Paris, Ky.

By Ray Paulick
Catesby Clay Jr. seemed destined to one day carry on the family’s tradition of breeding Thoroughbreds at Runnymede Farm in Kentucky’s Bourbon County, on land his great-great-grandfather, U.S. Representative Brutus Clay, had purchased for his son, Ezekiel Clay, in 1867, shortly after the end of the Civil War. Ezekiel Clay and his brother-in-law, Catesby Woodford set a high standard for breeding top-class runners at Runnymede from the beginning, and the farm remains a successful commercial operation to this day.

Young Catesby Clay, known to his friends and family as Chris, grew up on the family farm, but he didn’t really get the bug for racing until after his freshman year in college, when he went to work as a hot walker for trainer Jim Baker. He returned to school that fall, graduating from Georgetown University in 1996, and later that year responded to a classified advertisement to proofread Stallion Register pages in the research department at Bloodhorse publications, where I was serving as editor in chief.

He got the job, albeit a temporary one, and made a favorable impression on Dan Liebman, then the research director who recommended hiring Chris for a full-time position when the company launched a new product in 1997, the MarketWatch newsletter.

Chris and I worked closely together on MarketWatch, and he was instrumental in creating a product of great value to breeders and owners that contained useful, never-before-seen statistical data on stallions, auction buyers and consignors, and trainers. He worked tirelessly through technical challenges and production snafus (though he was known to take occasional naps at his desk after staring at pages and pages of data for hours) to put out the product almost singlehandedly.

As much as he seemed to enjoy the work, which was certainly going to help him if he were to someday take over the operation of Runnymede, Chris became increasingly interested in a higher calling spurred on by his Christian faith and a desire, as he now says, “to give more of myself in serving others.”

In the spring of 2002 he used his vacation time to go on a mission trip to Croatia and Bosnia in the Balkans, and came back feeling exuberant. A couple of months later he attended World Youth Day in Toronto, Canada, and was inspired by the message of Pope John Paul II.

The Catholic Church was at a low point at the time, with multiple scandals involving priests and child sex abuse. The number of young men entering the priesthood was falling as a result. Chris, instead of letting the church’s problems deflate the inner calling he felt, was more motivated than ever. In August of 2002, he entered the seminary at St. Meinrad School of Theology in southern Indiana. He studied there for five years and was ordained as a Catholic priest May 19, 2007, by Bishop Ronald Gainer for the Catholic Diocese of Lexington, Ky. He was then assigned to the Cathedral of Christ the King in Lexington as a parochial vicar, or associate pastor.

Chris was the first employee I ever lost to the priesthood, yet seeing his ordination was one of the happiest days of my professional life, because I grew to learn how important it was for him to be able to serve his fellow man.

“As my desire to serve others grew, people started coming up to me and asked if I’d thought of becoming a priest,” Father Chris, now 34 years old, recently told me. “At first I’d say ‘no,’ because I hadn’t thought of it. But then I thought maybe they see something in me that I don’t see in myself. I took it to prayer, and there was a confirmation in prayer.”

It was while at prayer shortly after he returned home from work one night that he said was his “definitive moment” pushing him toward the priesthood. “I knelt down by my bed and prayed, ‘God, what is your will for me?’” Father Chris recalled. The telephone rang, and his father, Catesby Clay Sr., was on the line. Catesby was with Father Norman Fischer and seminarian Teka Berhanu, who had been a family friend since Chris’s childhood.  His father put Teka on the line and Teka told Chris about his experience at a seminary in Rome and invited him to join him there, saying he would love it. “This was the answer to my prayer,” Father Chris now says.

“All that involves is maybe coming up to someone and introducing myself if I don’t know them or greeting someone I do know,” he said. “I might offer them a blessing if they like. It may be a brief visit, but I want my presence as a Catholic priest to remind everyone who sees me to remember that they are important before God; what they are doing is important, and that God loves them deeply. We all need more hope, love and mercy of God in our lives. Hopefully I can bring a little bit of Christ’s love in my ever-so-brief visits.”

Many of the Christ the King parishioners are active in the Thoroughbred industry, and he always enjoys talking horses with them. “Of course, as a priest, we will be hit with weightier matters than horses,” he said.

Father Chris said the funeral Mass for David Mullins only a few months later was one he’d never forget. “I celebrated the mass with Deacon Bill Rood and we went to the cemetery for the burial. There we stood as so many familiar faces walked in sorrow behind the horse-drawn hearse with a bag-piper playing. It was all very fitting for us to be there together in grief for our friend David who had brought so much life and love to us all.”

He also talks with Sandra White, who directs Women in Racing and Bethlehem Farm in Paris, Ky., about the ministry she does for women recovering from addictions. “In all this, the great challenge is not forgetting my primary responsibility involves serving the parishioners at the Cathedral,” he said.

So if you’re wandering through the Keeneland stable area one morning and come across a young Catholic priest, be sure to say hello to Father Chris Clay. You’ll find a man who is just as comfortable talking of things spiritual or equine, and someone who is helping make the world a better place, one person at a time.

Copyright © 2009, The Paulick Report 

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I always subscribed to the theory that you can’t tell a book by its cover. For that reason, I was always impressed but never really that surprised when one of the grumpiest people I’ve ever had the pleasure to work with also turned out to be one of the most charitably minded.

Today, on this day of giving thanks, instead of focusing on an equine charity, the Paulick Report is writing about someone in the equine industry who has been a tireless champion for a charity that anyone who’s ever heard ringing bells outside of a grocery store is familiar with: the Salvation Army. 

I first met Ron Mitchell when we were colleagues at the Thoroughbred Times in 1988. Ron was all business, someone who learned the ins and outs of the horse world working at a bloodstock agency before entering the journalism profession. Like many journalists working at trade publications, Ron always seemed to know more about a story than he could write. Maybe that’s why he always seemed so grumpy!

I left the Times in 1991 to work for the startup daily paper, The Racing Times, and Ron shifted his notebook to the Bloodhorse magazine shortly thereafter. We were reunited in 1992 when I was named chief editor of the latter publication.

During my 15 years there, Ron had his responsibilities shifted at various times. He always accepted each new challenge with the same stern face and gruff attitude, then dove into his position with great dedication and a sense of pride and ownership for what he was doing.

It’s that same sense of pride, combined with a belief in social responsibility toward his community, that has driven Ron (pictured, Vickie Mitchell photo) to stand outside a Lexington, Ky., grocery store hours at a time several days a week during the holiday season over the last 15 years, ringing a bell and encouraging people to donate to the Salvation Army kettle. He says he does it because it’s always been a great source of news tips from people in the Thoroughbred industry who shop at the Kroger grocery store in his Chevy Chase neighborhood. But I’ve never believed that.

Just as his career in journalism has been transformed from manual typewriters to laptops and a black and white newsweekly tabloid to a 24/7 Internet site, Ron’s methodology for raising money for the Salvation Army has gone digital.

Be assured that your generous donations will be put to good use. As Ron said of the Salvation Army: “I did extensive research on charities and concluded that the SA does the most with the least. They do not fritter away their money on high-paid executives and they have a program that emphasizes assisting their clients with personal self-improvement and trying to get them back on their feet. The SA is not a ‘handout’ organization. Although they are not considered an ‘equine charity,’ many current and former workers within the Bluegrass horse industry utilize the many services offered by the SA."

If you can’t make it to Ron’s Kroger in Lexington, consider a donation to your local Salvation Army bell ringer. Better yet, go online to Ron Mitchell’s personal Salvation Army fundraising page and click on Ron’s "Donate to My Kettle" button to make a donation there.

You might even coax a rare smile out of him!

The Paulick Report will spotlight a different charity each day of Thanksgiving week, when we traditionally take time to reflect and give thanks to the blessings we have and to help those less fortunate. This is a difficult time for many Americans, and charitable organizations are feeling the effects of the global economic crisis. We hope you’ll spend a few minutes to learn about some of the charities that make us a better industry, and consider giving to these or to others that we won’t have the opportunity to publicize. Remember that no gift is too small.

Copyright © 2008, The Paulick Report

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What you won’t hear in the report is how the tentacles of the Jockey Club and some of its individual members strategically reach into various organizations and businesses in an effort to exert control throughout the Thoroughbred industry.

To quote from the book, “The Right Blood: America’s Aristocrats in Thoroughbred Racing,” by Carole Case: “This is a story about money and power, and about a particular group of rich and powerful Americans—the men (and a very few women) of the Jockey Club. With its founding in New York City at the turn of the twentieth century, the Club took the reins of Thoroughbred racing in the United States, and it has never entirely let them go. For more than a century, then, the Jockey Club has dominated horseracing in this country.”

For better or worse, the Jockey Club, which has been ruled since 1982 by chairman Dinny Phipps and vice chairman William S. Farish, has considerable power over the Breeders’ Cup, Keeneland, National Thoroughbred Racing Association, the Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association and its American Graded Stakes Committee, Bloodhorse magazine, and the New York Racing Association, among others.

Here’s a quick rundown.

– William Farish’s son, Bill, is the board chairman of the Breeders’ Cup, which before its governance was changed a few years ago, had been tightly controlled by the senior Farish and his longtime friend and horse business partner G. Watts Humphrey. The battle over control of the Breeders’ Cup board has been detailed by previous articles in the Paulick Report..

– The senior Farish replaced Ted Bassett in 2006 as one of the three trustees who oversees Keeneland’s operations. Keeeland’s president, Nick Nicholson, is a former executive with the Jockey Club. There is some speculation that one of the senior Farish’s goals is to expand Keeneland to the point where it can bid to become a permanent host for the Breeders’ Cup, making it the Augusta National of the racing industry.. An expansion is on the drawing board now, with Keeneland making a possible Breeders’ Cup bid as early as 2011.

– The NTRA board is populated by several Jockey Club members, including Humphrey and Robert Clay, plus Jockey Club president Marzelli, and three racetrack executives — Nicholson of Keeneland, Bob Elliston of Turfway Park (owned in part by Keeneland), and Charles Hayward of the New York Racing Association, which has been controlled by Phipps for more than 30 years. At one point, the NTRA and Jockey Club shared office space in New York.

– The Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association has had some semblance of independence from the Jockey Club in recent years, through its chairman, Bill Casner, who is not a Jockey Club member but has been asked to speak at Sunday’s Round Table. Casner was recently succeeded by Reynolds Bell, currently a steward of the Jockey Club and a bloodstock agent whose major client is Farish’s Lane’s End Farm. Dell Hancock, whose family’s Claiborne Farm boards the Phipps family mares, served as chair of the American Graded Stakes Committee until recently being succeeded by Peter Willmot. Steve Duncker, currently the board chairman of NYRA, was a previous Graded Stakes Commiteee chair.

– Stuart Janney is chairman of Bloodhorse magazine, whose board also includes Bill Farish, G. Watts Humphrey, D.G. Van Clief, and Antony Beck—all Jockey Club members with the exception of Beck, who is very close friends with Bill Farish. Janney is a Jockey Club steward, a cousin of Dinny Phipps, and chairman of Bessemer Trust, the company founded by Phipps’ great-grandfather. He succeeded Humphrey as chairman, who in turn succeeded Bayard Sharp, Farish’s late father-in-law.

– The New York Racing Association’s close relationship with the Jockey Club is no secret. Its tracks serve as playgrounds for many Jockey Club members, most notably Dinny Phipps, who has the most desired finish line boxes at the NYRA tracks. The Jockey Club even has offices at the New York tracks. The Jockey Club once officially ruled New York racing, but lost its official control when a horseman named Jule Fink went to court after being denied an owner’s license. NYRA’s board is populated with Jockey Club members, and its chairman, Steve Duncker, like most chairman before him, is a member of the Club as well.

The tentacles clearly reach into breed associations, regulatory agencies and other organizations throughout racing and breeding.

What isn’t clear is why the Jockey Club, led by its chairman and vice chairman, wants so desperately to control the industry, and what they plan to do with that control.

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For those who have never attended, there is no “round table” at this annual throat-clearing exercise for many of the industry poobahs, and there is not really any discussion, either. It’s a precisely orchestrated show that leaves nary a stanza for improvisation, and there is no question about who the conductor is waving the baton. According to several individuals who have spoken at past Round Tables, Dinny Phipps goes over every speech with a fine-tooth comb, cutting out things he doesn’t like and adding points he wants to have made.

The Round Table is one of the projects of the Jockey Club that Phipps has overseen since becoming the breed registry’s chairman in 1982. That same year, William S. Farish became the Jockey Club’s vice chairman. That’s 26 years running as a two-man team, 

But let’s not look ahead to Sunday’s festivities just yet. Let’s go back in time to a day when Dinny Phipps wasn’t trying to save the entire Thoroughbred industry; he was merely applying his business skills, enthusiasm and charisma to New York racing.

Some people who confuse wealth and power with vision and business intelligence might say that Dinny Phipps was born to lead. He is a member of one of America’s wealthiest families. His great-grandfather, Henry Phipps, was Andrew Carnegie’s partner in what became known as U.S. Steel, and he was the founder of Bessemer Trust, for which Dinny Phipps has served as chairman. As if that wasn’t enough, Dinny Phipps’ grandfather, Henry Carnegie Phipps, married into another of America’s wealthiest families, that of Darius Ogden Mills, who struck it rich in the California Gold Rush. At one time, the Phipps family owned roughly one-third of the exclusive island enclave of Palm Beach, Fla., where Dinny Phipps officially resides (Florida has no personal income tax).

Dinny Phipps followed his grandmother (Mrs. Henry Carnegie Phipps of the Wheatley Stable) and his father, Ogden Phipps, into Thoroughbred racing. Phipps and his father also were skilled at “court tennis” (some call it real tennis), a game that also found popularity with royalty in 16^th and 17^th century France and England. Ogden Phipps was a mover and shaker in New York racing, serving for years as a trustee of the New York Racing Association and also as chairman of the Jockey Club.

Dinny Phipps was made a member of the Jockey Club in 1965, when he was just 24 years old. In 1971, at the age of 30, he was appointed to the board of trustees of the New York Racing Association. It was the same year the first Off-Track Betting shop opened in New York, a development that sent on-track business at the NYRA tracks into a long and steady decline.

Young Phipps wasn’t entirely a chip off the old block. Whitney Tower, writing in Sports Illustrated, said most members of the Phipps family went out of their way to avoid publicity. Tower wrote in 1965: “Until Dinny slightly altered the family pattern by hobnobbing in track press boxes and frequenting Toots Shor’s (a midtown Manhattan bar and grill frequented by celebrities and athletes), none considered the press anything more than a necessary evil of the modern age."

Tower, whose sense of humor could be wicked, also wrote of the young (and still growing) Phipps’ court tennis skills in the 1965 article that featured the Phipps family’s Bold Lad, an early season Kentucky Derby contender. “Dinny, who, like Bold Lad, has never missed an oat in his life (weight, 275 pounds), is defending amateur doubles champ with Northrup Know, after playing No. 2 on both the tennis and squash teams at Yale.”

Phipps was moved up to a newly created position of vice chairman of the NYRA board in 1974. The chairman, Jack Dreyfus, bred and raced under the name Hobeau Farm and was best known as the creator of the mutual fund through his financial company, the Dreyfus Fund. Dreyfus also spoke willingly about his bouts with clinical depression and became a vocal proponent of a drug he was given to treat the problem.

In an extraordinary editorial in the Feb. 16, 1976, Bloodhorse magazine, editor Kent Hollingsworth called for Dreyfus’ ouster as NYRA’s chairman.

‘The roof is leaking,” Hollingsworth wrote of NYRA and its three racetracks, Aqueduct, Belmont Park, and Saratoga. “In other sports when the trend is downward, the coach or manager is fired. … (Dreyfus) has lost the confidence of a growing number of New York owners and trainers and cooperation of management and horsemen is absolutely essential to reverse the downward trend of New York racing.”

Hollingsworth then endorsed Phipps to become the new chairman.

“Young Dinny Phipps, vice chairman of NYRA, has the support of most New York owners and trainers. As chairman, Phipps would be more accessible, and greater cooperation with horsemen could be attained. Also, the vacant slot for a director of racing needs filling now, by a man who has the experience and rapport with both management and New York horsemen. … The NYRA needs new – not just new, but better – direction. It needs it now, for all of racing cannot afford to have New York racing continue downward.”

Five months later, in July 1976 Dreyfus stepped down and Dinny Phipps was appointed NYRA’s chairman. “I hope I can fulfill the duties of this office with the same energy, foresight and creativity displayed by Jack Dreyfus,” Phipps was quoted in the Bloodhorse. “Working under him has been a valuable experience.” The Bloodhorse article gave no professional or business background  on Phipps, only saying that he was the son of Ogden Phipps.

By today’s standards, on-track business looked pretty good when Phipps took over. Aqueduct’s early-season meeting had average on-track attendance of 20,722, Belmont Park’s summer meeting averaged 24,387, and its fall meeting averaged 20,363. Saratoga had a daily average of 18,894.

But there were serious problems, and they would only get worse. By the time Phipps left in 1983, those same numbers were 13,340 at Aqueduct, 19,530 at Belmont summer and 16,735 for Belmont’s fall meeting. Saratoga was the lone bright spot, increasing to 26,644 by 1983.

Phipps spoke before New York legislators after his appointment, saying: “Thoroughbred racing in New York State, once a growth industry, has fallen on evil days, and a period of crisis is clearly upon us. And this has happened, purely and simply, because growth has stopped. … There may be those who will argue that concern for on-track growth is misplaced in the era of OTB and who anticipate the day when tracks will operate primarily to serve off-track clientele. If this day comes, we believe it will mark the end of both OTB and the tracks. We do not believe that OTB can flourish and prosper in a climate of ever-declining interest in on-track racing. The tracks make customers for OTB, not the other way around.”

But under the headline “Better Days Ahead,” a story in Bloodhorse magazine in November 1976 quoted Phipps telling the American Trainers Association that NYRA was going to “make an all-out effort” to improve conditions.  

The efforts went unnoticed by Sports Illustrated the following June after Seattle Slew clinched the Triple Crown with a win in the Belmont Stakes. “The 70,000 people who showed up at Belmont Park Saturday did so despite the best efforts of the New York Racing Association to keep the race a secret,” the Scorecard item read. “No wonder the NYRA is in trouble. … NYRA chairman Dinny Phipps needed a bang-up selling job. So, the week of the Kentucky Derby, just one month before the Belmont, Phipps hired a marketing expert and gave him the title vice-president in charge of marketing. It seemed like a smart move.

"But new VP Ted Demmon admits that the only thing he knew about horses is which end the tail is on. “His previous job was marketing vice-president for Hardee’s, the ‘hurry on down to’ hamburger joints, where he was also in charge of product development. While Phipps hasn’t yet assigned him that job, someone at the NYRA should have told Demmon that a man named Billy Turner has just spent a year developing the hottest product the NYRA could have hoped for. Yet just three days before Seattle Slew was to become the first undefeated Triple Crown winner in the history of racing, the television ads in New York were still inviting people to come out to beautiful Belmont Park, where, just maybe, some afternoon they might see another Secretariat.”

At the end of 1977, his first full year as chairman, Phipps was scarcely mentioned in Bloodhorse’s annual index of articles. The few references included the fact he had commissioned artist Richard Stone Reeves to paint a portrait of Bold Ruler, that he was awarded the P.A.B. Widener Trophy in Kentucky, that he was re-elected as a director of the Grayson Foundation and that he and his wife had a son born in July (sort of like those stud news items that announce when a major stallion’s first foal is born).

But things were happening at NYRA. In September 1977, Thomas FitzGerald was forced out as NYRA president and James Heffernan was brought in to replace him. There were labor problems with mutual clerks, and a TV deal was struck to show some major races on CBS.

The major emphasis after Phipps took over as NYRA chairman was to convince then-Gov. Hugh Carey to push for a reduction in takeout in hopes that it would stimulate handle and on-track attendance. Independent research commissioned by NYRA, the Pugh-Roberts Study, showed business would go up between 12-15%. How hard did Phipps work on this? “We put in two hours every working day just on this one thing,” said Phipps, who even made two trips to the state capital in Albany. Eventually, a 20-month takeout reduction experiment was approved, and Phipps became the toast of racing. 

The New York Turf Writers named him “the man who did the most for New York racing.” In February 1979, Phipps was given the Eclipse Award of Merit by a committee representing Daily Racing Form, the National Turf Writers Association and the Thoroughbred Racing Associations.

Hollingsworth, Bloodhorse’s editor, remained one of Phipps’ biggest supporters, writing of NYRA: “The management is tops; NYRA board chairman O.M. (Dinny) Phipps is young, innovative, responsive, with a competent staff of experienced professionals that knows what should be done and does it.”

Six months after giving Phipps the Eclipse Award of Merit, however, the presenters might have wanted to call for a “do-over.” Business at the Belmont summer meeting was down in attendance and up only slightly in handle after the takeout reduction, falling well short of the Pugh-Roberts Projections. NYRA’s overall year-to-date business was even more dismal, with attendance dropping 13% and betting off 8.4% through the first seven months of 1979.

“Despite reduced takeout and million-dollar promotion campaign, no light has appeared yet at the end of the tunnel,” Bloodhorse’s New York correspondent William Rudy wrote. “Nor was the atmosphere a happy one. Horesmen were irate over what they termed general ineptitude in the racing department, and a new organization, the New York Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Benevolent Association, was formed with Jack Gaver president and Joe Trovato and Murray Garren vice presidents. The group issued a statement that said: “You must be able to communicate with the NYRA if you have a problem or disagree with existing policies. … The fact is that the NYRA now is pretty much a closed shop at top levels.”

The critical Bloodhorse article said NYRA’s board members were mostly yes men who “all go along with decisions made. … Members are often informed at board meetings of actions already taken. There is, on occasion, dissent from former NYRA chairman Jack Dreyfus Jr., a gentleman who seems inhibited by a feeling he should not criticize his successors.”

For his work, Phipps was rewarded with re-election as chairman in May 1980, a year that ended just as poorly as the previous year: Belmont attendance was down 8.2% and 3.8% in handle, while Aqueduct’s late-season meeting dropped 13% in atteance and 8% in handle.

The following year, former treasurer Jerry McKeon replaced Heffernan as NYRA president. The legislature began looking at the 1985 expiration of NYRA’s franchise and invited racing people to speak at a hearing of a joint legislative task force in Albany. Penny Chenery, who raced Secretariat, expressed her displeasure over the actions of the board and management of NYRA, telling legislators: “If you gentlemen perceive as I do a lack of responsiveness on the part of NYRA, I urge you to require of the board of trustees responsibility for the performance of the NYRA and its CEO,.”

After nearly 6 ½ years as NYRA chairman, Phipps resigned the post in January 1983, and he was succeeded by Thomas Bancroft, who also failed to reverse the slides at Aqueduct and Belmont that accelerated during the Phipps era (Saratoga was an exception). 

Phipps has remained on the NYRA board, and some have likened his stepping down in 1983 to the recent replacement of president Vladimir Putin in Russia, who was constitutionally prohibited from running for a third consecutive term. Just as Putin has not stepped aside after being nominally replaced by Dimitri Medvedev as president (Putin remains “prime minister”), high-placed industry sources say that Phipps continues to call many of the shots in New York racing from behind the scenes.

In that is the case, Dinny Phipps, if nothing else, is a master of the power play.

Copyright © 2008, The Paulick Report

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