Posts Tagged ‘Philadelphia park’

By Ray Paulick
One of the most interesting and encouraging developments of the young 2010 racing season was the recent announcement in New Jersey that Monmouth Park will slash the number of racing days but increase daily average purses to $1 million—the highest ever in the United States for a regularly scheduled race meeting. A daily average of $1 million is roughly triple the daily purses offered in previous years at Monmouth Park.

Most weeks, Monmouth will run Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, offering 12 races per day, rather than a more traditional Wednesday-Sunday schedule. A weekends only fall meeting at Monmouth will replace the previous Meadowlands Thoroughbred meeting.

Click here to learn more about the 2010 Monmouth Park schedule and here for the stakes schedule.

How to pay for this? A large chunk of the money, $20 million, comes in the way of a subsidy from the New Jersey casino association, a deal that expires this year. The hope of New Jersey Sports and Exposition and Monmouth Park officials is that higher quality racing with bigger fields will substantially increase handle. Average daily handle in New Jersey has dropped from $5 million to $3.2 million over the last five years.

Longtime Monmouth Park executive Robert J. Kulina, the track’s vice president and general manager, talked with the Paulick Report about how he is planning to put Monmouth Park back on the map of major league racetracks.

This is a pretty dramatic step. Reminds me of the lyrics to Neil Young’s “My My Hey Hey”—“it’s better to burn out than to fade away.” Is that that the scenario you felt as though you were facing with New Jersey racing?
You’re the second one to mention that great song. It’s true. First of all I don’t think any other state would have had the horsemen that allowed us to entertain this concept. It’s almost been two years we’ve been working on this.

It boils down to a couple of things. Everybody in the industry understands what we are doing is not working. I liken our industry to Detroit, where the auto industry is almost gone. They had a monopoly, we had a monopoly and it’s not working. This is the last year of our purse supplement (from New Jersey casinos). We needed to come up with a model to show the racing can be successful and give us a vehicle to ask for future funding for purses. If we went with the same day-in and day-out cards, the reality for additional funding would be more doubtful. It’s a big picture thing. Dennis Drazen (former New Jersey Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association president), myself and John Forbes (current NJ THA president), we talked about any number of dates scenarios. Finally we decided we wanted to cut it to the point where there would be were no excuses left; it’s  the least common denominator, with the hope being that in the future we can add. I am very appreciative of the horsemen. There was a lot of hard work on their part.

Did you look outside of the United States? This looks an awful like what Japan or Hong Kong is doing.
There are no geniuses here.  Less is better. We looked at foreign models. We added the fall dates to see if there would be any life at Monmouth that time of year. It’s been 30 years or more since we raced that late at Monmouth. For one year, it’s something we had to do, but there are a lot of negotiations, a lot of issues that still need to be resolved.

You’ve said you need to double handle to sustain these purses of a million a day. What are the realistic chances of that?
That’s not what I said. My projections were soft, 20% to 25% increases. What I tried to allude to is that Saratoga is still the best in the country. We looked at the model–$13 million in daily handle at Saratoga). We are at $3.2 million. Somewhere I said can I grow toward that Saratoga number. Can I double my number this year? I don’t know. We made very soft projections just to maintain where we were: 20% increases on live handle, 20% on transmission of races, and that’s adding two or three races per day, ans assuming our field size will increase from under 7.5 horses per race to 8.75 or maybe nine. We think we’ll sell more races to California. Philadelphia Park won’t be running on Sundays, so how much can we pick up there? It’s a big gamble.

In 1970s when I was racing secretary here and New York was dark on Tuesdays, I’d put an overnight stakes on Tuesdays and we were doing $3 million a day in handle just in that building.

One thing that’s important to understand is that I want the other guys to have a good product, because I’m selling bets on it. I want racing across the country to be strong and good and competitive. I think one of our problems is that we are trying to become a slot machine in our wagering mentality.

Have you put more into the marketing budget?
We’re doing a lot of new things. We’ve had success adding events the last few years. We’ve had a crab cake event, we’re adding a jazz and blues festival, adding a burger event with the Newark Star-Ledger on Memorial Day weekend. We are doing more food events, adding a second music event. We’ve reintroduced the Monmouth County Hunt meet and believe that can become a big event. These things take two or three years to build. There are 16 weekends during this time and we’re trying to create an event every weekend. There is a lot of excitement among people who are lapsed fans. The upside can be big; I remember what it’s like to have 17,000 here every Saturday.

In addition we are real close to getting the Haskell televised on ABC, a one-hour show. You know we have a record of trying to be aggressive with our 3-year-olds.

What’s the impact on the stakes program?
Mostly minor things. Our graded stakes are right at $5 million, pretty much the same as before. We’re bringing the Meadowlands Cup to Monmouth and running the Pegasus as a Haskell prep. Our overnight stakes, something I created a long time ago, will start at $100,000. We are really focusing on the high end.

I have a great relationship with the horsemen, and they bought into the concept. We’re now trying to work on the purse schedule. Part of the plan is to put meaningful money back to last place. Right now we are talking about $2,000 for the last-place horse. That’s a lot of money. Too many small owners can’t make it, and just because you’re small doesn’t mean you’re not good.  If you can run a horse, and you perform, the $2,000 helps pay some of the training and offsets part of your losses. We’ll try to stop people from abusing the system by running just for $2,000.

You can’t finalize your purses until you write the condition books. We’re still working on it, but the purses are going to be very good at all levels. The first condition book is almost finished. It’ll be on our website soon.

What’s been the immediate reaction?
The stall applications look like when I started in 1977 as racing secretary, and it’s a who’s who of American racing. There are a lot of interesting things going on.
 
The comments on blogs from different people have been very encouraging. The game needs to do something different, and a lot of people are wishing us good luck. Hopefully, we can find something that works. There’s a lot of hope and enthusiasm out there.

Copyright © 2010, The Paulick Report

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As the Paulick Report continues to grow, we will be bringing on more turf writers and industry insiders to share their opinions and perspective on the racing industry across the country and internationally. Longtime turf writer Martha Claussen, currently with SureBet Racing News, will be writing a piece for the Paulick Report once a month opening our readers to the South/Southwest region of the American racing industry.

- Ray Paulick
 

By Martha Claussen
There are few names in the Thoroughbred industry as well known as Bob Bork.

I met up with Bob for lunch this week in Houston. My intent was to interview him for a Paulick Report story on the difficulty of smaller tracks getting a graded stake. We discussed his hard-fought battle to get a grade for Sam Houston Race Park’s Connally Breeders’ Cup Turf in 2005, but soon branched out into so many topics, that I felt compelled to revise my story angle.

Bob came to Texas in 1995 to serve as general manager of Sam Houston Race Park and was  promoted to president in 2002. He brought a solid knowledge of racetrack management, having served as vice president, general manager and chief operating officer of Arlington International in Chicago; vice president and general manager of Philadelphia Park and general manager of Garden State Park in New Jersey. Bork made some major changes to save the Houston Class 1 track, which opened to much fanfare in 1994, and two years later filed for bankruptcy. Houstonians didn’t quite "get" horseracing. They liked their football, basketball, baseball, rodeo and even supported the Houston Dynamo, a MLS team that made its Houston debut in 2008. 

Bork, loved the challenge. He switched the post times from afternoons to evenings and increased the number of simulcast track offerings. He was the mastermind behind the 12% takeout on Pick 3 wagers, and even more daring, the ten-cent superfecta, which Sam Houston began offering in 2005. Many tracks across the country, including the most venerable in Kentucky and California, followed suit.

Sam Houston has two well-regarded track surfaces. The main dirt track has a Brazos sand base that has been popular with horsemen and boasts one of the lowest fatality records in the nation. It’s turf oval is named after the late John B. Connally, the governor whose support of pari-mutuel racing lead to the opening of Sam Houston and other Texas tracks. The Connally Breeders’ Cup Turf Stakes had been run at Sam Houston since 1996. Many noted trainers including Hal Wiggins, Bill Mott, Bobby Frankel, Steve Asmussen and Graham Motion, shipped horses in for the mile and one-eighth handicap.  Beginning in 2000, Bork and Sam Houston racing secretary Eric Johnston annually approached the American Graded Stakes Committee of the Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association for consideration on the Connally Turf. Their best shot came after the 2004 edition of the stakes which attracted a nationally prominent field of turf specialists, most notably Better Talk Now. The heralded Graham Motion trainee did not win the Connally (heavy rain that evening rendered the course yielding and the front running Warleigh led gate to wire), but captured the Grade 1 Breeders’ Cup Turf later than year.

Bork, who was also serving as president of the Thoroughbred Racing Associations (TRA), attended the graded stakes session in December, 2005, and was thrilled when the committee gave the Connally its Grade 3 status for the 2006 calendar year.

When asked if that was one of his proudest moments, Bork reflected for a moment, and said no. He went on to discuss the challenge of getting OTBs in Pennsylvania and the uphill battle with legislators. In 1989, it was finally passed in the house and senate, but vetoed by the Governor. Bork and other industry officials  had a three-day window to get a reversal and worked 24-7 to get the word through media sources that tax-payers would benefit greatly from the revenue spawned by off track betting. Just hours before the deadline, OTBs passed in the state. Exhausted, but elated, Bob got in his car to return to his office. On the way, he decided to stop in a local watering hole and have a beer. The place was empty, except for the bartender and a regular, who was already three sheets to the wind at noon. No sooner than Bob had pulled up a barstool, the patron stared at him and yelled out "I know you; you’re the guy on tv."  Wino aside, that was a highly memorable career moment for Bork.
 
Some industry veterans can be aptly described in a few words. Smart, dedicated, focused, passionate, driven. There are few words to sum up the total essence of Bob Bork. He is all those, but irreverent irascible, unconventional and sometimes, hilariously funny as well.

I worked for Bob for ten years at Sam Houston Race Park. He was a tough task master, but in retrospect, we had a lot more fun than many people in the workplace. Bob balanced his authority with a challenge to each one of his department heads to be innovative and creative. Of course, that did  not mean that every idea or suggestion was taken into account. On more than one occasion, I researched, prepared and walked into his office with an elaborate plan. Minutes later, I was dismissed with words including "don’t let the door hit you on your ass on your way out". At first I was offended, but over time, I came to understand that Bob only kidded certain people. If he didn’t respect you, you received the silent treatment. Despite the quirks, Bork had no trouble pitching in when someone was shorthanded, even taking on concession stand duties when the hot dog line for the “Quarter Night" promotion got too long.

The marketing department, under the savvy leadership of Bryan Pettigrew, produced a video spoof on Bob. Our goal was to incorporate as many "Bobisms" as possible. There were lots, including “everyone’s a marketer”, “prove to me that if I let you spend $100,000, you will bring in over $100 K in revenue”, “mopes” and our personal favorite, if you tried to sneak out before the evening races were over, even if you had been there 14 hours since 8:00 am, he would ask you if you were working “half day”?

Bryan portrayed Bob and the rest of us took our turn at getting shot down.  We unveiled the video to Bob and his wife, Judy on Derby Day and held our collective breath as he watched. First a smile, then a chuckle followed by an ear to ear grin. He knew we had captured his true spirit. Judy loved it more than Bob; she asked for extra copies for the Bork Christmas gathering.
 
Running a racetrack is a tough job. The general manager attempts to balance the needs of the horsemen, simulcast patrons, live racing fans and employees, all the while trying to make a profit in these challenging economic times. Bob was pretty good with the horsemen and empathized with their frustrations over lower purses than the surrounding states (Louisiana, Oklahoma and New Mexico) with VLTs. He did get into it with a Texas owner who preferred to run his mare against state-bred company instead of facing Take Charge Lady in the 2002 NTRA Great State Challenge. Bob asked nicely, implored and came marginally close to begging. The owner would not change his mind. A heated encounter took place in the winner’s circle when the owner simply told Bob "you can’t tell me where to run my horse" and Bob, without missing a beat replied "I can tell you not to run at my racetrack."
Three years ago, Maxxam, the parent company of Sam Houston, selected a new management team focused on making the track more of an entertainment destination. Bork retained a position as chairman and worked on legislative affairs as well as his national role as president of the TRA. His contract with Maxxam expired eight months ago.

He refuses to use the word “retirement” and would gladly go back to work full time. But for now, he has plenty of hobbies and past times. He is a great cook, loves to create concoctions with his juicer and enjoys heading to Freeport on the weekends to enjoy his 35′ Viking fishing boat.  He is also working out with a trainer several times a week, not just to stay in shape, but to compete in the 2011 Chevron Houston Marathon, a 26.1 mile run through the city of Houston held in January. The race attracts 22,000 participants each year, including some internationally elite runners. Bob’s goal: to win his age group and best his time of 4.29 he ran in 2001.
 
Gotta love the guy!
 
Martha Claussen has been involved in the racing industry since 1997 as a publicity director and writer for the Houston Chronicle, Texas Thoroughbred Magazine and SureBet Racing News.

By Ray Paulick
In the 10 months since Dan Silver was named director of communications and media relations for the New York Racing Association, NYRA.com has become an innovator and leader in racing’s digital world. Part of the association’s  marketing department since January 2008, Silver and NYRA marketing director Neema Ghaza have become the sport’s dynamic duo when it comes to internet marketing, entertainment and promotions. The innovations they and their associates have developed at NYRA.com and on YouTube are setting the standard for the rest of the industry. If you haven’t checked out NYRA.com lately, you should.

Silver graduated from the first class of master’s degree students at the University of Arizona’s Race Track Industry Program in December 2007 (he also holds a master’s in journalism from Medill at Northwestern University and a B.A. from Haverford College). He had previous horse industry experience working for the Jockey Club, Reynolds Bell Thoroughbred Services and Philadelphia Park.

The Paulick Report spoke with Silver about how NYRA.com has evolved during his relatively short tenure there:

NYRA has clearly made a decision to use its NYRA.com website, along with Youtube, to inform, educate, and entertain racing fans and horsemen. How did your strategy evolve?
It’s very important to mention right away that all of the initiatives we have introduced wouldn’t be possible without support from the top, in our case NYRA president & CEO Charles Hayward and NYRA COO Hal Handel. They let me and Neema Ghazi, NYRA’s director of marketing, have pretty much free reign in exploring new ways to use the internet to benefit our fans. With the knowledge that they’re behind what we’re doing, it makes it much easier to launch new initiatives.

In terms of the strategy and how it evolved, I think it’s just trying to use our resources to the best of our abilities in reaching out to current and prospective racing fans. The internet is not just the future of marketing, it is the present, and it affords many opportunities to market your product and educate fans at a very low cost, certainly costing less than conventional methods of advertising like television spots, radio spots, and newspaper ads.

On The Lead, our monthly email newsletter, was the jumping-off point for our internet outreach initiatives. We launched it in April 2008, and now, two years later we are up to almost 100,000 subscribers.

The first group of video series that we launched were the jockey and trainer profiles and the Trips & Traps handicapping show. For the jockey and trainer profiles, we have always thought fans would have interest in that. If you go to a Yankees game, between innings there is always something on the video board, maybe a profile of Derek Jeter, and fans love that stuff. It seemed like a no-brainer to do similar things with the stars of our sport and put them on Youtube and the NYRA site. Trips & Traps was a brainchild of Andy Serling, who I can’t say enough about. He wanted to give fans something they don’t ordinarily get, and the type of in-depth trip analysis provided on Trips & Traps is unmatched in my opinion.

From those first three series it just ballooned to what it is now, and it will continue to expand.

How much investment has been made in the effort from a budget and personnel standpoint?
The great thing about expanding your presence on the internet is that it is very low cost. It costs nothing to create a Facebook page, Twitter pages, a Flickr page, racing blogs, etc. For shows like Trips & Traps we are just using existing studio space at a time that it isn’t normally used, so there is minimal extra cost there.

We are extremely fortunate at NYRA to not only have the support of top management but also to have some incredibly talented and passionate employees that work on all of these various internet initiatives. A lot of people see all of the different things that we have developed and assume we have consultants that handle everything. That couldn’t be further from the truth. These initiatives are all created and maintained by NYRA personnel.

Are you developing products for different audiences? Some things seem to be designed for casual fans and others for regular horseplayers and horsemen?
Absolutely, we try to have something for every type of racegoing constituency out there. Trips & Traps and the Andy Serling Twitter page are items that even the most advanced of bettors should be able to benefit from. The jockey and trainer interviews are for fans that want to learn more about the stars of the sport. The Backstretch Buzz and NYRA Spotlight videos are great educational tools for fans to learn about what goes on behind the scenes to allow a Thoroughbred track to operate. The NYRA Facebook page, Twitter pages, and NY Racing Insider Blog allow fans to stay up to date with all of the latest NYRA news, and also are great vehicles to try and attract new fans. The New York Watch website allows fans to identify the up-and-coming stars of racing.

For horsemen, we recently launched an email service, with help from Equibase, that allows owners to receive email notifications when their horses are entered to race. To illustrate the point that our top management is not only on board, but also enthusiastic about using the internet to reach out to people, the idea behind this service came from NYRA chairman Steven Duncker.

One initiative that horsemen, bettors, and most fans of the sport have enjoyed is the photo finish archive on the website. We post all of our photo finishes, win, place, and show, on NYRA.com shortly after the conclusion of each race.

What’s proven to be the most useful or successful addition to the web site?
The Friday Night Live Web Chats have been extremely well received by fans. Our terrific web designer, Nick Aquilino, put together a great live chat webpage that’s as professional as you will find anywhere. Andy Serling often does these chats, and gets in-depth handicapping the weekend cards, but we also have had chat guests like NYRA COO Hal Handel, trainer Gary Contessa, and jockey Richard Migliore. All of the chats are available in an archived format on the chat page, and I think you’d be surprised at how candid many of the answers are from our guests. The toughest thing about the chats are that we usually have 300 questions asked and the guest can only get to 60 or so during the hour- or two-hour chat period. But I am a really big fan of these chats and would urge any racing fans to check them out. Friday nights at 8:00 p.m.

Has anything surprised you? Something you thought would be popular that hasn’t or something that has been better received than expected?
While not surprising, the Andy Serling Twitter page has been a tremendous success. We launched it at the start of Saratoga meet last year and he is up to almost 1,800 followers. The great thing about this is that once someone starts following you on Twitter, they are usually there for good. So someone may not even be thinking about betting one day, receive a Tweet that Andy just gave out a $20 winner, and all of a sudden that person is thinking about NYRA and betting one of our races based on Andy’s advice. It’s an absolute no brainer. I think Twitter is more useful for things like that than an informational news page.

A recent initiative that has immediately taken off is the free text alert service. We introduced this about a month ago, and nearly 1,000 people have already signed up. Whenever there is a Pick 6 carryover or a weather related cancellation, we send text messages out to those folks that have signed up. This is a great way to spread the word to interested parties about carryovers without bombarding them with information.

Is it fair to say there isn’t a great deal of overlap in the demographics of typical web users and those of veteran racing fans?
I’m not sure that is a completely fair thing to say. By and large, yes, some of the younger generation are more apt to be utilizing Facebook and Twitter, for example, than some folks that are in an older demographic. That being said, I have been approached by some people that have been wagering on and attending the races for quite some time that do follow and appreciate what we are doing online. So I would say that one of the advantages of web-based initiatives is that they allow us to more easily reach a younger and more tech savvy demographic, but at the same time that certainly doesn’t exclude an older demographic from taking advantage of our internet platforms.

Is this viewed as an investment in racing’s future or something that you are getting tangible benefits from now?
I view it as both. Hopefully the new fans that discover some of our internet and video initiatives will continue to follow racing for a long time. I also am pretty sure that we are getting tangible benefits from it now. For example, people who follow Andy Serling on Twitter, probably wagered more on the Saratoga meet than they would have otherwise. And I don’t consider tangible results only in terms of wagering. The Friday Night Live Chats, the NYRA Spotlight videos, and similar initiatives are providing information and education to those that want to learn more about racing. If someone watches our Spotlight video on stewards, decides they want to pursue a job in racing, and goes on to help the industry, it’s a win for racing.

How do you quantify or benchmark the results? Is it having an impact on handle?
I think it’s very difficult to try and quantify the effects these initiatives have on handle. There are so many factors that effect handle, like field size, weather, the overall economy, that it is very hard to try and identify the effect that one specific factor has on handle. For me, when I get emails from industry leaders asking to use our NYRA Spotlight videos as teaching tools, or from racing fans thrilled they have a chance to chat with Richard Migliore, it means that they are having a positive effect on people.

What’s the most important thing you’ve learned through this process?
I think whenever you launch something new, it is imperative to consider what segment of your fan base you are launching it for, and then proceed with how best to connect with that group. You have to be careful not to take the approach of throwing everything at the wall and hoping some of it sticks. We carefully consider each new initiative that we launch, and will continue to do that.

As a closing thought, I’d also like to commend you, Ray, for what you have done with the Paulick Report website. It’s a great resource for racing fans to catch up on all of the latest racing news and also get to read some excellent original articles and viewpoints.

Copyright © 2010, The Paulick Report

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By Ray Paulick
“I’ve been doing this since 1979, and I just can’t get a fair shake.” So says Michael Gill, North America’s leading owner by money and races won on four different occasions who finds himself in a familiar position–at the center of controversy, after Penn National jockeys voted Saturday night not to ride in races if Gill’s horses are entered.

The jockeys took the initiative following the fifth race at Penn National, when a Gill-trained horse, Laughing Moon, blew a suspensory and fell after the finish, causing another horse to go down. Gill had a runner entered in the sixth race, but that horse was scratched. Gill-owned horses entered later this week also have been scratched, and Penn National officials said Monday they temporarily have banned his horses from the entry box, according to bloodhorse.com. Jockeys complained that an unusually high number of horses owned by Gill have either broken down or suffered injuries in Penn National races in the last few months, putting riders at risk. One of Gill’s horses broke down on Thursday night, and Laughing Moon became the 15th runner since October to break down, pull up during the race, be eased, or return lame following the finish.

Penn National officials said seven of Gill’s horses broke down in 2009, a figure that Gill disputes. But even if that number is correct, he said, he believes his percentage of breakdowns is in line or lower than that of other stables that compete at the Pennsylvania track.

I was unable to reach Gill over the weekend prior to publication of Monday’s Paulick Report article on the Penn National incident, but I contacted him Monday at his Mortgage Specialists office in New Hampshire. Needless to say, he wasn’t happy with the actions of the jockeys or with the unwelcome publicity, and in a 30-minute, emotional interview touched on a wide range of subjects. Among the revelations from the 54-year-old Gill were:

- He has fired Darrel Delahoussaye, the trainer of Laughing Moon. “They (Penn National) put a gun to my head, and someone had to take the bullet,” he said. “I feel bad about this. But if I lose the (49) stalls at Penn National, I’m out of business.”

- Some time last year, Gill hired former Oaklawn Park and Louisiana Downs leading trainer Cole Norman. Norman was released from prison in January 2009 after serving time for negligent homicide, for his role in a fatal car crash in which he was under the influence of prescription pain killers. Norman works at Gill’s Elk Creek Ranch in Oxford, Pa., which is used as a training center for horses that race at Penn National, Philadelphia Park, Laurel, Mountaineer Park and Charles Town. “He’s a good trainer,” said Gill.

- Though he said he has lost tens of millions of dollars over the years, Gill claims he didn’t “put one penny of my money into the business last year. I can go to the IRS and say this is a business, it isn’t a hobby.” Gill said he is in a five-year audit with the Internal Revenue Service over whether or not his racing stable is a legitimate business.

- Apart from the horses that broke down at Penn National in 2009, Gill claims he had only one other horse break down in a race. “I ran 2,247 horses last year,” he said. “If a guy had 100 starts and one horse breaks down, is that unacceptable? We’re running in the middle of winter on muddy tracks.

- Gill denies “running sore horses,” and said he didn’t have a single bad test in 2009. “And was anything found in any of my horses after they broke down? Nothing.” I asked Gill about widespread rumors that shock-wave therapy is used at Elk Creek Ranch on horses close to a race. “I never use shock-wave therapy. Never have had a machine. Never, ever used it once, and believe me, plenty of guys have tried to sell me the machines. I don’t believe in them.” He also said he would “open the farm to anyone to inspect it. They can go over every horse I have.”

- He attributes much of the stable’s success to the fact he gives all of his horses medication for Equine Protozoal Myeloencephalitis, or EPM, a neurological disease. “A good 80% of horses have EPM,” he said. He also has throat surgeries, or myectomies, performed on many of the horses he claims because “with EPM, one side of the flap (in the epiglottis) is gone, and the other half doubles in size. Then it closes up. The surgery helps them breathe.”

- His stable, at one time consisting of 450 horses in 2009, was reduced to 220 and he is in the process of reducing it to 120. “I’m still downsizing,” he said. Furthermore, Gill claims that “all of the horses go to retirement programs.” He wasn’t specific as to where they go. “I give good homes to them,” he said. “I’ve given away 20 horses in the last 30 days for $1.”

- Gill didn’t say he planned to take legal action against Penn National, the jockey colony or the Jockeys’ Guild, but said “Do you know when people organize against one person, that’s a significant lawsuit. Does anybody understand that? I’m tired of suing racetracks—and winning, by the way, every effing time.” He said the jockeys took the action–reported to be a unanimous vote—because “it’s a very closed community at Penn National; a lot of good old boys. I went in there and won all these races, and I’m winning with only two jockeys.”

- Though he lives and works far away in New Hampshire, Gill said he keeps tabs on the stable both at the training farm and the track. “There’s not a race that goes off that I don’t see,” he said. “I have cameras in the barn that go right to my office. I turn around and see every race. I do what I can to be able to run both businesses.”

Why, I asked Gill, is he still in the business, if he thinks he is so mistreated and so misunderstood? “I love the competition. I love the animal. I am a competitor. I am that $5,000 broke down racehorse. I’m a raw competitor with bad knees and sore neck. What better place to compete than in horse racing, and I don’t even gamble on these horses.”

Gill continues to be denied stalls at many tracks, and doesn’t understand why he isn’t appreciated for his involvement in the game and for “showing the industry that you can make money doing this. Of course, if people find out they don’t have to buy a $1-million yearling to make money, do you think they’ll spend money at those sales?”

I suggested to him that people spending that kind of money are looking to win big races during the Triple Crown or at the Breeders’ Cup, not $5,000 claiming races in the dead of winter. “That’s the lottery mentality,” he said.

He turned the tables and asked me a question: “Why don’t you like me?” I said I thought he was arrogant and used his horses as a means to an end.  “You’re mistaking arrogance with competitiveness,” he said. It was clearly an argument I wasn’t going to win.

“Look,” he said. “I came from a seminary, had no money, didn’t go to college. I worked harder than everybody else to get what I have. I started my mortgage company in a one-bedroom apartment, and my living room was my office. I loved horse racing and turned around and invested my money. I go to work every day and haven’t had a vacation for as long as I remember.

“I just don’t understand: What have I done that’s so wrong?”

Copyright © 2010, The Paulick Report

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By Ray Paulick
In an unprecedented move, the Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association’s American Graded Stakes Committee has taken “graded” status away from three races in Pennsylvania that had already been run in 2009 because the Pennsylvania State Horse Racing Commission failed to follow drug testing protocol required by the TOBA committee. The races in question are the former Grade 2 Pennsylvania Derby and Fitz Dixon Cotillion Stakes at Philadelphia Park and the former Grade 3 Masters Stakes at Presque Isle Downs.

To repeat, these races were advertised and run as American Graded Stakes, and the various trade publications and Thoroughbred industry data bases reported them as being graded after they were run. It was not until the American Graded Stakes Committee met recently that the races were stripped of their graded status.

At first blush, the decision doesn’t seem fair, especially to the owners and breeders of the horses who either won or placed in those stakes. Why should they be punished for something (drug testing protocol) that was completely out of their control?

But, frankly, I like the fact TOBA is flexing whatever muscle it has to strengthen the integrity of the game, to tighten drug and safety rules and create some level of national standards for the best and most important races run in the United States. The committee members should be congratulated for setting these standards (click here to read the American Graded Stakes Committee’s protocol), and, for the first time, showing their commitment to integrity by enforcing them.

Andy Schweigardt, who administers the AGS program for TOBA, said committee members were “disappointed” they had to take such a dramatic step, one that could have had significant economic implications on the horses losing the important status that comes with an American Graded Stakes victory. In this instance, all three winners either previously or subsequently won a graded race of the same or equal standing, so it did not impact them. According to an article at bloodhorse.com, however, three of the horses that placed in the Pennsylvania races lost their standing as “graded stakes placed” or slipped from grade 2-placed to grade 3-placed. So there are some potential economic damages.

Schweigardt said the committee engaged legal counsel prior to the decision to revoke the race grades. In other words, TOBA feels safe in the event of litigation by anyone who might feel they were harmed by the decision. I’m not sure the Pennsylvania State Horse Racing Commission should have the same comfort level.

What the Pennsylvania State Horse Racing Commission failed to do is conduct testing for alkalizing agents, commonly known as milkshakes, something that is part of the American Graded Stakes drug-testing protocol.

All racing commissions in states that offer American Graded Stakes are notified of the protocol in advance by Schweigardt, who then follows up in the autumn of the year the races are run by requesting a letter from each racing commission stating their compliance with the protocol. “We hadn’t received (the letter of compliance) from Pennsylvania as of the mid-November deadline,” said Schweigardt. “We got ahold of someone just before Thanksgiving, and he said at the time he couldn’t send the letter because they hadn’t done the testing for alkalizing agents.”

“One of the reasons given was budget constraints,” Schweigardt added, “but the others were philosophical in that they disagreed with us, saying their scientific counsel told them the use of alkalizing agents in Thoroughbreds doesn’t have any affect on performance, therefore it would be a waste of money.” Schweigardt said Dr. Lawrence Soma was the source of the scientific advice to the Pennsylvania State Horse Racing Commission. Pennsylvania does test for “milkshakes” in Standardbreds.

Pennsylvania State Horse Racing Commission chair Dr. Corinne Sweeney did not return a phone call from the Paulick Report to discuss the issue and Joe Mushalka, director operations for the commission, said he could not talk about it though said a press release would be released in the next few days.

“TOBA’s decision (to require testing for alkalizing agents) was based on the fact it was important, as seen in California and other states,  and by a desire of the Racing Medication and Testing Consortium to put together a model rule on how to go about properly testing and regulating this practice,” Schweigardt said. “And, quite frankly, there was concern from racing fans that this was in their perception a significant performance enhancer in horses.”

The position taken by the Pennsylvania Horse Racing Commission is ignorant and arrogant and demonstrates some of the ongoing challenges in the scientific community on which the horse industry depends on drug testing and medication issues. Some people and institutions simply think they are smarter or more informed than others, even when their positions fly in the face of industry consensus. The Pennsylvania State Horse Racing Commission comes out looking like fools in this case and owes an apology to the owners and breeders of the horses that competed in the three races that had their graded stakes status revoked, and to the fans whose confidence in this sport is wavering because of medication and drug testing issues.

This was industry regulation at its worst.

* The American Graded Stakes Standings only includes races in the United States. Additionally, sales stats are only included for horses that were sold.

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NO ONE PREDICTED KEENELAND’S SEPTEMBER YEARLING SALE WOULD BE UP, so it’s not that surprising to see a 13% drop in the gross receipts through the first six sessions of the 15-day marathon. That 13% equates to a $41-million decline in revenue that will not go into the pockets of breeders this year, and that red number only figures to increase as the sale reaches the second half.  The drop in revenue will ripple throughout all kinds of Thoroughbred-related businesses.

Gill, who was recently in the news because of some regulatory problems at his mortgage company, said he was getting out of the horse industry in 2006 when he accepted his Eclipse Award as outstanding owner. Many people had two words for him: good riddance.

THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER WON’T BE COVERING GILL’S EXPLOITS since it accepted the early retirement of Turf writer Craig Donnelly only a month after the paper, the nation’s eighth largest, dramatically reduced the space allotted racing in its sports section. At that time, Inquirer editors told the Paulick Report it was keeping Donnelly but obviously they had a change of heart.

Newspapers may be an endangered species in the near future. Turf writers at daily newspapers already are.

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By Ray Paulick