Alan Balch - Fiefdoms redux?

I’m reminded of racing’s counterproductive fiefdoms by a 2008 writing in these pages of the late Arnold Kirkpatrick, my much-revered colleague and friend.  Back then, it seemed to him, there were way too many fiefs in the way of industry-wide accomplishments.  

To Arthur Hancock’s suggestion that our problems were caused by a lack of leadership, Arnold was “unalterably convinced that our problem is not a lack of leadership but too much leadership.”  He counted 183 separate organizations in Thoroughbred racing alone, each with their own agendas and jealousies.  “With 183 rudders all pointed in different directions, we have two possible outcomes – at best, we’ll be dead in the water; at worst, we’ll be breaking apart on the rocks.” 

In 2024, can it be said, without irony, that this is the best of times, and the worst of times?

In North America, and California in particular, an historic sport and industry contraction is well underway, by every possible indicator – led by the declining foal crop.  One might think there has been a corresponding contraction in the list of racing’s organizations; somehow, I doubt that’s true.  Nevertheless, in the “Golden State,” once a perennial leader of American racing, we have lost a critical mass of tracks since 2008:  Bay Meadows, Hollywood Park, fair racing at Vallejo, San Mateo, Stockton, and Pomona, and Golden Gate Fields this year. 

Is it simply a coincidence that this all happened while one racing operator – the Stronach Group --  increasingly dominated and controlled the sport in California, as no track owner ever before was permitted to do?

Arnold’s word “fiefdom” . . . comes back to mind, but now from a different perspective.  In European feudal times, as we learned in school, the fief was a landed estate given by a lord to a vassal in return for the vassal's service to the lord.  There are a great many California owners, trainers, breeders, jockeys, vendors, fans, and even regulators, who have been wondering how the vassals ever turned the tables.

In a Los Angeles Times interview published on April 5, Aidan Butler, the chief executive officer of 1/ST Racing and Gaming, the Stronach operator, used the term “imbeciles” to describe those who would question the company’s intentions, and perhaps its motives, in sending what was widely perceived as a blatantly threatening letter to the California Horse Racing Board.  

Instead, he termed the letter “transparent.”  And then stated, “if nothing else, people have been forewarned.”  Seconds before, he had claimed that the amount of money Stronach had invested in Santa Anita proved its good intentions.  This is the same executive who months earlier had suddenly announced, giving stakeholders notice of only hours, that Golden Gate Fields would be closed within weeks, before changing his mind under pressure from the rest of the industry.

Confused?

Stronach’s track management may be described many ways; truthfully “transparent” is certainly not one of them, despite constant assertions to the contrary.  As a private family company, even in a regulated industry, its leaders can claim whatever they want with impunity.  After all, the exceptionally valuable real estate on which most (all?) of their track holdings reside appears to make them immune from audit or inspection:  they rarely, if ever, are reluctant to tell their racing fraternity vassals that it’s their way or no way.  The damage resulting from that attitude is staggering.

Edward J. DeBartolo, Sr., was a predecessor billionaire owner of multiple American tracks.  Perhaps, however, because of his ownership of great and successful team sports franchises, among other interests such as construction, retail, and shopping center development, not to mention education and philanthropy, he knew what he didn’t know.  He realized he always needed teammates.  He delighted in saying to his fellow track owners that managing race tracks was by far the most difficult of all his enterprises, due to the elaborate interdependent structure of racing, and its nearly infinite number of critical component interests, each with different expertise.  More complicated than any of his other pursuits, he said!  To succeed in racing challenged him to learn, and his success resided in hiring, consulting with, and relying on people who knew more than he did.  As it did in all his businesses. 

Even to the most oblivious, it can’t have been hidden to the Stronach leadership that entering the heavily-regulated California racing market in the late 1990s would present serious challenges, at least as enormous as the opportunities.  Acquiring the two glorious racing properties of Santa Anita and Golden Gate (with a relatively short leasehold at a third, Bay Meadows) had to have been exciting.  To someone with the DeBartolo outlook on interdependent management, rather than the inverse, it could have been invigorating and boundlessly successful. 

That the opposite has resulted is an enormous tragedy for the sport worldwide, not just in California.  After all, the State of California’s economy (as measured by its own Gross State Product) is among the top five in the world, outranking even the United Kingdom’s.  How could this happen?

Had Stronach leadership begun, at the outset, consulting and cooperating in good faith with its California partners (including regulators, legislators, and local communities, not to mention fellow racing organizations, the owners, trainers, breeders, and other tracks), learning from them as teammates rather than dictating to them, California racing would look far different now than it does.  Its imperious and constantly changing management leadership compounded perennial problems and threats, not to mention complicating the industry’s politics and standing in California sports.  Obvious failures to understand California markets and invest in sophisticated communications and marketing also have been apparent, despite continual assertions to the contrary.    

Is there still hope for California racing?  Yes . . . but if and only if honest humility suddenly appears from Stronach leaders, and immediate, sincere engagement occurs with all the rest of the interdependent entities upon whose lives and success the racing industry depends. 

Alan Balch - What, me worry?

Article by Alan F. Balch

If you’re of a certain age, you can’t help but remember Alfred E. Neuman, the perennial cover creature of MAD magazine.  I sure do, and not mainly because of the magazine’s content . . . I was a dead ringer for him.  Skinny, gap-toothed, freckle-faced, red-haired, with crazy big ears.  So my laughing “friends” said, anyway.

Kids can be so mean to each other.

Obviously, the teasing stuck with me.  For a lifetime.  But back then, I shared another trait with him:  nothing worried me.  Everything seemed like a joke.  Like everyone else, I just yearned to grow up so I could be free.  Free of school, free to live all day, every day, with horses in a stable, if I wanted.  Which I did.

By college, though, I was an inveterate worrier, and still am.  My best friend once said, “Alan, if you didn’t have anything to worry about, you’d be worried about that!”  

We in racing, and in California particularly, have an overabundance of worries these days.  How the hell did it all happen?  From leading the world in attendance and handle a few short decades back, not to mention great weather, we have (not suddenly) come to . . . this.

In an interdependent sport, business, industry, such as ours, everything one part does affects all the others.  No part can succeed without the others; if one fails, all fail.  Unfortunately, there have been many failures to observe amongst all of us.

Ironically – but not entirely unexpectedly – I believe California racing’s historical prowess started to unravel in the best of times:  the early 1980s.  Our California Horse Racing Board regulators no doubt believed the industry was so strong that it could easily withstand disobeying a statutory command, which “disobedience” some of us believed could lead to disaster. 

 Hollywood Park sought to purchase and operate Los Alamitos, despite a clear prohibition in the law forbidding one such entity to own another in the state, “unless the Board finds the purpose of [the law] will be better served thereby.”  Santa Anita’s management at the time objected strenuously, including in unsuccessful litigation, providing a “list of horrors” that might ensue if the delicate balance among track ownerships in the state were disturbed.  

Among those horrors was the prediction that a precedent was being set for the future, where one enterprise might not only become significantly more influential than others, it could even become more authoritative and powerful than the regulator itself.

We at Santa Anita, whose management I was in at the time, were deeply concerned about our own influence and competitive position . . . and our reservations and predictions were largely ignored, undoubtedly for that very reason.  At everyone else’s peril, as it has ultimately turned out.

That Hollywood Park acquisition move turned out to be ruinous.  For Hollywood Park!  And the cascade of repercussions that followed, including changes of control at that track, led to another fateful regulatory change in the early 1990s:  the splitting of the backstretch community’s representation into separate and sometimes rival organizations of owners and trainers, which in every other state in the Union are joined as one.  Before his death, the author of that idea (Hollywood’s R.D. Hubbard) said, “That was the worst mistake I ever made.”

Consider that in the first half-century of California racing, interests of the various track owners, as well as owners and trainers in one organization, were carefully balanced.  No one track interest ruled, because the numbers of racing weeks were carefully allotted in the law by region.  

Unilateral demands of horsemen went nowhere.  Practically speaking, the Racing Law couldn’t be changed in any important way without all the track ownerships agreeing, with the (single) horsemen’s organization.  In turn, that meant there were regular meetings of all the tracks together, often with the horsemen, or at their request, to address the multitude of compelling issues that constantly arose.  

But when that balance was disrupted, even destroyed, is it any surprise that for the last three decades the full industry-wide discussions that were commonplace through the 1980s are now so rare that track operators can’t remember when the last meaningful one even took place?  

Thoroughbred owners have meetings of their Board not even open to their own members, and never with the trainers’ organization.  The Federation of California Racing Associations (the tracks) apparently still exists, but hasn’t even met since 2015.  The Racing Board meets publicly, airing our laundry worldwide on the Internet, showcasing our common dysfunction and lack of internal coherence to anyone who might be tempted to race on the West Coast.  

Not to mention those extremists who cry out constantly to “Kill Racing.”  And one private company, which also owns the totalizator and has vast ADW and other gaming holdings, not to mention all the racing in Maryland and much of it in Florida, answerable to nobody, controls most of the Thoroughbred racing weeks in both northern and southern California.

Our current regulators didn’t make the long-ago decisions that set all this in motion, and may not even be aware of them.  In addition, the original, elaborate regulatory and legal framework that was intended in 1932 to provide fairness and balance in a growing industry is unlikely to be effective in the opposite environment.  And the State Legislature?  All the stakeholders originally and for decades after believed nothing was more important than keeping the government persuasively informed, in detail, of the economic and agricultural importance of racing to the State.  Tragically, that hasn’t been a priority for anyone in recent history.

Just to top it off:  as an old marketer of racing and tracks myself, I believe in strong, expensive advertising and promotion as vital investments.  For the present and future.  I once proved they succeed when properly funded and managed; but I’m a voice in the wilderness now, to be certain, when betting on the races doesn’t even seem to be on the public’s menu.

What?  Me worry?!

Track Superintendents - the three generations of the Moore family and how they have track management has changed over the last fifty years

Article by Ed Golden

            Dennis Moore’s career as the world’s foremost race track superintendent drew its first breath back in the 1930s, when his father, Bob, began a move akin to the Joad family’s forced escape to California from Oklahoma’s Dust Bowl, captured so poignantly in John Steinback’s 1939 classic, “The Grapes of Wrath.”

            Bob Moore, who passed away in 1987, was the patriarch of a family devoted to track maintenance and the safety of horses. In 1946, he went to work at Hollywood Park where he was a long-time track superintendent at the Inglewood, California track which closed on Dec. 22, 2013. Bob’s sons, Ron and Dennis, followed in his footsteps.

            They have been track superintendents at Santa Anita, and now his grandson, Rob, Dennis’ son, is taking over at the historic Arcadia, California track. In addition, they lend their services to Los Alamitos in Cypress, while Dennis also consults and plies his trade at tracks throughout the United States and across the globe.

            “I’ve done work overseas at probably over 150 different race tracks,” said Dennis, a native Californian who celebrated his 74th birthday this past Dec. 7. “I don’t count the tracks anymore. I didn’t want to leave California as a kid and now I’ve been to Germany, France, Dubai, all over the world. This is a great job, but you’ve got to have thick skin.

            “You listen to the trainers, but not those who make it personal and yell and scream and cuss. I won’t tolerate that, although sometimes their complaints are legitimate and you investigate, so all the scientific testing we do right now is a big help.

Bob Moore

“My dad came out here in ’38. He hopped a freight train and lived in hobo camps. He’d talk about the Dust Bowl and how they’d soak cloths in water and put them over their face so they could sleep at night.

            “His father told him he could go to California as long as he’d come back and finish high school. He did that, but as soon as he finished high school he returned to California and never left.

            “He got into construction as a mechanic in ’38, left Santa Anita in 1948, opened a garage in LA, then shut that down, went back to work at the track in 1953 and was there until he retired in 1979.

            “I was born in 1949; my brother was born in ’46. We’d go back and forth from Hollywood Park to Santa Anita. That was the circuit at that time, because Del Mar’s work was all done by Teamsters which had its separate crew.

            “That’s how my brother and I got involved with the race tracks. When I was about six years old, in the summer, we’d go to work with my dad sometimes. We’d ride on the harrows after the races and hang out in the garage, stuff like that. They’d race Tuesday through Saturday.

            “Ron worked for a while at Hollywood Park before taking over as track superintendent at Santa Anita in 1978. In 1972, I started working at Los Alamitos before working the Oak Tree meet at Santa Anita. In ’77, I became the track superintendent at Los Alamitos.”

            Ron, 77 and retired, says his history at the race track began by gambling, starting with Swaps and (Bill) Shoemaker in the 50s.

“When I was 14, I got a job as a footman on the carriages that took the judges around the track, way before there was closed-circuit TV and everything,” Ron recalled.

Ron Moore

            “We didn’t race Sundays then, only Saturdays and holidays, allowing me to work while still going to school, and the money I made went to betting. I didn’t do much good at it, but my interest started earlier, going to work with my dad and hanging out on the backside at Hollywood Park.

            “That’s where all the stable employees would go to gamble. During the races, I always wanted to get close to the rail and wait for Shoemaker to ride by so I could wave at him.

            “My first bet was made there, and I think I won $11. I did eventually work on race track surfaces at Santa Anita from 1969 to ’87. I worked as a construction laborer at Hollywood on the track crew and a little while at Los Al before I went into the Army. Later I operated racing equipment on the track.

“But give credit where credit’s due; my brother (Dennis) has been at the forefront in making racing safer. He’s never been afraid to try something new, and most times it’s not just an improvement, but a huge improvement.

“His decisions aren’t made lightly, only after much deliberation, investigation and discussion with experts on soil conservation. That’s the whole game, safety of the jockeys and the horses.

“Not because he’s my brother, but over the long haul in this country, I would say he’s done more for safety than anybody.”

Dennis & Rob Moore

            Dennis has extensive experience with a multitude of surfaces--dirt, turf, and synthetics as well as related maintenance equipment, perhaps more than any living being. Dennis and Rob currently are directing a gargantuan project, installing a Tapeta training track at Santa Anita.

            Track supers are burdened with a 24/7 task, shuteye a valued commodity attained at infrequent and welcome intervals. They are at the mercy of hourly weather forecasts, ringing cell phones and texts, with safety of horse and rider ever paramount.

            It’s a balancing act reminiscent of the Wallendas, only this on terra firma, an indigenous tradition with the Moores who wouldn’t have it any other way. To use a football analogy, sometimes it seems like it’s always third and long.

            “It’s not a nine to five job,” Dennis readily admits. “I get to the track every morning at 5:30 and don’t leave until about 6:30 (p.m.) or later. When the track is sealed, we come in about midnight, if we can open the track. There’s a lot more to it as far as maintaining, grading, the material composition and everything that goes with it.

            “I have horsemen call me 4:30, 5 o’clock, 6:30 in the morning, especially when we’ve got rain, when the track is sealed or even if they want a local (weather) forecast,” Dennis said. “That’s just part of the job.

            “We have a professional weather service that we use, but I have several other sites that I go on to try and make sense out of the forecast. The problem we have now is, everybody’s got a cell phone and they look at that and think it’s the accurate weather.

            “But the guys we use (Universal Weather) have been professional meteorologists for 40 years and are probably right about 85 percent of the time. I’ve been using it since 1977 and my brother and dad used it before. Universal gets timely updated forecasts whereas your phone may not be updated for 12 hours.

            “You consider all that information and decide if you’re going to open the track, leave it closed or what have you, and sometimes you’re the pigeon and sometimes you’re the pole, because when you’re wrong, you’re wrong, not the meteorologist.

            “You learn to deal with that, because all trainers consider themselves trackmen, but trackmen aren’t trainers. Every horse isn’t going to like your track. People talk about how safe synthetic tracks are, but, since 2020, I’ll put our (safety) numbers at Santa Anita and Del Mar against any synthetic tracks in the United States.

“I think Santa Anita and Del Mar are two of the best tracks in the country of the 50-some that have been tested.

            “I believe we can make dirt tracks just as safe as synthetics, but there’s a lot of work involved. All the protocols the Stronach Group started in 2019 and are in place now have helped a lot, as well.

            “But it doesn’t matter if a horse gets loose in the barn area and runs into a post and kills itself. It becomes national news. Some of these horses haven’t run in a year or missed 10 months of works, so you know they’ve got issues and we review them very carefully, but you’re not going to catch every one of them; things happen.

            “Most dirt tracks are comprised of sandy loam with silt clay particles,” Dennis added. “Synthetics can vary but Tapeta is the one right now that has been the most successful and that’s what is being put in the training track at Santa Anita. Along with the protocols, we have new rules and regulations we’ll follow, including a weather policy that dictates what we’ll do when we seal the track. It’s changed quite a bit from what it was in the old days.

            “We’ll be able to train on Tapeta in rain, snow, sleet or whatever.”

            At press time, Rob, who turned 54 the day after Christmas, was working hand in hand with Dennis in an effort to have Santa Anita’s Tapeta training track operational in January.

            “So far, so good,” Rob said. “We were under time constraints trying to complete it by the first week of January. Knock on wood, everything has been going well.”

            Following in the footsteps of family members was a natural transition for Rob.

            “That’s all guys in my family did and talked about,” Rob said. “For me, as a little kid going to the track with all that big equipment was like playing with soccer toys. Plus meeting all the race track characters and people from different walks of life made an indelible impression. It was attractive, in that sense.

            “But this job is kind of like a doctor’s in that you’re on call 24/7. I don’t think I’ve turned my (cell) phone off since I got the job. Sometimes meteorologists will forecast good weather, but then something unexpected happens like rain and wind. It seems there’s always something going on.

            “The fortunate thing for me is, I grew up around it and I thought I would be prepared for everything that would come along. But I wasn’t prepared at all, because there are so many minute details to consider in addition to the track and the horses.

            “When the pandemic hit, people were all talking about the horses, the horses, the horses, not about those who were on their backs. It was somebody’s father, somebody’s son, brother or sister, and that’s my biggest concern.

            “At every meet, I tell our crew we don’t want to be the reason something (negative) happens. I’m real fortunate with the crew I have because the majority of them grew up in the business, they’re third-generation like I am, they have a passion for the game and they care about it.

            “They pay attention to details, and that makes your job a lot easier when you have a reliable, dedicated crew. You’re only as good as your crew, plus my dad is a consultant, and he pops in every now and then pointing out potential problems.

“You’re not only responsible for the track itself, but everything that goes on around it. This is not a job you have just to make a paycheck

            “If you’re a trackman and you think you know it all, then you’re screwed and you’re screwing everybody around you. My dad’s been doing this 52 years and he’s still learning. I think that’s what separates him from everybody else. He’s always trying to make things better.

            “He’s a perfectionist, and it rubs off on you when you’re around it your whole life.”

Track consultant Dennis Moore alongside CHRB & track officials readying the Orono Biomechanical Surface Tester

            John Sadler is among the vast majority of trainers who concurs.

            “Dennis Moore is the gold standard for Track Superintendents,” said Sadler, 67, a Hall of Fame member-in-waiting.

 “I can’t heap enough praise on him. He’s the kind of guy you can call to discuss any issue. You can see that reflecting in our numbers favorably shifting dramatically on improved horse safety, and Dennis is a big reason for it, not to mention he’s been doing it for a hundred years.

            “The good thing about Dennis is, he can’t be pushed. He’s an experienced guy who believes in what he’s doing, and you have to allow him to do his job.”

            There are many special memories of Moore’s unselfish contributions to Sadler’s successes, one of which is foremost in his mind.

            “It was a week before Santa Anita’s big winter meet began in 2010 and Hollywood Park still had a synthetic track at the time, and it had rained for days and days,” Sadler recalled. “I asked Dennis how Santa Anita was doing because it was closed for training due to the rain, although horses could jog the wrong way.

            “I had horses pointing to the Malibu, the La Brea and the Mathis Mile, and Dennis said he might be able to open. So I vanned my horses over there and got to work on them, and we won all three stakes on the opening day card. Sidney’s Candy won the Mathis, Twirling Candy won the Malibu and Switch won the La Brea.

            “Dennis, communicated well and I got my works in. He wasn’t doing me a special favor, just telling me what was going on . . . a great guy.”

            Another tried and true member of the Dennis Moore fan club is Richard Mandella, who offered the following unsolicited praise.

“Track maintenance has everything to do with safety, and the Moore family is as good as it gets,” said Mandella.            

Dennis Moore – the gold standard for Track Superintendents

“It’s not an exact science, and everybody has to understand that,” Mandella added. “It’s something you have to have a feel for, and the Moores have always been excellent. Variables in track surfaces can work both ways for everybody, and even on a normal race track, that comes into play.

            “Some horses like deep tracks, some like them hard and fast. I don’t know if that’s important as far as safety is concerned, but the most important thing is uniformity and having a nice, even bottom with some bounce in the track so that horses are stable with it. It’s a combination that requires flexibility.”  

            While Dennis is primarily focused on safety and fulfilling random requests for trainers, it’s unreasonable to expect him to comply with all of them.

            “I’m sure he tries,” Mandella said, “but in my experience being on the California Thoroughbred Trainers (CTT) track committee for so many years is that if you have 10 trainers talking about track conditions, the ones who are winning like it, and the ones who aren’t, don’t.

            “It’s not easy to maintain a neutral position, but if anybody does it, Dennis Moore does.”

Hunter Valley Farm

Article by Bill Heller

A Mo Reay

Six days before St. Patrick’s Day, the four Irish partners of Hunter Valley Farm near Keeneland found their elusive pot of gold, not at the end of the rainbow, but in the final 10 yards of the Gr.1 Beholder Stakes. That’s where their filly A Mo Reay thrust her nose past odds-on favorite Fun to Dream, giving the Irish quartet their first Gr.1 stakes victory at Santa Anita; half a world away from the Irish National Stud in Kildare, where two of the four, Adrian Regan and Fergus Galvin, met in 1991.

Hunter Valley Farm’s John Wade, A Mo Reay & jockey Flavien Prat.

“It was a surreal day,” Regan said. “When we set up the farm, the thought of having a Gr.1 was never even thought about. We were hoping to make the farm viable. We’ve been very lucky. Without my partners, it never would have happened for sure.”  

Asked if he could ever have imagined such a feat when he was a younger lad in Ireland, Adrian’s buddy Galvin said, “It was nowhere near the front of my mind.”

Certainly, their two somewhat silent partners, Tony Hegarty and John Wade, had no idea. Those two friends met in a tavern in Chicago, then became business partners, founding A & J Construction, a successful construction company in Lockport, Illinois, 30 miles southwest of Chicago. Hegarty and Wade started out as carpenter contractors and eventually switched to land developers and custom home builders. “We’re doing okay,” Wade said.

Okay enough to speculate in Thoroughbreds. “It turned out to be an amazing adventure,” Hegarty said. “We’re more or less silent partners. Fergus and Adrian pick the horses.”

They do so adeptly. “Those guys—they come up with some good ones,” Wade said.

Both Galvin and Regan credit their fathers for their equine education.

“It was part of my childhood,” Galvin said. “My father ran a small stud farm in Dublin. I have him to thank for my early grounding and the early education. He had a couple of horses in training. From the age of eight, I was by his side most of the way. I have him to thank for where I am now. He’s doing great—keeps a close eye on the U.S. My dad is 84.”

Galvin said both his parents visit the United States. “They came over last spring to Keeneland,” he said. “They really love Kentucky. There’s no place like Kentucky in the spring. Kentucky is almost my home away from home. In Ireland, everyone has some involvement. There’s a large part of our population who has connections in the horse business. They have a deep love of horses.”

They frequently pass that love on to the next generation, a tradition Galvin and his wife, Kate, who works at Godolphin, will likely instill in their four young children, Marie, 10, Harvey, 8, and twin boys Joseph and Nicholas, 6.

Adrian Regan & Flavien Prat

Galvin’s experience at Irish National Stud helped shape his future. The Stud, founded in 1918, annually offers a six-month residential course which begins every January. Its goal is “to equip learners with the knowledge, skills and competence required to perform effectively in responsible positions in the Thoroughbred industry.”

It’s where Regan and Galvin became life-long friends. Regan, too, credits his father: “I wanted to be a trainer like my father T.A. was. When I left school, I went working for him.”

Both Galvin and Regan honed their skills before deciding to buy a farm. “I’ve been lucky enough to have some great employers before we started out,” Galvin said. “First I was at Pin Oak Stud for five years. Then I ran a small operation, Newgate Farm, and did a six-year stint at Ashford. It was very invaluable to me going forward. That really sent me on the path we are on today.”

Regan spent four years at Langford Farm breaking yearlings. “I loved my time there,” he said. “It gave me a great foundation.”

Providence brought Hegarty and Wade together. “Myself and Tony became friends when we got to this country in March 1981,” Wade said. “I had just come over here in the middle of March. He came around the same time. We hung out together. We were buddies. We started our own construction business.” 

Like Galvin and Regan, Wade had a love of horses growing up in Ireland. “I loved them,” he said. “I didn’t have the funds to buy any.”

Then Wade went to Kentucky. He watched Unbridled win the 1990 Kentucky Derby—as his trainer Carl Nafzger called the stretch drive for owner Mrs. Genter—and was hooked. “That’s what probably did it,” Wade said. “I had another Irish friend who would go to Keeneland: Pat Costello. He advised me to take a run out to Lexington to see the farms. I met a bunch of my countrymen. Every now and then, some of them did syndicates. I said, “If you do it again, count me in.” Then I talked my partner, Tony, into getting involved.”

Hegarty didn’t have an early equine education in Ireland. “I’m from northwest Ireland,” he said. “Horse racing is in the other parts of Ireland. Up my way, there was no horse racing. There are no tracks.”

Yet, he was all-in joining his friends to buy and breed Thoroughbreds. Together, the four Irishmen purchased Golden Gate Stud in Versailles in 2004 and renamed it Hunter Valley Farm. In its first year of operation, its first yearling that went to auction was Scat Daddy. All he did was post five wins, including the Gr.1 Florida Derby, in nine starts, earn more than $1.3 million and become the sire of 69 stakes winners, including undefeated Triple Crown Champion Justify before dying at the age of 11. Hunter Valley Farm had sold him as a yearling for $250,000. “Unbelievable to have that quality of horse in our very first year,” Wade said.

In November 2022, the Irishmen bought three-year-old A Mo Ray for $400,000 in the Fasig-Tipton Sale. Trained by Brad Cox, she won a $97,000 stakes at the FairGrounds and the Gr.3 Bayakoa Stakes at Oaklawn Park.

A Mo Reay and jockey Flavien Prat (#5) dug in to edge out Fun to Dream to win the Gr.1 2023 Beholder Mile at Santa Anita Park.

Cox shipped her to Santa Anita to contest the Gr.1 Beholder Stakes March 11. The filly she had to beat was Bob Baffert’s Fun to Dream, who had won four straight and six of her seven lifetime starts. She went off at odds-on, A Mo Reay was the 7-1 third choice in the field of eight.

“It was funny going back to Santa Anita,” Regan said. “I did a short stint with Bob Baffert years ago.”

In deep stretch, Baffert’s favorite was desperately trying to hold off the rallying A Mo Reay and jockey Flavien Prat. They crossed the finish line in tandem. 

Hegarty and his wife, Sheila, were watching the race from their home. “We were screaming our heads off,” he said. “You’re screaming at the TV, egging her on, egging her on. I thought she got up.”

She did. 

Wade was asked if it occurred to him that the race was six days before St. Patrick’s Day. “It did not,” he said. “But we celebrated like it was St. Patrick’s Day.”

Alfredo Marquez: Raised at the Racetrack

Lions and Tigers and Bears, OH MY!

Being “raised at the racetrack” takes on the true meaning of the phrase when one is referring to trainer Alfredo Marquez. The California conditioner, now 75, was introduced to the backside of a racecourse when he was just a month old. 

Article by Annie Lambert

The old Agua Caliente Racetrack in Tijuana, Mexico, has tethered Alfredo Marquez to Thoroughbred racing and his roots in Mexico for a lifetime. He spends off days from his California training barns at his home in Tijuana, a gated community literally built in an area where Caliente’s old barns once stood.

“That’s where I still live,” Marquez affirmed. “I still live basically in the barn area. We have a gated community where they tore out like six barns; there is a fence between the other barns and our homes. Most of the old barns are still there. They got bears, lions, tigers, elephants and a few Andalusian horses…all the barns are occupied by different kinds of animals.”

The “old” Caliente hosted Thoroughbred horse racing between late 1929 until the early 1990s, a golden era for the racecourse. Greyhound racing seven nights a week now satisfies the live racing obligation needed to continue their simulcast signal.

But, how did wild animals come to replace racehorses in the old stable area?

Jorge Hank Rhon was raised in Mexico by his wealthy, powerful German immigrant parents. Before taking over the Agua Caliente track in 1984, he moved to Tijuana from Mexico City where he had been an exotic animal trader. Rhon owned nine pet shops, six veterinary clinics and a dolphin show.

Before moving, he sold his businesses—many of which were paid for in part with exotic animals: rhino, leopards, cougars, panthers, tigers and even the Andalusians. During the evening horse races, Caliente spectators were able to watch some of the menagerie roaming on the infield.

Rhon still owns Grupo Caliente, Mexico’s largest sports betting company.

What does Rhon do with the animals? “Feeds ‘em,” Marquez said with a laugh. “It’s like a small private zoo for the owner of the track. He’s an animal lover.”

Rearview Mirror

The Marquez family has been a part of Caliente’s storied history—as well as California tracks—for several generations; nearly every Marquez family member is or has been a racetracker. They worked at tracks like Santa Anita, Hollywood Park, Golden Gate, Bay Meadows and mostly Del Mar “because it’s only a jump from Tijuana.”

Marquez’s brother, Saul Marquez, is currently a jockey valet for Juan Hernandez (current leading rider at Santa Anita), Franklin Calles and Ricardo Gonzalez at Santa Anita. Saul’s son, Saul Jr., was a jockey agent for a long time and worked sales at horse auctions. He now runs his own business as an independent trucker. A nephew, Victor Garcia, is the son of former jockey Juan Garcia and is also a trainer at Santa Anita.

“A lot of my Tijuana family, most of them, worked at the track,” Marquez said. “They were grooms, trainers, assistant trainers, pony boys, exercise riders and jockeys.

From an early age, Marquez,  worked within the Thoroughbred racing industry in many capacities. His one wish from the beginning was to own a racehorse. 

“My main goal was to own horses,” Marquez said. “That was it from day one, since I was born. I had a horse when I was young. My dad bought me a horse for my birthday when I was seven. I sold it when I was eight. It was a riding horse, a filly. In those days [in Tijuana], there were no cars. You walked to school, which was not too far from home, and you walked to the racetrack.”

 Marquez claimed his first horse for $1,000 in 1964, at the age of 16. He took a horse named Social Book off Wes Cain and the owner, Mrs. Morton. Those connections claimed the horse back just three weeks later for $1,400.

“They sent him up north, and he made like $50,000,” Marquez said of Social Book.

His second claim was Cahill Kid, trained by then leading trainer, C.L. Clayton.

“That was a very, very nice horse—a stud,” Marquez recalled. “I ran him six times and had four wins, a second and a third. I lost him for $1,600. I think all together I made about $7,800 in three months, which was a lot of money then and a lot more nowadays.”

“I bought a Chevrolet Impala in Mexico with the money,” Marquez added. “I also bought property—a lot that I built apartments on later—like in 1968, I finished building.”

While he was claiming his first horses, Marquez worked for trainer L.J. Brooks until he was “17 or 18,” before going to work for a smaller trainer with only a couple of horses. Marquez remembers one really nice gray horse he handled, The Roan Clown—a two-time winner at Pomona.

Motivos & More

The English translation for motivo is “a reason for doing something, causing or being the reason for something.” Motivos was a horse perfectly named to become the young trainer’s favorite horse—a horse he owned himself.

“I had Motivos, a Mexican bred,” Marquez explained. “He ran twice in California, then I took him back to Mexico, to Tijuana. In one year, he was Sprinter of the Year, Miler of the Year and Horse of the Year. In the 1980s, he took everything—running from 5 ½ furlongs, a flat mile, a mile and an eighth and mile and a quarter.”

“What I admired about that horse was, when he goes short, he goes to the lead and they never catch him,” the trainer added. “And when you go a mile or more, he breaks on top, and he lays back second or third; he doesn’t go past, then he makes a run. He’s just like a human. I’ve never seen any horse like him, ever. He was amazing—amazing—and he was so smart.”

Motivos even ran second in the $250,000-added Clásico Internacional del Caribe (Caribbean Derby), the most important Thoroughbred black-type stakes race in the Caribbean for three-year-olds. The Caribe is for the best colts and fillies from the countries that are members of the Confederación Hipica del Caribe; the race rotates between those countries each year.

In 1988, the Caribe was held at Caliente. Marquez ran Don Gabriel (MEX) and Joseph (MEX), both colts owned by Cuadra San Gabriel. “Don Gabriel won it, and Joseph ran second,” Marquez said. “Nobody had ever run one-two before.”

With Equibase earnings of $8,384,323, Marquez has trained multiple graded-stakes winners over the years.

Melanyhasthepapers (Game Plan) was purchased as a yearling for $40,000 out of the Washington sale at Emerald Downs by owners Ron and Susie Anson. They named the colt after Melanie Stubblefield who handled all the registration papers at Santa Anita for decades.

Melanyhasthepapers

“I bought the colt off the Ansons for $40,000 when they retired from owning horses,” Marquez remembered. “He ended up being a stake horse.”

Melanyhasthepapers earned $311,152 between 2003 and 2006 including five wins; the horse won the Cougar II Stakes at Hollywood Park, ran second in the All-American Handicap (G3) at Golden Gate and third in Santa Anita’s Tokyo City Handicap (G3).

Tali’sluckybusride

The Ansons also purchased Tali’sluckybusride as a yearling out of the 2000 Washington sale for $23,000. The Delineator filly went on to win the Oak Leaf Stakes (G1) and was third in both the Hollywood Starlet Stakes (G1) and Las Virgenes Stakes (G1). She ultimately earned $245,160.

Ron Anson obviously had an eye for a runner. “Ron was pretty good at claiming horses and buying them privately,” Marquez said. “He died last year.” 

Marquez-trained stakes horses include: Martha and Ray Kuehn’s - Irish (Melyno (IRE)) that won the Bay Meadows Derby (G3); Anson’s - Irguns Angel (Irgun) topped the A Gleam Handicap (G2), ridden by Eddie Delahoussaye; and their gelding, Peach Flat (Cari Jill Hajji), was triumphant in the All-American Handicap (G3).  

 “We claimed Peach Flat up north at Bay Meadows for $20,000—his second start,” Marquez pointed out. “We won seven races with him.”

Tali’sluckybusride

The Border & Beyond

Marquez used to check on sales yearlings at Gillermo Elizondo Collard’s Rancho Natoches in Sinaloa, Mexico. In 1989, between inspecting sales yearlings, he spotted a mare with a baby at her side that caught his eye.

“It’s a big, beautiful farm,” Marquez pointed out. “I’m checking those horses, and I see this mare with a little baby—probably five months old. The owner bought the mare at Pomona in foal to La Natural; this is that baby.”

When Marquez inquired about buying the La Natural, the owner informed him that the colt was Mexican-bred, not Cal-bred. The trainer wrote a check for what had been paid for the mare – he thinks $6,000 – and asked that the baby be delivered to him at Caliente as a two-year-old.

“I waited almost two years,” Marquez said. “I got him and two other horses [for training] delivered to quarantine at Caliente Racetrack. I broke him at Caliente along with the other two.”

The La Natural colt, named Ocean Native, made his first start for Marquez at Del Mar in 1991 in a $50,000 maiden-claiming race with Kent Desormeaux riding. The dark bay gelding won going away first time out. Less than three weeks later, Desormeaux rode him back for a second win in the Saddleback Stakes at Los Alamitos.

After running up and down the claiming ranks, Marquez lost Ocean Native on a win for a $25,000 tag at Del Mar in 1993. The durable gelding was hardly finished, however. He ultimately ran fourth in his last race with a $3,000 tag in 1999 at Evangeline Downs. Ocean Native ran 77 times, won 12 races and earned $155,194.

One of the babies that arrived at Caliente with Ocean Native was a Pirate’s Bounty named Tajo. Marquez remembered the colt as “a really nice horse that broke his maiden at Del Mar; and he also won an allowance at Hollywood Park second time out.” 

The Anson’s Lord Sterling (Black Tie Affair [IRE]) took his connections on a two-week trip to Tokyo, Japan, for the very first running of the Japan Cup Dirt (G1).  

Lord Sterling

In late 1998, Marquez claimed Lord Sterling from Jerry Hollendorfer at Golden Gate, in just his second out for $50,000. The horse had run second his first out there in a $25,000 maiden claimer. 

Over the next two years, Lord Sterling won four additional races for Marquez including a listed stake at Santa Rosa. In October of 2000, the horse finished second in the Meadowlands Cup Handicap (Gr.2) as the longest shot on the board. That effort punched his ticket to Japan.

 “We were invited and almost won the race,” Marquez recalled with enthusiasm. “[Lord Sterling] ran a big, big third in a $2.5 million race. We went back the following year with another of Anson’s horses, Sign of Fire.”

Sign of Fire (Groomstick), a graded-stakes placed runner, unfortunately bled and ran out of the money. 

“Tokyo is like five racetracks in one,” Marquez said. “They got turf, dirt, a bigger turf and steeplechase. They only ran Saturday and Sunday. But, like on Friday, you see hundreds of people sleeping on the sidewalk so they can go into the races. They limit it to, I think, 100,000 people. They gamble, and I mean they really gamble…

“You know what’s really amazing? When the horses come out of the gate, everybody gets quiet until the race is over; it is total silence.”

Love & Compassion 

Marquez commutes between his Tijuana home and Southern California tracks—roughly a three-hour drive to Santa Anita. He spends a few days each week in Mexico, depending on his schedule—a routine that has sustained him for 40 years.

He and his wife, Angela, a certified public accountant, have four children. His son and three daughters were not encouraged to pursue racetrack careers, according to their father. The kids are smart, educated and on the road to bright futures.

“I wanted them to buy property instead of horses,” Marquez explained. “Real estate—that’s where the money is. Horses are fun, and when you race, you enjoy as much as possible; but you can’t win every time.”

Marquez’s son Jonathon graduated from San Francisco State University. He and Angela  recently traveled to Boston to see Jonathon receive his Masters Degree in speech therapy. Their daughter Brenda graduated from Grand Canyon University of Phoenix with a Masters in Education and is teaching. Daughter Georgette teaches in San Diego and another daughter, Yvette, evaluates autistic children. 

Although Marquez encouraged his children to pursue education and positive careers, he loves “everything racetrack,” especially training and owning horses. He also takes compassionate aftercare of his trainees.

Marquez claimed Starting Bloc (More Than Ready) in the spring of 2018 for $50,000 out of the Richard Mandella barn. The colt ran 15 times for Marquez, picking up 11 checks, including three wins. 

When his horses show signs of being at the end of their careers, Marquez has a solution.

“We’ve still got Starting Bloc up at the ranch in Nevada,” Marquez said. “My owner, Robert Cannon’s son, Michael, has a big, 5,000 head cattle ranch up there. [Retired horses] have a whole big field. It’s their home for life.”

Lil Milo (Rocky Bar) is another of Marquez’s horses headed to the ranch for life. “He won the Clocker’s Corner Stakes the last time he ran,” the trainer pointed out. “His owner Dr. [Jack] Weinstein died right after the horse won, like a month later.”

Most of his career, Marquez trained a barn of 40 to 45 horses. Most of his owners became like family; and as they aged and drifted out of the horse business or passed on, Marquez also slowed down.

“When they retired, I retired,” he explained. “Right now, I’ve got the smallest barn as possible—only six to eight horses. But I’m going to stay in business until I drop. You have to have your mind working all the time. I don’t want to stop.”

Marquez recalls all of the many great horses he has trained with enthusiasm and can rattle off stories of every one. As he says, “I’ve been so lucky to own horses. They are still in my memory, in my heart.”

#Soundbites - What do you think racing will be like five years from now?

By Bill Heller

Todd Pletcher, Hall of Fame trainer

It’s difficult to project, but I think we’re going to continue to see what we’ve seen the past five years: a reduction in the tracks that are open. I think we’ll see continued growth in gambling, period. I think racing is benefitting from that—an open mindedness to gambling. Everyone now is gambling on football—pretty much on everything. One thing that grew during the pandemic was gambling. There will be fewer tracks but more of them operating successfully.

One thing we need to do is continue to make improvements on safety.

Assuming it (the HISA) goes through, it’s a good thing for the sport. We need some uniformity. It’s very difficult as a trainer to keep track of all the different rules in every jurisdiction. It should level the playing field.

Graham Motion, trainer

I hope, once we have the Horse Racing Integrity (and safety) Act in place, we’ll be in a better place five years from now. There will be smaller foal crops and less racetracks but a better product—one with more integrity. The status quo is unacceptable. It’s almost impossible to keep up with the different rules. We need uniformity and integrity, and right now we have neither.

Kelly Breen, trainer

I think what we saw in the pandemic was that people are betting—maybe more online. So many people learned how to bet on their phones and iPads during the pandemic that we’re setting record handles.

On track, you go to Saratoga, and it was mobbed. On the blue ribbon days, everybody is going to show up. I’m at the Keeneland Sales, and you can’t raise your hand. Racing is good. If you can get a good legislative body, and get everybody together for where we need to be in the next five years so you don’t have different rules on medication, the good horseman will be around.

Cliff Sise, Jr., trainer

Will we be here in five years? They are just tearing it apart. In New York, they have great purses now, but the new governor wants to take all that money and spend it otherwise. If that happens, purses will go so low. In California, Del Mar does well, but we don’t have the contract to get the purses up to where they should be. Owners are getting disgusted. We’re all shaking our heads wondering if we’ll be here in five years. It depends a lot on governors. If they look down on us, they can just say no more horse racing. PETA is watching us. We’re under the microscope so much. It’s a tough game to enjoy anymore.

Eric Jackson, Oaklawn Park Senior Vice President

Five years is a pretty short time from now. There will be fewer tracks than today, but those that survive the withering will be better than before. Sports are popular. I think it will be quality over quantity. In any sport, there’s demand to see it at a better level.

Chris Merz, Director of Racing, Santa Anita

I’m going to shed a positive light. I’m hoping this new bill puts everybody on the same page with the same rules. Then we can coordinate post times so they don’t conflict. It will be an industry working together to help the industry. We need to make this work. I think we’ve seen what happens when we don’t.

Michael Dubb, owner

There will be more consolidation, and we’ll be probably at the infancy of a marriage to legalized sports betting providers. I think that’s the future of racing. Anything that grows handle is probably good. You get a sports provider and a content provider, and the future will be TVG horse shows—you get on somebody’s platform. Do I want to bet if it’s sunny or cloudy? Do I want to bet football? Here’s horse racing. Do I want to bet that? think that’s the future of racing. Twenty years ago, we didn’t know the future of racing would be iPads. That’s how it turned out.

Barry Schwartz, owner and former CEO of the New York Racing Association

A lot has changed because of the pandemic. I think it exposed people to gambling on the Internet. Handle is everything. To me, right now, racing looks very alive and well. You see what’s going on at Keeneland. They’re already way past last year. Critical to racing is HISTA. They’ve got to get that up and running so the public has more confidence in racing, and that racing is legitimate. I think if we have a real strong organization in place, it will make people a lot more confident about racing—about racing being legitimate. The bottom line is I see a lot of things to be happy about with racing going forward. I didn’t  feel that way five years ago.

Nick Cosato, owner

I would like to think we’re headed in the right direction with the Integrity Act. I’m optimistic.

Jack Knowlton, owner

I’m optimistic that racing will be in a better place in five years than it is today. In part, I do believe that the federal legislation will allow more resources to do the kind of testing we need to stay one step ahead of the cheaters. One of the big things is we never had enough resources to do the research. They’re coming up with new stuff to cheat. In my mind, that’s the biggest issue racing is facing. I think you’re going to have owners feeling better about participating.

And we’ll have one set of rules. The other thing, and we’ve made strides, is the issue of safety. We look at the data, and we’re getting a lot better, but there’s more work to be done. We have to continue to improve it. That’s definitely going in the right direction. The other issue is after-care, making sure we find a place for these athletes when they’re done with their careers.

A safer Santa Anita - How the Santa Anita vets & trainers made a positive difference in 2020

By Ken Snyder

Some media observers have opined that bad journalism is not just reporting inaccuracies or things made up to suit a narrative, but also what isn't reported. From the perspective of many people in the racing industry, especially in Southern California, the absence of even the slightest acknowledgment of the safety turnaround at Santa Anita in 2020 is an example of the latter.  

Here are the facts with one apples-to-apples comparison of statistics between 2019—when Santa Anita suffered a horrific spate of fatalities—and last year. According to The Jockey Club's Equine Injury Database, there were 13 racing fatalities on the dirt track in 2019 at Santa Anita.  In 2020, there were zero racing fatalities—zip, nada, none—on the dirt track. Pick your adjective to describe that: incredible, astonishing, miraculous? The public is still waiting, by and large, on adjectives, or anything else for that matter, from the media.

Looking at all statistics, the dirt stat is no anomaly. With training fatalities, there were 17 in 2019 and 10 in 2020. Only with turf racing are the numbers close; in fact, they're even—six turf fatalities in both 2019 and 2020.  

Hall of Fame Trainer Richard Mandella is perhaps charitable when he says the absence of reporting is "suspicious."  

The one indisputable fact is that animal rights activists want racing shut down, he said. Why the governor and the politicians "jumped on board last year," as Mandella states it, is anybody's guess.  

He speculates that a decline in marketing spending by the California racing industry—advertising in media outlets—may be at the root of not reporting the turnaround.  Perhaps People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA, the principal anti-racing activist group) exert powerful political pressure (and funding to political campaigns). Maybe public perception crafted by media reporting (and "not reporting") impacts things at the ballot box far more than those in racing can imagine.

There is no question that a cluster of fatalities like those that occurred in 2019 at Santa Anita will produce an outcry from the public, and deservedly so. "We were warned that if we didn't get it straight," referring to 2019, "that they were going to 'cut our cord' and stop racing," said Mandella.

Bullet dodged. Mission accomplished. Racing continues. So, what was the story-behind-the-story of the success at Santa Anita in 2020?  

Mandella expresses the principle behind the solution: "Two heads are better than one." In actuality, a training inspection program established by The Stronach Group (TSG) brought to bear not just two heads but four veterinarians led by TSG Equine Medical Director Dr. Dionne Benson. 

As many as three vets hired by Santa Anita and reporting to Benson space themselves around the track every morning, watching workouts and coordinating with another vet in the barn area.  They will observe all the horses but particularly those on a daily list of horses deemed at "elevated risk," as Benson terms it, who will breeze that day. A horse exhibiting lameness, whether it is on the list for close observation or another horse merely out for a gallop, will be examined by the vet serving backside duty that day once it leaves the track. Often that vet will meet a horse and exercise rider at the barn and examine the horse while still under saddle.

An on-track vet will sometimes radio an outrider to get a horse off the track immediately if it appears to be in distress. The vet will then call the trainer to alert them to a possible injury and have the barn-area vet waiting as well. On-track vets have even followed a distressed horse and rider from the track to the barn.  

The program began informally in 2019 when the state shut down Santa Anita because of the fatalities. Benson came onto the Santa Anita racetrack in May 2019 and had the foresight to assign Santa Anita vets with downtime to watch training.  

"Prior to that time, the responsibilities of the track and training were the track surface, making sure that it was well taken care of, setting the training hours, and providing outriders to catch loose horses.  We really felt we could do a lot by adding some oversight and supervision to training.  

"We really refined it as we proceeded, and it progressed to a more active role for the veterinarians." 

The refinements and staffing meant an unprecedented degree of inspection and effort in terms of time and money. "When you're watching horses one day a week or one day a month, it's not the same as watching five days a week for five hours," said Benson. Santa Anita veterinarians rotate days off to make certain of training coverage daily. "You start to know the horses, and because we also do physical inspections on horses in training, we have a really good idea of which ones we're most concerned about."

Benson said her vets develop "a good sense of the horses. They'll say, 'Oh, that's so and so. He looks great today.' They not only have the ability to pick out unusual movement patterns for the horses, but they also know enough about the horses that each one has a profile in their mind."  

Inspection is not a matter of random selection. A requirement for Santa Anita trainers mandates they must register any horse they intend to breeze 48 hours before that workout. A horse working Wednesday, for example, requires registration with the racing office on Monday. The office will compile expanded past performance data that includes races and workout times plus injury and vet's list history. The office passes these on—usually 70 to 80 pages—for Benson or a member of her team to review. The reviewer will apply as many as eight criteria to determine horses that may be at higher risk for injury and fatality. Things looked for include inactivity for more than 90 days, unusual work patterns, horses coming into California from another state, and, as one might expect, horses that have a history of being on the state veterinarian's list for unsoundness. 

Also, a horse scratched from a race, who flipped in the gate or that finished 20 lengths behind in a race are additional things noted in reviewing past performance and history, said Dr. Jay Deluhery, a Santa Anita inspector.

Of, say, 200 horses scheduled for workouts, an average of 50 makes the "watch list" for close observation while on the track, according to Deluhery. The team will then divide and examine each horse on the following day. Vets will flex and palpate the limbs and have the horse jog in the shedrow or just outside it. "From there, they can make the decision of, 'Do I want this horse to breeze or not?'" he added.  

"In some cases, we'll say, 'Yeah, this horse is good,' or we want more information about this horse. 'It's had a long layoff. Why?' Or, 'I want to talk to your vet about this horse, or you need this diagnostic before you can breeze.'"

"We maybe see a couple to five horses a week that we actually turn down for works.  

"In some cases, we'll say, 'Come and jog in front of the vet on the track under tack.' Sometimes you see different information there."

If the workout registration and subsequent inspections sound extreme, it has gained acceptance by Santa Anita trainers, by and large. "I think learning is setting in that maybe mistakes were being made, and we're learning to correct them," Mandella said.

Benson estimates that since the program's inception, the team has performed 3,700 to 3,800 examinations of horses both routinely and before breezes at Santa Anita.  

An unexpected result of the program beyond reduced fatalities is what Benson calls a "culture change" among the racing community at Santa Anita. "We have trainers who are more willing to go directly to diagnostics instead of saying, 'Let's see if we can medicate the horse through this problem.'" 

Deluhery added, "They are seeing the value of having more MRIs [magnetic resonance imaging] and increasing PET scans [also for tissue and organ functioning], and even more nuclear scintigraphy [essentially a bone scan] on the horse."

"Some of them have taken the initiative, and we don't have to tell them; they just do it. Horses with bone scans? It's unprecedented. They're doing it on their own."

Benson added, "There are always going to be outliers, but the majority of the trainers that we have at Santa Anita, San Luis Rey and Golden Gate Fields [all California TSG facilities] really want their horses to be healthy and safe; and they don't want to be the person who has a horse that's injured."

Important to the inspection is not only the cooperation of trainers but private vets employed by trainers. Whether intended directly or not, the TSG inspection program has "instituted private vets doing exams prior to works and prior to entry," said Benson. "We've actually involved the veterinarians to do things that they had not been doing, but they're reaping the benefits. 

"It's a very collegial atmosphere for the most part. I mean, no one wants to have their horse scratched. No one wants to be told, ‘Your horse has to go and have this diagnostic,’ but instead of the pushback that we might have gotten two years ago, people now are like 'Absolutely, we'll do the right thing,'" said Benson.

Deluhery believes acceptance by trainers was the key factor in the success of the program. "I expected them to either accept this or the inspection program would die," he said. "Now that they've seen the results, they're wanting to cooperate, and they're happy to show me any horse in the barn."

He believes trainers have seen the value in replacing guessing, hunches and risk-taking with "putting a little science into things" where horse health is concerned. Too, he believes they see "the economics of it on a big scale." A healthy horse will be a more productive horse with a potentially maximized racing career.   

The inspection program has drawn the interest of others in racing. "I've had a few calls with different regulators, different individuals, different jurisdictions; and I think there is a desire to do it," said Benson. Currently, TSG has veterinarians watching training at all of its California tracks and is working to expand the full program elsewhere.

"It is costly. Hiring three to four vets per track to cover your days is not inexpensive, but I think it is an investment that is well worth it. The more interventions, the more eyes we have on these horses, the better we can see something before it happens."

Whether covered or ignored by those professing to be journalists, one thing is inescapable and captured by Mandella in an overview of the inspection program: "The facts are there. It's worked."

Dr. Benson and her team are, without question, pleased with the success of the inspection program and look for continuing improvement statistically. One unrecorded statistic, however, means more to them than anything: horses that, because of the workout inspections and examinations, have been retired.

She recounted just one story among many: "I had a vet come up to me and say, 'You know, there was a horse that was on the track that your vets kept flagging. They just kept saying, 'We don't like the way it moves.' I could never really see it as that lame. You guys kept at it so I finally sent the horse for a bone scan and sure enough, it had a humeral stress fracture brewing.'"

Horses with stress fractures, with time and therapy, can come back. In this case, the owners and trainer elected to retire the horse.

"Those kinds of things have certainly happened more than once, but that was one that really stuck out to me because humeral stress fractures are really hard to identify by a private vet.  This guy trusted our vets," said Benson. "If they're saying there is something wrong, then there's probably something wrong. Let's do something that probably saved that horse's life."

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Safer racetracks - We look at the measures taken by The Fair Grounds and Santa Anita took action to make their main tracks safer

By Ken Snyder

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…" so wrote Charles Dickens. For horse racing in 2020, it just wasn't where you would expect the best and worst, at least in a modern-day "Tale of Two Racetracks."

To wit: Santa Anita began 2020 in the wake of a nightmare: 20 racing fatalities in 2019. The Fair Grounds in New Orleans, on the other hand, was on the cusp of two straight Januarys without a racetrack fatality. If you don't know the rest, you can probably guess what happened, 2020 being 2020: Santa Anita embarked on a record year in 2020 with zero fatalities on the dirt track and one less fatality in turf races than in 2019 [see sidebar]. Meanwhile, at the Fair Grounds—long known as having one of the best surfaces in America—six racetrack fatalities occurred in January, a number more than double the average for this month.

Instantly, media attention focused on the Fair Grounds, interest made more acute, perhaps, by the highly publicized spate of fatalities at Santa Anita.

Overlooked by a large portion of the media (perhaps conveniently, some would say) is the anomaly that January 2020 represented, not just for the Fair Grounds but also for Thoroughbred racing in America. In terms of catastrophic injury rate, the sport enjoyed the smallest rate of fatalities per 1,000 starts—1.53—in 2019.

Sealing or floating a track produces a flat surface for water to run off.

The Jockey Club created an Equine Injury Database (EID) in 2009, recording statistics and specifically compiling data from 14 leading tracks (including Santa Anita). In that first year, fatalities were 2.0 per 1,000 starts—the highest in the span of the 11-year-old EID.

So what happened at the Fair Grounds?

A harrowed track surface enables water to penetrate the surface rather than run off, causing over-saturation and potentially ripe for injuries and fatalities.

Dr. Michael "Mick" Peterson, executive director of the Racing Surfaces Testing Laboratory, led a team of track management and, perhaps more critical, trainers with horses at the Fair Grounds to examine and analyze the track surface, particularly maintenance practices. Fatalities are multifactorial, and the intent was to address potential issues with the track surface. According to Peterson, unexpected and unpredicted rainfall during training hours occurred in January. Making matters worse, the rain—while amounting to maybe a half to three-quarters of an inch—fell for 45 minutes to an hour.

Harrowed before training, the track surface was "open," as Peterson termed it, enabling water to penetrate the surface rather than run off.

The result was a surface possibly over-saturated and potentially ripe for injuries and fatalities during races in the afternoon. Closing the door to this possibility meant closing the track if rain was expected or did fall during training and sealing or "floating it," which produces a flat surface for water to run off into the infield.

If that sounds simple, it isn't. There are dozens of trainers with stalls full of horses each needing track time, either for leg-stretching gallops or, more importantly, workouts timed out a certain number of days before an upcoming race. Racehorses are athletes who absolutely have to get out of their stalls, and there are no days off. Weather can’t be a deterrent; they run in the rain, and they train in the rain. Stopping training to float and seal a racetrack—something commonly done between afternoon races—is uncommon during training hours and disruptive to trainers’ schedules. Simply put, trainers lose a hunk of training time if the track superintendent floats the surface during workout hours in the morning.

Fair Grounds track superintendent Pedro Zavala uses a soil moisture meter to measure moisture content at different areas of the track surface.

Here is where, according to Peterson, the Fair Grounds achieved real success. A group of trainers met with Fair Grounds track manager Jason Boulet, track superintendent Pedro Zavala, and Peterson and basically said, "We're going to have to do that then," referring to track closure during training for surface sealing.

For Peterson, Boulet and especially Zavala, this response from trainers with entries, races slated, and owners to whom they are accountable was as jaw-dropping as Santa Anita's zero dirt-track fatality statistic in 2020.

"It really was one of those perfect moments in interaction between track management and superintendent and trainers," said Peterson, who added, "It's hard to get up in the morning and not know which horses you can train. I was thoroughly impressed with the willingness of trainers to do that."

Their only request was as much of a heads-up as possible to trainers if weather radar indicated rain looked likely. Track closure during training for floating was an option left on the table. It was part of “give and take,” as Peterson termed it, to enable trainers to send out horses needing a workout for an upcoming race ahead of a wet track.

"If I'm a trainer, I know that I might lose the second half of training because they're going to shut it down and run the floats. Then I can train whatever horses I know I need to get out there in the first set.

"This is where the industry needs to go—the communication, being reasonable, recognizing the need for give and take at times."

The cooperation of trainers at the Fair Grounds should not have been a surprise, given the history at the track. The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 provides an anecdote that is very telling about the input of trainers into track conditions and management at this third oldest American racetrack.

Katrina flooded the Fair Grounds and washed away the track surface. What replaced it was not nearly as good as pre-Katrina, according to regular Fair Grounds trainers. A group of them, principal among them Al Stall, provided a simple observation: "It was better with the darker sand," said Stall at the time, referring to reddish sand in the pre-Katrina surface.

Peterson remembered Boulet calling him to report that trainers were convinced darker spillway sand from the nearby Mississippi River would bring the track back to what it was. "Jason said, 'I think they're crazy. I don't think the color matters,'" recalled Peterson with a laugh. "I said, ‘Jason what they are actually identifying is the little bit of iron oxide in the sand. It's hydrophilic and not hydrophobic, and you know what? I bet they're exactly right.’" …

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PET scanning - reduces catastrophic fractures - latest advance in equine imaging - designed to image horse legs

By Mathieu Spriet, Associate Professor, University of California, Davis

Santa Anita Park, the iconic Southern California racetrack, currently under public and political pressure due to a high number of horse fatalities during the 2019 season, announced in December 2019 the installation of a PET scanner specifically designed to image horse legs. It is hoped that this one-of-a-kind scanner will provide information about bone changes in racehorses to help prevent catastrophic breakdowns.

What is PET?

Figure 1: The first equine PET was performed in 2015 at the University of California Davis on a research horse laid down with anesthesia. The scanner used was a PET prototype designed for the human brain (piPET, Brain- Biosciences Inc., Rockville, MD).

PET stands for positron emission tomography. Although this advanced form of imaging only recently became available for horses, the principles behind PET imaging have been commonly used at racetracks for many years. PET is a nuclear medicine imaging technique, similar to scintigraphy, which is more commonly known as “bone scan”. For nuclear imaging techniques, a small dose of radioactive tracer is injected to the horse, and the location of the tracer is identified with a camera in order to create an image. The tracers used for racehorse imaging are molecules that will attach to sites on high bone turnover, which typically occurs in areas of bone subject to high stress. Both scintigraphic and PET scans detect “hot spots” that indicate—although a conventional X-ray might not show anything abnormal in a bone—there are microscopic changes that may develop into more severe injuries.

Development of PET in California

The big innovation with the PET scan is that it provides 3D information, whereas the traditional bone scan only acquires 2D images. The PET scan also has a higher spatial resolution, which means it is able to detect smaller changes and provide a better localisation of the abnormal sites. PET’s technological challenge is that to acquire the 3D data in horses, it is necessary to use a ring of detectors that fully encircles the leg. 

The first ever equine PET scan was performed at the School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of California in 2015. At the time, a scanner designed to image the human brain was used (PiPET, Brain-Biosciences, Inc.). This scanner consists of a horizontal cylinder with an opening of 22cm in diameter. Although the dimensions are convenient to image the horse leg, the configuration required the horse be anesthetised in order to fit the equipment around the limb. 

The initial studies performed on anesthetised horses with the original scanner demonstrated the value of the technique. A first study, published in Equine Veterinary Journal, demonstrated that PET showed damage in the equine navicular bone when all other imaging techniques, including bone scan, MRI and CT did not recognise any abnormality.

A pilot study looking at the racehorse fetlock, also published in Equine Veterinary Journal,  showed that PET detects hot spots in areas known to be involved in catastrophic fractures.

Figure 2: These are images from the first horse image with PET. From left to right, PET, CT, MRI, and bone scan. The top row shows the left front foot that has a severe navicular bone injury. This is shown by the yellow area on the PET image and abnormalities are also seen with CT, MRI and bone scan. The bottom row is the right front foot from the same horse, the PET shows a small yellow area that indicates that the navicular bone is also abnormal. The other imaging techniques however did not recognize any abnormalities.

This confirmed the value of PET for racehorse imaging, but the requirement for anesthesia remained a major barrier to introducing the technology at the racetrack. To overcome this, LONGMILE Veterinary Imaging, a division of Brain-Biosciences Inc, in collaboration with the University of California Davis, designed a scanner which could image standing horses. To do this, the technology had to be adapted so that the ring of detectors could be opened and positioned around the limb. 

With the support from the Grayson Jockey Club Research Foundation, the Southern California Equine Foundation and the Stronach Group, this unique scanner became a reality and, after the completion of an initial validation study in Davis, the scanner was installed at Santa Anita Park in December 2019.

Figure 3: The two images on the left are bone scan images from a 4-year-old Thoroughbred racehorse. The images on the right are 3D projection of PET images of the same fetlock. The bone scan revealed an abnormality at the bottom of the cannon bone. The PET scan confirmed this abnormality and helped better localize it. In addition, several other abnormalities were found on the PET scan in the sesamoid bones.

PET at the racetrack

The new PET scanner has been used to image the equine limb from the foot to the knee. The current main focus at the racetrack is fetlock imaging, as the majority of catastrophic breakdown in racehorses affects this area. The UC Davis pilot study highlighted the value of PET for detecting abnormalities in the proximal sesamoid bones—the two small bones at the back of the cannon bone—that are commonly involved in catastrophic fractures. Previous necropsy research on horses which suffered breakdowns has shown that changes can be present in the bones prior to the development of major injuries. The goal of the Californian PET project is to detect these warning signs in order to avoid training and racing horses at high risk for catastrophic breakdown.

Alternative imaging techniques

Other imaging techniques are available for examining equine bone. Scintigraphic bone scans are doing an excellent job at detecting stress fractures of the humerus or tibia, and this has helped markedly decrease catastrophic injuries in these areas. Bone scan is also used for fetlocks; but “hot fetlocks” are common on bone scan, and the lower resolution 2D images often do not allow to truly determine whether horses are at high risk of fractures or have normal bone adaptation to training.

Figure 4: The MILE-PET scanner (LONGMILE Veterinary imaging, Rockville, MD) is the first PET scanner specifically designed to image standing horses. An openable ring of detectors allows easy positioning and safe scanning.

MRI is used for fetlock imaging too, and MRI scanners designed for imaging standing horses have been available for over 15 years. Several large racing centers are equipped with such scanners, and MRI excels in particular at detecting changes in the cannon bone that precede condylar fractures. MRI can detect areas of bone densification, or even accumulation of fluid in the bone, typically indicative of microtrauma that can weaken the bone.

Computed tomography (CT) has also recently been used for standing imaging of the fetlock. At the moment, there are a few centers equipped with a CT scanner allowing standing fetlock imaging, but they are only available at, for example, New Bolton Center, Pennsylvania - USA, and the University of Melbourne, Australia. CT uses X-rays to create 3D images. Similar to MRI, CT can detect areas of bone densification or areas of bone loss. …

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Leonard Powell - the French trainer in California

By Ed Golden

“When I learn that a nation can live without bread, then I will believe that the French people can live without glory.”—Charles de Gaulle

Leonard Powell can live without neither, although with a workload that consumes the majority of his very existence, he still finds time for required sustenance and moments of exultation when they present themselves.

The 42-year-old Frenchman is a world-class horseman, weaned on Thoroughbreds from early youth, starting on his family’s 200-acre stud farm in Normandy followed by stops around the globe in Australia, England, Singapore and the United States, and calling California home since 2004.

When attempting to buttonhole him in person, however, an APB might come in handy. At Santa Anita, his base of operations, a sighting at the track’s popular early morning watering hole, Clockers’ Corner, is rarer than a Triple Crown sweep.

Leonard Powell is either sedulously conducting business at his barn, or high upon horseback supervising jogs, gallops and breezes on the track.

A former amateur jockey in France, where he rode in steeplechase races as well as on the flat, landing in the winner’s circle on occasion, his work schedule is Trumpian sans the tweets.

“I wake up at 3:45 and leave the house just after four,” Powell said explaining a typical day—his accent as thick as one of France’s nearly 300 varieties of cheese. “I get to the barn just after 4:30, check the horses and provide any medications as needed.

“The first set of horses goes out at 5 o’clock, so from 5 o’clock until 10 o’clock I’m on horseback, either on a Thoroughbred or a pony. At 10 we school horses if necessary, review their condition with a veterinarian or myself, check on the horses that worked the day before or that morning.

“That takes us to 11:30 or 12. Usually from 12 to about two I go over paperwork that needs to be done in the office. In the afternoon, we go to the races when we have horses running, or back to the barn feeding, walking or grazing them until 4:30.”

Powell’s day begins well before he arrives at the barn. He commutes from his West Hollywood home to the Arcadia track, a stretch of 25 miles.

“I was living in West Hollywood when I was stabled at Hollywood Park (which closed in December of 2013),” Powell said. “I have three daughters (Louise, 14, Blanche, 13 and Jeanne, 9) and they were going to a bilingual school that taught French and English.

“When I moved my barn to Santa Anita, the kids were doing very well, so I decided to make the commute instead of them. I didn’t want them to change schools.

“Actually, my commute in the morning is easy, because at 4 o’clock, there’s not much traffic. I can make it in 25 minutes going with the traffic. In the evenings, when I’m against the traffic, it can take 45 minutes.”

Married to Mathilde—his sweetheart from their days at Caen University—all their children enjoy racing, particularly Jeanne who rides and spends time with her father at the track on weekends.

Of the 25 head Powell has in training, by far the most celebrated is an 11-year-old gelding named Soi Phet. The tassel-haired trainer was not suffering from insipience when he made the claim for $16,000 at Hollywood Park on May 23, 2013.

Since then, the California-bred son of Tizbud has achieved success of mythic proportions, and after a recent freshening, is expected to resume his racing career.

“I’m going to take my time with him,” Powell said, “but I would expect him to return to the races at some point.”

When Soi Phet posted a 47-1 upset winning Santa Anita’s $100,000 Crystal Water Stakes by a head at age 10 in 2018, he was believed to be the oldest horse ever to win an added money event at the storied track, which opened on Christmas Day, 1934.

The Crystal Water was his 58th career start.

“At the time I claimed him, he had all his conditions,” Powell explained. “He had only won a maiden 20, he was a non-winner of two (races), he was a Cal-bred; it was the spring of 2013, and the Del Mar meet was coming up with very generous purses.

“When I took him, it was because he had conditions left, and I felt I could move him up.”

Wow and double wow! Eight stakes wins and a million dollars in earnings later, Powell now looks like the Nostradamus of trainers.

When he has occasion to give a leg up and pre-race instructions to jockeys Brice Blanc, Julien Couton, Florent Geroux, Julien Leparoux and Flavien Prat, fellow Frenchmen all, the bilingual Powell does what comes naturally.

“If the owner of the horse is there,” Powell said, “I speak English so that he can understand. But if it’s only me and the rider, we speak French.”

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Alan Balch - Horsemanship 1a

Horsemanship 1a – by Alan F. Balch

Anyone who has witnessed the saga of racing at Santa Anita this winter needs no repeated recitation of the facts . . . to say that the sport as we have known it is jeopardized in California, and perhaps North America, is a gross understatement. It’s worth remembering that the very word—jeopardy—is derived from gaming; when a position in chess and other games is equally divided between winning and losing, there’s danger.

Just how endangered we are, only time will tell.

So, of course, The Jockey Club released “a major white paper.” But like all the other stakeholders, they couldn’t resist pointing at everyone else except themselves. Again we heard their self-serving, political, and self-destructive refrain that “race day” and other therapeutic medications are culprits for what ails us. They threw in unspecified “cheaters and abusers” for good measure, as though that’s the public face of racing we embrace! All this, despite the simple fact that in the same state, during the same months, with the same medication rules as at Santa Anita, with the same or worse weather, another track—under the same ownership—maintained its position as one of the safest courses in America. Doubtless it escaped The Jockey Club that the all-weather synthetic surface at Golden Gate Fields was a principal factor in differentiating the two tracks!

But it hadn’t escaped anyone knowledgeable in California that main track and turf maintenance at Santa Anita beginning in January, as well as management of the racing program itself, may have been seriously flawed. And that the inherent issues are far greater than any isolated, dramatic spike in serious injuries at one place.

Therefore, it’s now essential, especially for the sport’s leadership, to go back to the objective, unemotional truths of basic horsemanship—not self-defeating posturing—to try to see where we stand throughout the world.

From the beginning of horses in sport, which is to say at the beginning of recorded history, the objective was to breed and train a swifter, stronger, better horse. For all this innocent animal’s many gifts to humankind, whether in work, commerce, war, exploration, sport, art, pleasure, or otherwise, horsemanship must begin with breeding. Responsible, logical breeding.  

Racing simply demonstrated who could breed a better horse. Glory followed. And later, riches. Racing stock is the proof of breeding stock.

The Jockey Club’s principal purposes are to improve the Thoroughbred breed and protect its integrity. It’s the breed registry. It sets the standard for breeding. At least it should. But that’s where our problems really begin, because the Thoroughbred breed is based on genotype, not phenotype. The genotype is the set of genes a horse carries, and our breed registry protects “integrity” by taking elaborate steps to be sure that there are no stray non-Thoroughbred genes in our horses. The way things are going, we might well need some!

The phenotype, on the other hand, is all of a horse’s observable characteristics—its conformation, quality, substance, and soundness. Who is guarding or enhancing the conformation, quality, substance, and soundness of our Thoroughbreds? Apparently not the breed registry! The next “white paper” we need to see from The Jockey Club about “reform” needs to take a deep, honest look at best practices for breeding, foaling, nursery, and every medication or veterinary practice that gets a Thoroughbred sold, whether or not in the auction ring and beyond. Any breed registry that permits, tolerates or encourages the breeding of unsoundness to unsoundness is not breeding a better horse, that’s certain. Nor should the registry turn a blind eye to any cosmetic or medicinal practice that could possibly compromise substance or soundness.

If the registry will concentrate on the true integrity of the breed—its soundness—it won’t need to waste nearly so much breath on the conduct of others.

Those of us who grew up in non-racing horse sport all remember The Sportsman’s Charter. It proclaims that sport ceases when it becomes a business only, something done for what there is in it. “The exploitation of sport for profit alone kills the spirit and retains only the husk and semblance of the thing.”  I believe this is exactly what’s been overtaking racing (killing it) for decades now.

There’s a reason that Keeneland and Saratoga and Del Mar succeed and inspire: their profits are turned back into the sport. They race limited seasons of the highest quality. They don’t exist for return on investment, except for the sport itself. But The Jockey Club boasts of its “group of commercial, for-profit subsidiaries and commercial partnerships.” Presumably those profits should benefit the sport. Do they, if protection of live cover, stud fees, auction prices, unsound pedigrees, and bloodstock profiting are weakening the breed? Do they, if their own professional journalists are muzzled? Do they, if their contributions to the U.S. Congress are wasted on the fool’s errand of banishing Lasix?

The for-profit racing associations and affiliated entities, whether public companies or private, exert the most pressure to exploit our once-great sport financially, all in the name of return-on-investment.  Consider this: At around 20,000 Thoroughbred foals a year these days, the foal crop is about where it was in 1966. In that year, Santa Anita raced 11 weeks. California racing had no overlaps between northern and southern dates (except during the summer fair season). The majestic colossus that is Santa Anita was dark from April until Christmas.  

Now, with the same number of foals as 1966, California has year-around racing throughout the state— north and south simultaneously. Santa Anita by itself races about 32 weeks. Can that much racing possibly be in the best interests of horses and the sport?

The collision between those interests and unrestrained financial gain is palpable. All those of us who have turned a silent or blind eye to this, including me, cannot avoid our own blame for what has happened. We have not put the interest of the horse or the breed first, as basic horsemanship would teach us to do.

Speaking of which, there’s another trumpeting elephant in our midst: the whip.

All those of us who can still remember our first serious riding lessons know we were taught not to get on without a stick. Then came the hard part: how and when to use it. Over the thousands of years of horses serving humans, understandings and opinions about this have evolved, to be sure. The humane, sensible use of the stick is probably more debated than ever before.

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Javier Jose Sierra - Invisible no more

By Ed Golden

Javier Jose Sierra has survived if not prospered for 45 years in a game he loves. Yet, he does not warrant a bio in any media guide.

He is racing’s Invisible Man.

The 66-year-old trainer has been sedulously plying his trade despite lack of recognition, ego be damned.

A native of El Paso, Sierra stands on a foundation adorned with pillars of self-confidence, gained in no small part from a proper upbringing in a family of 12 children, and tours early on with legendary trainers D. Wayne Lukas and J.J. Pletcher, father of Todd Pletcher.

Sierra grew up in Juarez where he played soccer as a kid. At 14 he aspired to be a jockey at Sunland Park in New Mexico, but his father, Cirilo, a native of Mexico, made education a priority. Javier aborted racing, went to school at the University of Texas El Paso (UTEP) and graduated with a degree in electrical engineering. Eventually, he earned an MBA while still working full time.

“I was doing well as an engineer,” Sierra said. “I worked my way up to vice president at an aerospace company.”

The appeal of the turf, however, proved an alluring temptress. Duly smitten, Sierra ultimately came to California in 1976.

“As soon as I graduated from college, I loved racing so much, I bought a couple horses,” he said. “I was doing both jobs at the same time, training horses and working in the aerospace industry.”

Most of Javier’s family were involved in racing. “All my brothers worked in racing in different positions, grooms, hot walkers, exercise riders, thanks to my father, who was a trainer.

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“While in college, I worked three summers for Lukas when he trained quarter horses in New Mexico, and with J.J. Pletcher one year at Sunland Park. I remember Todd being there. He was probably five years old.

“I learned a lot from both men, especially Pletcher. I was impressed with the quality of horses he brought in from back east. One was a son of Bold Ruler named First Edition. J.J.’s training regimen was amazing, completely unlike everyone else there at the time.

“Gerald Bloss was another big trainer from New York who was in New Mexico in the ‘60s. He was like Baffert is now. He had big owners, like DuPont, and used different techniques from those of the cowboys. We learned a lot from those guys.”

Bloss trained the great Gallant Man in the first part of his two-year-old season before he was transferred to New York with John Nerud.

Gallant Man, along with Bold Ruler and Round Table, in 1957 comprised arguably the greatest crop of three-year-olds ever. Gallant Man finished second by a nose to Iron Liege and Bill Hartack in that year’s Run for the Roses when Bill Shoemaker, aboard Gallant Man, misjudged the finish line and stood up in the stirrups in the shadow of the wire.

Gallant Man went on to win the Belmont Stakes and at age 34, became the longest living horse to win a Triple Crown race. He died on Sept. 7, 1988. Count Fleet was the previous record holder, having died on Nov. 30, 1987 at the age of 33 years, eight months.

“My older brother, Cirilo Jr., was an assistant trainer for Jake Casio who conditioned quarter horses in New Mexico for many years,” Sierra continued, “but when Jake died, I asked my brother to help me train at Santa Anita. Ten years ago, he retired and I took over training full time, giving up my job in aerospace.”

All these years later, he is a mainstay in the Golden State, making Santa Anita his headquarters save for tours at Del Mar when the seaside track is open. He lives 17 miles from Santa Anita in La Crescenta, with his wife, Dulce. He has never raced on the East Coast.

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Huey Barnes - an enduring fixture on the Californian racing circuit - in profile

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This article appeared in - North American Trainer Issue 41

Rick Hammerle - from racing fan to racing secretary

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Mike Mitchell - taking on a new lease of life at Santa Anita following a roller coaster year

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THIS ARTICLE FIRST APPEARED IN - NORTH AMERICAN TRAINER - ISSUE 27

4yo only Stakes Races in the spring

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THIS ARTICLE FIRST APPEARED IN - NORTH AMERICAN TRAINER - ISSUE 27

Is it time to change the way stakes are scheduled?

Graded stakes scheduling across the country has become farcical in recent years, says Sid Fernando, with too many races for the same types of horses clustered together to make them meaningful events in their own right, on many levels.

By Sid Fernando

First Published (20 April 2011 - Issue Number: Issue 20)

California dreaming - the hopes for 2011

Steve Schuelein asks Santa Anita and Del Mar racing secretary Rick Hammerle, trainer Howard Zucker, bloodstock consultant Gayle Van Leer, owner-breeder John Harris, and professional horseplayer-handicapper Jimmy Allard about their hopes for 2011.

By Steve Schuelein 


First Published: (02 February 2011 - Issue Number: Issue 19)