There is a mandatory meeting at Laurel on Tuesday at which proactive approaches to equine health and safety measures will be discussed. Sounds like the pre-race panel may be coming here as well.
Laurierace, what are your thoughts, if you don’t mind sharing, on a pre-race panel similar to what CHRB had implemented?
For me, hasn’t been in place long enough in CA to really get a feel if it is really making a difference and if it’s being implemented as it was planned.
I for one would have welcomed the extra sets of eyes personally as I never wanted to run a horse with an injury no matter how minor it may have been. It’s only as good as the people doing the checks though so that remains to be seen. Forever the vet exam in MD has literally been to take them out of the stall and jog them a few steps and be done with it. Other tracks have made you take the bandages off and they palpated and flexed the front legs at least so there is no uniformity in my experience.
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I’M no vet, but I can tell in a split second if one of my personal horses is even slightly off. Some of These vets that look at dozens of horses a day develop a good eye.
Depends on whose eyes. The two horses running first and second in the Bertrando stakes at Los Al were there because the panel scratched them the previous week from running at Santa Anita. And as I understand it, it is not majority rule-- any one of them can scratch your horse for any reason. A four year old Candy Ride owned by Wertheimer and trained by Mandella got scratched because he was an unraced four year old. Since he’s not getting any younger, no racing for him.
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I think they are flirting with fire and if they get burned, it was what they deserve for acting like the mean girls in high school who won’t let someone unpopular on the yearbook committee.
I am not saying Hollendorfer is as pure as the driven snow but if they have a case to make, where are the regulators? How is this happening without a single ruling? How can he be ruled off multiple racetracks without a single suspension, a single hearing, a single witness?
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This sounds ridiculous. Maybe the horse had a physical reason for not being started before 4yo and maybe just circumstances of not being with the right owner at the time with the finances or situation to get him ready to race and on the track.
I realize there is a difference between a 3o and 4yo but look at Justify… unraced at 2. Should that be held against him?
Laurierace, good to hear you’d support a review panel of some sort but as others have said, I would like to know how it’s implemented. Say 3 vets examine your horse and one thinks the horse shouldn’t race… should the ruling be unanimous, majority, one dissension, any appeal??
Look how often we see in this BB where there is a horse (not race horse) with some sort of ‘soundness’ issue and 2 or 3 vets give 2 or 3 different DXs and treatments. I am fine that vets don’t agree until that ‘disagreement’ influences something like a horse racing or not. And then what is the recourse other than ‘whoops’, when a unanimous agreement viewed horse breaks down. Still the trainers fault??
Exactly. I’m not even “demanding” a hearing, etc. without knowing more… I’m just asking them to throw us a darn bone as to why they felt this was necessary to improve safety. You can’t rule someone off the track in multiple jurisdictions without some sort of explanation.
Even a simple statement to the press like, “after necropsy results and surveillance of his barn, we found evidence that horses’ welfare was being put at risk.” They cite the number of breakdowns he had, they cite his past violations (which aren’t even as egregious as some other active trainers)… any thinking person is going to question the circumstance when those are the only two pieces of evidence presented.
I am so sick of every single racing organization in this country being painfully bad at public relations.
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Yes they can. It’s a private business and they don’t want him participating any longer. No one I know knows exactly what went down, since I’m on the east coast, but everyone seems to be in agreement that something went down. He is known to train them hard. Of note, his win % dropped from 22-25% pre 2016 to 17-18% in 2016 through today. Maybe there is some kind of history of him relying on something other than horsemanship to win races. And now his breakdown rate is high, and so he is gone. Pure conjecture, mind you.
@Palm Beach Maybe I should reword that.
You shouldn’t rule someone off the track in multiple jurisdictions without some sort of explanation, unless you are deliberately trying to start a dumpster fire.
I feel similarly to you that something was likely up. I think it’s perfectly plausible the ruling was justified. But I can’t say that for sure because they haven’t told us anything.
The situation could have been handled with more competence in my opinion, especially when the state of the sport is literally at stake. Racing has for too long subscribed to the tight-lipped mode of operation. I understand the mindset that it’s a private business and the general public doesn’t need to know the inter-workings of a business… yet racing is also a publicly regulated sport, and one that many voters would like to see abolished. Many of those voters have opinions formed out of nothing but ignorance, so when you remain tight-lipped about your procedures, the ignorant voters start controlling the narrative with the product of their own imaginations.
Or at least that’s been my long-standing view.
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Hollendorfer can always race in Louisiana; in the past, they have refused reciprocal suspensions. I’m sure they would be delighted to have him.
In regard to NYRA’s flip-flop, the conspiracy theorist in me can visualize a back channel communication between TSG and NYRA which went along the lines of “We banned the guy, don’t make us look bad by taking his entries. BTW, bettors at our tracks,simulcasting outlets and ADWs all over the country are really going to miss wagering on the NYRA signal.”
Just a thought.
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He isn’t suspended though so there is nothing to reciprocate.
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I looked at Equibase. It is not nearly as stark as you are painting it. In the last few years, he’s been 17 -19 %, he was 20 % in 2015 and 20 % in 2012. At the same time, he’s also becoming more of a national figure and running in stakes races nationally. He really didn’t have a break out year nationally until 2010 with Blind Luck, which probably contributed to the Hall of Fame the following year and then of course he had Songbird. Oh sure, he had Event of the Year and Hystericalady but 2015 is really the new era for him when he is running horses for national barns that cost a mint at the sales.
The problem is that you can’t drop those to win and it is bound to take a beating on your win percentage. (Except for Baffert who always struck me as curiously immune.)
Speaking of Baffert, his win percentage went down double digits this year, from 32% last year to 19 % this year with the new protocols in place. Shall we apply the same rules?
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My other thought is that the NYRA execs are thinking to themselves “God help us if he has a breakdown in a big race.”
They’ve seen this show.
I’m not so sure. Has anyone looked at numbers in terms of percentages? Cassidy had one (which I guess is allowable) but Jerry has to have three or four times the horses.
Like I said, plausible… not certain by any means. You would know far better than I would, actually racing against him.
I did exactly as you suggested with percentages when the news broke-- it may have been the first time I ever willingly went to the horse racing death count website, to figure out the trainers involved so I could crunch the numbers.
It’s tough to make anything heads or tails of the numbers, though. At least that’s what I thought. He’s one of the top 10 largest operations at Santa Anita. So many of the people who lost horses are considerably smaller barns, some only making 10-20 starts or less the entire meeting.
I worked for Mike Gill. Breakdowns were unfortunately all too common in my life for a period of time. Ironically, I had a front row seat for far more catastrophic ones a few years later, working for a much adulated horseman whom no one would blame. Sometimes you can’t predict it coming at all. JH’s numbers were concerning, but I don’t think having the most breakdowns alone is enough of a reason for this, and I’d like to believe those in control hold the same line of thinking.
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Breakdown percentage for trainers? Is it online?
Not to my knowledge, but you can easily pull trainer stats for Santa Anita and calculate the percentage of breakdowns per starts. With his 4 breakdowns per 160 starts, Hollendorfer comes out to 2.5%. Cassidy’s 1 breakdown out of 56 starts comes out to 1.7%. But Ron McAnally’s 1 breakdown in 7 starts comes out to 14% for the meeting.
So if you want to go strictly by numbers, there are people who look far worse on paper than Hollendorfer. Are they just going to ban all of the Hall of Famers based on numbers?
I didn’t make a spreadsheet or anything, I was just curious when they announced Hollendorfer was out, knowing he had one of the larger stables.
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And if one is using breakdown count as the “ban” metric, then every meet there will be one trainer who has the most breakdowns by count. There just will be… so every meet the trainer with the largest breakdown count is banned? (note that I said ‘count’ vs ‘percent’ as I would agree that percent is maybe a more likely metric but still, I think a risky road to go down without knowing trainer history including the types of horses and races they participate the most in.)
For me, ‘not safe’ just doesn’t cut it as justification.
