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00:00For the love of the horse, for generations to come.
00:28Good morning, it is January 18th at 1109 a.m. and welcome to another edition of the TDN
00:33Writer's Room podcast.
00:34I'm your host Bill Finley, I'm a correspondent for the TDN and I co-host a radio show on
00:39Sirius XM every Saturday with Dave Johnson.
00:41Please tune in.
00:42Hey guys, happy January 18th, I'm Randy Moss with NBC Sports with Lucy Standing Guard in
00:48the background.
00:49Zoe Cabman here with First Racing and Santa Anita and XBTV, Doodles right behind me.
00:55It's January the 18th and I am flying through dry January guys, I just wanted to throw that
01:01out there.
01:02Wait a minute, dry January, I don't follow, fill me in.
01:05It's raining a lot out there, what do you mean?
01:08Oh, I see, okay, okay, duh, sorry about that.
01:12Yes, Santa Anita of course had to cancel on Saturday and on Monday over the weekend.
01:18Speaking of Santa Anita, I wanted to kick off the story, you know, look, as writers
01:23we spend a lot of time talking about the bad news in horse racing because frankly there
01:27is a lot of bad news.
01:28It's nice to talk about the good news and going back to 2019 was one of the darkest
01:33periods in racing history.
01:35Lucy just moved by the way, I mean about an eighth of an inch.
01:38It's shocking, I know.
01:40Yeah, shocking.
01:41Okay, 2019, one of the worst chapters in horse racing history when there was all those breakdowns
01:47at Santa Anita.
01:48It was front page news in the LA Times and on the six o'clock news every night.
01:53I mean, a really awful period and some people were really thinking that the sport was going
01:57to perhaps be outlawed in California.
02:00Zoe's employer, the Stronach Group First Racing, they got together and said, we've got to fix
02:04this darn thing.
02:05Fast forward about three and a half years later, boy have they fixed it and they provided
02:09us with some statistics this week.
02:11In 2022, there was not a single breakdown in a dirt race at Santa Anita during the entire
02:19year.
02:21There were 12 fatalities, we want the number to be zero, but they were along the lines
02:25of other things, some sudden deaths, there were horses in training.
02:28In the afternoon, racing on the dirt, no fatalities and that comes on the heels of a Del Mar year
02:34where at both meets, zero fatalities during racing as well.
02:39Randy, certainly welcome good news and you've got to give the Stronach Group tremendous
02:44amount of credit.
02:46It looks like they've gone from one extreme to the other.
02:48Well, they deserve a tremendous amount of credit.
02:50I don't think, given the stature of the animal rights lobby nowadays in the 21st century,
02:58I don't think it's a sensationalistic take to say that the very existence of Santa Anita
03:05might have been in question unless they turned things around and it took a group effort.
03:10It took the racetrack, it took the veterinarians, it took the horsemen to all collaborate and
03:16try to get this thing turned around.
03:19Unfortunately, I don't think you're going to get nearly as much news coverage on the
03:26TV and in the newspapers about what Santa Anita has done positively since then as you've
03:32got in terms of negative coverage back in 2019, but that's just the nature of the news
03:36cycles and the nature of the beast.
03:39But yes, I agree that they deserve a tremendous amount of credit for getting a handle on this.
03:45Zoe, you're right there, your boots on the ground.
03:48What is going right?
03:49I mean, everything is going right.
03:51Kudos to the Stronach Group, First Racing and the horsemen because there are a lot of
03:57old school horsemen out here that didn't take lightly to the veterinary checks that went
04:02on.
04:03But at the end of the day, you have to acquiesce for horse racing to move forward in California.
04:08There's a vegan restaurant on every corner.
04:11This is a different country we're living in, in Southern California.
04:15California on a whole is completely different.
04:18I always feel like we're on an island out here.
04:21And as far as horse racing, we are.
04:24And the fact that we had to acquiesce just a little bit to Peter, a lot of people were
04:28saying, well, why are you bending over to placate those guys?
04:33Well, this is the world that we live in, and we were in very, very much danger of shutting
04:40down.
04:41So I think there were, let me see, I wrote it down, 5,381 veterinary exams performed
04:48on 4,673 horses last year in California.
04:55And it just goes to show the scrutiny these horses are under, and some of them pass and
04:59some of them don't.
05:01It's down to the horsemen and the vets on a whole.
05:04And of course, we have the best track maintenance here in Southern California as well, to just
05:09get this thing going and it's going in the right direction.
05:12It's not perfect.
05:14I'm not sure it could ever be perfect when you're dealing with four-legged animals, but
05:19it's certainly on the right track.
05:21Yeah.
05:22And one of the things I learned from writing this story was how successful these veterinary
05:27checks have been.
05:29And basically, to put it into layman's language, they basically put all these horses under
05:35a microscope, and they're not going to let anything slip through the cracks.
05:39But it makes me wonder about racing as a whole.
05:42And I don't have the numbers in front of me, but when the Jockey Club puts out its numbers
05:46at the end of the year, end of the fiscal year, the amount of breakdowns is going down,
05:51but it's not going down as dramatically as it has, or anywhere near as dramatically as
05:55it has at Santa Anita, which leads me to say, why isn't everybody doing what they're
06:02doing at Santa Anita?
06:03I know it may not be that practical for other tracks.
06:06I'm sure it's very costly, it's very time consuming, and maybe a lesser track just doesn't
06:12have the manpower to do something like this.
06:15But my goodness, if this is working as well as it is at Santa Anita to have these veterinary
06:19checks, it should be done everywhere.
06:22We shouldn't just be talking about Santa Anita having no breakdowns.
06:25We should be talking about horse racing having as close to no breakdowns as we can possibly
06:29get.
06:30Yeah, well, unfortunately, it's not just the case in horse racing, it's the case with every
06:34other sport in life in general.
06:36A lot of times these draconian measures aren't taken, unless something's put under a microscope
06:42and a racetrack is getting, you know, tremendous negative publicity.
06:45Arlington Park had a similar situation way back when, and it led to them switching from
06:49a dirt surface to a synthetic surface.
06:52It's been a whole sea change out in Southern California.
06:55When you think back to what happened in 2019, it wasn't just the lack of veterinary oversight,
07:01it wasn't just trainers perhaps pushing the envelope a little too much.
07:06If you remember, there was a pretty strong weather component to that in 2019, a very
07:11rainy season.
07:13The track had to be compacted to get the water off of it over and over and over.
07:18And now look what happened this past weekend, very rainy weekend and Santa Anita just said,
07:23we're going to cancel Saturday's racing car.
07:26You would never have seen that, I don't think, back in 2019.
07:29So a lot of things have changed.
07:31And there's a statute that's been put forward that if the track is sealed, they have to
07:36have a meeting with the Jockeys Guild.
07:38There are like four or five different entities that have to meet together and decide whether
07:43racing is safe to go ahead.
07:45And I think they're just basically going on the side of caution, which is a very good
07:50thing.
07:51And to echo your point about Arlington, is it me?
07:53I was at Arlington during that terrible rash breakdowns I was here.
07:58I've seen firsthand, Peter camped out at Arlington Park, Peter camped out at Santa Anita, Greyhound
08:06racing is gone in Florida.
08:09So I mean, these are real things that go on unless you've seen it firsthand.
08:13I mean, there were some days it was hard to even drive in the gates at Santa Anita
08:16because they were picketing outside.
08:19This is real, absolutely real, the things that are going on.
08:23And, you know, yes, it's not sounded out in the news right now.
08:27But as far as I'm concerned, no news is good news.
08:30Right.
08:31And, you know, everybody in horse racing loves to hate Peter.
08:33And that's fine.
08:34They give you a lot of reasons to dislike them.
08:38And people, I'm sure, were very unhappy with the news coverage.
08:41Zoe, you were there.
08:43You know, from a distance, I wouldn't get the same feel that you did.
08:47But Aiden Butler, the CEO of First Racing, told me about, you know, the helicopter, you
08:51know, the buzz of the helicopters overhead.
08:54But had that not happened, I don't think we'd be where we are today.
08:58And look, you don't like it.
09:00You don't want to ever come.
09:02And you know, Peter is public enemy number one for a lot of people in horse racing.
09:06But you know, if this might have happened in 1963, it wouldn't have been a big deal.
09:11Nobody would have paid any attention to it and nothing would have been fixed.
09:15I'm not saying Santa Anita wouldn't have done the right thing anyways.
09:18But the fact that their backs were pushed against the wall by PETA and by the news media
09:24obviously made it, you know, forced the issue quite some bit.
09:28So from an ugly situation and what a lot of people, I'm sure, consider very unfair treatment,
09:35some good definitely came from that.
09:37I think a big round of applause needs to go out to Delmar as well, who has followed suit
09:43with all the protocols in place at Santa Anita.
09:46Obviously Santa Anita runs for seven months of the year, just about, and Delmar runs for
09:51almost three.
09:52So there's a little bit of difference there, but the whole of California has really banded
09:58together.
09:59Very good.