The Friday Show

Lisa Lazarus, CEO of the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority, is back on the Friday Show for another round of questions from Ray Paulick and bloodstock editor Joe Nevills. The last time Lazarus appeared, HISA’s Anti-Doping and Medication Control program was just getting under way and the Horseracing Integrity & Welfare Unit – HISA’s testing […]

The guest seat is empty this week on the Friday Show, but not for lack of trying. Given the controversy surrounding the decision by Churchill Downs Inc. to extend the company’s private property ban on Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert – which began shortly after Medina Spirit failed a drug test following his first-place […]

One of many traditions in horse racing is its resistance to change. Sometimes, however, change is necessary. For example, when COVID-19 hit in 2020 and racing in many jurisdictions was shut down, the process of taking entries changed when backstretch access was limited and gatherings of people inside of a building (i.e., a racing office) were […]

The Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority’s Anti-Doping and Medication Control program has now been in effect for one month, meaning there is one set of rules and one agency administering those rules throughout the United States (with the exceptions of Texas, whose racing commission chose not to join HISA, and Louisiana and West Virginia, which […]

The decision by a court of appeals on June 8 to reverse the New York State Gaming Commission’s minimum three-year ban of trainer Linda Rice focused on unwritten rules and common practices in a racing office. Specifically, Rice had been charged with improperly receiving names and past performances of horses entered in overnight races before […]

Marty McGee ended his long run as a writer and handicapper for Daily Racing Form in May after attending his 50th consecutive Kentucky Derby. But hardly the retiring type, the Eclipse Award-winning journalist moved into a new position as jockey agent for Joe Talamo, who began his career on the West Coast in 2006 but […]

The discourse around the rash of fatal equine injuries at Churchill Downs has onlookers inside and outside the horse racing industry searching for causes and solutions. Many have examined the 12 fatalities at Churchill from the beginning of the meet on April 29 through the end of the day on June 1, looking for patterns […]

The past several weeks have seen a rise in mainstream media coverage of racing fatalities in the lead-up to this year’s Kentucky Derby and Preakness. So far, nine horses have died at the Churchill Downs spring meet, while the Preakness undercard saw one fatality from the same barn as Preakness winner National Treasure. All this […]

“The life of the jockey has always been difficult, but the recent death of jockeys Avery Whisman and Alex Canchari by suicide have the racing industry asking itself tough questions about why it’s so challenging – and who can help,” writes Natalie Voss, editor in chief of the Paulick Report, in her two-part series earlier […]

So, you’ve won the Kentucky Derby. What comes next? For Ramiro Restrepo, co-owner of 2023 Derby winner Mage, what came next was an urgent search for a phone charger, followed by an outpouring of love and congratulations unlike anything he’d ever seen. Restrepo, who co-owns Mage with OGMA Investments, Sterling Racing, and CMNWLTH, is a […]