Take Two: Jockey Club, TOBA’s Transparency Program Gets Failing Grade
Whatever happened to transparency and the publication of veterinary records for Kentucky Derby starters and other graded stakes runners?
The Jockey Club and Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association initiative and website, HorseracingReform.com, lists 130 owners who have “voluntarily pledged to make available to the public veterinary records covering a 14-day period preceding the date on which any of their horses competes in a graded stakes race in the U.S. or Canada.”
However, the website lists medication records for just one horse competing in one race, that being Kentucky Oaks runner Include Betty, who finished eighth for Brereton Jones and Tim Thornton and trainer Tom Proctor. Veterinary records for Jones’ Oaks winner, Lovely Maria, were not published.
Neither were the vet records for Kentucky Derby winner American Pharoah, whose owner, Ahmed Zayat, also signed the transparency pledge. So did Kaleem Shah, owner of third-place finisher Dortmund; Sheikh Mohammed’s Godolphin Racing, owner of fourth-place finisher Frosted; John Oxley, owner of fifth-place finisher Danzig Moon; Jerry Crawford’s Donegal Racing, owner of seventh-place finisher Keen Ice; Kenny Troutt’s WinStar Farm and Barbara Banke’s Stonestreet Stables, owner of 10th-place finisher Carpe Diem; and Earle Mack, co-owner of 12th-place finisher Bolo.
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None of the vet records for these horses was published.
Several of the aforementioned are members of The Jockey Club, which, as previously stated, is behind this initiative. Other Jockey Club members who had horses running in graded stakes at Churchill Downs on Kentucky Derby day and did not follow through on their pledge included John Amerman, William S. Farish of Lane’s End, Arthur Hancock of Stone Farm, B. Wayne Hughes of Spendthrift Farm and Charlotte Weber of Live Oak Stud.
As an advertisement from HorseracingReform.com on the Paulick Report says, posting vet records “is as simple as taking a picture from your smartphone.”
Why, then, is hardly anyone following through on their pledge? Perhaps it’s because The Jockey Club and TOBA took this on as nothing more than a knee-jerk reaction to the flare-up a year ago when Steve Asmussen’s stable was infiltrated by an animal rights activist whose video created a mini-crisis for the sport’s leaders.
In the wake of that crisis, Ogden Mills Phipps, chairman of The Jockey Club, snapped his fingers and called for transparency on veterinary records for Kentucky Derby horses. It was a dismal failure then (see 2014 followup article) and a dismal failure now.
