Breeders' Cup says 2019 event remains set for Santa Anita

The Breeders’ Cup remains committed to running its two-day event at Santa Anita this year despite the deaths of 22 horses at the track since its meet opened on Dec. 26 and the outcry surrounding the deaths, a spokesman for the organization said on Friday.

“We have not changed our commitment to holding our event at Santa Anita later this year,” said spokesman Jim Gluckson.

However, in a statement, the Breeders’ Cup said it had not decided whether the 2019 event would be run under the house rules that Santa Anita is expected to put in place this year, including a ban on the race-day use of the anti-bleeding medication Lasix and restricting the use of the whip by jockeys and exercise riders to “corrective safety measures only.”

Santa Anita is not scheduled to resume racing until Friday, March 22, but its racing office issued an alert on Thursday saying the whip restrictions would become effective immediately. The race-day Lasix ban is expected to be put in place prior to the resumption of racing at Santa Anita, but horsemen’s organizations in California have yet to issue an official response to the plan.

“The longstanding policy of the Breeders’ Cup has been to seek consistency with international rules, including a ban on race-day medication,” the statement said. “There are many details of the California program yet to be decided or publicized. Once the program is fully formed, we will meet with our board of directors to analyze and discuss the impact of the program on the Breeders’ Cup World Championships.”

In 2012, the Breeders’ Cup banned the race-day use of Lasix in its 2-year-old races. The ban was initially planned to extend to the full slate of Breeders’ Cup races in later years, but it was scrapped after the 2013 event. At the time, several other organizations, including the American Graded Stakes Committee, also had abandoned plans to seek restrictions on race-day use of the drug.

Nearly all of the horses who race in the Breeders’ Cup are administered race-day Lasix, even those shipping in from Europe and Asia who do not normally receive the medication.

Other organizations also are taking a wait-and-see attitude about the changes announced by Santa Anita’s parent company, even as few people are willing to criticize Santa Anita’s new policies in public.

Terry Meyocks, the national manager of The Jockeys’ Guild, which represents riders, said on Friday that the guild’s board is scheduled to meet with officials for The Stronach Group early next week to discuss the new riding-crop restrictions. In the past, the guild has advocated for an existing model rule that allows stewards to fine riders for excessive or flagrant use of the whip.

California already has the most stringent whip restrictions in the U.S., and those rules were put in place in response to concerns from animal-welfare activists. Under the rules, jockeys are limited in how many times they can use the whip without giving a horse the “opportunity to respond,” which has led to hundreds of fines in the state.

Meyocks said the design of whips, which the guild prefers to call “riding crops,” has changed extensively over the past 10 years to become far less painful to horses, with enlarged and cushioned poppers replacing firm strips of leather. He said the guild is hoping to communicate those changes to Santa Anita’s management at the meeting.

“We need to have a discussion with them and then see what they decide,” Meyocks said.

Guild members have argued in the past that the whip is a vital tool in controlling horses.

Elsewhere in The Stronach Group stable of tracks, Laurel Park in Maryland issued an alert to horsemen on Friday saying that horses will be placed under “additional scrutiny” in prerace exams and in the post parade. The alert said trainers must be present for prerace exams and will need to have veterinary records available upon request.

In Northern California, The Stronach Group’s Golden Gate Fields held its first card since the announcement of the revisions on Thursday, which were also supposed to be put in place at that track as well. All the horses but one on the eight-race card were listed as receiving race-day Lasix.