CHRB discusses sanctioning trainers responsible for catastrophic injuries

A subcommittee of the California Horse Racing Board held a 90-minute meeting on Tuesday to discuss the possibility of drafting a regulation that would allow the board to sanction trainers whose horses suffer catastrophic injuries, a rule that would be the first of its kind in the U.S.

Dr. Greg Ferraro, the chair of the board and its Medication, Safety, and Welfare Committee, stressed in the opening remarks of the meeting that the board “does not even have a draft of what a regulation would look like” but he also said that “this is a discussion we need to have.” He reiterated that fatalities in California have been cut in half over the past two years.

“Unfortunately, that’s not good enough,” Ferraro said. “We have to do better if we want to survive and have a healthy racing environment.”

Although a variety of speakers appeared during the committee meeting, the dominant point of discussion involved a lengthy presentation by Alan Balch, the executive director of California Thoroughbred Trainers. Multiple individuals praised Balch’s commentary, which rejected the idea of a specific regulation in favor of the establishment of a committee that would examine injuries and generate recommendations on methods to reduce fatalities.

Balch said the CTT has held two board meetings on the subject of a specific regulation and conducted a conference call last week that had “more than a hundred trainers” on it.

“There are many more opinions on how we should address this matter than there are trainers,” Balch said.

Balch said that the movement to establish a rule penalizing trainers was an effort backed by groups in California that are seeking to eliminate horse racing, and that the effort would lead to a “circular firing squad” within the industry in an effort to sow discord by placing blame for injuries on a single individual, rather than recognizing that most injuries are multi-factorial. He urged that the CHRB support the establishment of an “accident prevention task force,” and he said that the CTT was prepared to lead the effort.

Balch also said that an existing CHRB rule that allows for sanctions for violations of “animal welfare” was sufficient to take action against a trainer who has shown “willful or reckless misconduct.”

“How to define them – willful or reckless misconduct – that’s the fundamental problem,” Balch said.

Balch said that the accident prevention task force he recommended would be comprised of individuals representing all constituencies in California’s racing and breeding industries. It would examine new data on synthetic surfaces versus turf and dirt; the CHRB current regulations to remove inconsistencies and “provide clear due-process guidelines”; and the expansion of continuing education to incorporate new findings about injuries and to draw in other licensees, such as riders, veterinarians, and regulators.

As is the case for all meetings held by the CHRB, the meeting ended after seven representatives of anti-racing groups were harshly critical of the racing industry and voiced support for the rule. California’s anti-racing groups have aggressively mounted public-relations campaigns to sap support for the sport over the past 10 years, and they have become far more outspoken since a spate of fatalities in the spring of 2019 at Santa Anita Park brought widespread attention to the industry’s practices.

Many of the anti-racing commentators accused the CHRB of looking the other way as trainers move horses with serious injuries off of licensed grounds so that horses could be euthanized without the fatality being recorded by the CHRB. After the public-comment period, Ferraro asked Scott Chaney, the CHRB’s executive director, to comment on the claims, and Cheney said that the board has investigated and found “zero” instances of the practice.

“These are really spurious allegations that a lot of these animal-welfare groups are making,” Chaney said.