Racing had to navigate turbulent seas in 2019

“Oh yes, the past can hurt. But from the way I see it, you can either run from it or learn from it.”

– The character Rafiki, in “The Lion King”

As 2019 comes to an end, before bidding it “good riddance” and hurriedly turning the page to 2020 for a fresh start after a year that forced all of racing to examine the way it conducts its business, the philosophical musings written for a movie cartoon character might well summarize the crossroads at which the sport has arrived.

So, will racing run from its issues, or learn from them?

To be sure, there was plenty from which to learn, starting with a crisis in Southern California over horse fatalities that has impacted policies on racing, training, surface management, track management, medication, and horsemanship. Countless lives have been altered, and the reverberations are still being felt across the country, be it policies tracks are enacting or debating, or, specific to California, jockeys leaving and trainers relocating or splitting their strings.

The news that began in Southern California and then spread across the country overshadowed just about anything that was done on the track this year. And there were some terrific performances and achievements. Bricks and Mortar, the front-runner for Horse of the Year, won all six of his starts at six different tracks, five in Grade 1 races, including the Breeders’ Cup Turf. His jockey, Irad Ortiz Jr., and trainer, Chad Brown, both set single-season records for purse earnings by their horses, both topping $30 million.

Mitole was brilliant from six furlongs, the distance at which he won the Breeders’ Cup Sprint, to a mile, the distance at which he defeated an outstanding field that included McKinzie and Thunder Snow in the Metropolitan Handicap. The star-crossed Maximum Security, denied victory in the Kentucky Derby, bounced back from a medical emergency in late summer to win a pair of stakes at year’s end, including the prestigious Cigar Mile. Uni and Got Stormy beat the boys in important Grade 1 mile races on turf. Flavien Prat won the biggest races in both the United States and Canada, capturing the Kentucky Derby and Queen’s Plate.

But all that was dwarfed by the ominous cloud that covered the sport the last 10 months of the year. The attention the situation received was widespread, including a report on HBO’s “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel,” and a news brief in Time magazine headlined, “Why are so many racehorses dying?”

The spike in fatalities at Santa Anita came during the first two months of a meeting which, during a rainy winter, required constant sealing and unsealing of the track. Santa Anita subsequently was closed for much of the month of March, and ended up losing 23 racing days over four months.

The Los Alamitos meet that followed comprised nine of the originally scheduled 12 days. Review panels were set up to screen entries, and enhanced veterinary checks were enacted. Much of this already was being done by Del Mar, whose summer meet was completed without a single fatality from 2,372 starters in its 297 races. In a year of tumult, the Del Mar summer meeting was a welcome respite.

Politicians ranging from California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, to its senior U.S. Senator, Dianne Feinstein, had racing in their sights after all but ignoring it previously. Feinstein went so far as to repeatedly request that Santa Anita temporarily stop racing. Many of the policies that have been enacted, or are being discussed – like rules regarding the whip, or how to proceed in extreme weather – are the result of pressure from Sacramento.

Santa Anita received a boost from the Breeders’ Cup, which voted to keep the 2019 event at Santa Anita. The championships went off without a hitch until the last 15 seconds of the Classic, when Mongolian Groom suffered a fatal injury, casting a pall over the day. The Breeders’ Cup said an independent evaluation regarding the fatality would be done by Dr. Larry Bramlage.

The hiring of the intelligent, level-headed Craig Fravel, who left the Breeders’ Cup in the fall to head up The Stronach Group as its chief executive officer of racing operations, should help bring improvements and stability to the overall scene in Southern California. Emotions, though, are still raw with trainers, who felt they were being blamed, without evidence, for the spike in injuries. Jerry Hollendorfer, a Hall of Fame trainer who had a spike in fatalities from horses in his care, was thrown out of Stronach Group properties, not for violating rules, but because TSG can do so since its facilities are private property, an opinion that was upheld in court.

An investigation by the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office, released in December, found no “evidence of criminal activity or unlawful conduct” related to any fatalities at Santa Anita.

In the wake of the issues at Santa Anita, a coalition of major tracks – including the three that host the Triple Crown – and the Breeders’ Cup formed the Thoroughbred Safety Coalition, with its stated goal pushing for changes in medication policy and other ways of reducing racing injuries.

Compared to 12 months ago, significant strides have been made regarding equine health. Sales companies, for instance, now ban off-label use of bisphosphonates. The bar has been raised in terms of requirements horses must meet in order to race. Santa Anita recently installed a Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scanner.

But racing seems no closer – all these months later – to having a unified, consistent way to present accurate information, or to counter unfounded and erroneous claims made by organizations whose stated objective is to see the sport eliminated.

The Kentucky Derby, for the first time, had a horse disqualified from victory for an incident that occurred during the race. The debate over whether Maximum Security should have been taken down will rage for years. After the race, the stewards put out a statement and refused to take questions, a tactic that was criticized and has led to discussion about ways to improve communication between racing’s referees and its patrons on a daily basis.

The 2018 Derby and Triple Crown winner, Justify, was in the news in 2019 owing to a report that he was one of seven horses who had tested positive for scopolamine in 2018, but had the case thrown out without public acknowledgement. The California Horse Racing Board was criticized for the way it handled that situation and enacted a new policy regarding the reporting of positive tests to try to be more transparent.

In Illinois, the hope that came from having a gaming bill passed was quickly dashed when the owners of Arlington Park, Churchill Downs Inc., failed to file for a casino license, calling into doubt the long-term viability of one of the nation’s most gorgeous racetracks, and certainly the most important one in the state.

In New Jersey, the biggest card of the year – Haskell Day – was truncated and delayed owing to oppressive heat and humidity that caused the cancellation of racing that day at Saratoga and other tracks in the East. It was a variation of a theme that has played out most noticeably in California – just what weather and track conditions are truly safe, and which are so extreme, for horses and humans, as to require cancellations?

In New York, the chief executive officer and president of the New York Racing Association, Chris Kay, was dismissed after having employees at the company work on his private residence, an illegal and embarrassing gaffe that was dealt with quickly and resulted in a deserved promotion from within the company for David O’Rourke.

The consolidation of racing continued, with historic Suffolk Downs becoming the latest track to close. Gaming companies continued to find value in tracks in states where gambling is expanding, leading to the sales of Ellis Park, Mountaineer, and Turfway.

In addition to Bricks and Mortar, Got Stormy, Maximum Security, Mitole, and Uni, there were a number of other horses who shined.

Midnight Bisou, good at 3, was terrific at 4, winning 7 of 8 starts, three Grade 1, while racing from coast to coast. Omaha Beach, among the horses in Southern California whose spring campaign had to be adjusted when racing was suspended, won the Arkansas Derby going 1 1/8 miles, then after missing the Kentucky Derby owing to an entrapped epiglottis, returned months later to win a Grade 1 sprint going six furlongs.

City of Light, winner of the 2018 Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile, headed off to stud following an overpowering victory in the Pegasus World Cup. McKinzie, named for the late racing executive Brad McKinzie, a close friend of trainer Bob Baffert's, won the Whitney just 15 days after the passing of the popular Marylou Whitney, the owner, breeder, and socialite who was the First Lady of Saratoga, resulting in one of the most emotionally meaningful moments of the year.

Annals of Time returned from a layoff of nearly 21 months and in his third start back won the Sword Dancer, adding another Grade 1 win for the Bricks and Mortar team of trainer Brown and owners Seth Klarman and William Lawrence. Tom’s d’Etat, like Annals of Time an older horse who had to be nursed through injuries, got his deserved Grade 1 victory in the Clark, rewarding the work of trainer Al Stall Jr.

Tom Amoss turned in one of the best training achievements of the year by getting Serengeti Empress ready for a smashing victory in the Kentucky Oaks in her first start after she bled in the Fair Grounds Oaks, a win that again showed therapeutic medication can have legitimate uses. Covfefe, perhaps the first horse named for a typo on Twitter, trumped her competition in the Test and Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Sprint, putting her in position to win at least one (female sprinter), and perhaps two (also 3-year-old filly?), Eclipse Awards.

And on the international front, X Y Jet put his speed on display winning the Golden Shaheen and frequent North American visitor Thunder Snow repeated in the World Cup in Dubai.

The National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame at long last welcomed jockey Craig Perret, who joined the mares My Juliet, Royal Delta, and Waya as inductees. The Hall’s newest Pillars of the Turf were Ted Bassett, Christopher Chenery, Dick Duchossois, William S. Farish, John Hettinger, James Keene, Frank E. “Jimmy” Kilroe, Gladys Mills Phipps, Ogden Phipps, Helen Hay Whitney, Marylou Whitney, and Warren Wright Sr.

Scott Stevens won the George Woolf Memorial Jockey Award, joining his brother, 1996 winner Gary, and making the Stevenses the first brothers so honored.

Among those who chose to retire this past year were two popular figures, Fasig-Tipton’s Terence Collier and trainer Scooter Dickey.

In addition to Marylou Whitney, many prominent racing personalities passed, including Hall of Fame jockey Randy Romero, steeplechase riding and training Hall of Famer Tommy Walsh, and journalist Jack Whitaker.

The lengthy list of those who died included owners and breeders Mike Anderson, Alan Booge, Harvey Clarke, Ed Cox Jr., Morton Fink, Dan Gatto, Bill Graham, Sam Lima, Clay Murdock, Irv Noren, Gustav Schickedanz, Edward Stone II, Philip Teinowitz, John Toffan, and Phyllis Mills Wyeth; trainers Gerry Aschinger, Don Bennett, Vinnie Blengs, Kim Boniface, David Cross Jr., Henry Dominguez, Kathleen Feron, Richard Hazelton, Jerry Lavigne, Richard Lundy, Chuck Marikian, Jim Morgan, Jimmy Picou, Gerry Russell, Roger Stein, Troy Taylor, Joe Walls, Don Warren, William Wolfendale III, Troy Young, and Joseph Zoppi; and jockeys John Bell, Herbie Hinojosa, Jerry Nicodemus, David Pettinger, Pede Prentice, Doug Small Jr., Shawn Spikes, Senon Trevino, Rudy Turcotte, Cheryl White, and Bobby Yanez.

Entertainer Tim Conway, a longtime owner and supporter of causes for jockeys, died, as did journalists Rick Cushing, Steve Davidowitz, Bob Fortus, John McEvoy, John McCririck, Ronnie Virgets, and Jim Wells; photographers Garry Jones, Trevor Jones, and Bill Scherlis; racecaller Dick Woolley, chart caller Mike Ryan, racing executives Carmen Barrera, Liz Bracken, Thomas F. Carey, Sherwood Chillingworth, Ronald Ferraro, Bob Flynn, Donnie Fuller, Roger Ramey, and Jon Schuster; stewards George Slender and Gary Wilfert, veterinarians Dr. Melbourne Teigland and Dr. Paul Thorpe, starter Spec Alexander, attorney Tim Cone, horsemen J.J. Crupi and J.B. McKathan, bloodstock agent Bob Fox, exercise riders Juan Becerra and Janice Norwesh, Darby Dan Farm’s Tracie Willis, and Bob Fletcher of the Winners Foundation.

It was the training death of Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile winner Battle of Midway, who had returned to action after being found sub-fertile at stud, that first brought national attention to the spike in fatalities at Santa Anita. Other prominent horses who died this year included Kentucky Derby winner Sea Hero, retired Breeders’ Cup winners Pleasantly Perfect and Six Perfections, 2018 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf winner Line of Duty, current stakes-class runners Amalfi Sunrise, Ballard High, Divine Miss Grey, Magnum Moon, My Majestic Rose, Orra Morr, Sea of Class, and Will Call, and the international sensation Wicklow Brave, who raced with distinction on the flat and over the jumps.

Other horses who passed included recent retirees Delta Prince and Roaring Lion, old-time favorites Boom Towner, Evening Attire, Lakeway, and Pepper’s Pride; aged legends Gala Spinaway, 31, and Quick Call, 35; fellow retirees Bint Marscay, Carterista, Geri, and Yankee Fourtune; stallions Atticus, Deep Impact, Jump Start, Menifee, Morning Line, and Pioneerof the Nile; prominent broodmares Cappucino Bay and Lisa Danielle, and retired steeplechase greats Good Night Shirt and McDynamo.