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CALIFORNIA THOROUGHBRED TRAINERS
Shooting the messengers?
T
HE ancient plight of messengers bearing bad news is much with us in racing today. If for no other reason that given the advent of the Internet, hidden cameras, smart phones, and constant surveillance, there are more messengers – and more agendas – than ever before. That got me to thinking. At the dawn of recorded history, would Plutarch have been as disturbed by a messenger losing his head (literally) for delivering the wrong information, as for innocently delivering bad news? To this day, we believe it necessary to discipline children for lying or for misleading their parents or teachers; in business and politics, being mistaken has consequences, and being willfully dishonest or wrong has even more severe outcomes. In other words, messengers may deserve our disapproval – not for the sincere delivery of bad or unpleasant news, but for delivering erroneous or misleading news. This is more important than ever these days, when most of us believe (without a second thought) that “perception is reality.” Our slavish adoption of such a silly notion, with hardly a critical thought, has led to increasingly superficial acceptance of any widespread suggestion, accusation, or smear as truthful. It has empowered emotion over reason. And most of all, it has empowered those who are adept at creating perception, at the very great expense of those who believe instead that facts should inform perception. Creating false perception has apparently become more lucrative than ever. Given the marvels of modern science, it’s actually funny to consider how many people simply accept the “perception is reality” ruse. After all, we still perceive the earth to be flat, and the sun to be moving overhead, though we have been taught otherwise. Perception is most certainly not reality. Power, however, especially in politics, business, and sports, seems to be increasingly concentrated in those
06 TRAINERMAGAZINE.com ISSUE 32
By Alan F. Balch CTT Executive Director
“Racing is exceptionally vulnerable to virtually any claim or accusation because of its lack of cohesive governance” who control perceptions, rather than in those who would choose facts and considered reason. This state of affairs is extraordinarily dangerous for a dis-integrated sport like racing is in the United States. Racing is exceptionally vulnerable to virtually any claim or accusation because of its lack of cohesive governance, and difficulty in serious, timely, and straightforward communication among its many independent stakeholders and governing bodies. Never has all this been more evident than the last few years (and particularly the last few months). The New York Times – both editorially and in its coverage of racing – has become an advocate not only for insufficiently defined federal supervision of some aspects of racing, but also openly hostile to and unbalanced in its coverage of what it has editorially determined to be a “disreputable sport.” Decades ago, racing would have looked to its major racing associations to guide its public relations, as it did in racefixing scandals of old. Now, the tracks are largely if not completely silent at each bodyblow to the sport emanating from The Times. Instead, the “alphabet organizations” take to issuing statements and wringing hands, whether comprised of breeders, veterinarians, owners, horsemen, tracks, or combinations of them.
Some of these statements – presumably intended to defend the sport and advance its reputation – actually make the situation worse, particularly when they include inaccuracies! After all, correcting erroneous perceptions ought to begin with reliance on objective facts. But let us not forget that pursuing an organizational agenda seems to trump all else these days. Attacking the use of furosemide to inhibit exercise-induced equine bleeding was where the current smear of racing began in 2010. That attack originally emanated from The Jockey Club, which apparently chose to disregard the results of its own expensive study on the medication. The cudgel was then wielded by “reporters” for The Times (should I say “advocates”?) who expanded the bludgeon to include all manner of purported “performance enhancing drugs,” including furosemide as one, allegedly administered indiscriminately to race horses, resulting in sordid examples of abuse and mayhem. Here are just two key facts, largely unreported in our nation’s “newspaper of record.” A recent survey performed by the Association of Racing Commissioners International on 320,000 testing samples from race horses found 99.59% not in violation for prohibited substances. And, contrary to The Jockey Club’s much more damning public assertion, only four racing states (Florida, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Colorado) are not in the process of implementing uniform reform of medication rules. And even those four states do have their own rules, however individual they may be, and purport not to tolerate abuse of medication; they certainly do not knowingly tolerate cheating of any kind, however misguided or antiquated their procedures may be. Am I claiming that racing is pure and without problems? No. However, the serious problems we do have are magnified beyond those of any other sport for one reason: the performance and nobility of the horse. All the equestrian sports rely on the equine athlete, and racing requires its peak of exertion and therefore its highest risk. The requirements of horsemanship, rightly understood, place a far higher responsibility on its organizers and leadership and participants for those athletes than for the athletes in any other sport! Given the undeniable evolution of racing toward gaming and away from sport, our problems should be no great surprise, especially given the simultaneous rise in public questioning of any activity where an animal is the focus of attention. So it behooves us to re-double our efforts to improve
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