By T. D. Thornton
A marathon six-hour California Horse Racing Board (CHRB) meeting on Thursday in Del Mar yielded the elections of a new chairperson and vice-chair on the rapidly changing board. But voting on the three most anticipated items on the larger-than-usual agenda–whip reform, the disclosure of health records of claimed horses, and the 2020 dates for the northern California circuit–all got tabled to a later date after being debated at length by regulators and stakeholders.
A fourth item of heightened interest–the granting of a racing license to Santa Anita Park for the upcoming winter/spring meet that begins Dec. 26–was approved conditionally after 47 minutes of verbal grilling from commissioners and strident protests from anti-racing activists who spoke during the public commentary period.
The CHRB voted 6-0 to greenlight Santa Anita's season with the stipulation that track officials come back before the board at the Dec. 12 CHRB meeting to present an acceptable plan of action for calling off racing and training when inclement weather or track conditions make it unsafe. That protocol could be needed to trim up to 12 race dates off Santa Anita's 104-program “flex date” calendar that the board granted earlier this year.
The makeup of the regulatory board is in flux at a time when the California racing industry is grappling with how to best implement sweeping new safety initiatives.
Two of the CHRB's most active members–former chairman Chuck Winner and former vice-chair Madeline Auerbach–are no longer with the board. Commissioner Fred Maas said Thursday's meeting would be his last, as he has declined to be reappointed. A seventh board member position remains unfilled. Two key longtime staffers, executive director Rick Baedeker (retiring in the spring) and assistant executive director Jacqueline Wagner (newly retired) will also no longer be part of the CHRB.
Gregory Ferraro, DVM, who was appointed to the CHRB in June, was elected by his peers as the new CHRB chairman. Oscar Gonzalez, who was appointed in September, was elected as the new vice-chair.
“We have made several important regulations and changes. There are many more to come,” Ferraro said after taking over the running of Thursday's meeting. “And the ones that are [expected] to come are much more difficult than the ones we've already passed, and we need to be prepared for that.
“But I can tell you, in short, the days of permissive medication are over,” Ferraro continued. “We will gradually eliminate medications and keep them away from racing [and] training. That's the goal. We expect opposition on some of these, but we are determined to carry them out in the best interests of horses and jockeys.”
The “opposition” that Ferraro alluded to was evident even when it came to other, non-medication agenda items that got pushed off Thursday's docket to future CHRB meetings. Several of the proposals that got postponed have been in the works for months, yet they got tabled largely so stakeholders could try to achieve consensus or to obtain additional information to guide the CHRB's voting.
The rule that would allow a jockey or exercise rider to carry a whip only for safety purposes–first advanced by the CHRB back in March–needed to be reworked because California's Office of Administrative Law (OAL) found a “legal flaw” during the months-long review process that Baedeker said dealt with a jockey losing his/her share of the purse as a penalty.
As a result, the CHRB presented a different version of that proposal on Thursday's that instead allowed for a disqualification for whip usage at the stewards' discretion.
Yet in the end, a desire to gather additional information on the topic–perhaps through the sharing of protocol information with the newly formed industry group the Thoroughbred Safety Coalition, which several CHRB members said is expected to weigh in on this topic–resulted in a 5-1 vote to table the whip reform measure.
The agenda item relating to a requirement that a claimed horse's medical health record be transferred to a new owner also got postponed until the Dec. 12 meeting.
During discussion, stakeholders and some CHRB members indicated a desire to include more comprehensive information in those health reports than what was initially approved at the rule's proposal stage. But amending the rule as it neared final voting triggered concerns that OAL might reject the rule in this case too, so the board voted unanimously to see if CHRB staff could first get an indication of whether the switch to more comprehensive reporting would be acceptable to the OAL before deciding to adopt it or not.
The NorCal race dates are an annually contentious issue, and this year has been no exception, with debate among stakeholders spanning months.
On Thursday, the CHRB entertained a motion to go ahead with a plan that had the backing of the California Authority of Racing Fairs, but instead opted to act on a motion to table the dates allocation until Dec. 12 after hearing from track operators and horsemen's representatives that a plan more agreeable to all parties might be hashed out over the next three weeks.
After the 6-0 vote to table the NorCal dates, commissioner Alex Solis made an apparent attempt at humor regarding the annual frustration over race dates, but his quip drew mostly stunned silence from attendees because the topic hit too close to gun violence.
“I think I have a solution,” Solis said. “I think we next time bring a few guns and [settle this like] the Wild West.”
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