Animal cruelty

More than seven years after Maria Borell, trainer of 2015 champion sprinter Runhappy, was accused of animal cruelty to animals in the second degree, charges against her were officially dismissed Thursday in district court in Mercer County, Kentucky. Daily Racing Form reported Wednesday that Borell's attorney Russell Baldani had indicated that a proposed dismissal order had been filed earlier in the week that would lift the ban that forbade Borell from caring for horses. The Blood-Horse confirmed Thursday that the case had come to a conclusion. Borell, who was fired...

Either trainer Burton Sipp is an unwitting pariah, or racing is his witting fool. Over the last 40 years, Sipp has faced allegations involving insurance scams and dead horses, animal neglect cases, race-fixing stings and regulatory malfeasance. Not all the accusations against him have stuck. Since the mid 1990s, Sipp has been barred from applying for a racing license in New Jersey due to swirling suspicions of fraudulent practices. So he moved his tack to more welcoming pastures. For the past few years, the trainer has been dogged by allegations...

Trainer Juan Carlos Vazquez has been banned from running horses in the state of New York, according to a release from the New York State Gaming Commission. In a ruling issued July 7, the Pennsylvania Board of Stewards suspended Vazquez through Jan. 26, 2025, alleging that a horse under his care was shipped from Belmont Park to Parx Racing who was in such poor health that it had to be euthanized after its arrival. The stewards labeled Vazquez's behavior "grossly negligent, cruel and abusive." It its statement Monday, the NYSGC...

Amber Cobb, the Thoroughbred owner and trainer who had been summarily suspended by the Delaware Park stewards last month after having already served a 60-day penalty earlier in the summer for "improper or inhumane treatment" of a horse, had her license yanked again Thursday for the remaining term of its three-year issuance, through Dec. 31, 2022. Among the reasons listed in the Oct. 28 revocation ruling by the Delaware Thoroughbred Racing Commission (DTRC) were that Cobb failed to appear at a disciplinary hearing Oct. 22 that had been scheduled in...

I, like everyone else who has seen it, was utterly disgusted with not only the video depicting the actions of trainer Amber Cobb against one of the horses but also the almost complete ignorance of the Delaware Racing Commission in reducing her suspension for those actions. How this industry continues to manage to shoot itself in the foot repeatedly is just mind boggling to me. Actions that are as heinous as those displayed by Ms. Cobb require only one action, and that is immediate revocation of her license to train...