Natalie Voss of the Paulick Report has received a record fourth nomination this year for Team Valor International's Stan Bergstein Writing Award for a story that triggered action from Gulfstream Park against trainer Marcus Vitali.
Voss reported that Vitali had reached a deal with the state to serve a 120-day suspension and pay a $7,000 fine to resolve a long list of medication violations, but he was still watching his horses train in public and private areas of the Gulfstream property and was using a program trainer, Allan Hunter, to run them. A day later, officials from Gulfstream and The Stronach Group announced that they will no longer accept entries from Vitali or Hunter, have banned Vitali from the company's racetrack properties, and would give Hunter 10 days to remove his horses.
Additionally, Gulfstream official Tim Ritvo said the track would crack down on the use of program trainers and followed up by denying suspended trainer Kirk Ziadie access to company property and requiring his father, trainer Ralph Ziadie, to provide proof that he has not been acting as a program trainer on his son's behalf.
No other writer has garnered more than three nominations in a single year for the $25,000 Stan Bergstein Writing Award, which will be presented this fall for a fifth time by Team Valor and its founder and CEO Barry Irwin.
Voss's other nominated stories in 2016 were for a story on out-of-competition testing in the U.S., another on the vagaries of veterinarian's lists from state to state and a fourth on shadowy websites that sell dubious horse supplements.
Team Valor nominates stories throughout the year and assigns a panel of judges to select an award winner. This year's judges, for stories published between Nov. 2, 2015 and Nov. 1, 2016, are racetrack announcer Trevor Denman, Hall of Fame jockey Chris McCarron and veteran turf writers Neil Milbert, Maryjean Wall and Michael Veitch.
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