Op/Ed

Stand up before you read this column. If you think Scott Blasi is the only trainer in America who has ever bad-mouthed an owner, please sit down. If you think Scott Blasi is the only trainer in America who has ever run a horse he didn't think was 100% healthy, please sit down.

Over the past few seasons, as racing has contracted, much discussion has taken place among the game's stakeholders as to which of these entities is most necessary for survival of the sport.

This morning I viewed with revulsion the video posted by PETA. The cold hard fact is that it is a snapshot of how so many racehorses are managed. Our industry is permeated with those who have no regard for the welfare of the horse, nor understanding of the growing negative perception of horse racing.

It has been a year since the New York Times published its article and the PETA video which painted then-Hall of Fame nominee Steve Asmussen and his assistant, Scott Blasi, as allegedly abusive operatives in the seedy world of horse racing. While many of us were disturbed by the images and comments made in the PETA video, most of us knew that PETA had taken questionable liberties and made several distortions in its depiction of one of racing's most successful, albeit frequently sanctioned, racing outfits. Personally, I want to see Mr. Asmussen and...

Almost a year ago, the National Basketball Association (NBA) unveiled a new website, stats.nba.com, where they did something novel to improve their sport. They released a vast statistical trove, powered by a flexible and useful database allowing fans, researchers, fantasy gamers and even team executives to investigate and study all forms of basketball data–current and historical.

I have been a member of the Kentucky Thoroughbred Association & Kentucky Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders (KTA/KTOB) for several years. I believe in supporting the entities that work tirelessly to improve our industry, and am confident that this organization has done a great deal for all of us who work with Thoroughbreds.

I am asking the many of you celebrating the on-going unraveling of the synthetic surface era to pause for a moment and consider what this means for the future well-being and safety of the thousands of race horses that have no say in this matter. The answer: a lot more of them are going to die.

I don't think anyone has missed it. On an almost monthly basis there seems to be some sort of fight about signal fees. A signal fee--the amount a home track charges others for showing their races--is negotiated between entities. Currently the Monarch group of companies are fighting with the mid-Atlantic tracks about these fees, and some customers are having a tough time betting, for example, the Gulfstream signal.

I was honored to be elected as chairman of the RMTC–the industry's scientific advisory organization consisting of 23 major racing industry stakeholder organizations – in September of 2013. I chose to accept this expanded role after participating as a board member since the RMTC's inception over a decade ago. I am passionate about RMTC's education and advocacy initiatives, particularly the RMTC's efforts to reform horse racing's national medication policy through the development and advancement of uniform medication rules, a multiple violator penalty system, laboratory accreditation / external quality assurance, and...

I contend that every race day at every major racetrack in North America a trainer cheats by sending out a horse for competition in an illegally enhanced state.

When I worked at The Blood-Horse in the winter of 1970, I remember how excited everybody was about publication of the Experimental Free Handicap. When I edited The Thoroughbred of California in the early 1970s, I remember how excited we were to see how the California-based and -bred juvenile would be treated in the weights

Back in the 1990's when slots started to enter the landscape of North American horse racing, one of the first things racetracks did was spring open the gates, making it free for everyone to enter.