ARCI

Edited Press Release Racing regulators from across North America who are members of the Association of Racing Commissioners International (ARCI) met Thursday to consider a new aggressive approach being utilized in Oklahoma to safeguard horses utilizing "Emergency Protective Orders." This temporarily excludes horses in the care of trainers whose horses have demonstrated an abnormal and materially elevated pattern of severe post-race distress, including repeated incidents in which horses were unable to safely leave the track under their own power. To date three trainers have received such orders, effectively excluding 171...

The issue of computer assisted wagering (CAW) is not new and it is clearly time that it be revisited given the extent to which it has grown. Bettor concerns are valid and the question has always been whether anyone, large or small, is given an unfair advantage that is not available to anyone else. Phrases and words like "racketeering," "pool-rigging enterprise," and "insider bettors" conjure up images of insider trading and criminal activity which, if proven, could then warrant criminal prosecution and make those convicted ineligible for a racing license....

Earlier this month, the Association for Racing Commissioners International (ARCI) issued a 28-page report assessing the effectiveness of the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act (HISA) after three years of operations. The report covers a lot of ground, including the federal authority's approach to collecting and calculating its equine fatality statistics. In this regard, the ARCI identified several points of concern, namely:   That "there has been no uniform reporting policy governing how this data is collected and maintained."   That in 2024, HISA reported thirteen fewer equine deaths than those...

Yet New Mexico Commission Asserts Neither Drug Allowed at State Level, Either by T.D. Thornton A federal lawsuit filed last month by a Sunland Park-based veterinarian against the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority (HISA) and Horseracing Integrity and Welfare Unit (HIWU) is alleging anti-constitutionality claims similar to a number of other cases that have been swirling at various levels of the federal court system for the past four years. But the civil complaint initiated July 3 in United States District Court (District of New Mexico) by Jason Scott, DVM, does...

The Association of Racing Commissioners International's (ARCI) annual Animal Welfare and Integrity Conference, which was hosted at Churchill Downs during the afternoon of Thursday, May 8, heard from a pair of panels that specifically delved into how social media can impact the industry, according to a Friday press release from the organization. The 'Thoroughbred Racing Roundtable' included West Point Thoroughbreds own Terry Finley along with Churchill Downs's Vice President and General Manager Mike Ziegler and Tina Bond, an owner-breeder who is president of both the New York Thoroughbred Horsemen's Association...

Racing last year for the first time since a pair of 2017 hurricanes decimated St. Thomas's Clinton E. Phipps Racetrack in the U.S. Virgin Islands, at least six Thoroughbreds were euthanized over the course of three carded days at the track. Another horse suffered a breakdown during a workout, bringing the total to seven. Those are just some of several major issues plaguing the St. Thomas/St. John Horse Racing Commission (STT/STJ HRC), who is charged with the responsibility of regulating racing on the island. Compounding horses dying on the track,...

The Association of Racing Commissioners International (ARCI), a service provider and membership organization, has added to its board Dr. John Chancey and Connie Winn, the group said in a press release on Thursday. Both Chancey and Winn were appointed to fill vacant seats by the group's chair, Commissioner Doug Moore of the Washington Racing Commission. Dr. Chancey has been Executive Director of the Oklahoma Racing Commission since early 2023 and he currently serves as the Chair of the Drug Testing Standards and Practices Committee of ARCI. Winn, the Executive Director...

Stan Bowker, a longtime management executive who also served as a steward at several racetracks, passed away Sept. 10 in Clearwater, Florida after a long illness. After 17 1/2 years at Ak-Sar-Ben in Omaha, Nebraska where he rose to become the director of racing, Bowker made stops at Canterbury Downs and Will Rogers Downs. He was also a senior steward at Colonial Downs and spent 11 years as a judge at Oaklawn Park, Indiana Grand, and as recently as 2021, at Canterbury Park. Bowker established a consulting company to assist...

Though officials within the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act (HISA) Authority have already made huge strides forward in terms of across-the-board equine safety standards, one ongoing concern among stakeholders is that when it comes to the enforcement arm of the national program, an inflexibility in the way some cases are handled and sanctions meted out means the penalties don't always fit the crime. To discuss these concerns, the TDN recently spoke with Alan Foreman, chief executive officer of the Thoroughbred Horsemen's Association and national ombudsman on behalf of HISA and...

Since the launch of the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act's (HISA) drug testing program over a year ago, metformin has sucked up an awful lot of oxygen. Under HISA, there have been seven resolved cases and four pending cases involving metformin—perhaps not an especially large number on its own, until framed against the number of metformin cases adjudicated before the program went into effect. An Association of Racing Commissioners International's (ARCI) review of their database "going back decades" found five metformin cases for Thoroughbreds. All were from 2017 onwards. The...

The day after the Louisiana Racing Commission held an emergency meeting in which it voted to restore the Association of Racing Commissioners International (ARCI) guidelines that were governing Clenbuterol and Depo-Medrol in the state, the President of the ARCI, Ed Martin, reacted to the news in a press release. The statement is printed in its entirety. "The ARCI Model Rules process has served the horse racing industry and fans well for decades and has been a vehicle to achieve a substantially common approach to anti-doping regulation in a sport not...

Just days after announcing that a set of emergency rules were about to be enacted on June 8 that would loosen drug regulations in the state when it came to numerous medications, the Louisiana Racing Commission held an emergency meeting Tuesday in which it voted to restore the rules that had been governing Clenbuterol and Depo-Medrol. The Louisiana Racing Commission kept in place the new rules that had been enacted that covered dozens of other less controversial medications. Of the numerous drugs over which regulations were changed that, for the...