Lisa Lazarus

By Scott Finley After an opening day of casino and conventional gaming panels, the focus of Wednesday sessions was on developments in racing, including a review of the newly launched Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act and a thoughtful panel on how fixed-odds betting can positively impact the American horseracing industry. Lisa Lazarus, newly appointed CEO of the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority (HISA) spoke of the challenges her organization has faced in launching the initial phase of the Federal Statute that created HISA. Of the 21 states that host live...

Barely six weeks into its existence as the sport's national rule enforcer, the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority (HISA) has spent $1.8 million defending itself in four separate lawsuits currently pending or under appeal in federal court. But the true irony behind the spiraling costs of the anti-HISA litigation is that almost all entities--owners, trainers, jockeys, tracks, racing commissions and states--are going to have to pay twice, regardless of the final outcomes of those complex lawsuits. That's because plaintiffs like the Jockeys' Guild and various horsemen's associations will spend their...

Edited Press Release The Jockey Club released the agenda for its Annual Round Table Conference on Matters Pertaining to Racing, which will be held as an in-person event for the first time since 2019 and hosted for the first time at the Saratoga Springs City Center in Saratoga Springs, New York. Scheduled for Sunday, Aug. 14, at 10 a.m. ET, the conference will also be streamed on The Jockey Club's website, www.jockeyclub.com, and Facebook page, facebook.com/USJockeyClub. Chairman Stuart S. Janney III will preside over the conference. As the keynote speaker,...

Early last month, Lisa Lazarus, CEO of the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority, set industry tongues wagging when indicating that horses unregistered with HISA by the launch date of the Horse Racing Integrity and Safety Act (HISA) would be scratched if entered to race. With HISA D-Day now upon the industry, the California Horse Racing Board (CHRB) offered guidance Friday about how it would be handling unregistered horses both this weekend and the weeks ahead, as per revised guidance from the HISA Authority. The long and short of it is...

The states of Louisiana and West Virginia are at the forefront of a new federal lawsuit filed late Wednesday that seeks to block the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act (HISA) from going into effect when the clock strikes midnight on Friday. The defendants, who consist of the HISA Authority, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), and board members and overseers of both entities, have allegedly violated the Fourth, Seventh and Tenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, plus the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), which governs the process by which federal agencies...

With the July 1 implementation date for the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act rapidly approaching, there has been a feverish push to get tens of thousands of horsemen and horses registered in time as well as an education effort to get the industry's stakeholders up to speed on the Act's myriad rules and regulations. Tuesday, Lisa Lazarus, the CEO of the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority--the governing body tasked with implementing HISA--joined the TDN Writers' Room presented by Keeneland as the Green Group Guest of the Week to provide updates...

With the July 1 implementation date for the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act rapidly approaching, there has been a feverish push to get tens of thousands of horsemen and horses registered in time as well as an education effort to get the industry's stakeholders up to speed on the Act's myriad rules and regulations. Tuesday, Lisa Lazarus, the CEO of the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority--the governing body tasked with implementing HISA--joined the TDN Writers' Room presented by Keeneland as the Green Group Guest of the Week to provide updates...

I have been following with interest the interviews with Liza Lazarus in the TDN. Excellent stuff, particularly today's piece concerning doping procedures. I sincerely hope the aptly-named Ms. Lazarus can bring racing back from the dead and I applaud the new transparency of publication of test results along with the accelerated hearing and adjudication timelines. A great step forward. However, I can't see the advantage of reducing possible sanctions for controlled therapeutic medication offences to make a distinction between such offences and those concerning banned substances. This is a bit...

Bit by bit, the pieces of the puzzle are slotting into place for the Anti-Doping and Medication Control (ADMC) component of the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act, set to go into effect at the start of next year. Last month, that program was designated an agency to officially run it--namely Drug Free Sports International, an organization that has helped administer drug testing programs to a slew of major human sports leagues. Then, last week, the draft ADMC rules were for put out public comment. These draft rules can be found...

Facing a July 1 federal mandate to get all licensed personnel and actively racing Thoroughbreds registered in accordance with the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act (HISA), representatives from that organization's Authority team fielded questions from industry participants Friday in an online "town hall" forum, where the most pertinent query had to do with whether horses will get scratched if their online HISA registrations are incomplete by that deadline. The short answer, according to the HISA Authority's chief executive officer, Lisa Lazarus, is yes. But her slightly longer explanation tells us...

Last week, TDN launched a cheat sheet to help guide industry participants through the launch of the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act (HISA) on July 1. Since then, we have been fielding unanswered questions that industry participants have about the process to register, and about the new playing field come July 1, forwarding them to HISA for response. Over the weekend, HISA CEO Lisa Lazarus addressed a common registration problem bedeviling the system, with HISA's text message verification codes often been misclassified by telecommunications providers as spam. In short: While...

Dear Thoroughbred racing community stakeholder, We appreciate your assistance in spreading the word on the need to register with HISA before the Racetrack Safety Program takes effect on July 1, 2022. It has come to our attention that some users have recently experienced technical difficulties with the HISA registration platform. The primary issue has been with the two-factor authentication system that relied on text messaging, a standard measure to ensure an additional layer of protection. Our technology team has learned that, despite the success of earlier tests, HISA's text message...