town hall

During a detail-crammed 90 minutes, representatives from the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act (HISA) and Horseracing Integrity and Welfare Unit (HIWU) took to a virtual town hall Thursday to talk some of the what, how and whys of the federal program's budget processes since its inception in 2022 and on into next year's yet-to-be projected cost sheet. As HISA CEO Lisa Lazarus summed up the event, "HISA operates as a service to the industry. We owe a tremendous fiduciary obligation to our stakeholders, and we take that very seriously." The...

Representatives from the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act (HISA) and the Horseracing Integrity and Welfare Unit (HIWU) hosted a Town Hall Friday to dig down into the information issued in their recent annual reports and fatality metrics. One aim of the town hall, said HISA CEO Lisa Lazarus, was to publicly "look under the hood" of the fatality numbers to better understand how they're compiled. "How do we collect these metrics? What does the process look like? Why are we very confident that they are accurate?" said Lazarus. As much...

Trainers Ron Moquett and Dale Romans joined Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act (HISA) CEO, Lisa Lazarus, on the agency's virtual town hall Monday. Both trainers sit on the HISA Horsemen's Advisory Group. A good portion of the HISA Town Hall was spent emphasizing the role of the horsemen's advisory group as a vehicle for potential change and modification in HISA's regulatory framework, having driven tweaks to the federal authority's rules on things like pre-race electrolyte use and looser sanctions for positives related to human substances of abuse (more on that...

The Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority (HISA) will host a Town Hall webinar Sept. 7 at 12:30 p.m. ET to address questions about the Anti-Doping and Medication Control (ADMC) Program. It will be the first webinar in an anticipated series to connect industry participants with HISA leadership. Both HISA and the Horseracing Integrity and Welfare Unit (HIWU) leadership will be on hand during the webinar to provide clarity on the ADMC Program's rules, regulations, processes, and procedures. The webinar is open to anyone in racing. Registration is now open and...

Last week, the research team associated with StrideSAFE--a biometric sensor mechanism capable of detecting minute changes in a horse's gait at high speed--announced that seven of eight horses that suffered catastrophic musculoskeletal cases at Churchill Downs during its most recent meet showed via post-race readouts abnormalities as soon as they left the starting gate. In a nearly two-hour town hall Monday morning, StrideSAFE founder David Lambert and Churchill Downs equine medical director Will Farmer dug into the details, discussing the findings from an ongoing study in Kentucky and fielding questions...