Will New Rules Shift Responsibility from Trainers to Owners?

A proposed new section of regulations that could shift the ultimate responsibility for the care, condition, and treatment of horses from trainers to owners will be discussed formally for the first time when the Model Rules Committee of the Association of Racing Commissioners International (ARCI) meets Wednesday in Deadwood, South Dakota.

“The issue for the committee is whether the time has come to add a specific section to the model rules designed to increase the involvement and accountability of horse owners,” ARCI president Ed Martin wrote in a memo to Model Rules Committee members. “There has been a growing concern that the checks and balances necessary to ensure the safety of racehorses and the integrity of the race may not be functioning as well as intended as the regulatory scheme places almost total regulatory responsibility on the trainer to ensure proper care and management of the horse.”

In a phone interview with TDN, Martin underscored that the Model Rules Committee would first need to agree Wednesday whether or not to move forward with establishing a new section of rules. If it did, the next steps would involve creating a subcommittee to draft proposed language before soliciting comments from industry stakeholders that could be used to modify the draft. December would be the earliest that a modified draft comes up for consideration before the committee, he said.

“Some organizations have complained that the profit motive of an owner somehow enters into a decision [not to] put the health and welfare of the horse first,” Martin said. “I have words I would love to use [for that practice], but it would probably be impolitic.”

Martin continued, “A number of people have said to regulators that they felt that sometimes the veterinarians and trainers are caught in the middle if an owner may be putting pressure on them to perhaps run a horse they shouldn't be running…A trainer might, under such pressure, do something he or she should not do. If the trainer gets caught, should not the owner bear some of that responsibility? It's not sufficient to just lay it on the hired staff.”

Martin said that while he believed most licensees put the care of their animals first, a small percentage of owners run horses with undisclosed medical conditions or insist that their trainers and vets administer a regimented program of drugs and allegedly therapeutic practices to their entire stables, regardless of an individual horse's medically documented needs.

“When you see a horse getting routinely shot up with corticosteroids for no apparent legitimate medical reason and their joints are being routinely tapped,” Martin said rhetorically, “and then if that horse were to break down and somebody were to get hurt, what's the liability of the owner who approved the decision to run that horse knowing this information?”

Owners who were found to be flagrant or repeat offenders with a “pattern of violations” could be targeted by new rules that would bar any horse in their stable from being entered to race, Martin said.

The Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association (TOBA) does not have an official position on the proposed rule change, but will be “a very interested party to the discussions,” TOBA president Dan Metzger said.

“If it's something that can deliver higher levels of integrity, and if the right steps are involved and the right processes, I think we'd be open-minded toward looking at it,” said Metzger.

“I can see both sides of the argument,” Metzger continued. “The owner is not there every day [or] is probably [under the shed row] rarely. But at the same time, you could probably make a case if the owner bears responsibility, it's going to put a lot more pressure on the trainer to ensure that everything is held up to the highest levels of standards.”

Bob Curran Jr., vice president of corporate communications for The Jockey Club, said leaders within his organization preferred to decline comment for the time being on the issue of owner responsibility.

The ongoing task of the ARCI's Model Rules Committee is to come up with a framework of best-practice regulations. But even after new rules are recommended, it still remains up to individual state racing commissions to decide whether to adopt and enforce them.

A separate Model Rules Committee agenda item on Wednesday will deal with the proposed “excessive administration “ rule that the ARCI's Drug Testing Standards and Practices Committee (DTSP) drafted and put out for public comment in April.

That proposed regulation is designed to give state racing commissions a tool to go after the human connections of any horse found to have been “excessively” administered any substance. Trainers and veterinarians would be required to prove, as a defense, that their actions did not actually endanger the welfare of the horse. The maximum penalty would be a loss of license for up to 10 years.

But Martin said that based on a number of public comments reviewed by the DTSP when it met July 2, the committee did not approve the draft language and was of the opinion that more work needed to be done to shore up loopholes.

“There's some concern that this may enter into the regulation of veterinary medicine. It's certainly not the intent,” Martin said. “There are some people who like the concept but are not sure about the wording on it. I think that this is going to need more legal draftsmanship.”

Dr. Dionne Benson, executive director for the Racing Medication and Testing Consortium, wrote in a June 24 letter to the ARCI that “significant research would likely be required to define both 'excessive administration' and 'gross violation' for each substance in order to satisfy the ARCI's requirement for a scientific basis for threshold creation.”

Benson further commented that “standard of care criteria, such as what constitutes excessive medication, is largely under the regulation of state veterinary medical boards. These boards may very well be more rigorous than racing commissions, thus setting up a potential conflict between two state regulatory agencies.”

Dr. Mary Scollay, the equine medical director for the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission, took umbrage with a number of points, including the draft rule's attempt to define a horse's “racing ability” for the purposes of determining whether or not an administered substance caused an abnormal effect in performance.

“You're kidding, right?” Scollay wrote in a May 27 email that is included in the ARCI public comment package. “Who will determine what a horse might be capable of? The owner? The trainer? The betting public? How can this possibly be objectively determined?”

Scollay continued: “Who will determine what is accepted veterinary practice?…Will the trainer with the fat horse be sanctioned for over-administration of nutrients?…Bottom line, I support neither the document as written, nor the intent as described–given that the stewards already have the authority and duty to respond to the facts of each case as presented to them.”
Matt Iuliano, executive vice president and executive director of The Jockey Club, did not address the excessive overage rule specifically, but reiterated his organization's support for stringent enforcement of equine welfare rules when queried by TDN.

“As we have conveyed in the past, The Jockey Club believes that regulators should never be hesitant to issue meaningful penalties for conduct that threatens the health, safety and welfare of our athletes,” Iuliano said in an emailed statement. “We also encourage regulators to adopt all phases of the National Uniform Medication Program, one element of which pertains to stricter penalties for repeat violations that are reciprocally enforced among all racing jurisdictions.”

A related item on Wednesday's agenda will deal with a “horse tampering” rule that the DTSP voted without objection to advance to the Model Rules Committee. It broadly covers “any attempt to affect the racing condition or performance of a horse” through medications, substances, devices or procedures. The proposal does not address how violators would be penalized.

“What we're trying to do with both of those rules, excessive administration and horse tampering, is to create a way to prosecute cases that are over and above what you would consider an overage of administration of therapeutic medication relative to proper equine care,” Martin said. “These are attempts to essentially expand the traditional jurisdiction of state racing commissions beyond what has been the longtime focus of just post-race testing.”