Drug bust shows myth of horse racing ‘oversight.’ We need Horseracing Integrity Act.

On March 9, federal prosecutors in New York indicted 27 people, including trainers, equine veterinarians, and drug compounders, in the largest drug bust ever to hit U.S. horse racing. The indictments sent shock waves through the industry and many believe there are more to come. If even half of the allegations are proved, long held suspicions that horse racing has a serious, widespread, and ugly equine drug problem will be confirmed.

Cries of outrage followed the indictments, just as they have in other sports when cheating has been revealed. Scorn has been heaped not only upon those charged, but also upon the regulatory system that allowed and even encouraged the alleged conduct. And I use “system” loosely, because what we have is no system at all. Instead, it is a patchwork of state-by-state racing authorities that are neither uniform nor sufficiently tough in permitted and prohibited drugs, testing, laboratory accreditation and protocols, investigations, prosecutions, and penalties.

Compared to other major horse racing nations, our regulation of drugs is weak, fragmented, and ineffective. Horse racing is an international sport that operates coast-to-coast in the United States. Just look at the Kentucky Derby: major prep races for it are run in Florida, Louisiana, Arkansas, New York, California, and Kentucky. When a race is run at Keeneland, people bet on it from all over the country. American horses travel to England to run at Ascot every June, and during the Breeders’ Cup, American horses run against competitors from around the world.

Which brings us to an important set of questions: Shouldn’t every United States race be run under the same rules that are tough enough to prevent cheating? Shouldn’t American regulations be in sync with international rules? And shouldn’t the entire regulatory framework be designed and operated to protect horses and the brave jockeys who ride them? Much of the industry is advocating for drug reform, and we believe that the answer to these questions is, “Yes!”

The Horseracing Integrity Act (HIA) is landmark reform legislation sponsored by Reps. Andy Barr (R-KY) and Paul Tonko (D-NY), whose districts include America’s two most admired racetracks, Keeneland and Saratoga. The bill is rapidly moving through Congress, with a massive 250 co-sponsors in the House and 24 in the Senate. The bill would establish a national organization that will provide uniform and rigorous regulations to control medications and stop doping. The new organization would be an independent, private, self-regulatory authority controlled by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) and horse industry experts free of conflicts. It would be a marriage of the world’s most effective anti-doping agency and persons who know every facet of horse racing.

When this legislation was first introduced by Reps. Barr and Tonko in 2015, industry leaders such as The Jockey Club, Breeders’ Cup, Keeneland, Kentucky Thoroughbred Association, WHOA, and The Humane Society of the United States supported it. But it was opposed by horsemen’s groups, equine veterinarians, the organization of state racing regulators, some tracks, and others. The reasons were varied: the loss of race-day Lasix (a legal performance-enhancing drug), confidence that state regulators were doing their jobs, fear that USADA didn’t understand horse racing, and the cost of a national program.

Five years later, 27 trainers, veterinarians, drug compounders, and others are arrested for doping – a cheating scheme perpetuated right under the noses of tracks and state regulators who opposed (and still oppose) the federal legislation. And all of this was done by investigators who supposedly “didn’t know anything about horse racing.”

If opponents of the HIA had worked with the supporters to fashion universally accepted reforms, much of the past two years’ damage to horse racing could have been avoided. Moving forward, the industry needs to act together to make our sport the safest and cleanest possible – to restore integrity to horse racing.

And the obvious place to start is with passage of the Horseracing Integrity Act.

William Lear is vice chairman of the Jockey Club and a trustee of Keeneland Race Track.