In the lead-up to the Kentucky Derby each spring, the media is about fast horses, beautiful bonnets and good juleps. But this year — even with a blue-collar favorite, California Chrome, and his made-for-Hollywood story — the narrative is different.
That’s because last month People for the Ethical Treatment for Animals, PETA, rocked an already troubled American horse-racing industry with a nine-minute undercover video and a 285-page report alleging animal cruelty and medication, labor and other violations.
The video, edited from some seven hours of footage taped during a four-month investigation last spring and summer on the backsides of Churchill Downs in Kentucky and Saratoga Race Course in New York, centers on Steve Asmussen, racing’s second all-time winning trainer, and Scott Blasi, Asmussen’s then top assistant. But its allegations and message encompass the entire industry and its practices.
First reported and released in The New York Times, the video addresses multiple wrongdoing — from employing undocumented workers to paying less than minimum wage. But its focus is on the abusive treatment of horses — electric devices to shock them into running faster, racing them injured and, especially, the ubiquitous array of medications they’re routinely given — and on the callous and cavalier attitude shown for their welfare.
Neither Asmussen nor Blasi has commented publicly on the matter. Clark Brewster, an attorney for the two men, has said there’s no merit to PETA’s allegations and called its video “sensationalism.” After the video’s release, the National Museum of Racing in Saratoga Springs, New York, withdrew Asmussen’s name as a finalist on its Hall of Fame ballot and Asmussen fired Blasi.
Following its investigation, PETA has filed 10 federal and state legal complaints, including with the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission and the New York State Gaming Commission. It’s also lobbying for passage of proposed federal legislation that would put the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency in charge of drug enforcement in horse racing. (It’s said it has no plans “right now” to release additional video from its undercover footage.)
Most racing organizations have opposed such federal regulation. It’s one of few things they’ve agreed on. But the video has cracked that unanimity at its establishment pillar. Ogden Mills Phipps, chairman of The Jockey Club and co-owner of last year’s Kentucky Derby winner, Orb, called draft federal legislation “highly attractive,” and said if states don’t make enough progress by August implementing a national uniform medication program, proposed in 2011 and supported by The Jockey Club, “we will aggressively seek rapid implementation of federal legislation.”
Over more than 30 years, PETA has a gained a reputation for aggressive, less-than-even-handed and highly politicized tactics. But this isn’t a blame-the-false-messenger story, because the treatment of horses exposed in the video, while undoubtedly shocking to people outside of racing, is hardly news to those within it.
In the recent past, several prominent trainers — including those of Kentucky Derby winners — have been suspended for drug violations. It’s widely known that some trainers commonly work “miracles,” improving horses’ performances dramatically after they come to their barns. And the use of electrical devices is scarcely secret; it’s been backside talk since at least the time of Seabiscuit, and in 1999 a jockey was banned for five years for using a battery on his horse in winning the Arkansas Derby.
That considered, the PETA video may be more notable not for the legal medications — like the universally used diuretic Lasix, which helps prevent pulmonary bleeding — it targets, but for what it doesn’t address: the illegal substances, from cobra venom and frog juice exposed in news reports to designer pharmaceuticals undetected by labs, that permeate the culture of the sport. It matters little, in terms of public perception, that many stables never use them. They’re racing’s third-rail, and tackling them — at the federal, state or industry level — would make banning Lasix seem like window-dressing.
The PETA video raises the curtain on a struggling industry. Long past its glory days when it was “the sport of kings,” its stands were full and its stars — Man O’War, Citation, Secretariat — were household names, racing is beset with a shrinking customer base, failing tracks and competition from state lotteries and casino gambling. Its drug problem goes directly to its integrity — and survival. And only days from the Kentucky Derby, the industry is left to wait and wonder if national media coverage will focus more on its signature race and cheering fans or a new PETA story or video release, timed to steal the spotlight.