NTRA boss Rooney discusses Baffert, HISA & Triple Crown
Las Vegas
The 25th annual National Horseplayers Championship was one of many stops on Tom Rooney’s itinerary since he became CEO of the National Thoroughbred Racing Association three years ago.
A Republican who was a five-term member of Congress from Florida, Rooney took over the NTRA when the country was in the throes of COVID, when trainer Bob Baffert was unknowingly on the verge of a long fight with Churchill Downs over a Kentucky Derby disqualification and just as the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act was about to bring federal regulation to the sport.
Rooney, 53, spent a half-hour at the NHC, which the NTRA runs, talking about a range of issues this month in a conversation for Horse Racing Nation’s Ron Flatter Racing Pod. Most of the interview is transcribed here:
Let’s talk about some issues going forward here and a champion trainer who will not be at the Kentucky Derby. Bob Baffert chose not to move his horses over (to other trainers). There is a question about whether he will have any for the Preakness, because Nysos is a question mark now. But the Kentucky Derby is going to lack a guy who, polarizing though he may be, is the most successful trainer in the modern history of that race. What’s your feeling about that? Does the Derby get an asterisk (because of horses absent because of the Baffert suspension), and as big as the Derby is, does that matter?
“Well, as far as an asterisk, I think that that depends on the horses that aren’t going. You mentioned Nysos. That issue may have resolved itself, unfortunately, with his injury or whatever is wrong. But listen, I’ve gotten to know Mr. Baffert over the last couple years. I really like him. I obviously don’t think that he wants me to speak for him, and I don’t think that Churchill Downs wants me to speak for them. As a member of my board, Churchill’s very important to me, and I really respect, obviously, what they do. They are kind of like the top of our sport. The Kentucky Derby I think ranks second behind the Super Bowl in eyeballs for those two minutes, so they’re obviously hugely important. I really hope as a fan that the two sides can figure out their differences and come back together. Now more than ever I think that our sport can’t have divisions that are excluding anybody from anything. I think that our sport’s finally getting to a point where we’re going to have good things happen to it. I just hope that in that case the two sides can figure it out.”
Have you offered yourself or any of your team in terms of mediation to try to bring the two sides together?
“Not with this issue. We find ourselves offering our services when it comes to things like speaking for the industry on safety. We’ve started a campaign to do that. We’re helping others with their campaigns to do that and to spread the good news about our sport. Light Up Racing was here at the NHC. We’re not excluding anybody from trying to move the sport forward. I think that there’s probably better mediators for stuff like that, and especially Churchill being on my board, I don’t know that the Baffert camp would want us involved with that. I do know that he’s always going to have those champion-type horses. While this year might not be something, where people are like, ‘It’s really too bad so-and-so horse isn’t in,’ at some point that’s going to happen, and you’re going to wonder if we lost a Triple Crown winner. Hopefully we get it all figured out before that happens.”
I will ask you my annual question, even though it’s not that many annual, about your feelings about HISA, where it is, things that have gone well and things that you think are on the to-do list.
“There’s going to be a lot on the to-do list. Lisa Lazarus, who runs HISA, knows that. To answer your question, the bad is that we’re still going through growing pains. The good is that HISA knows that. I think Lisa is absolutely the best person we could have gotten for that job, because she wants to get it right. She also recognizes that, sometimes to get it right, you get it wrong in the process, and then you fix it. It was not a perfect product to start with, but there’s also a willingness by her to get there. I hear a lot of people complain about it. I hear a lot of people talk about the expense and this, that and the other. And I get that. And she does, too. She just put out a request for people to join her horsemen’s advisory group. The biggest kind of opposition to her has been elements of the horsemen groups. She’s trying to bring them in to advise her. If I was part of that group, I would take her up on that rather than just continually put out information about how bad it is and gin people up to thinking that there’s somehow going to be a reversal. There’s not, unless the Supreme Court takes it up and upends a lot of different elements of our society when it comes, without getting too much into constitutional law, delegation of authority by the legislative branch to the administrative branch. In this case, not to the administrative branch, but with the FTC overseeing HISA, which is not part of the administration. There’s other things, like the SEC oversees this thing called FINRA. So if the court takes it up and strikes down HISA, they’re also either directly striking down things like FINRA, or they’re sending the message that if that case was also brought, that it would be struck down as well. It would be a huge shift in the way that our country works, although this is the first time we’ve had a right-leaning court in a long time, so maybe they would take it up. I doubt it in my opinion. I think that the circuit courts underneath have pretty much all ruled for us. Until then HISA is the law of the land, and people should comply. I don’t think that you can wait around for banking on the Supreme Court to overturn a law that is somehow unconstitutional when I don’t believe that it is, and the circuit courts haven’t believed it and have agreed with that so far.”
I imagine you, however, are sympathetic to those trainers who have had a reversal of suspensions but maybe too late for them to have undone damage to their careers and to their livelihoods. What would you say to them as far as the message you already have offered, that yes, there are growing pains mistakes are made HISA learns from them, but here they are victims of the circumstances of the growth?
“Those stories are tough to hear, especially when there’s been a sanction already implied. But then there’s been kind of an admission or like a new rule made after the fact that they’re not going to do that anymore. I wish that there was a way to make people whole with regard to at least the financial part of that. Reputation and the like might be something that’s not able to get back. I’ve heard stories about horses that have failed a (drug) test, claimed, sat, re-entered, and then the drug test comes back, and they’ve already run the horse again. Obviously, they didn’t do anything wrong. It was the people before them.”
It was the whole sale issue (before a cited horse changed hands). Where did the drugs come in during sales?
“Right. But my point is that you’re hearing about this in the paper, and you’re hearing HISA react to it and then possibly re-react to that once all the information is in. This is part of what I’m talking about. The growing pains of a massive, federal law that changes the way an industry works. As a former politician, you know that that’s going to be difficult for people to comply with early. I forget who wrote the article I really like in the horseman magazine called Trainer. (It was by Alan Balch, executive director of the California Thoroughbred Trainers.) He wrote this thing about federalism and horses and how our country is based on federalism, the 10th Amendment and all that. I totally agree with it. I lean right of center. But we also have the commerce clause which says that which effectuates interstate commerce is more of a federal issue than a states-rights issue. We’re sitting here in Las Vegas, Nev., watching races from California. I see Maryland. I see Arkansas. These horses, if you look at the programs, their last race most could have been in another state. If you look at the law on what effectuates interstate commerce to avail itself to the commerce clause, it’s pretty loose. These horses traveling all over the country to race, especially the top horses that are going through the Derby preps and the like and then going into the Maryland and then to New York and then wherever, effectuate interstate. I’m very confident, so I disagree. I understand that the states had historically governed over their individual racetracks and that. But I think that HISA is going to be the right tool for monitoring bad behavior and racetrack safety, because we’re going to have a level playing field for the whole country and a sport where the rules should be the same whether they’re here out west or back east. It does break my heart to hear those stories about people who have gotten caught up in the sausage-making of what HISA is going to become. I just hope there’s a way that that HISA can make those people whole rather than just casting them off, because we can’t lose anybody. We can lose bad actors, but people that aren’t bad actors, we need to figure out how to help.”
The loss of horses is something that’s being documented now. There is a (HISA) portal with documentation and the numbers. As I understand it, that portal is complete with the information from the past year. Will it be made public? I know I’m asking you on behalf of the NTRA. But is it your belief it will be made public by HISA as a whole, or are we only going to get a snapshot of it? How do you stand about having that information made completely public?
“I think transparency is always the safest way to operate, because otherwise it looks like you’re trying to sort of hide your cards for some nefarious reason. I don’t think that that’s what Lisa is trying to do at HISA. I don’t know if there’d be reasons to keep confidential numbers until something else is revealed. I’m not going to second-guess what she’s doing with regard to that, because I honestly don’t know what their decision is. But in the end, in politics, in anything, when you are transparent, it’s much harder for people in the end to attack you and what you’re doing. Like, ‘Look, I’ve laid this all out for you. This is why we’re doing what we’re doing, and there’s no secrets here.’ We’re going to have a documentary coming out I think on Hulu about racing, before the Derby, and it’s going to be bad. Our job is to try to respond, and we have to respond as to why it’s good and what they’re saying is wrong, if there is something wrong. Having as much transparency when it comes to what you’re talking about and just everything that we do I think helps us make a better argument against those groups that want us to stop existing.”
Who’s doing the documentary?
“I think The New York Times is doing it through Hulu. I forget the name of it (“Broken Horses”), but the name is terrible.”
They have an agenda.
“They’re very well organized. The opponents of racing are very well organized. One of the things that I’ve focused on recently is to try to combat their organization with our organization. I’ll give you an example. When I was in Congress, and I’d have somebody say something on Facebook. You know. ‘Rooney’s the worst thing in the world.’ I’d have 10 people ready to go. I’d be like, ‘OK, that guy said I’m the worst person in the world. Counter that.’ So then I’d have 10 people. But if you don’t respond, then there’s a pile-on effect, and it’s just like, ‘Oh, we got him. He’s not responding, so it must be true.’ You have to respond. Light Up Racing was here and other organizations and the NTRA. Us as an industry need to recognize that the groups that oppose us are very well organized. We have to be equally organized, or else they’ll just pile on. One of the things is like this documentary. We had a tough year last year, and they’re going after us. Is there things to respond by saying what we’re doing better? Absolutely. Are we trying to get better? Absolutely. But we have to tell those stories. That’s the things I’m going to continue to work on. Funding is obviously always an issue, especially if you’re trying to go up on television. I don’t know if you saw the Super Bowl. The NFL put out several ads during the Super Bowl that were sort of like computer-generated things with (Kansas City quarterback Patrick) Mahomes throwing a pass. And then it’s like the analytics of his helmet and how safe it was. You could do that kind of thing for horse racing, too, to show what Lisa’s doing it at HISA to make racing safer through all these things that she’s trying to do. But just make sure people know, so that my friends that I play golf with or whatever that are casual fans of horse racing, they’ll watch the Derby and maybe a couple other races, but they’re not really like the people in this room that are really sophisticated. They’ll hear something negative and be like, ‘Hey, what are you guys doing about that?’ We have to show that we are doing something about it.”
I’ll give you a point in fact. I had someone come to me. There was a death at Santa Anita on the track Saturday, and it was like, “Oh, they can’t seem to get it right there.” And I go, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
“That might be the first one in how long?”
Exactly. I said that was the first on-track racing death in exactly 52 weeks. When they had a spate of them, they couldn’t get through a week. I don’t think that’s a coincidence. I think an effort got to that.
“Absolutely. California has been the leader in our industry over the last couple years since that Santa Anita …”
Five years ago.
“Yeah. Obviously you hate to have something like that happen, so you can make that argument. And even if you make that argument, it’s not going to ever be good enough for some people. But there are a lot of people that are casual observers that want to know that you’re at least trying, and I think most rational, pragmatic people appreciate that.”
I’ll wrap you up with something that you had talked about. I don’t remember where or what the interview was, but the question came up about Triple Crown scheduling as we see Maryland is going through its metamorphosis right now. The Preakness has had some tire-kicking about moving to Memorial Day weekend or sometime around there. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe you had suggested that a month between the Triple Crown races wouldn’t be such a bad idea. Where do you stand on that, and how far have any discussions come that you might have had about that?
“I haven’t changed my opinion on that since then. Obviously it’s up to the tracks to make those decisions. Obviously television will have an influence on what the tracks want to do and get the most eyeballs on track. As we see Maryland moving into a new NYRA-type situation (with the operation of Pimlico), and then you’ve got the new Belmont (Park) coming online. Obviously the Derby is going to be the first Saturday in May.”
They’re not moving.
“They’re not really part of this discussion. I think I think that as we see time go on, I think those tracks probably always consider these questions. I don’t speak for them or whatever. My opinion is my opinion. They will make their own determinations, what’s best for them and the horses and our sport. I really am excited about where we’re going in Maryland and what they’re doing in New York. These are all really positive stories, by the way, Ron. We’re always talking about a lot of negative stuff. I mean you’re talking about a new track at Belmont. You’re talking about new track at Pimlico. The second and third jewels of the Triple Crown are upping their game as far as what they want the world to see, and that’s exciting stuff. We’re talking about building new racetracks. The Triple Crown series being something that we’re all proud of as far as what people watching on TV see, so that’s awesome. I’m just really excited about where we’re going in the future of this sport.”
Accommodations for Horse Racing Nation coverage of the National Horseplayers Championship were provided and paid for by the National Thoroughbred Racing Association.