NTRA leader carries anger over Medina Spirit into his new role

Tucson, Ariz.

For worse or for worse, Medina Spirit’s death last week became a shared experience in horse racing, one of those “I remember where I was” moments.

Tom Rooney, the incoming president and CEO of the National Thoroughbred Racing Association, was about to fly to the University of Arizona’s Global Symposium on Racing when he heard the news.

“I was getting on the plane, and I had to buy the internet for the whole flight,” he said.

Then he said five words that he was not alone in thinking.

“My immediate reaction was anger.”

With that, Rooney, 51, was thrown into the deep end of the pool for his new job. Part of the family that started the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1933, Rooney is taking the NTRA reins from Alex Waldrop, who is retiring at the end of the month after 15 years in charge.

RELATED: Racing execs say Medina Spirit’s death is call to action

Crises come and go in horse racing. But when the current Kentucky Derby winner suffers a fatal heart attack seven months after failing a drug test that put his victory in peril, that crisis goes beyond horse racing. It is very much in the mainstream – complete with mainstream reaction that clashes with defenders of the sport.

“Having been a prosecutor, you do need to look at what you think is the evidence and what you think are the facts and make sure you temper them with what you can confirm before you make any definitive allegations,” Rooney said after his keynote speech at the racing symposium. “But I was mad. It’s one thing to have a horse collapse and die on the track. It’s another thing to continue to see the same narrative over and over and over again.”

This was where the Tom Rooney who was a U.S. Army lawyer and a five-term Republican Congressman from Florida ran head-long into the Tom Rooney who is a third-generation horseplayer on the verge of becoming a high-profile racing executive.

“It just gets old to the point where you’re sick of trying to justify it to your family and friends that, ‘Oh, no, no. This can be explained,’ ” Rooney said. “You’re just thinking of all the people that are in the racing industry that go to work every day and do things absolutely the right way all the time and are also having to justify what they do for living, how they do it and why it’s not like that all the time.”

Rooney’s family has owned and run the Shamrock Farm stallion operation in Maryland since 1948. Still, he knows he has a learning curve to navigate. It is a job requirement for the leader of the NTRA, an eclectic group that tries to represent the common economic and promotional interests of racetrack barons, upper-crust bluebloods, hardened horsemen and intractable regulatory fiefdoms.

Even some jargon is part of Rooney’s crash course.

“We’ll wait for the necropsy report to come out, which I just learned what that meant,” he said last week. “Hopefully, there’s nothing nefarious going on there.”

That led Rooney to talk about Bob Baffert. He repeated a narrative that has been shared whenever Medina Spirit’s Hall of Fame trainer is mentioned in the most casual of conversations. Baffert has constantly defended himself over claims of medication violations, not to mention the 75 horses who have died on his watch since 2000, according to The Washington Post.

“I am a fan of Bob Baffert,” Rooney declared. “But you get to the point where, if there is something going on there, I think he’s almost past the point of no return. It just gets to a point where it’s getting old.”

Rooney knows from drug abuse in sports. The National Football League has wrestled with it for decades, long before it started testing for performance-enhancing drugs in 1987.

“If we use football analogies, if you’ve had seven failed drug tests in one year in the NFL, you’re probably not playing in the NFL anymore,” Rooney said. “The standards can’t be different just because you’re talking about a horse.”

Rooney takes over the NTRA in a year when the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act is scheduled to take effect July 1, legal challenges notwithstanding. Hardened even more by Medina Spirit’s death, HISA supporters have repeated their mantra that it’s about time.

“If there’s one silver lining about what happened (to Medina Spirit), it is that it does embolden the industry and does embolden HISA to get this done and get it right and to be able to make sure that people understand that there’s going to be accountability for bad actors,” Rooney said. “I think that’s the silver lining from this. If there’s bad news that comes out of this necropsy, we can hold those types of people accountable and feel confident moving forward that horse racing is fair to everybody.”

Rooney is aware of the resistance to HISA from horsemen’s groups and state regulators who have filed lawsuits to keep the law from taking effect next summer. Some, like National Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Association CEO Eric Hamelback, were part of last week’s racing symposium. Hamelback raised specific questions about proposed rules and regulations that appeared vague or incomplete.

“There have been hiccups, but I do think they are going to get it right,” Rooney said, referring to members of the HISA board of directors. “It’s important that the stakeholders do stay engaged with them and be like, ‘Hey, you’ve made this rule, or you’ve made this policy, and it’s having an adverse effect on the industry.’ I don’t think they’re going to ignore that.”

Critics have said the NTRA is an expensive organization without much power. Rooney thought about whether a wave of regulatory momentum that comes with HISA could raise the profile and even the influence of the NTRA.

“I don’t know the answer to that, but I’ve wondered that same exact thing,” he said. “How are we going to work together, because we should be working together (with HISA authorities). We should be working in unison with me in Washington and them making sure that there’s a level playing field as far as safety standards, how we work together, and whether or not we’re used in conjunction with each other.”

While Rooney may have a whole new world of racing politics to navigate, he is building on a rich family tradition that has been steeped in the sport. Especially the betting side of it.

“My grandfather was into horses all the way back to the beginning,” Rooney said, referring to Steelers founder Art Rooney. “He basically made his fortune at the racetrack in Saratoga, enough to buy the Steelers. Honestly, he was able to keep the team afloat for the first 40 years of our existence, which we weren't very good, by having these horse tracks and making money elsewhere to pay the bills for the team. His passion was horse racing, and that definitely passed down to me.”