Kyle Rothfus doesn't use the term aftercare to describe finding safe, long-term homes for racehorses after they retire from the track.
"I try to think of it as continuing care, so it's not so much a matter of an afterthought," said Rothfus, a Thoroughbred racehorse breeder and owner who co-founded Mareworthy, a 501(c)(3) specializes in caring for and rehoming retired broodmares at his farm in Georgetown, Ky. "We look at it from a foal-to-forever mindset. From the moment that foal is born until their last day, this is continuing care. We just all have a different part, a different role in that."
Rothfus was part of last week's final session of the Association of Racing Commissioners International (ARCI) annual Animal Welfare and Integrity Conference, which featured panels, presentations and briefings on a variety of subjects Wednesday through Friday at the Seelbach Hilton and Churchill Downs.
"By the way, Kyle, I hope you haven't trademarked or copyrighted 'foal to forever,'" said fellow panelist John Nicholson, who last year assumed the very big shoes of replacing founder Michael Blowen as president of Old Friends Equine headquartered in Georgetown, Ky. "I love that. With your kind permission, I think all of us should use that as a kind of mantra of aftercare."
Old Friends was created in 2003 by retired Boston Globe movie critic Blowen and his wife, former Globe columnist Diane White, to take in retired stallions and geldings—most of them notable such as current resident Derby winners Silver Charm, I'll Have Another and Big Brown, but each with a unique story—and make them accessible to the public as horse racing's living history museum.
"Aftercare is not only providing the sanctuary for retired racehorses, but it's also celebrating their lives," Nicholson told the ARCI audience. "It also is a vehicle to promote and celebrate enthusiastically the sport of thoroughbred racing. Our particular niche in the aftercare world, we celebrate the sport and we ask our retired athletes to be ambassadors for the sport."
Panelist Janice Towles represented the transformative Thoroughbred Aftercare Alliance, which since 2012 has granted more than $36.04 million to accredited aftercare organizations, which have retrained for second careers, rehomed or retired 18,500 thoroughbreds. Currently, 83 organizations with approximately 175 facilities are accredited by the TAA, for which Towles is the accreditation and grants manager.
The panel was moderated by Cathy Shircliff, Churchill Downs Inc.'s director of equine industry relations and who is on the advisory board of Louisville's Second Stride equine adoption program.
Everyone agreed the biggest challenge facing aftercare organizations is funding and finding donors.
"It's always funding," Towles said. "The more money we get, the more horses we can help. One of the other challenges is convincing everyone that the problem is not solved, although the TAA has done a wonderful job. We've made great strides, we're doing great work and things have changed dramatically since 2012. But we have to let everybody know that the problem has not been solved and that the focus needs to be ongoing. We need to do more as an industry so we can help these thoroughbreds when they come off the racetrack... Getting awareness, promoting education, fund-raising, participating in our events. We all have to work together. I think the more we can do this as a unit, we'll be more effective."
Nicholson said a major breakthrough is that "everybody recognizes that aftercare is a pillar of our industry. It is an automatic thing we think about when we enter the industry.... But I think the next phase is education within our industry about exactly how aftercare works."
For example, he said, "for most of our facilities, the veterinary care is not free. Our hay, feed, worming, vaccinations—all those things that every horse facility, every farm has to do, we have to do as well. I think there's been a certain assumption that all of that is paid for. Horsemen know how expensive horses are. I think we have to remind them that horses in aftercare have those same expenses."
Rothfus said social media is a terrific way to market aftercare facilities.
"Social media is a great tool for us to educate without actually putting out that we are going to educate you," he said. "It has to be those little moments. I get nine or 10 million views a month on my page. And the ones that get the most views are the ones of a horse rolling. Or a baby kicking its mom. I take it for granted, but the general public builds a bond with that, and that gives us a chance to educate them. Why does a baby kick its mom? Why is that horse rolling? What is a fly mask? All the things we run into, but they need to first trust me and know that my horses have their own personalities."
Added Nicholson: "When people interact with our horses, it's a big win for our sport, for our industry. I witness that every day at Old Friends. It's the feeding of carrots and Mrs. Pastures cookies. Once you feel that, to the uninitiated who haven't seen that before, they are won over to our sport. It makes it that much easier to extol the virtues of thoroughbred racing."
ARCI president and CEO Ed Martin said he wants the conference's last panel to leave a lasting impression.
"What you do is integral to the survival of the industry," he told the panelists. "It's the right thing to do, period. But it plays a larger role in the survival of horse racing in general. Because the public is looking at what we collectively do."
Martin predicted that, either through court action or because of politics, Congress at some point will revisit and redo parts of the enabling legislation that created the Horseracing Integrity & Safety Authority (HISA), although no money was appropriated to pay for the federal mandate placed upon thoroughbred racing states.
The ARCI was not at the table when it was first put together, Martin said. "This needs technical corrections, not to decimate it but to make it work. We've seen the numbers that have been raised through their revenue-generating Authority, and they're big numbers. I would seriously advocate that before they rewrite this that there's some kind of funding responsibility to support aftercare. There are some states where the state legislatures could do that, too.
"I think it's important that the issues be raised. HISA is a regulatory agency. But the industry, when lobbying for this bill, did not include this. Hindsight is always 20-20, and I think there will be another opportunity at some point. I don't know when, but I think there will be. The ARCI should be at the table, because we want it to work as much as anybody else does. I would ask for the Authority to advocate for some kind of funding stream that would take care of our equine athletes when they're ready to retire."
Peterson: Biggest budgets don't always equal safest surfaces
'The maintenance personnel is one of your most valuable assets'
Last week's closing-day conference sessions included a pair of briefing panels. Joe Carr, president of Equine Risk Management Group, led the conversation on safe racing surfaces with Churchill Downs track superintendent Jamie Richardson and Dr. Mick Peterson, director of the University of Kentucky's Racetrack Safety Program and executive director of the racing surfaces testing laboratory.
Peterson said having a safe racetrack takes more than a healthy budget. The most uniform track in 2024 from all those he tested? Ohio's Thistledown, he said.
"It was the crew, it was the knowledge of the crew, and the way they were using the equipment," Peterson said. "The other good tracks were exactly what you expected; NYRA, Churchill, Keeneland—round up the usual suspects. Far less of this is budget, and a lot of it is how the equipment is used and, frankly, leadership.
"... There are some very, very high budget racetracks with exceptional equipment that have much inferior outcomes, and there are some with very, very small budgets that have fantastic (results)," Peterson said. "So it's really about people... The maintenance personnel is one of your most valuable assets. This is an apprentice-oriented occupation. You don't get a degree in racetrack maintenance. What you do is learn from the best practices, and what we've also seen are some really talented people from smaller racetracks end up with really good opportunities in new places. Because they learned. They're good at their jobs."
Farmer: Wearable technology can keep horses racing longer, safer
Dr. Michael Hardy, DVM , executive director of the Racing Medication and Testing Consortium, led the discussion on new developments in equine care and safety. Joining him were Keeneland's Dr. Stuart Brown, Churchill Downs equine medical director Dr. Will Farmer and the Kentucky Horse Racing and Gaming Corp.'s interim equine medical director Dr. George Mundy.
READ: Equine Safety Developments in Focus at ARCI Conference
Farmer talked about the possibilities created by wearable technology to detect subtle changes in a horse's mechanics when going at high speed.
"We have no objective metrics at high speed," he said. "The best you have is a clocker. With the speed horses travel, it's impossible for the best jockey, the best veterinarian, the best trainer to really identify very subtle changes. Through science, we've identified that upwards of 90 percent of horses have some type of pre-existing injury or lesion at the time of a catastrophic injury. We anticipated that we'd find there are subtle changes that would help us identify this needle in a haystack of an impending fracture in a horse. We started that study and it kind of grew wings of its own. Since the fall of 2023, we have been running StrideSAFE (monitors) on all starters in the state of Kentucky. I think we've added up to over 40,000 starts at this time.
"This was our first opportunity to gain some objective data with regards to how horses travel at high speed and how to potentially use that information—maybe down the road from a regulatory aspect—but my main goal was that we could feed information back to the trainer and to their attending veterinarian to allow them the opportunity and the information that would be helpful to intervene early. So rather than the horse coming back overtly lame, if we can pick up on some of these subtle changes early on, they can go down the path of some of the advance diagnostic imaging. The ultimate goal is to keep horses in racing longer and safer. Maybe rather than that horse needing six months off for surgery, it's 30 days of light training to come back to racing."
Turner: Regulators must be ready if SCOTUS overturns HISA
Joel Turner, a prominent equine attorney who recently retired as a partner in Frost Brown Todd, delivered Friday's breakfast address titled "Looking Back: Reflections and Knowledge Learned from a Career Dealing with Racing Regulatory Matters." He had a message for the regulators in attendance: Be prepared because some of the authority you lost to the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority (HISA) could be coming back.
Turner said the first legislative effort for federal intervention mandating uniform drug policy and medication rules came in 1980.
"Forty years later we got HISA," he said. "Because we didn't address the problem among the states—despite the earnest efforts of the ARCI to advance a compact that would accomplish that goal (of uniformity).
"We may end up back in that same situation and you all should be ready to address the regulation of horse racing on a state-by-state basis again. Because, as you know, HISA has been attacked as unconstitutional from many sides. As state regulators, you understand the new regime under HISA has wrested away a lot of the control from you as regulators. You have had to pay a dear price, and so have the racetracks, for that loss of control of these various racing operations. Unfortunately, despite the best efforts, there was never enough pressure brought to bear to get everybody on the same page to agree what's in the best interest of horse racing as far as medication rules independent of federal intervention."
Turner said the "flaw in the economics of HISA is that Congress told them to do a bunch of stuff and then they didn't allocate a single dime in federal money to implement HISA and all the regulations that it promulgated.... People have recoiled when they see the annual budget in excess of $75 million."
Be ready, he said, because "it's going to possibly fall back in your lap when the Supreme Court takes some of these cases that are pending in various jurisdictions."
Also at the conference, Anthony Salerno of the Pennsylvania Racing Commission was elevated to ARCI chairman, replacing Doug Moore of the Washington State Horse Racing Commission. ARCI chairs serve one-year terms.
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