At last, an obvious question answered

One of the biggest stories in racing these last few weeks — finally supplanted by the $5 million Rachel-Zenyatta challenge (the bet here is that one or both horses will not go to the post in the Apple Blossom) — has been the decision by jockeys at Penn National to boycott races in which owner Michael Gill had horses.

The jockeys maintained that his horses broke down with excessive frequency, thus endangering not only his horse and rider but also all other horses and riders.  The Paulick Report has covered the issue with admirable tenacity and investigative zeal, revealing, for example, that Gill employs a seeming rogues’ gallery of trainers and vets with a nasty habit of ending up on the wrong side of the rules.  Gill, on the other hand, maintained that the problems were with the track surface and not with his horses, and that he was being victimized by a jockey colony that wanted him, at least, to spread the wins around.

But as is so often the case in horse racing (and as I’ve blogged about previously, here), the debate has engendered a considerable amount of heat — read some of the comments on Paulick’s reports if you want a glimpse of an angry mob with pitchforks –and surprisingly little light.

In this case, light and context are more or less synonymous.  In other words, yes, Gill had a high number of breakdowns; he also ran a ridiculous number of horses.  How does his rate of breakdowns compare to other owners at the track, or to the track as a whole?  Yes, Cole Norman has a lengthy list of violations (21 pages of them, from Racing Commissioners International); given the large number of horses at one time in his care, how does that compare to other trainers?  In particular, how does his rate of significant offenses (such as Class 1 offenses, involving drugs with “no generally accepted medical use in the racehorse” and “a very high potential… for altering… performance”) compare to the training community at large?

These are critical questions, for a couple of reasons.  First, breakdowns are an inevitable part of the equine life; anyone who’s been around horses for more than about 10 minutes can tell you of a horse or two who was galloping in a field and suddenly, randomly suffered a fatal injury.  They’re fragile critters that way.  In this case, if Gill is the bad guy he’s alleged to be, then we should be able to demonstrate that through statistics; his breakdown rate should be markedly higher than the rest of the Penn National group.  Similarly, if Cole Norman is a cheater, the evidence should be clear, when his stats are compared to other trainers.  (I’m using Norman here, though the same issue is fairly raised for Gill’s other trainers, Anthony Adamo and Darrell Delahoussaye).

The trainer question lingers unanswered, but, thanks to the Thoroughbred Times (here), we now have the beginnings of an answer regarding Mr. Gill — an answer he’d prefer to have avoided  According to authors Jeff Lowe and Ed DeRosa, Gill horses accounted for five of the 21 breakdowns at Penn National during the last 13 months.  Gill’s rate of breakdowns was one horse per 208 starters — nearly one-half of one percent.

Meanwhile, the breakdown rate was considerably lower for the rest of the horse population at Penn.  In fact, 16 horses out of more than 17,000 starters broke down, a rate of one per 1085 starts.  In other words, Gill’s horses were more than five times as likely to break down as anyone else’s.

The authors admit to some obvious flaws in their methodology.  For one thing, it’s based entirely on chart comments; it does not include horses who were eased, some of which may subsequently have been put down.  It also excludes at least one Gill horse (and potentially others both from him and from other trainers and owners) that fell after the finish line.  Moreover, because the item studied (fatal in-race breakdowns) is, thankfully, relatively rare, it’s possible that a weird spate of bad luck could account for at least some of the difference between Gill and other owners.

Nevertheless,  the evidence they’ve compiled is damning, and, equally important, a critical element in allowing us to understand what is going on.

As news organizations, inside and outside racing, have, for economic reasons, cut back on staffs, requiring fewer people to do more work, one of the real losses tends to be context.  It’s easier to damn Gill for having had six horses break down than it is to determine how that compares to other owners; it’s easier to lump all medication violations under the umbrella of “cheating” than it is to understand the critical differences different classes of violations and what those distinctions tell us about intent.  The result is more heat — more outrage, more anger — and less light.

As racing lurches, either towards oblivion or the twenty-first century, there will be no shortage of angry mobs to guide them, and invariably towards oblivion.  Reasoned debate, informed by actual facts, will be harder to come by, but it’s the only way forward.   Because of the work done by Paulick and by the Thoroughbred Times, we have the context necessary to understand this issue.  More important, so, too, do racing commissions that might in the future be considering license applications from Mr. Gill and others; the commissions should have pertinent questions to ask, and Mr. Gill and his trainers should not be permitted to skate around them.