A Tale of Two Tales

Of the two news stories which have roiled the racing world this week, I think that, despite the rightful furor in the press over the outrageous conditions at Ernie Paragallo's farm, the incident involving Jeff Mullins in the Aqueduct detention barn is clearly the more significant in terms of the issues which are symptomatic of the woes presently dogging the industry.

I strongly disagree with those who seek to gloss over Mullins' "oversight" as no big deal, an innocent error involving a relatively harmless substance. If trainers are held responsible for medication incidents that take place in far off corners of their training empire where they were not even present (and rightfully so in my mind), then they are certainly responsible to familiarize themselves with the basic rules governing each and every track they visit, as distasteful as a jurisdiction which isolates horses for six hours before each race might be to Jeff Mullins. And, regarding the cough medicine that he sought to administer, why, I continue to ask, would he need to give it to a horse who wasn't coughing? As Joe Mahoney of the Racing and Wagering Board said, “If a horse needs Air Power to get to the finish line on race day, then we have a problem with that." And I think you can substitute nearly anything for 'Air Power' in that statement. Even more than an illustration of the continuing problem of medication, the incident is a further indication of the cavalier attitude that some horsemen continue to harbor toward the rules, even in the face of growing scrutiny in the blogosphere, press, political circles and, by extension, the general public.

The situation at Paragallo's Center Brook farm is nothing less than bizarre. It's a tragedy for the horses and humans involved alike; that's right, I find Paragallo to be a somewhat sympathetic figure here too, at least at this stage. Perhaps I'm being naive, but I can't imagine that this man willfully attempted to starve his horses to death. Instead, he comes across to me as simply pathetic; a man who, for whatever reason (we just don't know why as of yet), neglected his responsibilities, lost total control of his farm and animals, and now faces jail time for an offense which, while inexcusable given the vast number of living beings who depended on him for basic subsistence, involved, in my view, far less malicious intent than many who serve meaningless time or escape incarceration altogether. While most if not all of the horses involved will, in time, make a full recovery, Paragallo's life will likely never be the same. I just don't think we're yet in a position to reach a final judgment on him as of yet. Perhaps, in the end, I'll eat my words above.

I also believe that this matter, as opposed to the ongoing fight against illegal medications (and those presently legal as well), is an aberration. One of the reasons that the story seems so shocking is that we haven't heard of anything like it in this industry. In Bill Finley's kneejerk and unnecessary "ban the bum for life" column on ESPN.com, he had to go back some 26 years to find a case which even just slightly resembled what we're reading about today.

To me, this is less a story about horse racing than one simply about animal neglect and abuse, a topic we read about all of the time. It should probably be on page 11 of the news section rather than on page 1 of the sports section. However, racing reporters such as Joe Drape of the Times are just doing their jobs, and a fine one at that.

But by it being a horse racing story rather than one of many animal abuse stories, it invites commentaries by mainstream writers who know nothing about the sport, and who use it to jump on the bandwagon and add to the beating the industry has suffered in the last year. Take for example this ignorant blog posting on the US News and World Report site which states that the Jockey Club has "licensed breeders" and that it should "severely limit the number of horses breeders can bring into the world each year." Once we start to get people like that telling us how to run our business, then this industry has trouble even beyond what it's experiencing today.