SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. -- The U.S. racing industry should use the “foundation” provided by the implementation of the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority to pursue other shared goals, such as capitalizing on international markets and speaking with a unified voice on marketing initiatives, the chairman of The Jockey Club said at the close of the organization’s annual Round Table on Matters Pertaining to Racing on Thursday. Stuart Janney, who took over as chairman of The Jockey Club in 2015 after five years as vice chairman, urged industry unity after a two-hour Round Table lineup that included a 30-minute discussion about HISA’s rollout that sought to portray HISA as racing’s best chance of demonstrating that the sport had begun to address longstanding concerns over its regulation. The Jockey Club has been a strong supporter of legislation initiatives to create a structure like HISA for a decade, and the Round Table presentation indicated that the organization remains solidly behind the authority even as its rollout has been met with stiff resistance from factions of horsemen and racing commissions. “We need to get past the concerns that we are constantly in turmoil, rocking from one crisis to the next,” Janney said. He then cited a speaker at a previous Round Table who had told the gathering that to get past its crises, the industry had to “believe that it was on the path to success.” “With HISA firmly established, we are on that path, and we need to aggressively begin to market to a new and younger audience and defeat the extremist voices that threaten horse racing,” Janney said. The underlying conceit of that message – that HISA represents a step forward for racing that can be leveraged for future benefits – will certainly be challenged by HISA’s detractors, who have been highly critical of its rollout, its policies, and the circumstances surrounding a rash of positive drug tests since HISA’s anti-doping and medication control program went into effect on May 22. HISA’s backstretch critics contend that the authority devised its rules and policies without adequate input from horsemen, while other opponents, including some racing commissions and state government officials, have argued in court cases that the formation of the authority represented an unconstitutional delegation of power to a private company. To counter some of those critics, The Jockey Club organized a panel discussion for the second half of the Round Table program that included two trainers, Jena Antonucci, who became the first woman trainer to win a Triple Crown race when her Arcangelo won the 2023 Belmont Stakes, and Ron Moquett, who is a member of HISA’s Horsemen’s Advisory Committee (Antonucci recently signed an agreement with Daily Racing Form to be a “brand ambassador and industry advisor” for the publication). Asked to comment on what she thinks the “biggest benefit” to HISA has been, Antonucci said that the impression among most “smaller or middle-sized operations” has been that racing is compromised by trainers who have “better access to pharmaceuticals, to chemists.” She contended that HISA’s implementation of stricter rules and better testing capabilities would remove some of that element from the game. “It’s that guy or gal who busts their butt seven days a week, 24-7, who can walk into a race and not watch a horse re-break at the head of the stretch, where their plied trade, and their skill set, will have the ability to shine, where that eight percent trainer, historically, who thinks, ‘I can’t train a racehorse,' all of a sudden she’s winning more, or he’s winning more,” said Antonucci, who worked as an equine veterinary assistant prior to becoming a trainer. “And it’s not because we’ve done anything different in our practice. It’s just that we will be able to walk forward now and be confident that we know what we are doing, and that we do it darn well.” Antonucci’s remarks received an ovation from the audience, which, as usual, was comprised primarily of influential owners, breeders, and industry officials. Moquett said that as a member of the Horsemen’s Advisory Committee – which was created last year to attempt to mollify some criticism from rank-and-file trainers about their perceived lack of involvement in the rule-making process – he tried to act as a “sounding board” for trainers. He said he constantly received feedback from trainers, and that he has been attempting to give trainers a voice at HISA through his interactions with its top officials, including Lisa Lazarus, the HISA chief executive who was also on the panel. “I’m basically representing 4,500 people that have to go through every regulation that HISA believes is okay,” Moquett said. “And sometimes we don’t agree. So [Lazarus] and I will get together and we’ll yell. … But she always hears me out. She understands that I speak for a large group, not just me. We often come to an understanding that there needs to be more work done.” Moquett said he has tried to communicate with HISA that they are not going to be able to “regulate ourselves out of this mess we are in,” referencing racing’s poor public perception, and that HISA and horsemen both needed to embrace “smart regulation” that did not prevent trainers from applying the principles of horsemanship to produce competitive athletes. “I believe that if we do that you are gradually going to see a big increase of people outside the industry respecting what we’re doing,” Moquett said. Lazarus said that HISA is striving to accomplish both sets of goals outlined by Antonucci and Moquett, though she acknowledged that there were challenges to striking a balance between horsemen’s needs and the industry’s regulatory demands. “We all heard what Jena said, and obviously that’s the ideal, that’s the goal, that’s the mission, that’s the only thing we’re in place to do, and that’s to protect the industry and make sure that those who are racing clean have a level playing field,” Lazarus said. “But we also want to marry that with the issues that Ron raised. … The magic is finding that balance.” The Jockey Club’s attempt to cast HISA in a positive light at the Round Table also comes at a time when the organization’s budget is being supplemented by several prominent industry organizations, including The Jockey Club. HISA’s enabling legislation requires racetracks to fund the organization, provided that racing commissions turn down the option to put in place funding mechanisms, but not all organizations in racing are paying the fees. HISA has so far been reluctant to press the matter during a time when it is attempting to gain traction in the industry. HISA’s future is also complicated by the existence of two federal lawsuits that have made their way to the Fifth Circuit and Sixth Circuit Courts of Appeal. The Fifth Circuit will re-consider its own earlier determination that HISA was unconstitutional later this year, and any similar ruling would likely put HISA’s constitutional questions on a path to the Supreme Court. In a thinly veiled reference to the suits, which have consumed millions in legal fees on both sides, Janney pointed to the congenial remarks made during the HISA Round Table presentation as being a better path forward than litigation. “There is nothing better than respectful discourse to solve problems and make progress,” Janney said. Data and analytics Several other Round Table presentations focused on the use of data and analytics and their impacts on both racing and other sports. The first of the data presentations was delivered by Kyle McDoniel, who on June 1 began serving as the president and chief operating officer of Equibase, which is co-owned by The Jockey Club. McDoniel came to Equibase after a long career handling data initiatives for companies that did business with major sports leagues. Part of McDoniel’s presentation addressed Equibase’s recent efforts to clean up the timing of races, an area that has proved problematic as the company transitions from the traditional electronic beam-based systems in place for decades to global and local GPS systems. Equibase is the racing industry’s official data supplier, and its personnel and systems gather the real-time race data that form the basis of nearly all handicapping products sold in the U.S. Accuracy of that data is obviously of paramount concern to bettors (DRF has a contract for data with Equibase). Over the past year, McDoniel said, crews have installed the Equibase’s new electronic GPS system at eight additional tracks, bringing the track total to 28. With the additions, tracks representing 75 percent of the handle in North America have transitioned to the new E-GPS system, McDoniel said. McDoniel said that Equibase is currently working with other data companies to use optical tracking from existing camera feeds and artificial intelligence to improve and “refine” the data that Equibase logs for a race. Those new inputs, plus existing systems, “will be able to continue to increase the depth and quality of data that ultimately gets delivered.” The other data presentation was delivered by Michael Lopez, the senior director of football data and analytics for the National Football League. Lopez focused on the NFL’s surprisingly recent history of collecting detailed data on its games – it’s only been since 2015 that the NFL launched its Next-Gen tracking system that brought the league into the modern age. Prior to that launch, the NFL was producing roughly “170 lines of data” per game. Now, a single player produces 300,000 data points in a single game, Lopez said. Lopez said that the collection of performance data could have enormous implications for both the management of animals and the development of policies and rules that would make the game better for both participants and fans. The NFL, Lopez said, currently uses data to identify players at additional risk for injury and to analyze the potential impact of rule changes, among dozens of other uses. “Whatever horse racing’s priorities are,” Lopez said, “analytics will help address all of those problems.” Also on the subject of data, Kristen Werner, senior counsel of The Jockey Club who oversees the organization’s safety initiatives, said that The Jockey Club’s Thoroughbred Safety Committee had approved a recommendation that will urge racetracks to increase the frequency with which they take measurements of their racing surfaces and to make the results of those surveys available to the public. Following the presentation, Werner said in an interview that the publication of the results would allow horsemen and the general public to better assess the “consistency” of racetracks, especially in cases in which participants or outside observers are offering their opinions on the condition of tracks. The data contained in the published surveys could either support or refute those opinions, Werner said, bringing greater scientific weight to what are often positions grounded only in anecdotal evidence. Computerized account wagers, explained Earlier in the conference, a presentation on computerized account wagering programs provided the Round Table attendees with a general primer on the practice, which has exploded over the past 20 years alongside a general erosion in betting by both casual and everyday players who do not have access to the technology. Pat Cummings, the executive director of the Thoroughbred Idea Foundation, a racing think tank that has produced in-depth analyses of CAW activity over the past several years, served as moderator of the panel, which included Dr. Marshall Gramm, a professor at Rhodes College who is also a prominent gambler, owner, and breeder, and Joe Longo, the general manager of the New York Racing Association’s content management services. :: Bet the races with a $250 First Deposit Match + $10 Free Bet and FREE Formulator PPs! Join DRF Bets. Cummings said that his organization has estimated that approximately “one-third” of today’s handle is coming from CAW groups, a quadrupling of the share of the total U.S. pari-mutuel market since 2003, when Cummings said that CAWs accounted for eight percent of handle. (In an interview, he cited an NTRA task force report for the figure.) When factoring in the growth of that number over the last 20 years and comparing it to the general slide in Thoroughbred betting over the same timeframe, betting from non-CAW sources, adjusted for inflation, is down by “nearly two-thirds” since 2003, Cummings contended. That amount of smart money in the pools has made U.S. pari-mutuel pools far more “efficient,” meaning the prices in the pools are extremely close to the real-world odds, according to Gramm, who teaches a class on pari-mutuel markets. As a result, the sport’s “middle-market players” are playing less and less, said Gramm, because good prices on overlooked horses are getting harder and harder to find due to the effectiveness of the CAWs’ algorithms and their ability to dump thousands of bets into the pools at the last second. That dump allows the CAWs to basically set the market price. “I’ve talked to many [middle-market players] and they are betting a lot less,” Gramm said, adding that he is not philosophically opposed to CAWs. “They are getting squeezed out in this shark-eat-shark environment.” Longo discussed the impacts of NYRA’s decision in 2021 to prohibit any betting by CAWs in their win pools within three minutes to post, a restriction that has made CAW operators abandon the pools due to their inability to use the information from the existing win-bet distribution as a basis for making their own plays. While that decision could have cost NYRA a significant chunk of handle, win betting on NYRA races has not gone down, Longo said. Instead, the percentage of win betting compared to overall betting has remained the same. Consequently, NYRA remains satisfied with its decision to eliminate CAWs from its win pool (NYRA also bans CAWs from certain linked bets). But Longo said that he does not know yet if NYRA will seek other restrictions on CAW activity, citing a lack of consensus and clarity within the industry. “Know that we are working on that in the background, and hopefully we can speak more about that in a couple of months,” Longo said.  :: Want to learn more about handicapping and wagering? Check out DRF's Handicapping 101 and Wagering 101 pages.