Faraldo/Gural Spat Continues

Published: September 26, 2011 12:35 pm EDT

The back and forth between racetrack owner-operator Jeff Gural and Standardbred Owners Association of New York President Joe Faraldo just refuses to stop

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On Saturday, September 24, Faraldo issued a statement to trades media regarding drug testing, the movement of the Cane Pace, marketing dollars and more.

Faraldo's words appear below in their entirety.


While I am loathe to subject readers of the industry news websites to any further back and forth between Mr. Gural and myself – since it is obvious that he and I will need to agree to disagree on certain opinions related to our industry – I must respond very briefly to a couple of key misrepresentations that were contained in his comments of September 21.

First and foremost, Mr. Gural’s statement that Rick Violette, President of the NY Thoroughbred Horsemen, had “complained that Mr. Faraldo, on behalf of the harness horsemen, had refused to contribute to the cost of purchasing this [drug testing] equipment” is simply not true. For the record, such a request or conversation never took place between myself and Rick Violette and Mr. Violette conveyed to me yesterday that he never said any such thing to Jeff Gural. He also said that he would be reaching out to Mr. Gural to clarify that this is patently false information. It is one thing to put a spin on facts, but it is quite another to misrepresent, or worse create 'facts.'

Secondly, the actual issue with shifting the recent Cane Pace from New York to Pennsylvania was not related to the outrageous implication that drug testing is inferior in NY under Dr. George Maylin, but rather the issue was the fact that New York currently allows the permissive use of cortisone in horses and Pennsylvania does not. That was the central fact and, as a point of information, PA did conduct tests on all samples and to the credit of our NY horsemen there were no reported violations - even under a different testing regimen.

Additionally, Mr. Gural’s unfortunate suggestion that the standardbred horsemen “do not care enough” to contribute to steroid testing in New York is also simply not supported by the facts. The standardbred horsemen freely agreed to the imposition of a $10 per start surcharge imposed on horsemen in New York State several years ago to pay for just such testing. Industry observers know that the NYS Racing & Wagering Board’s past debt to Cornell delayed the testing implementation, which NY horsemen are paying for at a cost of $1.3 million per year – mostly out of the pockets of the harness industry in NYS. Do I need to remind everyone that such cost was that of track operators before racetracks morphed into racinos!

In closing there is a very telling quote from Mr. Gural that I think encapsulates what is obviously a clear and calculated effort to push any and all financial obligations related to racing – which have always been either the responsibility of the track or at a minimum, split between management and horsemen – solely onto the backs of the horsemen: “…it was unlikely that the track owners would divert marketing money from the casinos to racing since the economics did not make sense for them to do so and if we wanted to insure our long-term future it made sense for us to take over the marketing ourselves.”

For Mr. Gural to lament on one hand about the loss of racing fans and the need to bring younger people into the sport, and then on the other hand admit that the track owners have no interest in actually using their state-sponsored marketing allowance to market or support the racing side of their operations is cynicism of the highest order and demonstrates quite clearly what we horsemen are up against in our efforts to protect our livelihoods and grow our sport. Let’s not forget that since the advent of VLTs in NYS, the tracks have gotten nearly $1.4 billion dollars, and in addition to that there is a marketing allowance of between 8-10%, for the permissible use of promoting VLTs, and also to promote racing. One would expect that a self proclaimed devotee of harness racing would use that money like Yonkers does. So if a racino operator doesn’t want to spend that money given to promote racing, then perhaps a fair amount of that money could be managed by the horsemen, who have a real and vested interest in the sport.

At the end of the day, we all have the right to our own opinions, but we don’t have the right to our own facts. I honestly had not planned on responding, but the clear factual inaccuracies about the horseman’s actions on drug testing – as well as the misimpressions created about the differences between Pennsylvania and New York drug testing and the horsemen’s interest in the long-term well-being of our sport – compelled me to pen this response. Thank you for the opportunity to set the record straight.


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