New national rules for horseracing to take effect in July

Lisa Lazarus walked around the backstretch at Belmont Park nine days before the final leg of horseracing’s Triple Crown, selling as much as observing.

The CEO of the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority talked with trainers, riders and other horsemen about the sport’s federally mandated new governing body that she has been tapped to oversee. Lazarus was peppered with questions and complaints about the new rules that are about to become the national standard.

Once she explained what will change — and what won’t — the most common response Lazarus said she got was, “It’s nowhere near as bad as I thought it was going to be.”

One reason for that reaction at Belmont Park? New York is among the states that already follow many of the safety regulations, which will begin July 1, and the antidoping rules, which will go into effect at the start of 2023.

Lazarus said the policies that will become federal law about three weeks after this year’s final Triple Crown race closely resemble those that are already in place in California, Kentucky and New York.

Now that Congress has passed the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act, the rules will be the same across thoroughbred tracks in the U.S.

“The biggest that’s going to change is uniformity,” Lazarus said. “Uniformity, really above and beyond: It’s going to be one set of rules for everyone.”

Unlike other sports, horse racing does not have a longestablished national governing body, which would make getting every state and track on the same page. With an eye on cleaning up the sport, HISA is the closest thing to that.

Mark Casse, who is set to saddle Golden Glider in the Belmont Stakes on Saturday three years after winning the race with Sir Winston, said he and other trainers are still learning about what’s coming, but is relieved rules will be standardized across all jurisdictions.

“It’s a guess everywhere,” Casse said. “You’re like, ‘What can we do here? What can we do here?’ We have a lot of the same rules. A lot of the rules are not changing. I’m just hoping that they can be better enforced.”

The seven rules that will go into effect in July encompass jockey safety (including a national concussion protocol), the riding crop and how often riders can use it during a race, racetrack accreditation and reporting of training and veterinary records. Everyone in horseracing must register with the new safety agency by the end of this month.

Medication regulations, including a drug testing policy aimed at getting rid of doping in the aftermath of federal charges brought against 27 people in 2020 for what authorities described as a widespread international scheme to drug horses to make them run faster, take effect Jan. 1. Lazarus said her agency would take an extremely hard stance against banned substances that “should never be in a horse” with transparent processes and strict punishments, and “practical and firm” about therapeutic substances.