Women Run the World…And These Help Run Racing. A Feminine View of Racing Administration
Thursday, March 10, 2005
8:10 a.m. - 9:10 a.m.

Mr. Bergstein: This is the third joint meeting of the HTA and TRA, and I am happy and pleased to announce to you that there will be another next year at the Bellagio in Las Vegas. The meeting will start the day after the Super Bowl, on February the 6^th, and go through February 9^th. 

Ecumenicalism has been sort of a passion of mine for years, and I firmly believe far more can be accomplished jointly than separately. I want to thank all of our sponsors and I want to thank all of our speakers for sharing their generous time to come here. 

The title of the first panel is “Women rule the world, and these now rule racing.” I think the only ones in the room who would question that thesis may be bachelors, everyone else realizes that is a fact of life. 

The increasing role that women are playing in the administration of racing is a healthy thing, and we have four exceptional and outstanding ladies here today.  

In alphabetical order, Cheryl Buley was appointed to the Racing and Wagering Board in New York by Governor George Pataki and was confirmed by the New York State Senate on June 13, 2000, and was the first woman racing commissioner to ever serve on the board in New York. New York is a member of the Association of Racing Commissioners International, and Miss Buley served as vice chairman of the recently formed ARCI wagering systems and security committee. She is a summa cum laude graduate of Boston University, where she earned her Master’s degree in public relations in 1988. Prior to that she completed an international business program at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark and holds a bachelor’s degree in business and marketing from the State University of New York at Plattsburg. Miss Buley began her career working as a legislative aide for the president of the New York Senate, Joseph J. Bruno. During that time she was exposed to a wide range of topics in Mr. Bruno’s district, which includes horse racing. She also worked as a consultant, developing an award-winning public relations campaigns for McDonalds and the Dental Society of the state of New York. Far more importantly, Cheryl Buley has made the transition from politics to racing in remarkable form. I followed her career with interest from the time she was appointed. She has done her homework and she has studied and has learned racing thoroughly, and we welcome her here warmly today.

Ingrid Fermin, of course, needs no introduction in California. She is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, where she majored in humanities. She taught school for ten years, then--fortunately for racing where humanities is a strong background--she became the first female racing steward here. It is hard to believe that it was in 1981, but it is 24 years ago that Ingrid began her distinguished career as a steward. Last year, Arnold Schwarzenegger had the good judgment to appoint Mrs. Fermin executive director of the California Horse Racing Board. She was a stern and highly efficient state steward and has proved to be the same as the executive director of the racing board here.

Lynda Tanaka has practiced law in Ontario since 1975 at a large firm, West Falls LLP in Toronto. She is chairwoman of the Ontario Racing Commission and formerly served as vice chair. She has distinguished as the chairwoman of a Commission that has levied the most severe penalties of any racing commission or board in North America. It is going to be interesting to hear from Commissioner Tanaka. She is active in arbitrations as well as counsel for parties in private arbitration and in mediation, an excellent background for any racing commissioner.

Connie Whitfield is a native Californian who grew up here in Palm Springs. Connie is a graduate of Stanford Law School, and was a litigator with a large downtown firm in Los Angeles. Her husband is US Congressman Ed Whitfield, recently appointed as chairman of a federal oversight committee on all sports including horse racing. Mrs. Whitfield has played a very strong role in Kentucky taking its place with new respect in the national racing community with a new outlook on medication and penalties formulated in a large measure by her. She is the chair of the recently appointed Kentucky Equine Drug Council, and she is vice chair of the Kentucky Racing Authority. 

I am going to start this discussion off this morning by asking all of you one question. As racing commissioners or administrators, what is the one thing in racing that might keep you from sleeping at night? Ingrid, why don’t you start, since things have been so dull here in California in recent days.

Mrs. Fermin: First of all, the old song that it never rains in California is a total falsehood, and since I have been appointed, rain has been an issue, because I would wake up at night and think, ‘Am I really going to get on an airplane tomorrow and fly through all of this stuff and go to Sacramento?’ It has been terrible with slides, floods, and everything else. So that has been one issue, but I think the important thing is to not to let it keep me awake at night. I certainly have a lot of work cut out for me. Starting at the top with our stewards, investigators, and such, we have issues that we need to face, like reorganization. I hoping that the California Horse Racing Board is going to become more proactive and assume our responsibility with things that are of issue in our state. As all of you have been reading in the newspapers, we have not been able to stay out of them, in some negative ways. The horsemen, however, have been very supportive and one of the very important things that has happened here in California is that with our milkshaking issues and the racing associations have stepped up to the plate and assumed a role that the Board legally could not assume because of the split sample program. Del Mar, Santa Anita with Magna, and OakTree have all been very helpful and it has been nice to see the various factions in California working together and making a big difference. 

Mrs. Whitfield: I think probably the key preoccupation that keeps me from sleeping at night is fear for my life. I say that in jest, but not entirely. I have been pushing very fast, very hard to make changes in Kentucky. I feel we have a very narrow window of opportunity. I feel also that for some unknown but wonderful reason that in the state of Kentucky and throughout the nation, those of us who are pushing for change feel that the stars seem to be in alignment. Things seem to be happening, whether it is the indictment in New York, Ingrid in California, the right people being on the racing commission in Kentucky, to allow us to feel a new sense of resolve and unity. Because of that, I feel a certain strength to be able to do things that I probably otherwise would have felt more timid about. I am pushing very hard to make very rapid changes, and it has upset certain quarters of people. I have been getting very strange phone calls late at night at my home, and I am not really trying to say that I am about to be killed or anything like that, but it makes me feel that this change really is long overdue and because of the support I feel from within the state as well as throughout the country, I am happy to lose sleep at night because I feel that we are accomplishing really important things.

Mr. Bergstein: Lynda, does anything preoccupy you in the evenings in the very turbulent and very progressive jurisdiction that you rule?

Mrs. Tanaka: Well, I think it would be a total misapprehension if you thought that the shape or configuration of the chair made a difference in the life of a chair or executive director in racing. There is no such thing as an easy chair. There is no such thing as a comfortable chair. You are always on the hot seat. In Ontario, one of our major issues is size. From our most northerly tracks, Sudbury and Ottawa, down to the most southerly in Windsor, there are 18 racetracks, and over 1,700 race days. While over 400 of those are under Woodbine Entertainment Group’s umbrella, there is a tremendous number of races going on at any one time. My biggest worry is that there is such a large job to do, with over 31,000 licensees in Ontario, and such a large geographic span to cover, that we will become bogged down in details instead of being able to see major themes, such as changing the culture that stays silent in face of rule violations. That culture has to change if we are going to have an industry that is committed to integrity and walks its talk, as one of our former prime ministers said. You must walk the talk. You can’t just talk about integrity. It has to be in your bones. There are major issues in Canada that have to be addressed that relate far beyond us. This is responsible gambling month in Ontario, and the Responsible Gambling Council in Ontario has published newspaper inserts going into all the local papers. It broke down the dollars wagered by the 12 million people in Ontario. Horse racing has the smallest percentage, so we are not seen as a problem for responsible gambling, because we are not really part of the game of gambling. We are even smaller than speculative investments. We have gone from 100 percent of the game to 5 percent of the game. When I say “we” I know that there is a separation between the industry and the regulator, but my bottom line depends on wagering, and all of the regulators in Canada have the same problem. When the wagering dollar goes down, even if the number of race dates goes up, we still have a regulatory job to do that has to be done with fewer dollars. Those are some of the big picture items, but as you said, in Ontario there is never a calm moment. Something new happens every day.

Mrs. Buley: After being in this position for 4 ½ years, I don’t know if there will be another female commissioner appointed, because just about every major, shocking integrity-oriented headline somehow has involved New York. If you look back to the Pick Six, that occurred in 2001, and here we are in 2005, there is still no national office of wagering and security, there is no cyberspace monitoring of the wagers, we do not really know who is in the pools. I find it really shocking that Chris Harn, from his prison cell, is quoted in the paper saying, “The computer system is so archaic that it is easy for people to get into these pools and we are still using Pascal’s computer language that I studied in the ‘70’s in college.” I feel like it is almost like a groundhog day situation where you wake up and people are talking about the same thing over and over again and you are suffering, and it is not a funny thing, it is absolutely devastating. I think too that the regulators have to take our jobs more seriously. We need to drive this process, not necessarily commercially, although I do see the benefit of upgrading our infrastructure so that racing can benefit from new technologies and more revenues. But I think we all have to stop talking about it and start setting some deadlines and start doing things from a regulatory standpoint, and without a federal hammer to enact that change. Regulators have got to coalesce, come together, and drive this process, and I frankly will not rest until that happens. 

Mr. Bergstein: I thank you all four for your opening statements. It was a presumptuous question on my part because none of you look like you have lost too much sleep, so I will move on from there. Connie Whitfield, you have taken a tough new stance in a state that was long regarded as the bastian of permissiveness, and you have done it with courage and determination against some horsemen and some veterinarians as well. You have vocally opposed light penalties, and in one case you voted in the negative because you did not think the penalty was severe enough. As chair of the Equine Drug Council you successfully recommended that the Racing Authority, which you also vice chair, adopt the guidelines of the Racing Medication and Testing Consortium. With the eyes of racing now on Kentucky largely because some of the things you are doing, where do you go from here in the quest that you are seeking and, particularly with some horsemen appearing not inclined to accept the command or decisions of the authority? 

Mrs. Whitfield: That is an excellent question, but I have it all mapped out, partially because I am hung up on this narrow window of opportunity notion. The equine drug council by statute is responsible for recommending to the authorities what constitutes an effective drug regulatory policy for Kentucky racing. We have broken it down into five areas. The first is the uniform medication policy, next is testing, penalties, research and security. We feel that the uniform medication rule essentially sets a platform for the other four areas that are really aspects of enforcement. I have formed subcommittees to address each of these four topics. The drug council will be meeting in three weeks to take up the issue of penalties and hopefully we will be making a recommendation to the authority on penalties which I suspect will be very draconian. We will be making a recommendation within the month and hopefully they will vote on that. So we are going to be working on all of these topics contemporaneously and we have excellent people on the drug council and that is making it much easier. They are all leaders in the industry and they are very dedicated.

Mr. Bergstein: Cheryl Buley, you came to racing from high level politics in New York. You worked as a legislative aide to the most powerful figure in the New York Senate, and some think in the state, and you have studiously and successfully made the transition and learned the game of racing to where you are now a respected leader in racing in New York State and elsewhere. How tough was the learning curve and how frustrating are the political roadblocks of getting legislation passed in a state where lawmaking is like watching glaciers melt?

Mrs. Buley: Thank you so much. Really, that is a compliment coming from you. I had studied and I did not really come from a powerful political background, insomuch that my background is more in public relations. I have relied upon the decades of long experience of the staff of the racing board and really trusted and relied on their advice and counsel, particularly Joe Lynch, who said to me, “Cheryl, it really is all about the racing fan.” So the clients I had worked for had been McDonalds, Sheraton Hotels, the New York Dental Society, so I have always had to be a quick study. That part of it has not necessarily been new to me, but when he said that to me, I thought that is my client, the racing fan. With that in mind, whenever I am deliberating on any topic, I try to take into account the perspective of the fan. Ultimately that is who we need in the loop here. They are the lifeblood of the sport. As far as the political process in New York, I find it painful and frustrating, as I am an impatient person by character. The fact is that the budget has been late for 20 consecutive years, probably because we are a very diverse and unique state. We have Manhattan and Upstate constantly at odds, so characteristically New York is not like any other state in the nation. Also, because we have a majority Republican Senate, and we have a historically Democratic assembly, it does not really matter if the governor is a Democrat or Republican, their decisions lead to gridlocks so they rely on pushing things to the end of the session, then they end up kind of horse-trading various issues and it may not be within an issue. It could swap something for health care for something racing wants. One fundamental problem I think racing has had is that they have trouble in our state speaking with one clear voice because we have the OTB’s and the tracks with competing interests, and I have to tell you if you break this process item by item to see how racing can best succeed legislatively, it would be to speak with one voice, and that did happen with VLTs. Working in New York you just have to accept the fact that it is characteristic of New York. Things are going to be tough and you just can’t give up. We worked successfully with the governor this session. He has a program going to increase funding for milkshake testing and other things, and he is also recognizing that we have historic growth in games, so he has also proposed that we have a new racing commission and merge with the lottery so we also have oversight over VLTs and stop some of the needless duplication of racing and VLTs. Hopefully we will see some progress. But you never know where racing could end up next to health, education, welfare. Certainly proportionately racing is not really an election issue for New York’s leaders, but as gaming is increasing, and its public profile, I think racing can benefit from that to some extent and be heard.

Mr. Bergstein: Thank you. Ingrid Fermin, you were known for 24 years as a fair but a very tough state steward in California, then you stepped into a job where making deals on penalties had been criticized heavily in the press. Only 10 of 51 drug suspensions had drawn penalties, if the Blood-Horse’s figures were correct. You made it clear in taking the job that you intended that everyone would be held accountable. In a matter of weeks four trainers have been ordered to race out of detention barns, and one of them has captured national attention by calling racing fans, or anybody who bets on racing, “idiots.” Do you miss the isolation of the racing steward’s stand, or do you relish moving forward now in California, and how do you plan to do it?

Mrs. Fermin: One of the things that I emphasized during my interviews for the job is that having spent 24 years in the steward stand, I certainly know how horses run, and in the last few years it was particularly frustrating to see what the Racing Form eventually labeled as “super trainers” just working horses up the ladder--claiming horses, having them become stake horses and such. Watching literally thousands of races through the years and seeing suddenly horses that, knowing how the natural athlete runs, start running at the half-mile pole, break into a new gear at the quarter pole, continue to pull away, and win by double digits. Some people are lucky enough to have that happen once in a lifetime, and maybe really lucky to have it happen twice, but certainly not consistently. So, when the rules changed in California where they could start making what I have come to call--and Blood-Horse also--deals, it was very unfortunate, because I think it encouraged people to continue to cheat because there really was not a penalty. If you are a gambling outfit, you can cash bets, and maybe pay a penalty and there really is not any accountability. I think back in the days when somebody had to appear before the board of stewards and tell what happened and go through those steps and shame, and a suspension, and break down the outfit. That is the way we deter and the way we get the people out that we do not need. It was very frustrating, and I took a very strong stand saying that I think medications and our penalties are very, very important, particularly because of the welfare and the safety of the horse, the rider that is on his back, and also, as has been mentioned here so eloquently, is the fan and the betting public. They certainly want to know that they are betting on an even playing field. If we as a regulatory agency are not doing our best to make sure that playing field is an even playing field, we are not doing our job. To ignore it is really our crime. I am hoping that we are going to go back to adopting our penalties so that they will be strict again and be a deterrent. We are doing a lot of things that are different. We are trying to be more proactive, very visible. We are searching vans now when they come in from the auxiliary facilities, we are taking syringes from vets for analysis, we are going through vet trucks, we are doing a lot of things that will make it more of a deterrent for everybody. The penalties are essential. I have told them if you see somebody administering something that is obviously race day medication, that is a felony, it is race fixing, it is any one of those things. Santa Anita is across the street from the Arcadia Police Department. I would like to have them just come get them, handcuff them, and take them away, and I hope a lot of people see them on the way out. I think this is the stand that we really need to take. We have had a lot of publicity this week from one particular trainer who says that everybody who bets on horses is either addicted to gambling or an idiot, and I have had responses, I was reading my emails, everybody is enraged and I think rightfully so. So hopefully we are going to be able to change that profile, but until we have an even playing field for the horses and safety for the riders, I think that is what the fans are entitled to and that is certainly what we intend to give them here.

Mr. Bergstein: Thank you very much. Lynda Tanaka, your racing commission in Ontario has led North America in both firm and fast action and certainly in the severity and the size of penalties that have been levied there. As an experienced lawyer, you certainly have not been intimidated by lawsuits and legal challenges, and neither was your predecessor who was a professor of law, Stanley Sadinski. He was very highly regarded, one of the great racing commissioners in my opinion. Do you think that the lack of legal experience on the part of stewards in the face of skilled and expensive legal counsel on the part of defendants has been an intimidating or an actual deterrent to the administration of racing justice? If so, what is the answer?

Mrs. Tanaka: I don’t think Gary Cahill gets intimidated by many people—he is one of our Standardbred judges who is often on the Woodbine judges stand. The Woodbine judges stand will take 50-60 calls per night from fans watching who don’t like or do like what the judges have decided about something in the race. In our judges or stewards hearings, there are sometimes lawyers, but not always. We have tried to expand and intensify the training for our officials, because I think the quality of officiating is very important for the public and the race participants. I think that it undermines the legitimacy of your regulator if the horsemen catch the horse that switches from a trot to a pace in the last few steps before the finish line and the judges don’t. I think there are always going to be debates among horsemen about the interference charges and the interference violations, but in terms of the actual running of the race it is very important for the confidence that the race participants have to make sure that your judges and stewards are well trained. My predecessor and the former executive director deliberately went out and hired more stewards and judges so that they had the ability to take someone out of the stand and train them, give them day-long sessions on things like handling difficult people and difficult situations as well as computer skills and process skills. That makes for a more expensive regulator, but in the end it should make for a better regulator. In terms of the penalties, I think Ontario has tried to recognize certain basic principles about penalty imposition, and it does not matter whether you are a horseman or a racetrack appearing before the commission on a penalty, the principles are pretty clear. You want to deter the activity of that particular individual. You want them never, ever to do it again. Secondly, you want to deter people in a similar situation who might be tempted to violate that rule or act in that way. The third thing you want to do is be consistent with what you have done before, unless you are trying to implement a new rule and take a new approach to something. When you have got the consistency and you have the deterrence, the last thing is that you want to remove the financial benefit. So, when you look at Ontario and the way the purses have gone, and the amount of money that we are racing for in our sire stakes program, it is like that $20 parking ticket when you have to park there in order to get your million dollar lottery ticket in. You are going to pay the $20 fine for the parking if it means you get your ticket in at the right time to get your lottery prize. Time is money. Bigger stakes than just this are involved, so you have to remove financial benefit if you are going to truly impose a penalty. Those are sort of the four principles. I don’t think that it matters much that you have got judges or not at stewards and judges hearings. If they don’t like it, they all appeal and we have a hearing before us and there are lots of lawyers involved in that.

Mr. Bergstein: You have levied fines in Ontario as high as $300,000 and above, and obviously you don’t have legislative strictures that prevent you from doing that, but other racing commissions do. The issue of how you get those strictures removed is of interest to racing, and maybe you want to comment on that, because the kind of fines that you have imposed, both the length of the penalties and the amount of the dollars, is so far ahead of any other jurisdiction in North America, that you might want to comment on the fact that you have not been hampered by legalities.

Mrs. Tanaka: Well, remember that we are in an environment that is different from the American environment in this sense—we are a regulator, but there are many industries in Ontario that are regulated. Whether you are in one of those industries that may have an environmental impact or you are in cartage business, there are many industries where there are very heavy fines, particularly in the environmental field. People face very heavy fines. The latest legislation before the Ontario legislature would impose absolute liability for spills, which means that a company could do everything it reasonably could to prevent a spill, but it would still have absolute liability if the material that goes into the water course is detrimental to the fish or the wildlife. There was a case recently in which there was an escaping wheel. In Ontario it gets very cold in the wintertime. Truck axels sometimes break if there is overloading, and wheels find themselves bouncing down major freeways. You have 18 lanes of traffic and a truck wheel going down and people get killed. The wheel hits a passenger vehicle, and somebody is killed. There is a $50,000 fine for that, and the challenge was made in the courts that this was such a heavy fine to almost constitute penal consequences. In Canada, we do not have penal consequences for regulatory offenses, such as horseracing, or being in breach of your lawyer’s license. So the argument was that since this was what we call a strict liability offense, where you could show due diligence, but it is a very high standard, it was contrary to the law. The Ontario Court of Appeals said it was not contrary to the law to impose a fine of $50,000, because you are talking about people’s lives. So we are not in an environment where the legislature is of a view to limit us. You know, in the Berkley case, where I was prosecuting the case on behalf of the administration, we were talking about a hidden trainer and hidden ownership structure involving 15 licensees, where the purses totaled over $2 million. Now, that is the purses. How do you exact a penalty to dissuade people from entering into hidden ownership and hidden trainer situations, when if you put it together right, you can make that much money in a year?

Mr. Bergstein:  Just as a personal matter of interest and inquiry, in one case where the state of New Jersey was nice enough to send you the offender, he wound up getting ten years and $300,000, I believe. My question is, has the fine ever been paid?

Mrs. Tanaka: He was fined $100,000. The hearing was underway. There were 89 horses involved, and I think we had gone through 20 of them. We had the bookkeeper’s records, and that is how we were able to prove the hidden ownership and the hidden trainer, and it settled in mid-case. We had a mediation involving the vice chair, who was not on the panel, and that fine was agreed to, and it was agreed because he was going to be out of the business, that it would be paid over a period of years. There have been payments made, and if he wants back in the business, he has to pay the fine in total. We have collected money from various people. There were at least two who had $100,000, and they also had some pretty heavy legal bills to pay as well.

Mr. Bergstein: Connie, it has been suggested in Kentucky and elsewhere that owners are part of the problem and the answer, by patronizing trainers that they either know, or should know, are less than ethical. The fastest and most effective way of handling this would seem to be to suspend the horse as well as the trainer. What are your thoughts on that?

Mrs. Whitfield: I would say that the drug council is seriously considering this in our upcoming discussion on penalties. I think a very strong argument can be made that this is a necessary thing to do, and not simply because some owners may know more about the trainers than they pretend to. It is insufficient to just suspend trainers, because we all know that the owner can get substitute trainers. Thus far, at least in Kentucky, the deterrence has not been there. I have talked to a lot of substantial owners who are not thrilled at this idea by any means, but they understand that we have reached the point where we need to consider doing this, and I think Kentucky will end up incorporating that in our penalties. 

Mr. Bergstein: Do any of the other three of you have any thoughts on penalties to owners as a deterrent, or if not even as a deterrent, as a solution? If an owner gets in trouble with his horse or his horse gets in trouble because of the trainer, it would seem to me that there is a possibility that owners, instead of gravitating toward those kind of trainers, would move away from them. Ingrid?

Mrs. Fermin: We have just started in the last couple of weeks, because as I mentioned earlier, our hands are kind of tied because of the law with the milkshaking. However, with support of the associations, we have started calling in the personnel and the owner just trying to put some pressure on them. Certainly as the sanctions are in place, we can hopefully flex our muscles even more, but we have been bringing in the groom by himself or herself and asking them what they have seen, just making people a little uncomfortable. We have called in some of the owners and asked, “Did you have a pick six on this?” Also, once again, trying to put pressure on them, and actually have started a couple of investigations involving their horses as well as what kind of betting pattern they might have had. I think the more pressure we can put on, the better it is and the less inclined, hopefully, owners will be to gravitate to those who are taking the unfair advantage. 

Mr. Bergstein: Cheryl, do you share that view? If you share it, what can you do about it in New York?

Mrs. Buley: Well, the one question I really had of Lynda, was when we were talking about these seemingly high fines or suspensions, does the death penalty work? Is it a deterrence to have these kinds of fines?

Mrs. Tanaka: We think it is a deterrence. Those who have been suspended for a long time do come back and ask if they can have the period of suspension waived. There are people out there who are under lifetime suspensions. I think deterrence is one of those philosophical discussions that you and I can debate forever. Part of it has to do with making the person sorry they ever did it, but the other thing is sending the message out that the behavior is not going to be tolerated. Remember that in Ontario, when I was vice chair from 1995-98, we had two investigators, and we had more than 18 tracks. We had 20 or 22 tracks then. We had two investigators and all these tracks, and there were certainly complaints made, but there were not the resources or the manpower to follow up. Then you get horsemen saying, “Well, why are you hitting me with a $300 fine for this, when that person over there is doing something so much worse?”

Mrs. Buley: Well in New York, we have a $5000 maximum fine, but I think owners are leaving this sport, and it could be because of integrity reasons. I guess there has been a 30 percent reduction in ownership. I don’t know if somehow holding some of the people I know responsible who are owners that are not there at the track every day and so forth, I mean it is a compelling idea, but would it drive more owners out of the business? Maybe. Is it worth it to have a better handle on integrity? Probably. Does it make more sense to implicate the vet, and have a vet responsibility rule? I think I favor that more so than fining the owner in addition to the trainer. I think we need to do more with the vets and hold them accountable and require vet record treatments and work along those lines. I would have an open mind, but I also would want to consider the downside. 

Mrs. Tanaka: I guess the question is, is it a downside to lose an owner who is only prepared to be in the game if there is no risk, if they play around the fringes of conduct? That was an argument we had in the 1990’s, and I used to hear some of the people say, “Lynda, if they impose too big a fine or they are too strict on the horsemen, we will never get any new owners.” The question is, how many people are staying away from this business because they don’t want to be associated, because some person that is in the business will call them an idiot or an addict? The adage of a fool and his money are soon parted is what I hear from my friends and associates who are not associated at all with racing. They say, “Why would you want to get into that business, Lynda? Everyone knows the races are fixed!” That is the word out there. “Why would you want to be in there? It just seems that the people that are in there make a lot of money, but if you are not really part of it, you don’t make any money, whether it is wagering or owning.” There is unfortunately a reputation out there that has to be changed.

Mrs. Buley: I would agree with that. I think that in any regulation, we have to weigh the cost-benefit and the true deterrent effect of those decisions.

Mr. Bergstein: All four of you know, of course, full well, that the gentlest of all practitioners are racing journalists. As the close of this session, I thought you might have some thoughts on media. Go ahead, Cheryl.

Mrs. Buley: This is another reason why I stay up late at night. I appreciate the press coverage of the importance of the medication issue and that we need to do more with it, but whenever we are going to air racing’s dirty laundry, and there is a name on the label of the dirty shirt, somehow the racing press seems to coalesce and buffer this victim and talk about how this positive could occur. It was such a miniscule amount in this big horse. They write these red herring articles that don’t really speak the truth. They don’t present a balanced set of facts. They rarely print what the racing board states in regard to the case and because it is about people’s livelihoods, we take that role very seriously. I do wish that the racing press would meet its professional obligation in presenting the facts in regard to the penalties.

Mrs. Whitfield: I have not been involved in this business as long as you all have, but being married to a Congressman, I am used to harsh press. I have been thrilled with the press that the authority and the drug council have received in the state of Kentucky and also in the Thoroughbred Times and the Blood-Horse, and I think that the journalists are helping our cause. They are helping the sort of change that we are trying to make. I think that they have really helped educate members on the Kentucky Racing Authority and the drug council and me. I always carry stacks of Thoroughbred Times and Blood-Horse magazines and Stan’s newsletters with me, and read as much as I can because it helps me learn a lot and has inspired me as well.

Mr. Bergstein: Ingrid, a quick closing comment?

Mrs. Fermin: I don’t know if this is the week to ask me about the press and the media, but generally I think that recently the Blood-Horse and some of the articles have been very responsible for changing the tide in California, and I am very respectful of responsible press. But, as I said, it has been a little tough this week.

Mrs. Tanaka: I agree with a lot of what has been said. One of the things that we have to recognize is that we have an obligation to inform, to get our message as regulators out there. I am reminded of the Supreme Court of Canada that about 15 or 20 years ago, found that the press was so misinterpreting the Supreme Court’s decisions, that they hired an executive officer to meet with the press whenever they issued their decisions to explain, if they had questions, about what it all meant. I think that when you sit on the top of the mountain you have to be prepared to take some heat. You are an easy target because there is nobody else around you. It does go with the territory. What you want is fair and informed media coverage, so you want to make sure that you listen carefully to what they are saying and try to educate them.

Mr. Bergstein: I don’t know whether the premise of women rule the world was accurate, but it is certainly reassuring to hear the views of these women who rule their jurisdictions. I want you to join me in thanking them.