Running on Empty

Op-Ed

By Rep. Joe Pitts

Horse racing has been said to be the sport of kings. Horses are strong, majestic creatures, whose natural beauty and power awed us from Ancient Greek hippodromes to Churchill Downs today. Man's kinship with the horse goes even further back into prehistoric times.

And yet, as with any sport, there are cheaters who spoil it for everyone.

Like the homerun hitters of the 1990s, many horse trainers use a variety of illicit substances to give their horses an unfair competitive advantage, even if it hurts the horse.

It is not only cruel to the animal, but often to the jockey, many of whom are injured when sick or injured horses collapse. Some have even died, including the apprentice jockey Juan Saez, who had once been considered a future racing superstar. He was killed in a race at the Indiana Grand in Shelbyville, Indiana, at just 17 year of age.

If nothing else, horse doping besmirches the integrity of the sport, turning a horse race into just a race between two chemists. What happened with Major League Baseball in the 1990s has been happening in horse racing for over 30 years.

Every week, some two dozen horses die on racetracks across the country. Many of these are horses that were sick, but were doped up and forced to race anyway.

In fact, almost every horse is given race-day medication, which is banned in other countries. Other countries look at American horse racing in disbelief: it should be obvious that no horse should be drugged on the day of a race.

Many people are making a fortune off of an industry that has been tainted by extensive corruption, and not just in Kentucky. It's happening right here in Pennsylvania. In February, several defendants in Cumberland County pled guilty to running an illegal gambling ring, money laundering, and criminal conspiracy, following an extensive FBI investigation. They will lose hundreds of thousands of ill-gotten dollars, and now face the possibility of federal prison time.

Thirty years ago, Congress allowed interstate wire gambling on horse races to take place, with the understanding that the horse racing industry would reform and police itself.

Over the course of decades, that understanding proved to be faulty. Only some states adopted uniform standards, making little progress against widespread cheating.

It doesn't make sense to keep doing the same thing but still expecting different results. How many more decades would have to pass, how many thousands more horses would have to die? Time has come for innovative ideas to fix this problem.

That is why last year I held a hearing as House Energy and Commerce Committee Health Subcommittee Chairman on Health about this very issue. Using information from this hearing, I introduced legislation that would create an independent anti-doping enforcement agency. Other Members of Congress from around the country introduced various other proposals, indicating a growing consensus that the status quo is unacceptable.

Two days before this year's Kentucky Derby, I joined with Democrat Senator Tom Udall of New Mexico, to introduce bipartisan, bicameral legislation shutting off the Congressionally sanctioned flow of money to this industry. We named our legislation off of horses who were euthanized on race tracks after being drugged. Senator Udall named his bill after Teller All Gone, a two-year old quarter horse who fell after the wire at a race in his home state of New Mexico, and I named my bill after Coronado Heights, a four-year-old thoroughbred who died racing with a degenerative joint disease.

Our bill would put a halt to about 90 percent of the $11 billion wagered on horseracing.

Predictably, those profiting off of the status quo attacked our bipartisan reforms. Our reforms will ultimately benefit the sport by restoring it to honor and integrity.

On Wednesday, I joined with Representatives Anna Eshoo and Jan Schawkowsky to re-introduce another bill, the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act. If it becomes law, it will put an end to race-day doping by giving the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency enforcement authority. Further, this legislation would create a "three strikes and you're out" to ban bad actors from the industry altogether.

After thirty years of waiting at the starting gate, we hope that this bill can be the shot to get horse racing started again.

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