National HBPA Conference Day 1 Recap: Panel Says Horse Racing Would Be Smart to Embrace AI

Horse racing should not fear the advent of artificial intelligence, but rather embrace it as a valuable tool to assist with creating condition books and providing new ways to market the sport.

That was the conclusion of a discussion titled “Artificial Intelligence (AI) on the Track: Smart Tech for Racing’s Next Frontier” on Wednesday, the first of three days of panels and presentations at the annual National HBPA Conference at Oaklawn Park. The conference, which opened with a welcoming by National HBPA President Dr. Doug Daniels, continues with panel discussions Thursday and Friday before the full board meets Saturday.

John Julia, a racehorse owner-breeder who is senior vice president at Pinnacle AI, said understanding what AI is helps to demystify the concept and make it appear less scary.

“It’s about utilizing massive amounts of data to identify patterns in that data,” said Julia, a former board member for the Pennsylvania Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association. “And when you can identify patterns and data, you can extract a lot of business insights out of that. Not only can you extract insights, but then you can actually start making predictive models, because patterns of it have a tendency to repeat themselves, and that’s really what the basis of machine learning is all about.

“… We are not going to be 50 percent unemployed in the next three to five years. There are certain things that machines do very well, and there are certain things that machines don’t do very well. Machines, again, are very good at analyzing data at massive scale, finding patterns and correlations between different data points to yield an output. Sometimes that output is predicted in nature. But what machines are not good at is developing strategy, understanding how to take those business insights that we’re getting from the machine and apply them to everyday life.”

Rick Hammerle is a veteran racing executive who spent years as a racing secretary putting together the condition books that spell out what races for which entries will be taken at a track. He said AI offers all kinds of possibilities for assisting with what races have the best chance of filling and getting a decent number of entries.

“Let’s say that you’ve been writing a race for every 18 days,” Hammerle said. “And it now suggests that 23 days is the (optimum) number between races for that, something along those lines. And maybe you thought about writing the race going a mile. Maybe it suggests that if you had it a mile before, maybe you should have it back at a mile and a sixteenth. The more data we get, this could help in improving condition books, races moved maybe two days or a week.

“Obviously, you still need a human element. You can’t hit a button and have a book spit out. But you can have these small aids along the way to help you determine where a race might be placed.”

The morning line is a prime example of how AI can improve a product, panelists said.

“There are over 250 data points per horse in every race,” Julia said. “… If you have 10 horses, that means in that one race alone, there are over 2,500 different data points. If you have 10 races, that’s over 25,000 data points for one card. Something like making morning-line odds has moved beyond the capacity of the human brain to correlate all of that data and predict and come up with an accurate answer. That is a job that’s perfectly applicable to the machine and better-suited for compute than personality.”

Mark Midland, founder and CEO of Horse Racing Nation, said his company uses AI to create more accurate morning lines — actually projected odds — that use hundreds of data points and are updated every 10 minutes, accounting for scratches and other changes.

Other products they’re generating are the projected number of wins for a jockey, trainer or sire on a day’s card and horses’ speed figures that are available 90 minutes after a race. Midland said a racing-intelligent AI Chat-Bot could make picks and identify good and bad bets as well as pushing ticket sales and seating. HRN also is using AI to map out pace predictions, and Midland believes it can become a tool in more accurately planning race strategy.

Kyle McDoniel, president and COO of racing’s official data-keeper Equibase, likewise creates its morning lines based on data from hundreds of thousands of races. He said the industry-owned company has started using AI to create more uniformity for what a term means when chart callers describe what happened in a race. Marketing is another example where AI can be an important contributor, he said.

“Every major sports league, … they’re spending tens of millions of dollars with AWS to come up with all these data points and new stats,” McDoniel said. “Just telling stories about sports, telling stories about why this driver won race, or why this team won the game, why the momentum shifted, or the odds shifted, or how rare a play it is when Caleb Williams finds somebody in the corner in the end zone. Those are all things that are essentially trying to make a game more interesting, and that’s what we’re working on from the marketing standpoint: How can we come up with more stats to make horse racing easier and better to understand? Stats like ROI (returns on investment), they’re just not really good stats. There are ways to improve upon them.

“… There’s all this data that could help us all.”

— Jennie Rees

Are horsemen-owned tracks the future?

If corporate owners no longer want live horse racing — as appears the case at Gulfstream Park, with Belinda Stronach so far unsuccessfully seeking decoupling legislation that would allow her to keep the track’s slots license without the current mandate of running races — maybe a solution is to have horsemen own the tracks.

That’s a scenario that rescued racing in Nebraska, one of the focuses of the National HBPA Conference’s panel titled “Reimagining Racetrack Ownership A Future Led by Horsemen and Participants.”

Nebraska racing was in dire shape after the 1995 closure of the popular Ak-Sar-Ben racetrack after being sold to the county. Today the Nebraska HBPA owns two racetracks and partners with the Winnebago Tribe for a casino at each. The result is Horsemen’s Park in Omaha and Legacy Downs in Lincoln, both featuring a WarHorse Casino.

Lynne McNally, CEO of the Nebraska HBPA, didn’t gloss over the challenges involved, but said a key was to get protective legislation.

“We’ve been able to really revitalize the racing industry in Nebraska,” McNally said. “… The one direction the board of directors gave me was make it impossible — or at least super, super hard — to decouple. We specifically put in the constitution that it (casino gaming) has to be at the track. And we put in our development agreement that if we get divorced from our partner, they’re moving out and we’re keeping the house.”

Lonny Powell, president and CEO of the Florida Thoroughbred Breeders’ and Owners’ Association, said decoupling seems to dead in the current Florida legislative session, that after passing the House for the second year, the bill has gotten no traction in the Senate. But he is not optimistic that live racing will survive in South Florida.

“We can no longer ride with this Toronto group,” Powell said of Gulfstream Park’s ownership. “We hope they last as long as they can, but boy, you can’t plan your future there.”

He reiterated that the FTBOA possesses a permit for a nonprofit racetrack in Ocala and that he has enlisted a pair of advisors to help formulate an economically viable plan for a new track.

“That’s the direction we’re going to go to try to address our industry’s future,” Powell said. “… We have a plan, we have some thoughts, but I hope in another year or so I get to tell you some more details.”

(The Thoroughbred Racing Initiative — a broad-based industry collaboration that includes as partners the National HBPA, the Tampa Bay Downs HBPA and the Florida HBPA that represents Gulfstream horsemen — also is working on a long-range plan to secure the state’s racing and breeding future.)

When Colonial Downs closed in 2014, then-Virginia HBPA Executive Director and general counsel Frank Petramalo helped lead the push to get back live racing with the formation of the Virginia Equine Alliance. The non-profit’s four equal shareholders were the Virginia HBPA, the Virginia Thoroughbred Association (the breeders), the Virginia Harness Horse Association and the Virginia Gold Cup Association (steeplechase). The entity got statutory approval for source-market fees from the internet betting platforms operating in the commonwealth.  The legislation also allowed the alliance to run the off-track betting facilities.

Colonial Downs not only reopened after five years of dormancy — subsequently being purchased by Churchill Downs Inc. in 2022 — but is one of racing’s recent success stories, with its chain of historical horse racing gaming facilities fueling rising purses.

Petramalo, who retired from his HBPA posts at the end of 2023, said the horsemen have complete control over purses. “It really gives us substantial control over the racing product,” he said. “The race dates are pretty much controlled by statute,” with one day of racing required for every 100 gaming machines.

Still, Virginia racing faces competitive challenges, including legislation that would legalize the so-called “gray” machines, billed as games of chance that mimic slot machines and operate largely unregulated (and called gray because they operate in a gray area of the law). Petramalo and the other speakers emphasized it’s vital for horsemen to nurture strong relationships with lawmakers.

If horsemen owning racetracks sounds ideal, Ed Fenasci was on the panel to apply the cold water. Fenasci, the Louisiana HBPA’s executive director, spent years involved with racetrack management at the Fair Grounds in New Orleans. He laid out the myriad of challenges and headaches that horsemen face if engaging in track ownership.

— Jennie Rees

Panel discusses challenges facing smaller stables
Medina: “There are a lot of challenges, but growing up in this industry that I love, that is something I’ve always wanted to do.”

Owners and trainers’ ongoing battles in a numbers game, issues with the labor force, so called “super trainers” and finding the right spots for certain horses were just a few topics discussed during a morning panel at the National HBPA’s National Conference Wednesday at Oaklawn Park.

Trainers Tom Van Berg and Robbie Medina and owner Marshall Gramm joined moderator

Jennie Rees on the panel “Seeing the Industry from the Barn and the Owner’s Box: A Real-World Racing Conversation.”

Gramm, an economics professor at Rhodes College in Tennessee and an active owner at

several levels of the game through his Ten Strike Racing operation, said the continued

consolidation of horses into a small number of trainers’ care is affecting the quality of the

American racing product.

“You don’t need to have an economist degree or anything like that to look at the data and see what’s happening with the consolidation of stock in very few hands,” said Gramm. “If there’s some advantages to scale … that the biggest trainers are able to access better help, they’re able to move their horses around much easier. They’re subtle things, right? If you’re stabled at multiple tracks, it is easier to go from Kentucky and race in Indiana if you have stalls in Indiana; whereas if you’re a smaller trainer, you’re unable to do those things without the wrath of the racing office.

“So, it’s to the point where it’s hurt our racing product and also just entering the game for

young and up-and-coming trainers is harder to do. We need to think about what we want as a racing product, what we want for the fans, what we want for the horseplayers, and … try to encourage owners to move to other trainers and disperse their horses so we don’t have stakes that have three or four trainers with 10 horses in it.”

The consolidation affects more than the races themselves, trickling into the workforce for the medium and smaller outfits.

“The biggest change that I realized when I came back in the game is the quality and

availability of the labor pool in our industry,” Van Berg said. “Especially as a smaller-side stable, what happens typically is, you train or teach a hot walker, groom, exercise rider how to work … and then as soon as they get the ability to do it, they’re swallowed up by the bigger outfits because they can pay a lot more and they have better horses.

“It’s hard to maintain the quality and availability of the labor pool in our industry, especially

for the smaller outfits.”

Despite the challenges – which also include availability of horses from owners, continual

changing and restrictive regulations, workers’ comp issues and overall economics – Medina and Van Berg agreed that it all comes down to a passion for the game and for horses.

“Something I always wanted to do was train,” said Medina, born into the game in the barn

areas at Chicago tracks and a longtime assistant to Shug McGaughey in New York. “I kind of got a little comfortable there with Shug with all those good horses, and I was just trying to kind of wait for the right time. I got offered an opportunity during COVID to move my family to Kentucky, so that was kind of it. That fizzled out after a year and a half, and so I just had to hang up my shingle. There are a lot of challenges, but growing up in this industry that I love, that is something I’ve always wanted to do. It’s not easy, but that’s the path I’m on now.”

Van Berg also grew up in the game, the son of Hall of Fame trainer Jack Van Berg, and said navigating the challenges and changes comes with the profession.

“When Eric Hamelback (National HBPA CEO) asked me to do this panel, he said, ‘Tom, I

want to keep it positive,’” Van Berg said. “I didn’t realize the kind of task that was being asked, but I started going over my checklist of what we could talk about. … One of the things that helped us be successful for our clients was we could, during the downtime when Churchill wasn’t running, we’d go up to Ohio or Indiana, Pennsylvania, you know, Virginia, West Virginia and run spots that we could bring in some grocery money for our clients and pay for the feed bill or whatever.

“Probably in the last five or six years, you go to a lot of these tracks now and you see these big stables now are expanding even there. That makes it tougher. … Now you might see a couple big stables, breeders, breaking horses’ maidens at Horseshoe Indianapolis. When I was growing up, if Bobby Frankel had a champion horse, you wouldn’t see him at Turf Paradise. That just didn’t happen. Now these big outfits, they just have so many horses that they go to these smaller tracks just because they have to find an outlet for that horse to start.”

— Tom Law

HISA: Three years later does incremental change justify cost?

The status of the Horseracing Integrity & Safety Authority (HISA) and its enabling legislation has become a regular fixture at the HBPA Conference. The speakers at Wednesday’s presentation painted the need for reform at a minimum.

Ed Martin, CEO of the Association of Racing Commissioners International, made the case that the benefits of HISA have been minimal for its substantial cost to tracks and horsemen.

Martin, whose group represents parimutuel racing regulators, said HISA’s budget increased from the initial $66.49 million in 2023 to $78.42 million for 2026. He said the incidence of catastrophic injuries remains extremely, and said it’s not clear that incremental improvements had to do with HISA, noting the low numbers for some non-HISA tracks.

He said no new drugs or doping agents have been called by the HISA-contracted laboratories from the old system where individual states oversaw testing and rules enforcement. Martin said there is less transparency and accountability under HISA, a private entity with no public meetings or public records and which essentially approves its own budget, compared with state racing commissions.

Martin’s conclusion after three years of HISA: “HISA is doing a credible job at a greatly increased cost with results comparable to those previously achieved by the State Racing Commissions. The racing industry has lost transparency, independent financial oversight and the checks and balances that safeguarded the public when dealing with a government agency.”

Horse owner Brent Malmstrom said he’s spent millions of dollars financing the appeals of sanctions handed to two trainers under HISA for alleged drug-rule violations: Jonathon Wong, with whom Malmstrom has horses but not the one in question, and Phil Serpe, whom he says he’s never met. Why? “Because I believe in the cause,” the owner said.

“We believe that you cannot take someone’s economic livelihood away from them without an appropriate opportunity to defend yourself,” Malmstrom said. “And in this scenario that exists today, where you go through this arbitration process, where you don’t get to pick the arbitrator — it’s assigned — where you don’t get to do discovery, you don’t get to do disclosures, you don’t get to do depositions. … It’s really about fundamental fairness.

“This is not inexpensive to do. But if you don’t do it, how will change occur?.. When I look at where we started and where we are today, there have been some changes, and some of it is good. Your adverse analytical finding notice, you’re no longer immediately suspended. Back when this happened several years ago (with Wong), we had 18 hours to disperse 140 horses, and that’s on a Fourth of July weekend. There has been some progress made.”

Malmstrom said HISA did increase the level of metformin that had to be in a horse before it was regarded as a violation, and that Wong’s finding was well under the new level. However, Wong’s case wasn’t dropped.

“To me, that is a fundamental issue,” he said. “They’re still being branded, and the perception is that they did something wrong. … So what are we trying to do? I want greater accountability. I want greater oversight. I want conflict of interest to be disclosed. … These rules, the punishment needs to fit the crime. Somebody said before that no one should be at risk of losing their economic livelihood through no fault of their own. The CEO of HISA stated publicly, ‘Our job is to serve the industry as best we can, so that we have to balance due process and fairness to all the participants with finding the cheaters and cleaning up our sport.’ So, we’re saying we have to balance due process? I’m not OK with that. Something should never be at the expense of due process.”

Panel moderator Peter Sacopulos, an equine attorney based in Indiana, said it’s important to get mediation introduced into the adjudication system.

“Because many in this industry simply cannot afford to go through the administrative gauntlet and then try to look at judicial review,” he said. “It’s simply too expensive. … You’ve placed a price tag on due process that is too expensive for the average person to purchase.”

Daniel Suhr, lead counsel in the National HBPA’s legal challenge to HISA, noted that the Supreme Court sent the case back to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals — where the horsemen previously have won twice — to be considered in the wake of the SCOTUS ruling in a similar case. Suhr said he just didn’t see Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan, who twice ruled in favor of the National HBPA in striking down HISA’s enforcement mechanism, changing his mind this time around.

“Ultimately we’re going to be back where we were before we got sidetracked, which is at the U.S. Supreme Court,” Suhr said. “… We can’t have rules provisions and not have enforcement provisions. So, if the Court agrees with us just on the enforcement part and strikes that down, the whole bill fails. And if the whole bill fails, Congress has to go back and fix the problem, and so at that point, we will essentially force Congress’ hand. What that fix looks like is not up to me, right? That is for … all of you to figure out.”

(The National HBPA backs the Racehorse Health & Safety Act, legislation that would establish an interstate compact to develop nationwide rules and replace HISA.)

— Jennie Rees

Surprsinglyperfect feted as National Claiming Horse of Year

Press release: “Like winning the Eclipse Award for Blue Collar horses”

At Wednesday’s awards luncheon, Surprsinglyperfect was feted as the National HBPA’s 2025 National Claiming Horse of the Year off a 7-for-13 record at age 11, when he made his 100th career start. The gelding ran once at age 12, finishing second at Turf Paradise in Phoenix, after which he had an official retirement ceremony.

“What a blessing he is and has been for us,” said trainer Justin Evans, who raced Surprsinglyperfect with co-owner Jeff Rakoczy. “We’re very happy we were able to retire him sound now, and he’s going to be my daughter’s riding horse now. I kid around all the time and say he probably wants to go back into training just because he’s going to be tortured by her. What a special honor.”

Also honored for long-time meritorious service to horsemen and the industry was the University of Kentucky’s Dr. Thomas Tobin, a longtime HBPA consultant who for 50 years has been a pioneer in researching equine drug testing, the impact of medications and drugs at various levels on horses and inadvertent environment transfer and contamination. Sharing recognition was Frank Petramalo, who retired at the end of 2023 as executive director and general counsel of the Virginia HBPA. Petramalo played an instrumental role in the return of Thoroughbred racing to Virginia after Colonial Downs closed for five years.

— Jennie Rees