Letter to the Editor: On Decoupling’s Defeat in Florida

[Wandering Eyes]

Just as two of our greatest race days unfolded at Churchill Downs, our sport received great news as the Florida Senate held firm and did not take up the decoupling bill that had passed the House a few days earlier.

For the first time I can remember, the effort to defeat decoupling brought so many people in the industry together.

I personally wanted to congratulate the Thoroughbred Racing Initiative and their team, organized by members including David O'Farrell, Damon Thayer, Barry Eisaman, Mark Casse, Tom Ventura and many others. They did a tremendous job!

There are a few unsung heroes in this too–Mike Repole and Pat Cummings with the National Thoroughbred Alliance deserve our sincerest thanks for their incredible wisdom along the way. Keeneland, Fasig Tipton, Paramount, Hill n' Dale and Hunter Valley also must be thanked for their support.

As I mentioned in several letters over the last few months, I retained the powerful Tallahassee firm Gray Robinson and cannot thank enough their attorneys, lobbyists and advisors who also worked in close coordination with TRI's team.

There should be no doubt about how we got to this point: horrendous decision-making by the local horsemen's group board from July 2024 to January 2025, preceded by a slow degradation of that very group.

Gladly they  made the right decision to void the agreement supporting the Stronach group and joint the fight against decoupling,

In many ways, horsemen were betrayed for years.  We can now move forward and united as one group and deal collectively with our challenges better together. The only thing that matters is “Making Horse Racing Great Again” with people who care about the horses, our sport and the wide-ranging impact of the industry. What may be viewed as a total victory, of course, is not.

We must make the future better than the past, so in many ways, the battle has just begun. Horsemen should expect their lives will not be made easy in the coming weeks and months. We need to be ready to hold firm without fear or intimidation.

In battles such as these, we learn things we may not have realized over the years. Some things just become clearer. Through the past few months of endless phone calls, travelling, and more recently meeting members of the Florida Legislature, it has become clear that serious changes are needed if the Florida Thoroughbred Breeders and Owners Association is to be taken seriously again.

As one Senator put it to me, “the more money we give to the FTBOA, the more money they lose.”

It seems that some belt-tightening and reform is much needed in the FTBOA to improve industry representation in Tallahassee. Perhaps one starting point might be to move their headquarters to OBS, a properly run association with a tremendous management team and huge infrastructure. Alignment like this just makes sense.

There were many other learnings over these last few months. Feel free to reach out to me, as always, to discuss more.

Sincerely,

Carlo E Vaccarezza

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