Chairman Sabini calls all trainers cheaters
For all the very decent trainers committed to the harness racing industry, this statement made by the current Chair of the NYS R&W Board is disgraceful and unworthy of a regulator due respect from the many hard working people who train horses in the harness and the T-bred sport. The statement was made before the assembly committee on racing this past February. Sabini stated that AB 9954, the equine drug testing bill, would allow the Board to ensure that horse racing in New York is on the up and up. He noted that all trainers cheat and you have to look for the ones that you can actually catch. It was sent to us by our t-bred counterparts that discovered it. Not everyone in our sport should be painted with the same brush of those bad apples every endeavor has. There are cheating, lawyers, accountants, doctors, you name it but this attitude doesn’t bode well for a decent trainer who is being regulated by this Board. We are now paying $10 a start for steroid testing in NYS that we are not getting and are now being asked to lay down for a National Compact that will add costs inspired by this attitude that will be assessed based on purses paid in a particular place. Are our purses to be drained by such schemes based upon an underlying attitude expressed in the remarks made by the Chairman of our NYSR&WB?
