STUART S. JANNEY III: Setting up the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority was a road that none of us had traveled before. I can remember being told that we need a nominating committee, and by the way, it’s really important that we have people who are distinguished and independent; that it has to be a blue ribbon committee.

I wondered at that point if we’d be able to get the sort of people that we very much wanted. Because for our industry, this was an important moment. But on the other hand, people are busy.

I’m pleased to say that everything was beyond expectation. We had great people on the nominating committee. So to me, it was an extraordinary effort.

And as we all know, extraordinary efforts don’t come about without the right chairs in place, which is why, with huge enthusiasm, the stewards of The Jockey Club want to award The Jockey Club Medal to Dr. Nancy Cox and Len Coleman.

Nancy and Len, as the co-chairs of the nominating committee of the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority, you have just performed an incredible service for our industry. You got through the whole process, dodging any number of sharks swimming in the water waiting to pounce, depending on who you nominated, and the reception has been great for what you did.

I’ll just simply point out that we don’t award The Jockey Club Medal every year. When you go that route, you sometimes get people who are not deserving. We prefer to do it when we think there are people who have done an extraordinary service to the industry.

I don’t think there are any people who deserve The Jockey Club Medal more than Nancy and Len.

DR. NANCY COX: It is a distinct honor and privilege to receive this award. The whole process of working on the nominating committee with Len and the other nominating committee members. It was a pleasure. It was a lot of hard work.

We reviewed over 160 nominations and came out with a very diverse and effective group. That group of folks on the board and on the subcommittees have a passion, and they will carry through to great success, I am sure.

LEONARD COLEMAN: Let me say this to you, Stuart. I didn’t know Nancy beforehand. And when we got this assignment, we got together, and we immediately bonded. And we discussed what our goals should be in terms of the type of people that we were looking for, the highest qualities. As Nancy said, diversity, both geographically, gender-wise and ethnically.

DR. NANCY COX: I also think that The Jockey Club deserves a huge thanks for the years of striving for what led to the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act.

LEONARD COLEMAN: I very much appreciate the award. I’m used to getting awards for baseball, not horse racing. But horse racing has been a passion of mine since I was 18. And I also come out with another benefit in that now I can’t own any racehorses. So every month those checks won’t be flowing out.

STUART S. JANNEY III: Thank you, both, for your dedication and service to our sport.

We’ve seen some events over the last few months and watched as people tried to deal with the infractions and scandals with a very inadequate toolkit. This has educated a lot of people as to how important it is to have the proper tools to regulate a sport. We simply don’t have them right now. We’re a year away from getting them, but we will have them.

It’s unfathomable to me how anyone in this industry can be opposed to HISA, but some are. They’re trying to stop our progress through the courts, yet providing no alternative to the status quo, which we all know isn’t working.

In a call to arms to its members against HISA, the United States Trotting Association blatantly misstated the facts, saying that if HISA was enacted it would "Place harness racing under the regulation of a new, federal Authority with little or no harness racing representation or consideration for our concerns."

This is clearly not true. Standardbreds will only be included if the USTA "opts in" to HISA or if individual state racing commissions choose to place them under HISA, which seems highly unlikely in the states whose commissions have sued to invalidate HISA.

In their continued zeal to assault HISA, the USTA jumped the gun against a law that has no current effect on their breed.

The obfuscation does not end there. In his statements to the USTA board on the eve of its vote to file a suit over HISA, the USTA president stated, "…having the USTA as a plaintiff is of the greatest importance so the entire harness racing sport is represented."

I can tell you that we’ve heard from a huge number of Standardbred owners, trainers, and others who vehemently oppose the view that he and the USTA represent them in this matter.

The National HBPA, which is also fine with the status quo, has taken a similar approach. In the spring of 2021 issue of "The Horsemen’s Journal," the HBPA’s CEO characterized his organization’s decision to challenge the law as an exercise in due diligence to protect the law against future challenges by cheaters.

If the HBPA were so beneficent, it might have chosen to do something more than stonewall federal legislation reform all these years.

However, in an article on the lawsuit a few pages later, the HBPA made its true intention behind the suit crystal clear, the first sentence reading, "Organizations representing Thoroughbred owners and trainers have filed a lawsuit to stop a new law..."

There is no altruistic goal here. Without a doubt, in coming days you will hear doom and gloom scenarios and speculation from those speaking for the plaintiffs. You will hear them cry foul about how HISA gives certain federal powers to the non-governmental Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority and that a private organization, even if free of current conflicts of interest, can’t be trusted.

Many of those plaintiffs are the same groups that have welcomed, embraced, and defended Congressional intervention in racing when it has served their interests. Take, for example, the Interstate Horseracing Act of 1978, which gives horsemen’s groups a federally mandated veto power over the conduct of simulcasting. We know all too well how heavily they leverage those federal-given powers to their own benefit.

What is clear is that these folks are not truly concerned about legal due diligence or the requirements of constitutionality. They defend the status quo with lawsuits that are effectively protecting the few bad trainers, veterinarians, and horsemen at the expense of those who are honest. They offer nothing in the alternative other than worn-out notions of state-by-state compacts in defense of the same broken system.

Last year, in March, at the very start of the pandemic, we all learned of the indictment and arrest of more than two dozen persons by the U.S. Department of Justice. Their alleged offenses related to the systematic and covert administration of illegal performance-enhancing drugs to racehorses competing across the United States and abroad.

I said at the time that we were grateful to the federal authorities for their commitment and diligence in these cases. More recently, we have all read in the news of several guilty pleas from those arrested and the probability that those persons will face substantial jail time and fines in the millions.

We again thank the prosecutors and investigators for their hard work and determination to see these cases through, in particular during a pandemic.

Reading the transcripts from the cases leads me to believe that the prosecutions are not over and more arrests are likely. Certainly, the board of stewards of The Jockey Club will continue to support further private investigations into doping.

Today, however, I say to anyone in or around our sport who has been involved in these or similar criminal activities: Your time is up. We can only assume that these prosecutions have brought to light cooperation and information that will expose you. With your liberty and treasure at stake, it is time to come in. In fact, it seems it is your best path.

When the history of this is written, it will be clear who the obstructionists were and who opposed this industry’s best ever opportunity to right our badly listing ship.

I am proud to stand with those who support HISA, and I look forward to the needed reform it will bring to our industry and to seeing our ship finally sailing a straight course.

Thank you.