HISA CEO Lisa Lazarus addressed the University of Arizona Race Track Industry Program’s Global Symposium on Racing on Dec. 5, 2023. A transcript of her address can be found below and a video replay can be found here.

TRANSCRIPT:

Hello everyone. I think I'm going to ask for a different slot next year, because the slot right after the keynote speech is a bit challenging. Randy did a fantastic job and is very inspiring. I'm happy to say that I'm going to be up here sharing the same overall message as Randy, which is that I'm incredibly optimistic about where we're going as an industry and – notwithstanding some of the challenges that we’ve faced – I think the collaboration that is happening right now is in many ways unprecedented, and I'm really proud to be able to be part of what the industry is doing together.

I'm going to start by saying it's really an honor to be back in front of all of you after a year. I'm proud to say that we've come a long way since I addressed all of you last year. HISA's Racetrack Safety Program has now been in place for 17 months, it's Anti-Doping and Medication Control program for a little over six months. The last 18 months or so have really been about creating, building and launching, but we've now reached a moment in our evolution where we can legitimately talk about HISA's progress and its achievements to date.

Like any organization, you have to start with a solid foundation. All good organizations are ultimately, in my view, about the people. HISA is no exception – our people are the machine that drives the engine. The HISA leadership team has more than 415 collective years of racing between them, and I truly believe that access to them as a regulator is really unprecedented. The HISA team knows that racing happens seven days a week and they're available seven days a week.

I also wanted to mention the Horseracing Integrity and Welfare Unit team, which has more than 100 years of anti-doping experience between them, both human and equine. It's really an honor to work with them and to see what they've been able to accomplish over the last six months.

To echo something that Randy said, this year for HISA has really been about collaboration. We can only do right by the industry and achieve the goals that we all have together if we collaborate. And so, we spent a lot of time this year building relationships with industry participants and industry groups to help us achieve our goals. It's very fortunate that we have so many people who have been willing to lend their expertise and be part of what we're trying to achieve, which is making things better on a daily basis.

It starts with the horsemen. The horsemen are the foundation of what we do. We can't get things right if we don't have an ability to collaborate with horsemen. We've had the Horseman's Advisory Group in place for more than a year. It includes not just horsemen, but it includes veterinarians and racing executives. I personally rely on not just the meetings, but on the individuals in this group to gauge how things are going, whether we need to change a rule or modify an approach. That's been incredibly helpful for HISA to understand what we need to be doing.

One of the things that Randy also said is that we have to look at everything when it comes to meeting the challenges that we're facing. That means that it's not just about horsemen and about veterinary protocols, which are important, but it's also about racetracks and making sure that we can provide the safest possible racetracks with the resources that horsemen need to succeed and to keep their horses safe. One of the things that we also launched this year was the Track Surface Advisory Group. After spending some time looking into some of the spates of fatalities that we had this year, we realized that it was really important to have a group of professionals that we could dispatch to racetracks if we thought that there was a concern about the surface, and we wanted to have independent expertise to help us navigate those issues, so, we're very fortunate to have all of these folks lending their expertise.

One of the things that I'm sure most of you know is that the HISA Act requires us within three years of launching our Anti-Doping Program, which was May 22nd of this year, to conduct scientific research around furosemide, around Lasix, and to deliver the results of that scientific research to the HISA board to make determinations on what role Lasix will or will not play in the future of HISA. This is incredibly important, I know, to a tremendous number of horsemen, and we don't take it lightly. The committee that we've put together to come up with the request for proposals on the research that needs to be conducted as well as evaluate those proposals is really phenomenal. We've been incredibly fortunate to have their engagement and to know that that process is going to be conducted objectively and with a tremendous amount of professionalism.

This is more of a new announcement, but one of the things we looked around at HISA this year and realized is that understanding what the next generation is thinking and experiencing as they come up through the ranks in horse racing in every element – at racetracks, as horsemen, etc. – is important, and we need to make sure that we're listening and hearing and getting those sorts of fresh ideas and perspectives. We're going to be forming a Next Generation Advisory group in January of 2024. They'll be taking applications and going through an interview process, and the hope is to put together a committee that will help HISA navigate some of these issues with that perspective at the table and hopefully also contribute just generally to racing.

I also wanted to talk about the relationship that we've built with the Jockeys' Guild over the past year. I'm really delighted to say that we are working incredibly well and effectively with the Guild. The Guild has spent years upon years advocating for jockeys and being by their side and raising the issues that they face, and together with the regulations that we're able to impose and some of the benefits of HISA, we can work in tandem with them to address a lot of the issues that jockeys are facing. One of the things that we've done this year with the Guild that I think has been is really important and we're continuing to do is a mental health committee that is looking at the issues that jockeys face in the mental health realm. We commissioned a survey this year where we had a significant amount of jockeys, it was over 200, and we took those results and formulated certain hypotheses and questions that this committee is addressing.

There's the committee. Again, really fortunate to have so many significant actors in the industry be willing to lend their expertise and support to address these issues. We're working with Columbia University to come up with a center of excellence for jockeys to support some of these issues.

I also want to talk about veterinarians in terms of our collaboration and our outreach. Obviously, veterinarians are absolutely critical to the work that HISA does. We can't possibly do what we do – the industry can't function – without veterinarians, and we recognize that we don't have enough of them in horse racing, and we need to be able to draw more of them into the industry with a promise of what the future might look like. But we also need to be sensitive to the issues that they face – the pressures, the long workdays – and we realize that HISA in some ways can be burdensome given some of the paperwork, so we've spent a lot of time this year trying to deal with those issues. We've got 1,000 veterinarians. We have almost 2 million veterinary records at this point, which gives us tremendous ability to use data analytics to help us deal with some of our issues, which I'll get to in a minute.

In terms of veterinarians, one of the things that we've done this year is we've reached out to integrators. We call them integrators, organizations that support veterinarians and support horsemen with billing with records and have integrated with them to make it so much easier for veterinarians, at least those that use these systems, and we're always in the market to attract more to integrate with us. This is an initiative that I believe has really helped ease the burden for veterinarians, and we're going to continue to work on those.

To add to that, we've created two new apps this year to support veterinarians. One is the Lasix app, which allows them to enter Lasix treatments very simply in the field and upload them. One important features of that app is that you don't need to have a Wi-Fi connection when you're using it. You can simply enter the Lasix, and then when you go back to an area with Wi-Fi, it will download and enter the information for you. We just are launching our MedEnt app now. That app will allow veterinarians who wish to use it – it's obviously not mandatory, it's just a tool to ease their work – to enter treatments. Also, in the field you don't need Wi-Fi connectivity. You enter them all, super simple, and once you go back to an area that has Wi-Fi, it'll also download it for you and send it and fulfill your obligations to HISA.

Following some of the issues we had this year, there's been a lot of conversations about surfaces. Should we be looking more at all weather surfaces? Should we be spending resources in terms of upgrading what we know about dirt surfaces? Should we be following the international lead and spending more on turf surfaces? This committee has just launched and will be looking at the various surfaces, what's feasible, what the analytics tell us in order to make recommendations to HISA on regulations and the implementation of rules that might help us adapt to surface challenges.

We have had the opportunity and the privilege to work with a number of state racing commissions this year in partnership to deliver both our Safety Program, but also more recently, our ADMC Program. I know that's been an adjustment for a lot of racing commissions, and we've been very fortunate to have, for the most part, their support and to give us the time to perfect what we're doing to make sure that we can support them in the right way. So, we've got 16, what we call “Voluntary Agreements” with racing commissions, and within the states we don't have agreements with, we have six racetracks that we work with directly.

I also am pleased to say that about a month ago, we initiated conversations with the three sales companies all in the same room together meeting with HISA and talking about ways that we can harmonize our rules and harmonize the process of a horse from the very beginning of its racing life to the end to make sure that we have one aligned approach that prioritizes horse welfare. Again, everything is on the table as we drive to make the sport safer and make it fairer. I've really been incredibly pleased by the reaction of the sales companies and their willingness to have these conversations. And even though HISA doesn't necessarily regulate the weanlings and yearlings, as a national regulator, we can still be a unifying force in helping to make these systems more aligned and ultimately improve them for everyone.

We also work with the Racetrack Surfaces Testing Laboratory. They collect data, they do baseline tests for us at all of the racetracks, and they send that data to HISA so that we can use it in a proactive way to help us f identify concerns and areas that we need to need to target and need to improve.

Another way that we've made an important step forward with collaboration this year is we hired the first ever National Medical Director for horse racing. We are now aligned with other professional sports that have a national medical director. This has been a huge step forward because we can look at jockey injuries across the country with one person who's available as a resource. Dr. Hester fields calls every day of the week from jockeys who have injuries or concerns, and he addresses those and coordinates care. This was the very first year that he was at the Breeders' Cup, and he was able to work with all the elements – 1/ST Racing, the CHRB and the Breeders' Cup team – to make sure that there was a coordinated approach to emergency care if there was in fact an accident. He actually went out to the hospitals and the clinics in the region near Santa Anita, met with them and made sure that there was an aligned approach and that everybody could act really quickly if something happened.

This was the first year that HISA was able to support the Breeders' Cup with medical records. We were very privileged to be able to capture everything in one portal, in the HISA portal, and that can really be an important support for an event like the Breeders' Cup that has to review so many records and do so much in a short period of time, so we were really pleased to be able to do that. We also worked very hard at making sure that the foreign horses, the international horses, were registered and had everything that they needed to be able to integrate with our regulatory system.

It's funny that there was so much talk about Oaklawn earlier, it's very right place, right time. I put this slide up because it's only one example of a racetrack that has put up their hand to help us test out an idea and a concept. This concept actually did not come from HISA, it came from a couple of horsemen who actually train and race at Oaklawn Park, and what they wanted to do was see whether or not, if they set up a specific area within the racetrack for intra-articular corticosteroid injections, that would give more visibility, more transparency, and essentially be an improvement for the industry. This is just an experiment, it's not a rule, but we're really delighted that they're willing to try this out. As we all say, all-hands-on-deck and nothing is off the table.

I also want to talk for a minute about accountability and transparency. At HISA, we understand that we're accountable to the industry, and we understand that everything that we do essentially belongs to the industry. We've spent a significant amount of time this year making sure that we have the right policies and the right accessibility when it comes to accountability and transparency. For one, we just issued our data disclosure policy. Starting in the first quarter of 2024, we will release the various metrics that you see above which is equine fatalities, registrations, fines, track accreditation and riding crop violations. As we perfect our data and as we do better and better with our system, we will release new categories of metrics, but these are the ones that we are prepared to release in the first quarter of 2024. We're also going to start posting board meeting minutes. These are things that, while we might have wanted to do them early on, we just didn't have the resources and the structure, but we are starting to do these things going forward. Also, journalists have a formal process now where they can request information, and even if it doesn't fall in one of those categories, we will address each request on an individual basis.

This year we started a monthly newsletter. We tried to include as much information as possible about what's happening at HISA – the rule changes, initiatives, etc. – and we try to get that out to as many people as possible. We've had nine newsletters so far, and we're almost at 1500 subscribers, so if you're not subscribed, please subscribe after today. We try really hard to figure out how we can reach people. It's not an industry that's easy to reach. One of the things I sometimes joke about is I think that every flip phone that still exists in America is owned by a horseman, because it can be really challenging to make sure information gets out there, so we're trying all kinds of different ideas. This is not necessarily only directed at horsemen, but I think the newsletter has been something that's been an asset.

We also started town hall webinars. We've had two so far – they've both been about the ADMC program – but on those webinars, myself and members of members of the HIWU executive team were there to answer questions, provide updates, and we allowed people to send in questions ahead of time, even during the webinar, and we tried to provide as much information as possible during those webinars. We're going to continue to offer them in 2024. We will take new topics under consideration. If you have a topic that you want HISA to address, please, please suggest it to us. We are completely open and candid and want to be able to be responsive, so we're driven by the topics that are recommended to us.

We also send daily enforcement reports to all of the racetracks to help facilitate the rules that they need to enforce and to try to make it easier for them, and we have significant collaboration with the racing offices across the country. This has taken some time to get it exactly right, but I think we're now in a place where it's working very effectively and we have very few issues.

We also have, in the last year or so, added a number of things to our website. I often got questions about, can you make this available – all of these assessments, our form 990, etc. All of that is on our website and is available, and we'll continue to add to those as documents and financial data as they become available.

We have a 24-7 support line. This is really important because not everyone realizes that we get calls all the time into our help desk. In the very beginning, they were all about registration, they were all about technology. How do I get on? How do I do this? How do I do that? Now we get a lot of calls about from people who just want to talk about the challenges they're facing, or a rule they don't like, or sometimes even a rule they like once in a while. We’ve fielded over 71,000 calls and emails, and that resource will continue to be available. As HISA changes, what we’ve tried to do is change our approach to this resource by equipping those who answer the phones with more substantive information about rules because we can see the trends about how the questions change over time and we try to adapt to make that a significant resource. I think that's been an important part of what we've done.

One of the most important things that HISA can do for the industry is take the hard work of our veterinarians, of our horsemen and transform it into something that is usable, that is helpful. That is a major focus for us in 2024 – working with companies like AWS and like Palantir to develop technology that's going to be helpful to you, that we can that we can share with you. One of the projects that we worked with Palantir on that is going to be ready for deployment by the end of the year or the very beginning of next year is a tool that uses a number of different data points to identify horses of interest for veterinarians. It's a post entry screening process. It's something that we've used very successfully at some of the bigger events and at some race meets, but it's very time intensive for veterinarians. It takes on average about five hours per race card. Now, we're able to do it in the press of a button and provide that information to veterinarians. It doesn't mean the horses need to be scratched or anything like that. It's simply information and more history for veterinarians to be able to empower them to do their jobs. We're going to continue to find ways to use that data in a helpful and productive manner.

This is one example of some requests that we've had from veterinarians to see exercise histories. We can now make these available for every horse at the push of a button, and I think that helps us to advance research and other things that are, again, going to contribute to meeting the goals and the mission of HISA and the industry.

I'm just going to go quickly through some of the racetrack safety achievements this year. We have very few folks that are not registered now in the HISA jurisdictions where we operate, and that's been a big step forward since last year. More than 1,000 veterinarians, we have 54,000 covered horses registered with HISA, we've overseen 300,000 pre-race inspections and I mentioned earlier about the 1.9 million veterinary records.

Racetrack accreditation is a very important part of what HISA is doing, and we had to put all of the protocols in place to do it well and to do it responsibly and professionally. 51 racetracks have completed our audit and there have been 21 on-site visits. When I say on-site, I mean members of our team who work in in that space, they go, they meet very cooperatively with the racetrack personnel to try to address any issues or challenges to make improvements, and we've seen some very significant steps forward with some of the racetracks that we visited. This is going to be a really important tool. Everybody needs to be held accountable in the industry, not just horsemen, and that is something that we are very much moving forward at HISA.

I put this one slide up just because I wanted to talk a little bit about an example of a rule where we faced an incredible amount of backlash in the beginning, but ultimately now has settled, and I believe for the most part, everyone accepts that it's a rule that's working. When we first launched, the crop rule was one of the first things that HISA put out there as a rule, and there was, as I said, a tremendous amount of pushback. Four for every 1,000 starts was essentially, you would see a violation. That's gone down very significantly, but also what we're hearing from stewards anecdotally is that there's less interference, the jockeys are driving straighter in the stretch and that this has actually had a positive impact. The reason why, again, I put up this data is that we're going to continue to watch it. We watch the impact of all of our rules, and if something isn't working or isn't achieving our objective of safety and integrity, we will revise it. I think everybody in here probably knows that I am not shy about changing rules if something isn't working. This program is supposed to be working effectively for the industry, and if something is broken, we will fix it.

I'm also proud to say that we launched the first ever National Jockey Concussion Protocol about a month ago. That has been deployed to racetracks and has been an asset, and an important step forward for jockeys that we have a protocol that cuts across the country. We are now also working with a company called HEADCHECK, which is the first national EMR for jockeys, where they house all of the concussion baseline tests. If there is an injury, we can quickly get that jockey’s file to whatever trauma center or hospital requires it. We are in the process of getting everybody onboarded. We've got 15 racetracks, and the rest are planned for 2024.

I talked earlier about the jockey mental health initiative, but we started this project by doing a survey, as I said earlier, and we identified the areas where we believe responsive services are necessary and would be helpful, and we're working with the Guild to deliver those. One of the things that I think is also a sign that we're making progress and that our international peers are recognizing it is that we were reached out to by the international group that deals with jockey health issues to host a conference in October 2024 that will bring in experts on concussions, on mental health to Kentucky to discuss and debate these issues.

I'm going to go through a few of the highlights from the ADMC program. You'll hear from Ben Mosier and Kate Mittelstadt and Dr. Scollay later in the program, but these are some of the key metrics. In the last six months, almost 50,000 horses have been tested. We have been able to streamline the adjudication process so that the process moves a lot quicker and efficiently, more so than it was working in some jurisdictions previously. One thing I do want to talk about here for a minute is that one of the things that I heard a lot from horsemen as we were building that program is the public doesn't understand the difference between a therapeutic overage and doping. Everything is reported as cheating no matter what the violation is. We put a lot of thought into very much separating those programs in our protocol, so you have a completely separate program for controlled medication, which are therapeutics, versus what we call banned substances or the doping substances. I think you can see, or at least I believe from the media coverage, that that's actually taking hold, because you see very little, I would say almost no media coverage of the controlled medication violations. Some of the trade media, will republish the list, but all of the articles and true coverage are not about those violations. I feel like we are making progress, and that's an important step forward. A lot of educational resources and a lot of in-person visits. We recognize that for a lot of industry participants, that face-to-face meeting is really important, and we’ve tried to do that as much as possible.

In the category of apps, HIWU launched its app a couple of months ago. I think it's fantastic. You can put any substance into that app, and it will tell you whether it's a trade name or the chemical name, whether it's prohibited, if so, which category it falls into, what its potential effect on the horse is. It's very easy to do. In fact, even though we're a national regulator, it's been downloaded in 15 countries, which I think suggests that it does provide a fair amount of value and support.

You hear a lot about contamination discussions amongst horsemen when it comes to ADMC rules, and those are valid discussions and valid concerns because there are risks in our environment and horsemen are working incredibly hard to get things right, and we're trying to adjust behavior that is cheating and/or not good for the horse. We've tried different tools to balance the needs of the program to really protect integrity with making sure that it's fair and it's thoughtful and it's realistic for our environment. The Atypical Findings Policy is a policy that deals with environmental contamination, not the human drugs of abuse, but things in our environment that sometimes can get into a horse's system inadvertently, but if used intentionally would, in fact, be doping, or at least a therapeutic violation, depending on what category it's in. This doesn't get a lot of publicity because the whole point of this program is that if a horseman does have an atypical finding, it never becomes public, because if it turns out to, in fact, be a contaminant, the case gets dismissed. This program has been significantly used since the start. We've had 27 findings. The ones that have been addressed have all been dismissed, except for one, as contamination. I also want to say that some of these have also helped lead to discoveries of medical issues with horses. An atypical finding could also be an elevated testosterone. In some cases, we found tumors, a third testicle, those kinds of things, so I think that's also been a positive thing for the industry.

I want to make two other references where we've tried very hard to make sure that things are balanced and that horsemen have the tools that they need to navigate HISA. We have the first ever ombudsman in horse racing, I think he's standing at the back of the room, Alan Forman. He has been a tremendous asset because he is available to horsemen, if they do have a violation, to help them understand how to navigate the system. He's not a lawyer for them, but he actually helps explain the system, and he acts as a liaison between the horsemen and HIWU. I'm also very proud to say that we will very shortly announce a pro-bono legal program. It's the only one that I know of in professional sports, and what it will do is it will offer to any horseman who meets a certain income requirement a free attorney from our panel. We have some very reputable law firms that have signed up. We already have one covered person using the program because there was a quick need. This, I think, will be really transformational from the standpoint of allaying any concerns that financial issues would hamper your ability to protect yourself or have due process.

The tip line has been very active. We offer tip lines both through phone and also something called RealResponse, which is a texting system. That's been a resource that many have taken advantage of. All those tips are obviously evaluated for their veracity and to the extent they're useful, they're incorporated into the intelligence of HIWU.

I want to end on what the future looks like. As we look to 2024, I do so with really tremendous optimism. In the last several months, we've also submitted significant changes to the Federal Trade Commission for both programs, Racetrack Safety and ADMC. Those changes are based on experience that we've had in the last year or so and also very robust industry feedback. I think those changes, if they're approved, will make these programs even stronger than they are now and allow us to get to a place where it's the norm and where it works on every side and every test that's put to it.

I want to assure everyone that HISA is strong, it's focused, dedicated to our mission, and these are the things that we are going to be really focusing on in 2024:

Continuing to work with all industry participants: as I said, the collaboration is incredibly important. Nothing is off the table, and no group that profits from horse racing is absolved of a responsibility to take part and to help us achieve our goals of safety and integrity.
We are going to really focus on making use of the technology that we have at our fingertips, to not waste the data you all put so much effort into providing to us and to make sure that we're using it for good.
Also to use technology to ease burdens, to make this whole process – to the extent you're somebody who has to provide records, etc. – easier.
We also realize, and this is something that I talk about a fair amount, is that getting uniformity and rules is step one, but you don't have true uniformity unless you have uniformity in implementation, and so that's something that we're working hard on. Mark Guilfoil is leading that charge to make sure, with stewards in particular, that we have uniformity with the application of our rules, and that overall, we are operating under truly one set of rules, and that will take some time, but that is an important objective.
We also are looking at exploring funding initiatives that might take some of the burden off the industry through either government or private, and that's something that I know is important to a whole lot of people, and we recognize that.
Finally, education. Over and over again, we need to be educating, reaching. If it's on the rail, it needs to be on the rail, but we are going to continue to make the best efforts we can to do that.

I just want to close by saying that that these people, who I'm incredibly grateful to because they do all the hard work, will not take their foot off the pedal and will be there to do what we need to do and to move things forward and to be available and to be collaborative so that together, we can reach the objectives that we all want, which is a safe sport, a clean sport, and a sport that grows and prospers because nobody's talking about the latest doping case or the last horse that broke down, they're talking about Cody's Wish – they're talking about incredible stories. HISA should never be the story. Our job is to get rid of the bad stories so that all the amazing stories about horse racing can rise to the top. I'm going to end by saying, optimism. I thank all of you who have played a role in helping us achieve where we are now and ask that you continue to do so in the future, and I look forward to seeing you next year with hopefully better news. Thank you so much.