New book takes hard look at racing’s medication culture
I devoured Katie Bo Lillis’s new book, Death of a Racehorse: An American Story, over the course of two days and two nights in early May, right after it was released. I will confess to being skeptical about it before I cracked it open. The title struck me as sensationalistic, and it seems that many writers who take on integrity and welfare issues in horse racing arrive with agendas that trample objectivity. I expected the same this time.
I was very wrong.
Death of a Racehorse, ostensibly, is about the demise of the Thoroughbred racehorse Medina Spirit, who finished first in the 2021 Kentucky Derby, was later disqualified because post-race tests detected traces of an impermissible — on race day, that is — therapeutic medication, and then died from an apparent heart attack following a morning workout in December of that year. Where the book really goes, however, is to undertake an objective deep dive into the career of Medina Spirit’s trainer, Bob Baffert, racing’s bệte noire, while contrasting the controversial horseman against the backdrop of racing’s medication culture and the 2020 indictments that led to convictions and prison terms for some of Thoroughbred and Standardbred racing’s biggest names. It is done fairly and meticulously, and Ms. Lillis, a senior reporter at CNN covering intelligence and national security, comes with a deep understanding of the sport, having been an exercise rider at a Thoroughbred stable in Virginia during her college years before embarking on an exclusive two-year funded internship as part of the Godolphin Flying Start program.
Names familiar to those of us in harness racing leap off the pages. There are disgraced trainers Chris Oakes and Nick Surick, hobnobbing with Thoroughbred horseman Jorge Navarro in the Gulfstream Park paddock. All three went to prison. There’s Meadowlands investigator Brice Cote, at the behest of track owner Jeff Gural, becoming the “sherpa into the racing world” for 5 Stones, the private intelligence agency whose initial work prompted the FBI into launching a full-scale investigation. Veterinarian Kristian Rhein, en route to a prison sentence, takes a leading role. And then there is Dr. Seth Fishman, owner and operator of Equestology, purveyor of substances both legitimate and illicit, who is, quite simply, everywhere. He’s more localized these days, languishing in a Miami federal prison while serving out his 11-year sentence.
In late April, a trove of documents, exhibits and other evidence, including wiretap recordings, from the Southern District of New York’s case against Fishman and others was unsealed and made available. The materials are overwhelming in scope — at present, there are more than 20,000 pages in the public domain — and disturbing. There are strong indications that the federal investigation that culminated in the indictments could have gone even further, but, because of time and prosecutorial discretion, did not. Ms. Lillis makes this clear in the book, and it is fascinating to go behind the scenes as the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York and the FBI work to amass what they hoped would be an airtight case.
Cleaning up racing isn’t the FBI’s job, though. That falls to the industry itself, the state racing commissions, HISA (at least on the Thoroughbred side), and, yes, the breed registries and horsepeople’s associations, too. The Standardbred Racing Investigative Fund (SRIF), fresh from its probes into hidden ownership concerns related to former members Nick Surick and John Wagner, which led to USTA sanctions, now is in possession of the newly available evidence. Investigations have commenced. Results will follow, although not soon enough for many, as harness racing’s social media platforms will attest.
But while social media outrage is — relatively speaking — new, the problem of some horsepeople trying to gain a competitive edge is not. As Ms. Willis asserts in Death of a Racehorse:
Let’s get this out of the way right now: Drug use at the racetrack is not a new phenomenon. The sport of horse racing has never been ‘clean.’ In fact, it’s far from clear that drug use, both legal and illegal, is higher now than it was in earlier decades. It may even be lower … The use of medication at the racetrack, both legal and illegal, is and has always been talked about obliquely, or not at all. This fundamental uncertainty about the scope of the problem remains one of the sport’s major challenges. The endless recriminations, wild accusations, and convoluted and ineffective regulatory schemes that have sprung up in the face of that uncertainty today threaten to tear the sport apart from the inside, a peril just as profound as waning public support.
We have not done enough. That point is inescapable. But perhaps for the first time in a long time, everyone is paying attention. Harness racing needs to get to the truth.
As do a few others.
There is a declaration in the book that I found both ironic and astonishing. It comes from defense attorney Karen Murphy, whose clients have included Hall of Fame Thoroughbred trainer Todd Pletcher. Ms. Murphy laments that all of this drama really is the cause of one group — specifically, harness horsepeople.
“It’s all [expletive] harness. The whole thing is harness,” she is quoted as saying. “(It) had nothing to do with Thoroughbred racing. Nothing.”
Ms. Lillis immediately refutes her, calling her claim “patently counterfactual,” but she need not have bothered. In one of the governmental wiretaps introduced in his trial, and later via his client list, Dr. Fishman does it for her.
“This is a program Dubai Equine spent probably $2 million devising for their Thoroughbreds, you know? It’s part of a program that, uh, you know … there’s other stuff too … This is what they do for all their horses and overall, they are very happy. Sheikh Mohammed Maktoum said that the best three years, you know, in the 30 years he has been racing and they are very happy.”
Dubai Equine is the cutting-edge veterinary center owned by Sheikh Mohammed, whose horses race worldwide under his Godolphin nom de course. Godolphin won both the Kentucky Derby and Belmont Stakes this year with its star 3-year-old colt, Sovereignty, and is a global force in Thoroughbred racing. During the Fishman trial in 2022, a Godolphin spokesman indicated that it would have no comment on the wiretap transcripts. Ms. Lillis recounts in Death of a Racehorse the seizure of an Equestology shipment earmarked for Dubai Equine a few years earlier, and Dubai’s unsuccessful efforts pry it from U.S. authorities. It is compelling stuff.
So is Death of a Racehorse: An American Story. Bob Baffert is its leading man and Medina Spirit is its heart, but the American racing industry — for better and worse — is where it lives. I hope that you will read it.
Mike Tanner
This column appears in the July 2025 issue of Hoof Beats, the official magazine of the USTA. To learn more, or to become a subscriber to harness racing’s premier monthly publication, click here.