Abundance of Caution at HOF Ceremony

Concern that its annual Hall of Fame ceremony would be disrupted by protests over the induction of trainer Steve Asmussen led officials of the National Museum of Racing to close Friday's program to the public and develop strict security measures.

With an increased police presence in place, inside and outside the Fasig-Tipton sales pavilion in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., the two-hour ceremony was completed Friday without incident.

Asmussen's election was delayed for two years after the People for Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) released a video in 2014 from an undercover investigation alleging that he and his staff mistreated animals in their care. He returned to the ballot this year after investigations in New York and Kentucky cleared him of the serious PETA charges. He was fined $10,000 by New York regulators for using a medication without medical necessity and the New York Gaming Commission instituted a rules change.

Museum director Christopher Dragone said the decision to limit admission to the ceremony two blocks from Saratoga Race Course, was made after Asmussen was announced as a member of the popular Class of 2016 with the champion mares Rachel Alexandra and Zenyatta and jockey Ramon Dominguez. Dragone said a hostile reaction prompted the move to restrict seating to museum members. A May 24 press release said high demand for seats was the reason for the change.

“We did this due to an abundance of caution because clearly there was an open letter posted on the PETA webpage and we received several thousand emails directed at us on a daily basis,” Dragone said. “We would block email and they would come back. That lasted about two weeks. At that point we decided it had to be a ticketed event.”

The Hall of Fame ceremony started out as a low-key, small event in the museum library and decades ago was opened to the public. It was held in a large tent on the museum's lawn for about 10 years until the late 1990s when it was relocated to the Humphrey S. Finney Pavilion on the grounds of Fasig-Tipton. It has become any extremely popular event, drawing hundreds of fans, but Dragone said a change had to be made this year.

“I know some people are unhappy and we've been hearing about that, but it's about the inductees, and not the attendees,” he said. “This is their moment. This is the biggest moment in their lives and we were going to make sure that it's not disrupted by somebody. That's really what the whole idea was. I wanted the attendees to have a good time, to enjoy themselves. Really and truly it's about the inductees. It's their lifetime achievement.”

Though many may have surmised that Asmussen's election prompted the change in the seating policy, Dragone said there was some comment that that the museum used it to increase membership.

“The thing that bothered me is the notion that we charged or profited from this event,” he said. “That's absolutely not true. What we did do was make sure that the people in the actual venue were known to us so that we knew that there wouldn't be a disruption. That's why we did it that way. The easiest way to do that was to go to our membership list. And we thought that was also the fairest way to do it because they are known individuals who tend to come to the event anyway. We thought that would have the least amount of impact on the general public by doing it that way.”

The ceremony was streamed live on websites and shown on the grounds at Saratoga Race Course.

While Dragone acknowledged that the possibility of a protest directed at Asmussen's induction was the reason for the change, he said the popularity of the class and the demand for seats could have prompted a similar approach to seating.

“It's quite possible, given the limitations that we have there, we would have had to do it either way, or we would have had a lot of disappointed people showing and people being turned away,” he said. “We might have had to do this anyway because of the magnitude of the class–a remarkable class–but it was done because of the fact that we wanted to make sure that this event went off without any type of disruption from an outside party.”