Kick Up for Racing

SAPPORO, Japan -- "It's been a hard day's night," sang Masayuki Goto, vice-chairman of the Asian Racing Federation (ARF), as he took to the stage for his keynote speech during the closing exchanges of the 4oth Asian Racing Conference (ARC). And it is plain that Goto, the former president and CEO of the Japan Racing Association (JRA), and his fellow ARF committee members are looking forward to the day when their counterparts around the world are singing along in perfect harmony, perhaps to the tune of Here Comes The Sun....

If the crowd at Light Up Racing's first community event in Lexington, held Feb. 26 at Fasig-Tipton, was any indication of the support behind the industry's new grassroots initiative, the number of attendees at their second event held Tuesday, Mar. 5 at Keeneland only solidified that. Over 300 people, spanning across all aspects of the Thoroughbred industry, gathered in Keeneland's Limestone Café to learn about how their own voices and platforms can be used to collectively transform negative opinions about racing into positive messaging through accurate information, transparency, authenticity and...

by Brian Malloy The initial public forum for Light Up Racing at Fasig-Tipton in Lexington Monday night kicked off the most encouraging effort I've seen in my 44 years in horse racing. Vicky Leonard, the Kiwi PR pro who spearheaded a similar effort in Australia after a spate of tragic accidents in the Melbourne Cup, cogently outlined this grass roots campaign to a packed house and was greeted with thunderous applause. I taught the capstone course in public relations for several years at the University of Kentucky with a systems...

LEXINGTON, KY--It was standing room only for the inaugural community event in Lexington for Light Up Racing, the initiative launched last year with the goal of empowering the racing industry by providing consistent, transparent information and research. Held Monday, Feb. 26 at Fasig-Tipton, the event drew over 200 industry members who gathered to learn about how Light Up Racing was founded and what it has already accomplished around different parts of the globe, what the organization aims to achieve in the U.S. going forward, and how individuals can play a...

Every day, just as the the lull of the afternoon wants to take hold, Dad walks into the office from the farm and proclaims the rhetorical: "How lucky are we?" You see, Dad frequently goes out to greet our guests on our Mill Ridge-Horse Country tours, most often after they have fed carrots to mares standing by the fence. To a person they will look him in the eye: "You know how lucky you are to do what you do?" This is the reward we did not anticipate as we...

Trust in institutions, across all industries around the world, has reached an all-time low. Why? Well, as Jason Litt said in his letter to the editor, it's because the 'old guard' have not been held to the same standards as the rest of us in terms of performance, accountability, and transparency. Too arrogant to admit failure, too entrenched to change and too shrouded in secrecy. Confidence in horse racing's industry leaders has evaporated, just like the confidence and favourable opinion the public. So why wait for these very same institutions...