Maria Borell Seeks and Gets Denied a License
I am not a lawyer. I do not play one on television, on social media, or here at Past the Wire. I am a horseplayer who has spent most of his life in a heavily regulated gambling business. I know why regulation matters. I know why regulators need discretion. I also know that discretion without consistency, transparency, and a fair process can become something else entirely.
This is not a defense of Maria Borell. It is not an endorsement of her, an argument that she has made every right decision, or an attempt to excuse anything she may or may not have done. My personal opinion of Maria Borell has nothing to do with why I am writing this.
This is about the Kentucky Horse Racing and Gaming Corporation. It is about governance, fairness, consistency, and whether the evidence produced during a formal hearing mattered once Kentucky did not like the answer.
I did not have to agree with everything Rick Dutrow ever did to believe racing treated him unfairly. I did not have to agree with Bob Baffert on everything to believe the sport applied standards to him that it did not consistently apply to others. Due process is not a reward reserved for people we like. If the standard changes with the name, it was never a standard.
Maria Borell trained Runhappy to win the 2015 Breeders’ Cup Sprint. She was fired the following day after a disagreement over whether the horse, who Borell testified had heat in an ankle, should be sent to the track. Runhappy’s veterinarian reportedly agreed with Borell that the horse should not go. Whatever else anyone may think about her, that was the last time she started a horse in Kentucky.
In 2016, Borell and her father, Charles Borell, were charged with 43 misdemeanor counts of animal cruelty after horses were found in terrible condition on a Mercer County farm. The condition of those horses was appalling. That should never be minimized, softened, or forgotten.
Charles Borell resolved nine counts through an Alford plea arrangement. Maria Borell maintained that she was living and working in Florida, that the Mercer County property was leased by her father, that she had transferred her interest in their LLC to him, and that she had no responsibility for the farm, its employees, or the horses’ care. The case against her remained unresolved for seven years. In July 2023, the charges were dismissed with prejudice. The record was later expunged.
A dismissal is not the same as a jury finding someone innocent. It is also not a conviction, and an accusation is not proof. That is significant to me, particularly when a regulator invokes fairness and integrity while deciding whether someone may earn a living.
In 2024, Borell applied for a Kentucky trainer’s license. Her application was eventually referred to the KHRGC License Review Committee. She appeared before that committee in June 2025 and was told that a vote would almost certainly result in denial. Her application was withdrawn and later resubmitted for consideration by the full board. Kentucky denied it.
The written ruling listed several regulatory provisions but did not explain what Borell had actually done to violate them. KHRGC President and CEO Jamie Eads later testified that an applicant could read the cited regulations and determine which provisions applied. From where I sit, that is not notice. That is a guessing game.
Borell went to court. The matter was returned for a formal administrative hearing, which took place on March 31, 2026, before Hearing Officer Clayton Patrick. Kentucky was represented by counsel. Borell was represented by counsel. Witnesses testified, exhibits were introduced, a full record was created, and both sides were given the opportunity to make their case. Kentucky ultimately offered three primary theories for denying the license: a claimed lack of candor, financial irresponsibility, and what became known as the “where have you been?” theory concerning Borell’s years away from licensed training.
Patrick heard the evidence and issued his recommended order on June 2.
He found that Kentucky’s reasons had been “vague and inconsistent throughout.” He called the Corporation’s position a “moving target.” He found that its case “lacked substance” and “was not convincing on the issues presented.” He concluded that Borell had met her burden of proof on every theory Kentucky presented and that the agency failed to give her adequate notice and due process.
He recommended that Kentucky grant her a trainer’s license.
Kentucky did not accept that answer.
On August 25, the KHRGC issued a three-page final order rejecting Patrick’s recommendation “in full.” It did not write an independent analysis explaining why Patrick misunderstood the testimony. It did not separately answer his due-process findings. It did not explain why his interpretation of Kentucky’s financial-responsibility regulation was wrong. It did not reconcile its conclusions with the testimony he found persuasive.
Instead, the board adopted Kentucky’s own 27-page proposed order wholesale and substituted it as the agency’s final factual findings and legal conclusions.
Think about what happened.
Kentucky denied the license. Kentucky was a party at the hearing defending that denial. Kentucky submitted a proposed order stating how it wanted the hearing officer to rule. The hearing officer rejected Kentucky’s arguments and ruled the other way. Kentucky’s board then discarded his decision and adopted Kentucky’s rejected version of events as its final order.
That may be within an agency’s legal authority. A judge will ultimately decide what is lawful. The rest of us are allowed to examine whether it is fair, credible, and consistent with the purpose of having a hearing in the first place.
The adopted document itself raises questions.
It repeatedly says, “The Hearing Officer finds,” before reciting conclusions Patrick did not make. The actual hearing officer found the opposite. Those words were written when Kentucky was proposing what it wanted Patrick to find. He declined. Yet the board adopted the document without rewriting those passages to reflect that these were now findings made by the board over the hearing officer’s rejection.
Kentucky also adopted an obvious factual error identifying a prior Franklin Circuit Court order as having been entered on November 18, 2026. That date had not occurred when the final order was issued. The actual court order was entered November 18, 2025.
A wrong date alone does not decide a case. Neither does sloppy drafting. But when an agency rejects an extensive recommendation and adopts its own proposed document verbatim, errors like that matter. They tell us something about how independently and carefully the adopted document may have been reviewed.
The treatment of the Mercer County case is even more troubling.
Kentucky stipulated that the animal-neglect charges were not a basis for denying Borell’s license. Patrick wrote that Borell “convincingly established” she had nothing to do with the horses’ condition. He added that had there been even “a scintilla” of evidence connecting her to neglect, his recommendation would have been decidedly different.
Kentucky presented no such evidence.
Yet the Mercer County matter runs throughout Kentucky’s adopted findings. Borell is described as having disappeared, hidden, intentionally avoided Kentucky officials, acted deceitfully, and remained outside racing while getting animal-cruelty charges dismissed and removed from her record.
Kentucky says it did not deny her because of the charges. It instead used her response to those charges as evidence of deficient candor, reputation, judgment, and fitness. To this layman, that looks like walking an expunged case through the back door after promising not to bring it through the front.
Kentucky doubted Borell’s testimony that an attorney advised her not to return to Kentucky while the charges and related litigation were pending. Eads reportedly found that explanation odd and illogical. Kentucky was entitled to question it. But suspicion is not evidence. Kentucky produced no testimony from the attorney refuting Borell’s account. Patrick, who sat through the hearing and heard the testimony, found Kentucky’s suspicion insufficient. The board’s adopted order transformed that suspicion into findings of deceitful behavior and material misrepresentation. That is not a minor difference. It is a credibility determination made against the findings of the person appointed to hear the witnesses.
Kentucky’s “where have you been?” theory is equally difficult to reconcile with the record.
Borell had not started a horse in years. Kentucky treated that absence as evidence that it could not determine whether she retained the competence and horsemanship required of a trainer. That reasoning is circular. A trainer cannot compile recent starts without a trainer’s license. Every new trainer begins with no starts at all. Assistants, exercise riders, farm managers, veterinarians, and lifelong horsemen routinely apply for their first trainer’s license without an Equibase résumé under their own names. Trainers also return after long absences. The relevant question should be whether the applicant is presently competent, not whether the applicant has recent starts that could not have occurred without the license being requested.
More importantly, the hearing included actual testimony addressing Borell’s horsemanship.
Rosemary Homeister Sr., a retired trainer with decades of experience, testified that she observed Borell working in Florida. She said Borell arrived at the barn early, remained through feeding, and took very good care of her horses. Deanna Johnston testified from direct observation that Borell gave her horses excellent care and was focused on being there for them. Kentucky produced no trainer, veterinarian, steward, owner, or horseman who testified that Borell had forgotten how to train, lacked horsemanship, or provided substandard care to horses entrusted to her. Patrick found the favorable testimony uncontested.
Kentucky did not rebut the testimony. It essentially replaced it with an empty space on Equibase and called the empty space evidence.
Borell also obtained a California trainer’s license in late 2024. She did not start a horse there because the owner she expected to train for moved his horses to Kentucky. Kentucky used the unused California license against her. It gave little apparent weight to the fact that another major racing jurisdiction examined her application and determined she could be licensed. Kentucky was not required to follow California. It should, however, be able to explain why the same applicant was considered qualified there and unfit in Kentucky, especially when Kentucky produced no witness challenging her present horsemanship.
The financial-responsibility issue deserves a fair examination because the debts are real.
Walnut Springs obtained a judgment involving rent for stalls and a house. Borell entered a payment agreement, made payments from May through December 2015, and then stopped. She later said she had forgotten about the obligation. That was not a good answer. Kentucky was entitled to consider the default and what it said about her financial management.
Rood & Riddle obtained a judgment for approximately $15,000 involving veterinary care. That debt was not paid.
But Kentucky’s adopted version states that Borell made no effort to address it and “never tried to pay anything.” The evidence tells a more complete story.
Borell contacted Rood & Riddle about resolving the debt. In November 2023, an accounts specialist told her the clinic would not accept a payment plan and required the balance to be paid in full. Borell testified that she attempted to make a partial payment but was told the old account had been closed or removed from the clinic’s active books and no payment would be accepted from her.
Attorney Karen Murphy later negotiated a written agreement under which payments would begin after Borell obtained a trainer’s license and stalls. Rood & Riddle’s president acknowledged signing that agreement and testified that the clinic was not taking a position on whether Borell should receive a license. Kentucky considered the arrangement an attempt to leverage the debt and force the regulator’s hand. It was entitled to make that argument. It could reasonably conclude that a repayment plan dependent upon future licensure and stall space was insufficient proof of financial stability.
What Kentucky cannot fairly do is erase the contacts, the refused payment plan, the attempted partial payment, and the eventual signed agreement, and then declare that Borell made no effort whatsoever. The hearing officer recognized the distinction. He found that Borell had made payments to Walnut Springs and attempted to make a partial payment to Rood & Riddle, which Rood & Riddle refused because the account was closed.
The debts belong in the record. So do the efforts to address them. A regulator committed to fairness should not include one and minimize the other.
There is also a legal dispute over whether Kentucky’s cited financial-responsibility regulation applied to these judgments. Patrick read the regulation as requiring qualifying judgments involving parties licensed by the KHRGC. Neither Walnut Springs nor Rood & Riddle was licensed by the agency. He concluded that Kentucky could not expand the regulation beyond its text. Kentucky’s adopted order says the language is broader, that common sense supports applying it to these debts, and that the agency possesses general statutory discretion to assess financial responsibility anyway. I am not going to pretend to decide that legal question. Lawyers and a judge can do that. As a layman reading the record, I can see the problem: Kentucky cited a particular regulation, Patrick found that regulation did not apply, and Kentucky responded by broadening its interpretation and relying on more general authority. That is exactly why Patrick described Kentucky’s position as a moving target.
Kentucky also relied heavily on questions involving Terry Dyer, the owner Borell expected to train for. The adopted order cited his felony history, his lack of a Kentucky owner’s license, an alleged outstanding Florida warrant, uncertainty surrounding the registration of horses he described, and Borell’s lack of knowledge about his licensing status. Those facts may raise serious questions about whether Dyer should receive an owner’s license or whether any horse associated with him should be allowed to enter a race. Kentucky should investigate those questions. But Kentucky used them to find that Borell lacked experience, competence, good judgment, and general fitness. It moved from concerns about a proposed owner and his horses to a judgment about the trainer’s professional ability.
Reasonable people can debate that leap. What cannot be debated is that much of this reasoning only became clear after the original denial, which merely cited regulatory provisions and left Borell to determine the factual case against her. A fair regulator can deny a license. A fair regulator can impose conditions. A fair regulator can require financial documentation, proof of capitalization, properly licensed owners, registered horses, repayment arrangements, supervision, probation, or evidence of current competence. Kentucky had options between an automatic license and a permanent wall. It chose the wall.
Again, this is not about whether anyone likes Maria Borell. It is not about pretending the Mercer County horses did not suffer. It is not about excusing unpaid debts or declaring that every explanation Borell offered must be accepted. It is about whether Kentucky proved the case it claimed to have brought. Its own hearing officer said it did not.
Kentucky demanded a formal process. Witnesses testified. Documents were introduced. Arguments were made. The hearing officer found that Borell met her burden on every theory, that Kentucky’s reasons were vague and inconsistent, and that the agency failed to provide adequate due process.
Kentucky’s response was not to explain those deficiencies in a new, independent decision. It rejected the result in three pages and adopted its own previously rejected argument wholesale including language claiming “the Hearing Officer finds” things the hearing officer expressly did not find. Maybe a court will conclude that Kentucky had the legal discretion to do all of it. Legal discretion, however, is not the same thing as good governance. Authority does not automatically create credibility.
Horse racing asks its public to trust regulators with enormous power. They license the participants, enforce the rules, protect the horses, police the wagering product, and determine who may earn a living inside the sport. With that power comes an obligation to apply standards consistently and explain decisions honestly.
This is not about Maria Borell. It is about what happens when a regulator creates a process, loses under that process, and then substitutes its own preferred answer.
A judge can decide whether Kentucky’s final order is lawful. The rest of us can read the record and decide whether it was fair.
And from where I sit, Kentucky still has a lot of explaining to do.
