The horse racing internet had itself a moment last week. Screenshots of what appeared to be past performances with veterinary treatment records embedded chronologically into the running lines circulated across social media, igniting the predictable firestorm. The horse in question was Deterministic, who received Shockwave therapy twice in early February before running on the Belmont Stakes undercard and winning the Manhattan Stakes-G1. The outrage machine fired up immediately. Conspiracy theories flew. Secret societies were invoked. The CAW crowd was accused of having an inside line. The usual.
All of it noise. Let’s talk about what actually happened, what it means, and most importantly what nobody screaming on social media is willing to say out loud if they even know or realize.
Where the Data Lives — and Where It Didn’t Come From
The veterinary treatment records embedded in those past performances did not come from HISA. Lisa Lazarus said so directly Monday in the TDN’s weekly Ask HISA column, and she wasn’t hedging. “The screenshots of PPs circulating online could not have come from the HISA Portal,” Lazarus stated, “because some of the information is different from what is in the HISA Portal.”
That’s a specific, falsifiable claim. She’s not saying HISA didn’t have the data. She’s saying whoever produced that document pulled it from somewhere else and the discrepancies between what circulated and what lives in the HISA Portal confirm it.
Here’s the architecture you need to understand. HISA collects veterinary treatment data through InCompass, via a product called EquiTAPS, a platform built for trainers, veterinarians, state racing commissions, and track regulatory staff to submit and access treatment records for regulatory purposes. This is not a public tool. It’s a credentialed, authorized-access system. The data flowing through it is regulatory in nature. Horsemen don’t get a vote on whether their horse’s treatment history is recorded there, that’s the regulatory framework they operate under.
What IS public on the HISA website is the Veterinarians’ List: a snapshot of horses currently barred from racing or breezing, including those on mandatory 30-day stand-down following Shockwave therapy. A current list. Not a historical treatment log integrated chronologically into running lines. Those are two entirely different things, and the fact that someone is circulating the latter tells you exactly what kind of access the leak source had and what kind of investigation is coming.
Lazarus confirmed HISA has conducted its own review, concluded the source was not its portal, and has shared that finding with “other entities that might be the source of that information,” encouraging them to conduct their own internal review. She didn’t name names. She didn’t need to. InCompass, which, it should be noted, is owned by The Jockey Club is the logical place the trail leads. Whether an internal track investigation or an InCompass review turns up a responsible party is another matter. My expectation: it turns up a big zero. Whoever did this covered their tracks about as well as they covered their intelligence by routing the material through a social media account or to someone who shared it with that account which made it public.
The Horseplayer Reality Check
Now let’s address the argument that’s driving most of the noise: the idea that knowing Deterministic had two Shockwave treatments before winning the Manhattan represents actionable betting intelligence that gave certain players an unfair edge.
Here’s what those players conveniently leave out.
Yes, Deterministic won. He received Shockwave therapy twice in early February, came back May 2nd in the Fort Marcy-G3 at Aqueduct, and then went on to win the Manhattan at Belmont. In this specific case, knowing that information and acting on it would have worked out. Congratulations on the hypothetical ticket.
Now tell me how many horses received Shockwave therapy and lost. Tell me the win rate of horses returning from Shockwave treatment at various distances, on various surfaces, at various class levels, across various trainers. Tell me how many never made it back to the races at all. Tell me the odds those horses went off at when they did run, and whether the market had already priced the uncertainty in. Tell me any of that, and then we’ll talk about edge.
The 98 percent of horseplayers who can’t beat the races aren’t losing because they lack access to vet records. They’re losing because handicapping is hard, because the takeout is punishing, and because information alone does not constitute an angle. I have spent more than fifty years as a professional horseplayer. I have seen every edge proposed, every system marketed, every piece of information sold as the missing ingredient. None of it changes the fundamental equation. Successful players don’t win because they have more data. They win because they know what to do with data they do have and more importantly, they know what NOT to do with it.
Would I personally like to have access to a horse’s complete vet history? Yes. I’d like to know everything I can and then decide for myself what weight to give it. That’s the honest answer. But let me be equally honest: knowing Deterministic had Shockwave therapy would not have made a losing horseplayer into a winning one. It all evens out.
The Data Monetization Question — and Why It’s More Complicated Than the Uproar Suggests
The other charge circulating online that HISA has been selling horse health data to outside entities is, per Lazarus, categorically false as stated. “HISA would never sell individual horse health information without the consent of the Responsible Persons,” she said. No such agreement exists.
What does exist is a serious, ongoing conversation about monetizing aggregated, anonymized data and Congress has actually opened the door to this as a mechanism for reducing the financial burden of HISA on the industry. That’s worth understanding clearly before reflexively condemning it.
Think about what anonymized aggregate data looks like in practice. Not: Deterministic received Shockwave therapy on February 7th and February 15th, 2026. But rather: of the 1,200 horses that raced in a given week, 200 received Shockwave therapy, 350 received intra-articular injections, 850 raced with Lasix. Insurance companies, equine technology companies, international racing jurisdictions, they pay for this kind of statistical profile data. If HISA can monetize that information in a way that genuinely offsets the assessments that horsemen and tracks are currently paying, that’s not a scandal. That’s sound fiscal policy in service of the industry. I said good, not ideal. There’s a meaningful difference.
Lazarus also mentioned, in a sentence that deserves considerably more attention than it has received, that HISA is collaborating with Palantir to analyze its data. Palantir is not a neutral name. It is one of the most powerful and controversial data intelligence companies in the world, with deep roots in government surveillance and military intelligence contracts. Its involvement in racing data analysis is not inherently improper data analysis, but it is the kind of disclosure that warrants follow-up questions, and Past The Wire will be asking them.
The Two-Sided Coin Nobody Wants to Hold
Here’s where the debate gets genuinely complicated, and where the loudest voices on both sides tend to go quiet.
Racing’s transparency advocates, and count me among them on most issues, argue that more information made public is categorically good. Bettors deserve to know what’s going into the horses they’re betting on. The argument has real merit. I’ve made it myself.
But there is a legitimate competing argument, and it belongs to the trainers.
Legal veterinary work properly disclosed to regulators, within the rules, performed by licensed practitioners is part of how horsemen do their job. A trainer who has developed a specific protocol for preparing horses for certain types of races or surfaces, who uses particular legal treatments in a particular sequence based on years of experience and feel for individual animals, has a reasonable argument that this constitutes proprietary professional methodology. Making that methodology publicly visible in real time doesn’t just inform bettors, it neutralizes a tactical edge that was built through skill, observation, and craft.
The claiming game especially comes into play here. The ability to assess a horse’s physical condition, its treatment history, its readiness, and then decide whether to claim it is one of the most complex judgments in racing. Full public vet disclosure changes the calculus of that game in ways that would ripple through the sport well beyond the betting window. Personally I’m against the claiming game altogether, but I do not have a viable alternative.
There is no clean answer. This is a decision that requires the industry to actually sit down and decide on a framework and to do so with all the competing interests at the table, weighed in the right order. Lazarus herself acknowledged Monday that “whether or not that data would be made available in the future is something that the industry must discuss and consider together.”
I’ll offer my framework for that discussion: what is best for the horse comes first. What is best for the industry comes second. What is best for the trainer comes third. And the bettor, and I do not slight the bettor here, I am one, comes fourth. Not because the bettor doesn’t matter, but because a decision about horse health information that begins and ends with what helps someone cash a ticket has its priorities exactly backwards.
What This Actually Was
A leak from inside the regulatory infrastructure, most likely a track employee or someone at InCompass with authorized access who made an unauthorized use of it, found its way to a social media account that made it public. It generated a week of noise. HISA did not sell your horse’s vet records. The CAW crowd most likely did not have a secret pipeline. There was probably no conspiracy operating.
What we did get, is confirmation that HISA is working with Palantir, that monetization of aggregated data is coming, and that the industry has a real conversation ahead of it about where the line between regulatory data and public information should be drawn.
That’s the story. Not the screenshots.
