The Passive Architect: Why the Jockey Club is Building Tools but Refusing the Hammer

Johnny Mathis may have said it best when he sang:

Too Much, Too Little, Too Late to lie again with you

If you’ve followed Past the Wire or me for any length of time, you know I don’t pull punches. I don’t care about the “old boys’ club” optics, and I certainly don’t care for the “stay the course” rhetoric while the foundation of this sport is smelling like a four-furlong workout in a hurricane.

Recently, the Jockey Club (TJC) has been on a PR offensive. They’ve launched a Traceability Survey to find out where our retired Thoroughbreds go, (I could have told them) and they’re pushing Thoroughbred Connect as the ultimate safety net. On paper, it looks like progress. In reality? It looks like an organization that has finally realized the villagers are at the gates with torches—and they’re trying to hand out blueprints instead of actually building a wall.

The Tools: High-Tech Blueprints for a Crumbling House

The Traceability Survey and Thoroughbred Connect are the right tools, but they are entirely voluntary. In an industry where we handle billions in wagering but struggle to track a horse once it leaves the shed, “voluntary” is just another word for “optional accountability.”

If you’re a responsible owner, you’re already doing the work. If you’re the guy sending a horse to a low-end auction or a “kill-pen” pipeline, do you really think you’re going to log into your account to fill out a survey? The Jockey Club is acting like a Passive Architect. They’ve drawn up the plans, they’ve bought the expensive software, but they are flat-out refusing to pick up the hammer.

The $100 Million Question: Reserves vs. Reality

In their January 27, 2026, “Open Letter,” the Board of Stewards patted themselves on the back for contributing $2.5 million to aftercare this year. They boasted about a total of $112 million (now updated to $120M in their latest impact report) invested in the industry over the last 15 years.

But let’s look at the balance sheet. Based on the most recent ProPublica and non-profit data, the Jockey Club is sitting on net assets exceeding $100 million. For a non-profit dedicated to the “betterment of the breed,” that balance sheet looks more like a private equity firm than a life-raft for a struggling industry.

When you compare that $2.5 million aftercare “boast” to the scale of the problem, it’s a rounding error. Critics like Mike Repole—who has basically appointed himself the “Commissioner” of the sport because no one else will lead—rightly point out that $2.5 million is a drop in the ocean. We have a foal crop projected at just 17,000 for 2026. To guarantee a safe landing for those horses throughout their lives, we need systemic, billion-dollar solutions, not a “voluntary” check-off box on a registration form.

Why the 2026 Sudden Urge to “Trace”?

The timing of this is no coincidence. We are currently in the “Litigation Era” of racing. Repole has threatened a national lawsuit, accusing the TJC of being a stagnant monopoly. The Jockey Club’s response—releasing these tools and their recent “Open Letter”—is a defensive crouch.

They didn’t initiate this because it was the right thing to do; they initiated it because their social license to operate is being revoked in real-time. They waited until a billionaire with a megaphone forced their hand in January 2026.

The Missing Hammer: Mandates and Money

If the Jockey Club truly wanted to fix the traceability problem, they wouldn’t be asking us to fill out a survey by June 30. They’d be swinging the hammer:

1. Mandatory Reporting: You want to register a foal? You agree to a lifetime digital “check-in” requirement. Period.
2. The Aftercare Levy: Instead of self-congratulatory letters, how about a mandatory $100 fee on every transaction that goes directly to the TAA? That would double their aftercare budget overnight.
3. Real-Time Teeth: Traceability without enforcement is just a census of the dead. If a horse is scanned at a non-sanctioned auction and the registry wasn’t updated, the last known owner should face immediate registration bans.

The Bottom Line: Use Your Voice

The 2026 Round Table Conference in August is being set up as a grand reveal for this survey data. But we don’t need more data to know that horses are falling through the cracks.

Here is my call to action for the Past the Wire faithful: Don’t just fill out the survey. Demand that the Jockey Club makes these tools mandatory. Tell them that a $100 million asset pool and a $2.5 million aftercare budget isn’t “leadership”—it’s a PR strategy.

Collecting data is a prerequisite for progress, not progress itself. The Jockey Club has spent 130 years acting as a registry. It’s time they started acting like a leadership body. Build the tools, by all means. But for the sake of the horse and the survival of this game, pick up the damn hammer.

Oh yeah, and there is still crickets about the cockfighting everyone seems to just want to go away.