Low Hanging Fruit Often Tastes Bad
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” “They aren’t deaf, and they aren’t blind. They just know who signs the checks.”— Upton Sinclair
In horse racing, we often hear that “timing is everything,” but in the world of industry politics and media narratives, the more accurate phrase is “selective hearing.”
Over the past few months, I’ve pulled back the curtain on the tight-knit relationships that govern this sport’s “official” narrative in The Illusion of Independence. I’ve also highlighted the glaring hypocrisy in how we handle equine welfare in The Ethics Gap. But today, we need to talk about a contrast so sharp it should make every serious professional in this game stop and think: Why is the industry losing its mind over Kevin Bond while maintaining a deafening silence on a scandal involving some of its biggest stars?
To be 1000% clear—and I want this loud for the people in the cheap seats—I in no way condone the conduct attributed to Kevin Bond. If even half of what is reported is true, his remarks were deplorable, ignorant, and hateful. Frankly, screw him and the horse he rode in on if this is in fact who he is and what he is about. There is no room for that in a civilized society, let alone a sport trying to broaden its appeal. Did he say it? I don’t know but the “I was hacked” story was not one I bought into. Good for NYRA for taking a stand.
But here is the “Why” that no one else is asking.
Kevin Bond is a blip on the radar. He isn’t a face of the sport. He isn’t featured on every major racing broadcast. He doesn’t hold the reins of Grade 1 favorites every Saturday. Yet, the legacy publications—the ones like The Paulick Report and BloodHorse—have tripped over themselves to cover every angle of his “alleged” remarks.
Meanwhile, we have a documented, ongoing situation involving the Ortiz brothers, illegal gambling, and cockfighting in Puerto Rico. We are talking about a blood sport that involves the systematic torture of animals and illegal wagering—two things that are directly, fundamentally relevant to the integrity of Thoroughbred racing.
Where is the outrage? Where are the front-page features in the “establishment” media?
When I wrote about this in November, yes, last November, the response from the industry’s power players was crickets. The Ortiz brothers remain the darlings of the broadcast booth, while the media focuses its “moral” lens on a peripheral figure like Bond.
Watch the hands, not the mouth.
If you want to know why this discrepancy exists, look at who holds the purse strings. In The Illusion of Independence, I connected the dots between The Jockey Club, West Point Thoroughbreds, and the advertising dollars that keep the legacy media afloat. The Jockey Club doesn’t just manage a breed registry; they manage a narrative. They own 51% of Bloodhorse, America’s Best Racing, and sponsor articles in The Paulick Report which project favorable views of their efforts.
Through their joint ventures like Equibase and their ownership interest in BloodHorse, they have created a “closed-loop” system. When a Jockey Club Steward’s entity provides the advertising oxygen for a platform, like The Paulick Report, that platform naturally reflects the interests of its benefactors. It is much safer for these publications to rail against an easy target like Kevin Bond than to investigate a scandal involving the very jockeys who carry the silks of the industry’s inner circle.
We are told this sport is “all about the horse,” but that slogan rings hollow when the industry’s leading voices ignore animal torture because the people involved are too “important” to touch. It’s the same “Conflict of Interest of Success” I’ve spoken about before: If the status quo is making you rich, why would you look at the rot in the foundation?
I don’t care about ad buys, and I don’t care about being “invited” to the table. I care about the truth. I care about the sport. If we are going to demand integrity, we have to demand it across the board—not just when it’s convenient or when the target is someone we don’t like anyway.
The “establishment” media can continue to act as a PR arm for the status quo, but at Past the Wire, we’re going to keep connecting the dots. If the industry wants to ignore their stars cockfighting while patting itself on the back for “canceling” Kevin Bond, they are only fooling themselves. The fans and the bettors see it. We see it.
The silence isn’t just deafening; it’s an admission of who really runs the show.
No silence:
