The conversation about reform in Thoroughbred racing is getting louder. That’s a good thing. The sport needs it. The question worth asking — the one that rarely gets asked — is not just what reform looks like, but who is positioned to genuinely lead it, and from what perch they’re doing the calling.
That question has new relevance this week.
Erin O’Keefe of BTE Stables has been vocal on social media and in the Paulick Report about the need for an industry-wide reform summit — one that includes power brokers, track operators, trainers, aftercare advocates, breeders, and yes, The Jockey Club. Her vision, as laid out publicly, is a compelling one in its outline: one full day, no hiding, no excuses, no bullshit. Hard to argue with that as a concept.
Mike Repole apparently attempted to make something like this happen and got rebuffed, at least by The Jockey Club. That tracks with everything this publication has been documenting for months.
Here’s where I have to be direct, because I think the context matters enormously.
The Empty Chair Is Already on the Record
When Past The Wire reached out to The Jockey Club for comment and invited their participation in a televised conversation about governance, financial reserves, and accountability — they declined. We did the episode anyway. We named them, documented their 990 filings, we’ve already laid out the board overlap patterns, the reserve accumulation, the executive compensation trajectories, the structural firewall between BC Limited and BC Charities, and the legal architecture that governs what happens if these entities are ever dissolved.
That work is on the record. It isn’t opinion. It’s sourced from IRS filings and public documents, and it was done without the blessing — or the advertising dollars — of the entities being examined.
That distinction is not a small one.
The Paulick Report Question
Erin O’Keefe’s March 6 piece ran in the Paulick Report. I want to be careful here, because I have no interest in making this personal, and I’m not questioning her sincerity or her passion for the sport. Both appear genuine.
But the Paulick Report’s financial and institutional relationships with the very power structures she’s calling to account are worth noting — not as an attack, but as context that any serious consumer of racing journalism should understand.
The Paulick Report and Breeders’ Cup have run joint charitable initiatives together, with Breeders’ Cup CEO Craig Fravel explicitly praising those partnerships. The outlet’s staff page describes one of its senior editors as an “advertising liaison,” a phrase that describes the business model more honestly than most trade publications would dare. Ray Paulick has conducted exclusive feature interviews with Jockey Club-adjacent figures and executives in a context that is closer to access journalism than accountability journalism. The Jockey Club has sponsored in The Paulick Report.
None of this disqualifies the reporting that appears there, and some of it is solid. But it raises a legitimate question: when the Paulick Report publishes a call for reform that names The Jockey Club as an obstacle while simultaneously maintaining the kind of institutional relationships that define the establishment press, what kind of pressure does that actually create?
The answer, historically, is not much.
The Jockey Club has declined press participation, stonewalled governance questions, and sat in empty chairs for years — in part because the outlets covering them have rarely had the structural independence to push harder than a strongly worded op-ed.Past The Wire built its tagline around a simple premise: we are not for sale to the people we cover. That’s not a marketing line. It’s a structural commitment. We don’t take advertising from The Jockey Club. We don’t run joint charitable campaigns with Breeders’ Cup. We don’t describe our staff as advertising liaisons. We don’t get invited to the Round Table and then file a favorable profile afterward.
Past The Wire was built in part around a simple premise: we are not for sale to the people we cover. That’s not a marketing line. It’s a structural commitment. We don’t take advertising from The Jockey Club. We don’t run joint charitable campaigns with Breeders’ Cup. We don’t describe our staff as advertising liaisons. We don’t get invited to the Round Table and then file a favorable profile afterward.
What we do is read 990s. Pull dissolution statutes. Cross-reference board membership against fee structures. Ask the questions that don’t get asked at industry conferences where everyone in the room has a financial relationship with everyone else in the room.
That’s not heroics. It’s just the job, done properly.
The Reform Summit Idea — On Its Merits
To be clear: the idea of a stakeholder summit that happens without The Jockey Club’s participation is actually a good one. O’Keefe is right that Repole and Wellman and others with genuine influence shouldn’t wait for institutional permission to have a real conversation. If the establishment won’t come to the table, build a different table.
But the credibility of any reform effort — and the coverage of it — will ultimately depend on whether the people convening it, and the journalists covering it, have the independence to follow the conclusions wherever they lead, including into territory that makes sponsors and advertisers uncomfortable.
That’s the bar. It’s not a high one in principle. In practice, in this industry, it’s the one that almost never gets cleared.
Past The Wire will be watching, and covering, whatever comes next. The same way we’ve been covering what came before.
“Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed. Everything else is public relations.” — George Orwell
