You say the industry you are affiliated with has been the subject of a spate of bad publicity over a very public calamity?
You say there are rumblings that Washington's gotten a whiff of it, picked up the scent and the hounds are on the hunt?
Then you might just be in for an experience recently shared by Hall of Fame trainer Jack Van Berg, ESPN announcer Randy Moss and several other representatives of the horse racing industry. You could be chosen to testify before a congressional subcommittee. Oh, the fun and honor that's ahead for you.
It starts with a call or an e-mail.
“Got a call from Congressman Whitfield's man (Rep. Ed Whitfield, R-Kentucky),” Van Berg said recently in an interview at his Hollywood Park stable office. “Asked if I would come up there. I told him I would.”
Moss received an e-mail from a committee staffer inquiring if he would be interested in testifying. He ran it all the way up the corporate flagpole at ESPN's home Walt Disney Co. and got approval and encouragement.
About three weeks before the testimony came a formal invitation with a list of requirements for those agreeing to testify.
“They make you send in what you have to say, your speech ahead of time,” Van Berg said. “I just sat right down here and wrote down what I had to say. I just told them what I thought about the racing game.”
Among the requirements, said Moss, interviewed while here last weekend for the San Diego Handicap, was 150 copies of the written testimony, delivered by a certain date to a certain place, and sent electronically as well.
Out of curiosity, Moss contacted a committee representative and asked who paid the freight when one was called to testify. He was told that “unless you're indigent” the committee was not allowed to pay for transportation or hotel.
Moss might have been able to make a case for indigence if he had stayed in the turf-writing business. But he had the vision to head for the TV side long ago and has been with ESPN/ABC since 1999. No chance.
The preliminary requirements met, the big day came June 19. Anybody nervous?
Van Berg: “Didn't bother me none. I just told them what I thought and how I feel. If people like it, fine. If they don't like it, fine. I like horses and I think it's got to the place where it has gotten out of hand with medication. I think we're better off with none.”
Moss: “You would think, doing what I do for a living, I wouldn't be nervous, but I was. I wasn't nervous at the prospect of it, but sitting there in front of a panel of legislators was a little intimidating.
“Then, like anything else, once you get into it and relax a little it's not too bad.”
Van Berg, 72, may have gotten off the most dramatic line of the hearings when he delivered a gravelly voiced opinion that the training business had become “chemical warfare.”
“I've been saying that for a long time,” Van Berg said. “They race all over the world without medication and I don't know why we have to. The vet bills on some of these horses that are racing, it has gotten way out of hand.”
Moss describes himself as a “hay, oats and water guy” like Van Berg when it comes to substances on which horses ought to race. He provided testimony that was somewhat more sophisticated, but critical where necessary.
“After you're finished, a million things pop into your mind that you could or should have said,” Moss said. “The tone that the legislators used to describe horse racing was, in my opinion, overly harsh. If I had it to do over again I would have adapted my oral presentation on the fly to challenge that idea.
“They seemed to imply that horse racing is an evil sport. There are a lot of wonderful things about the sport and a lot of good people in it. But like every sport it has its issues.”
Moss said he came away from the experience “a little frustrated” that the panel was stacked with people of the same mind-set. “By excluding those who have differing opinions you bolster their case because they can say their opinions weren't heard,” he said.
Moss said he was “a little disenchanted” that it seemed to be not so much a fact-finding mission as an opportunity for some legislators to express their own opinions. But he acknowledged the issues that were gigantically mainstreamed by first Barbaro and then Eight Belles are ones that everyone within the industry has been aware of for a long time.
“Anybody who has followed horse racing over the years knows the sport has been dysfunctional as far as a national policy on several critical issues,” Moss said.
Last month's hearing isn't expected to be the only one. More are likely later this year before the government decides what, if anything, its role will be in changing the game.
“The way I see it, nothing but good can come of it long term,” Moss said. “The question becomes how to get there and that's a very tough question.”
Hank Wesch: (619) 293-1853; hank.wesch@uniontrib.com
