Competing primarily on the difficult Kentucky circuit, Spuns Son had raced 32 times between the ages of 3 and 5 without ever once getting his picture taken in the winner's circle. But the Hard Spun gelding had managed to hit the board on eight occasions, and he had closed well enough in $16,000 and $12,500 maiden-claiming grass routes in Indiana and Virginia during the second half of 2024 to make trainer John F. Hill, Jr. think that dropping him in for a $5,000 tag going long over Turfway Park's Tapeta surface during the December holiday meet might yield that elusive first victory.
“The race was in the [condition] book,” Hill told TDN over the weekend. “They [initially] had enough horses to run, but then they just kept pushing it back, pushing it back.”
Around Christmas, Hill said, “I saw it on the overnight [as an extra race], and I said, 'I qualify for this,' so I put him in. I entered the horse on Dec. 26. The conditions said that the race was for maidens, 4-year-olds and up. I did exactly what the overnight said.”
Trouble was, the race that Hill kept trying to enter late last month would end up getting carded as Turfway's very first race of 2025. And because all Thoroughbreds in North America turn one year older every Jan. 1, Spuns Son would be 6 on the day of his 33rd lifetime start.
This ended up being a problem, because Hill had no idea there was an administrative regulation on the books in Kentucky prohibiting the entry of some (but not all) 6-year-old maiden Thoroughbreds.
And what ticks off Hill the most, he told TDN, was that no one in the Turfway racing office seemed to be aware of this rule, either, when they accepted his entry.
Nor, Hill claimed, were the track's stewards as attentive as they should have been. He said state stewards Barbara Borden and Brooks Becraft III, plus association steward William Troilo, had six days between entry time and race day to catch the mistake.
But the Turfway stewards only informed Hill of the violation after Spuns Son closed with a rush from far back to win by a head at 10-1 odds.
In a stewards' ruling dated Jan. 15, Borden, Becraft and Troilo ordered that Spuns Son was to be disqualified and that owners Henry and Devin Dewald would have to forfeit $10,205 in purse winnings. They cited 810 KAR 4:010 Section 7, which states that, “A maiden six (6) years of age or older that has made five (5) life time starts on the flat shall not be entered or start.”
Spuns Son wasn't the only 6-year-old in the first race at Turfway on New Year's Day to be deemed ineligible and get disqualified. The fourth-place finisher, Left Pocket Money (Palace), also got wiped off the chart, with his owners losing $828 in purse money. The horses that crossed the wire 2-3-5-6 ended up being awarded the 1-2-3-4 purse winnings.
“The day after Spuns Son won, I got a call from the assistant racing secretary telling me the stewards are trying to disqualify the horse, which I thought was totally wrong, because they had a week to correct this,” said Hill, who has been training for two decades and only has one previous violation listed on his Thoroughbred Regulatory Rulings record maintained by The Jockey Club (a $100 fine from 2005 for not having a Coggins certificate on file).
“Evidently, they don't know the rules themselves, because that horse never should have made it through the entry clerk. They should have caught that. No one just enters a horse-the racing officials have to proof the entries. They had all the way up until that horse went in the gate. They could have even called me when the horse was out there on the track.”
Neither Hill nor Bonnie Pittman, the trainer of Left Pocket Money, were sanctioned or penalized via the ineligibility rulings. But for Hill, the loss of the trainer's portion of that purse money was enough of a financial punishment: In 2024, Hill won just three races from 45 starts, with his small stable bringing in only $89,458 in total purses.
By contrast, Turfway handled an approximate $227,000 in Race 1 bets, and that maiden race led into double and pick three pools that handled an additional $63,000. Using just round numbers, those two ineligible entrants in a field of 11 theoretically constituted 18% of the available betting interests in that first race.
However you slice the pari-mutuel pie, Turfway and the commonwealth of Kentucky both benefitted financially from the presence of the two ineligible horses despite failing to provide proper checks and balances against their entries.
Modest outfits like Hill's enable Turfway to fill races and function through Kentucky's cold winter months. Yet according to Hill's version of the events that took place at his hearing on the matter, he can't even get anyone at Turfway or the Kentucky Horse Racing and Gaming Corporation (KHRGC), to own up to their role in the snafu, let alone apologize for it.
Citing a rule that states that “in the absence of substantial evidence to the contrary, [the trainer] shall bear primary responsibility for horses he or she enters as to eligibility,” the stewards told Hill that he was the one who was ultimately responsible for violating the rule.
“That's how they protect themselves on anything. It's been that way for years, and it's time that all these things need to brought [to the public's] attention,” Hill said. “I mean, they're the judge, the executioner, and the jury. They're never at fault on anything.”
John F Hill Jr | Coady
Over the weekend, TDN emailed Jamie Eads, the KHRGC's president and chief executive officer; Tyler Picklesimer, Turfway's director of racing and racing secretary, and steward Borden asking for some on-the-record context about what happened and to clarify what safeguards are in place for checking to see that ineligible horses don't make it into the entries.
None of the three replied prior to deadline for this story.
Instead, by way of an answer, a KHRGC spokesperson sent an email attaching the two ineligibility rulings that TDN had already seen, quoting from the underlying rules stated on the documents.
When TDN sent a follow-up email asking what the stewards' and racing office protocol is for proofing the entries at Turfway, the spokesperson did not reply before publication of this column.
“The owners are upset because they felt like the track should own up to their responsibilities,” Hill continued.
“What I would have done was say, 'This race is official. What has happened has happened, but we're going to correct the wording so it won't happen again.'” Hill said. “But it's their way or the highway. There's no negotiating with those stewards. Like I told you–and you can quote it–they never do anything wrong.”
Hill might have a point about the rule needing to be better explained to horsemen. Presumably, few of them check Kentucky's administrative statutes prior to making entries. But they certainly do consult the condition book. The online version of Turfway's January condition book lists exactly two “Age Restrictions” on page 12. They are:
“1) All 4-year old and older first time starters and any previously-raced horse that has not raced in the previous 365 days must contact the KHRGC veterinarians to schedule an official veterinary work PRIOR to entry.
2) Any horse six (6) years or older that has never started is ineligible to stable, train or race at any Churchill Downs Property” (Churchill Downs, Inc., is Turfway's parent company).
Ostensibly, the not-well-publicized rule that forbids 6-year-olds that have made five or more starts was intended as an equine welfare initiative. But in practicality, exactly how does that regulation protect a gelding like Spuns Son? Consider the following:
If Spuns Son had raced between one and four times-but not 32-he would have been an eligible 6-year-old maiden. Kentucky's reasoning for capping the number of starts at five is not clear.
If Spuns Son had raced on Dec. 31 instead of Jan. 1, his entry (and win) would have been completely legit. Did something magically happen at midnight on New Year's Eve to imperil this gelding that rendered him ineligible?
And here's where this really gets weird: If Spuns Son now subsequently, after having been DQ'd from his lone victory, goes on to re-break his maiden at a different track–say at Mahoning Valley, where Hill sometimes races–he will once again be welcome to race at Turfway, because there is no age restriction on 6-year-olds that are not maidens.
“This is what they suggested, and these are their exact words,” Hill told TDN. “'Take him to Ohio, and then bring him back.'”
But, Hill continued, “Here's the thing: There's a big difference in purse money. You can run a [maiden] here for $5,000, and that purse is $14,400. You go to Ohio for [a] $5,000 [tag], what do you get for a purse, $4,000? That's assuming he wins. And you've got to ship.”
Hill said he plans to appeal the DQ. But he'd better be careful, because he runs the risk of running afoul of another obscure eligibility rule: If the connections appeal and the hearing isn't scheduled for weeks or months, Spuns Son will be in limbo, conditions-wise. That's because Kentucky (and other states) will “stay” the DQ until the appeal is adjudicated. So Spuns Son's in-dispute victory will, in essence, count against him for the time being if his connections appeal, meaning he won't be considered eligible for maiden races until the whole process plays out.
In fact, that exact situation happened one year ago at Turfway.
When a maiden filly named Magnolia Wind (Central Banker) was entered at Turfway on Jan. 4, 2024, racing officials failed to notice that she was ineligible because her connections were appealing a DQ'd victory (for in-race interference) that had occurred in Maryland two months previously.
Magnolia Wind ended up running second, and only after the race did the Turfway stewards declare her ineligible, taking away $5,331 in purse money while similarly blaming the owner and the trainer for not knowing the obscure rule.
“I'm still going to fight it,” Hill said. “I will be appealing it. But to be honest with you, I've never been in this situation. So I don't know–do you really get a fair chance by appealing?”
The post Week In Review: After Win DQ Over Obscure Eligibility Rule, Turfway Trainer Learns the Hard Way Who’s Responsible appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.
