(Update: No agreement was struck to end the jockey pay dispute described below by the Tuesday, Sept. 2, deadline. Five jockeys did agree to ride horses for Thursday, Sept. 4, races at Remington Park, although numerous horses were scratched without riders across the nine scheduled races. The following article remains in its original form.)
Negotiations about how much to pay jockeys in thoroughbred contests are threatening to scratch post-Labor Day races at Remington Park, a tense development leaving industry leaders with a sour celebration of horse racing’s 40th anniversary weekend in Oklahoma.
The Thoroughbred Racing Association of Oklahoma and the Jockeys’ Guild reportedly closed the gap in their positions over the weekend, making a late surge ahead of Tuesday’s stated 10 a.m. “scratch time.” Without an agreement by then, officials say, the cancelation of Thursday’s races at Remington Park seems unavoidable.
“This is an active situation that is going on between TRAO and the Jockeys’ Guild and the jockeys there at Remington. But I would not term this as ‘an impasse’ at all,” Joe Lucas, a longtime trainer and TRAO consultant said Sunday on The Remington Report radio show. “Right now, to my knowledge, the jock fee amount has been agreed upon by both parties — the number. It’s my understanding that the issues that still remain unresolved are basically the tier levels on the [win, place, show payouts] — you know, the purse monies. The beginning jock mount that they’re wanting, the $100, that is the number that both parties have agreed upon. But now they’re trying to resolve on the deal for the tier levels of the purse levels and how that increases, because it goes up from that number.”
The minimum non-winning jockey payout of $75 has not changed for thoroughbred riders in 15 years. With quarter horse riders already receiving a minimum pay bump to $110 earlier this year, the thoroughbred jockey pay dispute reached a boiling point this month while the Oklahoma Horse Racing Commission already faces internal turmoil. After an OHRC meeting Aug. 21, John Chancey resigned as the agency’s executive director and said he has reported allegations of financial mismanagement in the Oklahoma-Bred program and questions about simulcast arrangements at tribal casinos to the FBI and the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation.
At a special meeting Aug. 26, the commission named Amanda English, Chancey’s executive assistant and a career law enforcement professional, as acting director.
“Dr. Chancey has always been very fair and kind to me personally,” English said, noting she did not ask to be named director. “Very unexpected. (I have been asked) just to maintain what the Horse Racing Commission is called to do, which involves a lot of encouraging agriculture and breeding horses and keeping our employees ready to do the job we’re signed up to do.”
English, who formerly served as chief of police in Forest Park and as director of the basic peace officer certification program at MetroTech, said she was “not sure” how the thoroughbred jockey pay negotiations would play out in the coming days.
“The stewards are hoping to have an agreement by Tuesday at scratch time,” English said Friday.
As she assumes executive tasks and the OHRC begins its national search for a permanent director, English remains the plaintiff in a federal lawsuit she filed against MetroTech Superintendent Aaron Collins and former-Council on Law Enforcement Education and Training director Brandon Clabes. In her lawsuit, English alleges wrongful termination from MetroTech and claims Clabes improperly revoked her license as the director of the MetroTech BPOC program over an administrative dispute about whether a course participant was a full-time officer at the Maysville Police Department.
‘We want to work through this’
Fighting for their first pay increase here in 15 years, thoroughbred jockeys have asked the Oklahoma Horse Racing Commission to approve an industry-wide rule hiking their compensation. In the meantime, they have thus far opted not to enter to ride races this week.
For years, jockeys have been vying for a raise with little success. But earlier this year, the OHRC approved a permanent rule to increase losing mount fees for quarter horse jockeys from $75 to $110. However, that rule did not apply to thoroughbred races, which cover greater distances and generally generate more wagering.
“It just didn’t dawn on me, ‘Why aren’t we doing this with the thoroughbreds, too?'” past OHRC Chairman Bennett Anderson told NonDoc. “I guess TRAO has their own agreement with jockeys that ride thoroughbred horses. We could have and should have possibly done it at the same time, but I don’t know that it would have passed. There may have been a lot of lobbying from TRAO to not do it.”
At the Aug. 21 OHRC meeting, jockey and thoroughbred representatives prodded one another about the state of their fee negotiations while speaking to the commission. When the commission entered executive session to review Chancey’s employment, tension spilled into the lengthy hall of suites outside the Eclipse Room at Remington Park. With Dolly Parton hitting high notes from the track’s intercom system, Jockeys’ Guild and TRAO representatives accused each other of lying about how negotiations have gone so far.
“You were not willing to enter that agreement last year,” Mindy Coleman, legal counsel for the Jockeys’ Guild, said to Danielle Barber, executive director of TRAO. “You flat-out said, ‘We are not willing to take action.’ I’ll send you the emails.”
Barber told NonDoc on Aug. 29 that TRAO “would love to come to an agreement” and wants “to be good partners.”
“We want to work through this,” Barber said Friday. “We’ve offered $90, and that has been our offer. We met, we had a board meeting, and they have stayed at $90.”
According to Lucas’ radio interview Sunday, TRAO and the Jockeys’ Guild had each moved to $100, although rumors began spreading Sunday night that the wire may have moved again.
Jockeys made the decision not to be named to ride Sept. 4 races during entries Aug. 27, according to OHRC commissioner and retired jockey G.R. Carter. He previously told NonDoc he would support the jockeys making themselves unavailable to ride until an agreement is reached.
“The jockeys need to take a stand as a group and more or less force the horsemen’s group. They can’t have horse racing without jockeys,” Carter said after the special Aug. 26 meeting. “The way they can do it without actually striking is not accept entries.”
Before racedays, jockeys enter to be named as riders.
“What the jocks could do is say, ‘We’re not available,'” Carter said.
TRAO has avoided raising the minimum losing mount fee paid to thoroughbred jockeys for several years, according to Coleman, who asked the commission to take action Aug. 21.
“We’re respectfully requesting that the commission issue a directive adopting the same scale for the thoroughbred jockeys as previously had been approved for the quarter horse jockeys,” Coleman said. “Considering there has not been an increase since 2010, we do believe that this is fair and reasonable to all parties.”
Thoroughbred fees have not been updated since 2010, when minimum losing mount fees were increased to the current rate of $75.
“I hope that they get this right,” Anderson said of the industry groups and OHRC. “To not have racing is devastating to so many people — from the guy who is mucking out the stall all the way to the guy that owns the horse and everywhere in between. This is a disaster if they don’t have races.”
HISA frustrations offer some unity in racing industry
If it sounds like the mechanics and machinations of competitive horse racing are historically complicated, why not add the federal government into the mix?
Established by a bill Congress passed in 2019 and President Donald Trump signed in 2020, the non-government Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority seeks to implement a “uniform set of integrity and safety rules that are applied consistently to every thoroughbred racing participant and racetrack facility,” according to the organization’s website.
Lawsuits ensued, with three federal appellate circuits each finding HISA’s rule-making authority to be valid. However, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals held that the authority’s enforcement powers are unlawful. As the thoroughbred racing industry and tracks around the country hope the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately euthanizes HISA, owners, trainers, tracks and — now — jockeys are being required to pay new fees to the controversial regulatory body.
“At Remington (…) I think it’s around $2 million that we’re having to pony up,” Lucas said on Sunday’s radio program. “When I say, ‘We,’ (I mean) the track and the thoroughbred horsemen are having to pony that up, and that includes the jockeys. And they have a pay scale that they tell you that this is how much the jockeys pay, this is how much the trainers pay, this is what the owners pay, this is what the track pays. And it’s an animal that no one is, I don’t think, crazy about in Oklahoma. We have all joined in a lawsuit against that in federal court that is still waiting to be heard by the Supreme Court on the constitutionality of it. And we’re confident that if the Supreme Court will ever have the time to adjudicate this matter that we will be victorious in it and HISA will be a thing of the past.”
The new financial pressures from HISA have only made it more difficult for thoroughbred horsemen and jockeys to negotiate the proposed mount-fee hike.
According to a press release by the Jockeys’ Guild, Oklahoma thoroughbred jockeys actually take home only $40 of the $75 minimum mount pay after factoring in HISA fees, guild membership fees and payments to valets and agents.
“On March 31, Will Rogers jockeys were assessed a HISA fee of $2.76 per mount, and effective after the first week of racing, the Remington jockeys were now being assessed a fee of $5.76,” Coleman said. “To our knowledge, Oklahoma is the only jurisdiction where jockeys are being assessed these fees directly as opposed to these fees coming off the top.”
During the Aug. 21 commission meeting, Coleman’s request for the OHRC to approve a “directive” raising mount fees prompted contention from Barber and legal questions from TRAO attorney Terry McKeever.
“It sounds like I heard the word ‘directive.’ When I look at the statute and rules, I don’t see a role for the commission until there is an agreement. I see a default role in the absence of the agreement, but I do not see a provision that allows the commission to arbitrate or mediate a negotiation between the parties.” McKeever said. “And at the same time, I think to issue a directive is to make a rule without the rule-making process.”
OHRC Chairman Brian Burget asked either Assistant Attorney General Niki Batt or OHRC legal counsel Michael Copeland to look into the feasibility of the Jockeys’ Guild request. Batt ultimately said that, as the rule is written, OHRC cannot issue a directive without an agreement from TRAO and the Jockeys’ Guild.
“You do, however, have the power to change the rule,” Batt said.
Asked about the situation following the Aug. 26 meeting, Burget indicated the commission could do just that.
“My understanding is that, on advice of legal counsel, we are not able to make a directive absent an agreement with the horsemen’s groups and the jockeys,” Burget said. “And so as a result of that, we’ve opened up the permanent rule-making process to evaluate what the jockeys’ mount fees will be. That’ll go through the rule-making process.”
While Burget declined to comment on the gravity of the situation, his predecessor as chairman, Anderson, said the commission ought to step up and settle the dispute.
“What I would do is I would go to the jockey agents or whoever is in charge of the jockeys, and then I’d go to Danielle (Barber with TRAO) and I’d say, ‘I’ve been asked to put this on the agenda for a raise for the jockeys,’ and, ‘Tell me why we should not?’ And I’d listen to her tell me why we should not,” Anderson said. “And I still might put it on the agenda. That’s just how I feel about that.”
‘Impossible’ negotiations frustrate everyone
According to Coleman, the Jockeys’ Guild representative, TRAO has repeatedly avoided striking a new mount-fee agreement for years.
“In 2021, our former regional manager, John Beech, attempted to have discussions with representatives of TRAO about receiving an increase, and he was repeatedly told, ‘Not at this time,'” Coleman said.
Two years later, she said the Jockeys’ Guild approached TRAO again, this time proposing to raise the minimum losing mount fee from $75 to $100, a rate that Coleman said would put Oklahoma on par with other states.
Thoroughbred jockeys competing within the New York Racing Association receive a losing mount fee of at least $125. Jockeys riding in Kentucky also earn at least $125 per race.
“After being told, ‘No,’ without any consideration by the TRAO representatives, in an attempt to negotiate the following day, the Jockeys’ Guild presented another proposal to TRAO in which the increase would occur over the period of three years,” Coleman said. “However, TRAO once again responded they would not be taking action at this time.”
The Jockeys’ Guild attempted to enter into negotiations with TRAO once again when the increase for quarter horse jockeys came into effect, according to Coleman. She said TRAO eventually contacted the Jockeys’ Guild and requested materials to be presented at a March 17 board meeting. On March 19, the Jockeys’ Guild learned that TRAO rejected the proposal, Coleman said, adding that two weeks later, frustration mounted as jockeys at Will Rogers Downs in Claremore learned of the rejection.
“During the discussion that day, there was a suggestion that TRAO could possibly consider a $90 losing mount fee,” Coleman said.
She said the Jockeys’ Guild received a proposal April 9 that would raise the minimum losing mount fee from $75 to $80. The Jockeys’ Guild countered with their own proposal: $90, and for a portion of any given race’s purse to go to the fourth-place finisher.
“On April 29, once again, TRAO sent a scale with a nominal $5 increase. The jockeys were extremely offended,” Coleman said. “It did include the fourth place. They included the fourth place. However, the jockeys, again, were offended and felt there was no attempt to negotiate.”
On Sunday’s radio program, Lucas said it was his understanding that the fourth-place finisher percentage had been agreed to this weekend. He also noted that only jockeys receive a “losing” minimum payment in horse racing.
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According to an Aug. 26 Facebook post by TRAO, which said the organization and the Jockeys’ Guild had been unable to reach an agreement, TRAO proposed a scale that included a $90 losing mount fee, $20 less than the quarter horse minimum mount fee.
In a back-and-forth discussion during the Aug. 21 meeting, Carter asked Barber if she believes quarter horse jockeys are more valuable than thoroughbred jockeys, an idea she rejected. She also said the proposed tiers in the increase would push most jockey payment hikes higher than the $5 figure he had stated.
“If our average purse here at Remington Park is $25,000,” Barber said. “That is a $90 amount, that is not a $5 increase.”
Carter pushed back.
“You did not increase the bottom of the scale any more than $5, and the bottom of the scale is the guys who really need this money,” Carter said.
Despite disagreeing with Carter over the interpretation of TRAO’s proposal, Barber conceded that at Fair Meadows in Tulsa, where wagers are smaller and less voluminous, the minimum fee would be $80 under the initial proposal.
“TRAO is being impossible for the jocks to deal with,” Carter said after the Aug. 26 meeting. “They are offering them $5, $15. I mean, they just, a thoroughbred guy has got to be worth at least the same as a quarter horse guy.”
Underscoring the idiom of when it rains it pours, most races at Remington Park were canceled Saturday night owing to an equipment malfunction with the track’s simulcast system.
“It cost everybody money,” Lucas said. “It was a bad deal for everyone.”
