The Canadian Sportsman
February 03, 2010
Bulletproof? Even the name is insulting.
It carries the arrogant smack of being invincible, impervious, made of Teflon. Yeah, I get it. David Brooks’ company DHB Industries makes protective vests. Very clever.
But considering the New York Times reported in January of 2006 that about 23,000 of the company’s vest were recalled by the U.S. military due, allegedly, to “critical, life-threatening flaws” makes the name of the Brooks family’s racing stable that much more inappropriate.
Forgive me if I don’t congratulate the Bulletproof folks for not only being the sport’s leading owners in 2009, but for also setting a single-season earnings record.
Harness racing needs Bulletproof as much as a soldier needs flawed body armour.
The biggest joke of 2009 was that Bulletproof was allowed to race horses. David Brooks (above) was under house arrest for much of ‘09, charged with $186 million in fraud in a case now underway in New York. While awaiting trial, his brother, Jeffrey, was running the stable under the Bulletproof name, overseeing a 400-horse operation that includes top stallion Western Terror. Jeffrey was also, allegedly, helping David hide money overseas against the terms of David’s bail agreement.
That David, allegedly, used DHB money to support a lavish lifestyle that included helping fund his racing operation, puts harness racing at the centre of a trial that has caught the fancy of the New York press.
Why Jeffrey Brooks was ever allowed to take over the racing stable while his brother was awaiting trial for such a serious offense, I’ll never know. It’s not like they are estranged family members.
Why Bulletproof and the Brooks clan was ever allowed to take more than $12.6 million out of the industry in the first place, I’ll never know.
Apart from more information recently becoming public, there’s not a shred of difference between now and a year ago. Most of us knew a year ago Bulletproof was, at the very least, a questionable outfit and, likely, worse.
So, thank goodness the Ontario Racing Commission (ORC) finally led the charge on Jan. 26 by ordering the immediate suspension of Bulletproof, Perfect World Enterprises and a number of Brooks family members, including Jeffrey and David’s wife, Terry.
Minor kudos to the ORC for, once again, leading the charge among the group of regulators who have either dragged their feet on this, or ignored it altogether. Minor kudos to the U.S. Trotting Association for withholding horse transfer requests for the Bulletproof gang. Minor kudos to Standardbred Canada for not allowing Bulletproof to take home an O’Brien Award.
Trouble is, other bodies have been slow to act, with the exception of New York and New Jersey, which jumped on the train yesterday.
Before all you ACLU types launch into the old “innocent until proven guilty” line, remember being a licensed racing participant is a privilege, not a right.
Should David be found “not guilty,” he could apply for a license, though there would be no obligation to grant one.
In the meantime, the trial is going to make harness racing appear as unseemly as a Sopranos episode.
Again, here’s where harness racing pales in comparison to other sports blessed with commissioners.
Participants in other sports that sully its reputation are routinely fined and suspended long before courts render a verdict. Call it the “for the good of the game” clause.
In the absence of a commissioner, the least the various racing jurisdictions can do is agree that Brooks et al. are not welcome until a jury renders a verdict.
If regulators other than the ORC don’t have the fortitude to suspend the Brooks clan, then I suggest the industry’s participants take matters into their own hands.
Don’t train their horses and don’t drive their horses.
Jockeys at Penn National recently refused, en masse, to ride for owner Michael Gill over concerns that his horses aren’t safe. Why couldn’t trainers and drivers do the same in harness racing with Brooks’ horses for the good of the game? To do otherwise makes those who race his horses complicit in besmirching the very industry from which they derive their livelihood.
I’m not naive. Money talks. Talented horses are tough to come by. And it’s not the horses’ fault the people who own them are allegedly up to no good.
But if the Brooks family was suspended across the continent, the horses would have to be sold and, hopefully, raced by any number of scores of above-board people in this industry.
It’s the right thing to do. Though, admittedly, it will be small compensation for the damage already done to an industry that can ill afford it from a bunch that was clearly mocking us — and making a mockery of us — from the very beginning.
Bulletproof? Hardly.
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January 25, 2010
The latest installment from my weekly Guelph Mercury column…
Saturday was something of a bittersweet night for the connections of Fast Pay at the annual awards dinner for the Standardbred Breeders of Ontario at the Delta Hotel in Guelph.
Just 11 days before the banquet, Fast Pay was found dead, the result of an accident after becoming cast in his stall during the night.
Saturday, Fast Pay, who was driven by Guelph’s Paul MacDonell, will be honoured as the winner of the SBOA’s award for the top three-year-old pacing colt in 2009. The SBOA honours the horses that made the most money in each of eight Ontario Sires Stakes divisions. Fast Pay topped the sophomore pacing colts with earnings of $257,000 in the program.
He also set the fastest mile in OSS history with a 1:49 performance on Aug. 10 at Mohawk Racetrack in Campbellville. The mile was two-fifths-of-a-second faster than the 1:49.2 mark the great Somebeachsomewhere set in 2008 (though Somebeachsomewhere did set a 1:46.4 world record outside of OSS competition).
Lifetime, Fast Pay earned $424,516 and won nine of 32 starts for owners Larry Menary of Cheltenham, Ont., Denis Breton of Welland, Ont. and Phil Silvestri and Joseph Settimi, both of Hamilton.
Menary’s son, David, trained the horse and was the man who picked out and paid $38,000 for the colt as a yearling.
“He was probably my all-time favourite horse,” David told Standardbred Canada the morning of Fast Pay’s death. “He was one of the best ones, and we had so many good times with him.
“He’s one of those once in a lifetime horses, especially for my dad who’s been in harness racing for 40-plus years. I’m glad he had a horse of that calibre.”
Hopefully, a gelding named Haul Away can help ease the pain for the same connections. Haul Away earned $195,720 in the OSS program in 2009 to earn the SBOA’s award for the top male freshman pacer.
The SBOA also honoured the top trainer and driver in the 2009 Sires Stakes program — the same two men that won the awards in 2008. Brad Forward of Woodstock earned the Lampman Cup as the top driver in OSS. Bob McIntosh of Windsor earned the Johnston Cup as the program’s top trainer. Both the Lampman and Johnston Cup are awarded based on a points system. McIntosh was also the trainer of the top two-year-old trotting colt, Text Me ($346,400) and was named the Chris Van Bussel Memorial Award winner, which annually honours a top breeder.
Other winners from the Guelph region include the top two-year-old pacing filly, Western Silk ($287,400), trained and owned, in part, by Casie Coleman of Cambridge. Elusive Desire ($310,000) owned, in part, by Paula Wellwood of Cambridge and trained by her partner, Mike Keeling, was the top three-year-old trotting filly and will also be honoured as the winner of the SBOA stakes race for trotting fillies.
Equity ($333,500), trained, owned and bred, in part, by Charlambos Christoforou of Campbellville, was the top three-year-old trotting colt.
Wilsonator ($249,800), trained by Rob Fellows of Rockwood, is the top two-year-old trotting filly.
Shacked Up ($405,000), trained by American Tracy Brainard, was the top three-year-old pacing filly and also won the SBOA stakes event for pacers.
Standardbred Canada CEO Ted Smith was named the Lloyd Chisholm Award winner honouring meritorious service to Ontario’s harness racing industry.
January 15, 2010
The latest installment from my weekly Guelph Mercury column…
Considering all the remarkable things that happened in 1870, the fact a man named E. King Dodds started a sports publication in Toronto was hardly big news.
That same year, just five years after the end of the U.S. Civil War, the 15th Amendment to the Constitution was passed guaranteeing the right to vote to all men regardless of race.
Construction began on the Brooklyn Bridge (just try to imagine the New York skyline without it) and the first New York subway line opened.
Manitoba officially became just Canada’s fifth province, joining Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.
In Philadelphia, the first motion picture was shown to a theatre audience.
The Chicago Base Ball Club, later to become the Chicago Cubs, played its first game.
It is believed 1870 was also the year some McGill University student drew up the first formal ice hockey rules, four years before McGill played Harvard in the first game of modern American football.
Less well known is the fact a little publication called The Canadian Sportsman was born. Today, as it begins the celebration of its 140th year, The Canadian Sportsman is the oldest continuously-published magazine in Canada.
Click on the words “Guelph Mercury” to read the article in its entirety.
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