At 5:30 p.m. on June 4, a Family Fun Day inside Monmouth Park, Jamminjl, a 6-year-old mare with a dark brown coat, entered the starting gate for the day’s final race.

There were only four horses in the running because two already had been ruled out by a veterinarian. The crowd had thinned, too. No one sat on the faded wooden chairs of the upper deck.

Along the rail, straggling horseplayers reconciled their wagers. In a playground at the top of the backstretch, children rode swings and rushed down slides. The race was a shade over a mile, with a $29,000 purse.

Jamminjl had traveled thousands of miles in vans to race across California, Arizona and Arkansas. Her latest trainer was Hall of Famer Jerry Hollendorfer, who had been banned from several California tracks in the wake of multiple horse deaths in 2019 and recently agreed to legal settlements with those tracks. Claimed for $12,500 in April, Jamminjil had earned owners $92,361 in 28 races. At 10-1 odds, she was the field’s longest shot.

When the starting bell rang, she darted inside and strode up two wide on the far turn, where the announcer suggested she was ready to challenge for the lead as she rounded toward the backstretch. But her right foreleg collapsed, and she pitched jockey Nik Juarez headfirst into the dirt, where he somersaulted twice. On the way down, Jamminjl sideswiped Pure Elegance, a 4-year-old filly, throwing her jockey into the track, too. As Pure Elegance continued, gasps swept the crowd. Workers sped to Jamminjl, who suffered a disarticulation, or separation of bones at the joint.

Three opaque screens were erected to block the public’s view as a veterinarian euthanized her on the dirt track. In the playground 20 yards away, a pair of boys grew curious. One stood on the ground, the other peered from atop a slide.

“Can you see?” the one on the ground asked. “Has he gotten up?”

The boy on the slide pantomimed a slit throat.

It was the second death of a racehorse on Monmouth Park’s track in eight days, and it came as the industry is negotiating mounting criticisms of equine confinement and exploitation amid a spike in high-profile deaths.

Four years year ago 42 horses died at Santa Anita in California; just two months ago 12 horses died at Churchill Downs in the five weeks surrounding the Kentucky Derby — scarring racing’s premier event. As the deaths receive more national attention, new rules are being introduced by the Horse Racing Integrity and Safety Act, which attempts to set national safety and drug test standards to horsemen who chafe at federal oversight.

But horse-racing deaths aren’t happening only in Kentucky and California.

Last year, 22 thoroughbred racehorses died at Monmouth Park, a 153-year-old institution that has a Caesars Sportsbook in its grandstand’s bowels and hosts races three days per week for five months each year while receiving a $10 million state subsidy for its purses.

It was the track’s third straight year of increased deaths, and the track had an average of 2.05 horse deaths per 1,000 starts in 2022, above the national average of 1.25, which had dropped for a fourth consecutive year, according to The Jockey Club. An additional four standardbred horses died at Meadowlands Racetrack and one died at Freehold Raceway.

New Jersey will be at the nexus of a national reckoning as Monmouth Park hosts the 56th running of the $1 million Haskell Stakes, a prestigious race for 3-year-olds between the Triple Crown and Breeders Cup, on Saturday.

“The fact that millions of taxpayer dollars are being given to horseracing so people can bet on horses kept in confinement all day and killed if they take a bad step is horrendous,” said Joe Silva, an animal rights activist who lives in Eatontown. “We’re conditioned as a society to think traditions are okay. It is completely absurd.”

A New Jersey Advance Media review of hundreds of pages of equine fatality reports and necropsies accessed through public records requests, as well as race footage, site visits, and interviews with horsemen, veterinarians, gamblers and activists found horses died for a wide variety of reasons, including head trauma, a broken tail, a cervical fracture and pulmonary hemorrhages. Records were often incomplete.

“Unfortunately, a lot of times you have breakdowns with no way of figuring out what happened,” said Dennis Drazin, the CEO and chairman of Darby Development LLC, which operates Monmouth Park. “Even if we do everything perfect, you can’t stop breakdowns.”

Jamminjl was loaded into a rusty equine ambulance and driven into the rake yard, just over a fence from the track, where a weathered watchtower stands and a sign advertises: “FREE HORSE MANURE.” The ambulance backed into what is known as “The Pit,” an open-air, fenced-off mixture of sand, soil, grass and feces.

“Man, we hit the ground so hard,” said Juarez, who escaped injury. “Never had a horse break down that quick.”

Workers opened a latch, unloaded Jamminjl and covered her with a blue tarp, leaving her to be retrieved by M&S Pet Removal.

“It makes you want to get in your car, drive away and never come back,” said Hollendorfer’s assistant, Dan Ward.

Maintenance workers scrubbed the ambulance. Cleaners used leaf blowers to gather discarded betting slips.

Across the parking lot, The Sensational Soul Cruisers, an 11-man show band, played “Blame it on the Boogie.” as a purple sky yielded to darkness over the rake yard pit.

The Deaths

Racehorses have been breaking down for centuries.

For some, the image of Ruffian, startled by a bird in the infield, taking a bad step and collapsing at Belmont Park in 1975 brought the moral conundrum into devastating relief; for a younger generation, it was Eight Belles, a filly who broke two ankles after finishing second in the 2008 Kentucky Derby, that raised ire.

Breakdowns can be caused by a variety of factors, including poor track surface and jockey mistakes. Drugs, often used to mask existing injuries, are an increasingly prime suspect. While muscular up top, horses’ lower parts are bones, tendons, vessels and nerves. When a bone breaks, circulation is easily compromised.

“It’s depressing,” said Joe Irace, a racehorse owner and gambler who recently served as Oceanport borough council president. “I called my partner: should we rethink this? Get out of the business? My trainer told me: They’re not pets. They’re athletes. Don’t get attached to them.”

The thousand-pound horses who race at 40 mph on toothpick legs have suffered fatal breakdowns all over Monmouth Park. They collapsed on dirt and turf tracks, during morning training and afternoon races, by the ¼ mile pole, ½ mile pole, 3/8 mile pole, 7/8 mile pole, just past the finish line and while exiting the track.

But deaths have not been limited to the racecourse.

While 16 of last year’s fatalities at Monmouth Park occurred during racing or training, the other six were off the track. Kershaw, a 7-year-old mare, suffered a cervical fracture and was found with a three-centimeter-deep laceration on her forehead. Hi Millie, a 3-year-old gelding, was discovered laying in his stall. Owner James Frangella said that it was an adverse reaction to medication under a doctor’s care. Road to Meath, a 7-year-old gelding, was listed as a “Sudden Death @ rest.” The pathologist listed respiratory distress and the ingestion of an anticoagulant rodenticide as possible causes of death. Classic Escape, a 3-year-old gelding, finished last in a race, endured a broken tail and could no longer defecate before being euthanized days later.

“Chilling,” said Wayne Pacelle, president of Animal Wellness Action. “It reads like a litany of irresponsible conduct.”

Equine fatality reports include a line for veterinarians to specify the cause of death, but details can be vague. Answers at local tracks have included “Sudden Death – Cause Unknown”, “Probably Heart Attack”, “Horse was euthanized due to episodes of passing out” or “Euthanized in pit due to injury in trailer off property.”

In 2018, a 3-year-old filly purchased for $200,000, died and the cause of death line read: “? No Idea.” The filly was one of eight horses to receive 5 ccs of Lasix, a legal diuretic, at 5:30 a.m. and was found with no pulse an hour later. She died before ever racing.

“No previous medical issues,” the report said.

Patrick Battuello, an activist with the non-profit group, Horseracing Wrongs, has called for the end of horse racing after tracking deaths since 2014. To be included in The Jockey Club’s Equine Injury Database, a death must have occurred within 72 hours of a race, or it is not considered to have occurred at the track. While The Jockey Club monitors training and non-racing fatalities, those numbers are not included in its report.

“There’s a level of death the industry knows it cannot prevent,” he said, “We estimate over 2,000 horses die at U.S. tracks every year. If they halved that, would one thousand dead horses be acceptable? For $2 bets?”

Prior to races, bettors are provided granular details about horses — from how many pounds overweight they are to their workout times down to a hundredth of a second — but after the races few are volunteered about deaths, even the public breakdowns. When asked what was used to euthanize Jamminjl, Judith Nason, the New Jersey Racing Commission’s director, responded in an email through a spokesperson, only to say, “Horses are euthanized in accordance with accepted veterinary practices.”

Chart writers bury euthanasia notices in footnotes, and officials are cognizant that activists with social media names like @GambleOnHumans and @KillHorseRacing spread videos of breakdowns to the public.

“Everybody sees a lot of things they never saw in the past,” Drazin said.

But while Monmouth Park has posted a replay for 269 races run this summer on its official YouTube channel, the only race videos unavailable are those featuring horses that were either euthanized on track or euthanized within a week due to injuries endured in a race.

The Trainers

One morning last month, Donna Galati, the safety director at Monmouth Park, parked her golf cart by a wooden booth where trainers gather to watch their horses workout each morning. After walking up tattered steps to the doorway, Chuck Spina, a 75-year-old trainer and owner, spotted her.

“You here to arrest somebody?” he said. “Pre-race testing? You’re here. Something up?”

Spina laughed, but he knew his profession of a half century was being closely monitored.

On March 9, 2020, the FBI arrested 27 racing figures, including Jorge Navarro, a trainer known as The Juice Man for his penchant to inject horses with performance-enhancing drugs, and Jason Servis, an unassuming 66-year-old with a bulging win percentage, in a doping probe.

Both called Monmouth Park home and headlined the sweep that caught trainers giving PEDs to horses to deaden nerves, increase oxygen intake and reduce inflammation in order to collect bigger purses and prestige.

While horse racing annals are lined with allegations of rigged races and lax oversight, few episodes in the so-called sport of kings spotlighted what ails the sport as clearly as the federal case.

Navarro, who won seven consecutive trainers titles at Monmouth Park through 2019, flouted rules. In 2013, he was suspended in Florida for prohibited injections. Four years later, a horse trained by Navarro tested positive for benzoylecgonine, cocaine and morphine after winning a race at Monmouth Park. A few weeks later, a video surfaced showing Navarro celebrating a victory with an owner at a Monmouth Park bar.

“That’s the juice!” the owner said.

“That’s the way we do it,” Navarro said. “We f— everyone.”

But the New Jersey Racing Commission opted not to suspend Navarro, instead fining him $10,000 and placing him on probation for a year for conduct “extremely detrimental to racing” and violating the rule that a horseman not “make himself obnoxious.” Navarro continued to dope horses, according to the FBI, most infamously XY Jet, a gelding who won the Dubai Golden Shaheen race for $2.5 million. Shortly thereafter, XY Jet collapsed in Florida due to a heart attack.

And then there was Servis, whose barn was next to Navarro’s. In 2019, his horse, Maximum Security, finished first at the Kentucky Derby before being disqualified for interference. But investigators found Servis, who trained Drazin’s horses, was giving horses SGF-1000, a drug that lowered heart rates. To conceal charges, it was billed under “Acupuncture & Chiropractic.” Drazin was not charged in the FBI case.

Both Navarro and Servis pled guilty, and Congress passed the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act, or HISA, in 2020. Prior to HISA, individual states set regulations, but officials sought to codify uniform rules. HISA, which Monmouth Park was one of the last major tracks to endorse, started last July. Its Antidoping and Medication Control portion, which brings national drug testing rules and standards on substances, started in May.

“What HISA came up with to catch the crooks, we’re getting used to and realize it’s a good thing if it works,” Spina said. “To be determined. The sport’s not going anywhere. When you see the money spent on young horses even by working stiffs like us, let alone the billionaires and sheiks, it’ll be around a long time.”

Still, questions trailed trainers who have ended up at Monmouth in recent years.

Hollendorfer, who has over 7,000 wins, was barred from operating at California tracks owned by The Stronach Group after the trainer had a series of equine fatalities in 2019. In 2020, he sent horses to Monmouth Park, where one collapsed after a morning breeze. Last July, Annas Candy, an insured 4-year-old filly, was found dead in the barn. The fatality report said she flipped in the stall; her skull was fractured. A note added, “This horse attached to hoist.” A month later, Stratofortress, an uninsured 4-year-old gelding, suffered a fracture and was euthanized. This month, Hollendorfer transferred his horses on site to Ward, his long-time assistant.

While Hollendorfer could not be reached for comment, Ward addressed the deaths: “It’s sad when it happens, but you know these horses are really only alive for racing. The mare is bred to a stallion and then you get a foal to be a racehorse. Otherwise it wouldn’t even be alive.”

This summer, Todd Pletcher, another Hall of Fame trainer, rented stalls at Monmouth Park. Three days before the meet commenced, New York regulators suspended him for 10 days, fined him $1,000 and disqualified his colt Forte — the favorite in the Kentucky Derby until he was scratched due to injury — as the winner of a race last September in Saratoga Springs. The colt tested positive for an anti-inflammatory. When asked about Pletcher and Hollendorfer, Nason said, “The NJRC is not going to comment on specific licensing decisions.”

In 2021, the NJRC hired a chief inspector to oversee the licensing inspectors, review compliance, and provide additional training. In 2022, NJRC increased licensing staff to improve these services. But since the FBI sweep, horses at the three New Jersey racetracks have tested positive for at least 20 prohibited substances, including caffeine, opioids (oxymorphone, oxycodone) and pregabalin (an anticonvulsant and analgesic). Horsemen joke with each other not to cash a check from winning until drug test results are returned.

“We’re not close to catching up,” said Dr. Karyn Malinowski, director of the Rutgers Equine Science Center. “Chemists are way ahead of drug testing labs, and someone is always going to cheat. A lot of these unexplained deaths are, I think, because of different performance altering agents that are given to horses.”

The FBI case still looms. Navarro is inmate No. 26258-104 at the Federal Correctional Institution in Miami, where he is just over a year into a five-year sentence. Servis is slated to be sentenced in Manhattan four days after the Haskell.

Trainers try to keep the focus on track. One morning in late June, Kelly Breen, a 54-year-old trainer from Old Bridge, wore a neck brace while recovering from fusion surgery. When he saw a horse unseat a rider, he shouted, “Loose horse!” The horse continued toward Train to Artemus, a 5-year-old mare who won $102,000 that weekend. A stable hand stopped him.

“That’s the last thing we need right now,” Breen said.

The Numbers

Every summer weekend, Mario Mancino, 83, drives 51 miles from Secaucus to the track, parks for free, pays the $6 admission, buys a $4 program and orders a lemon-lime soda at a round table that requires a $25 minimum by the sportsbook. He looks for clues through a magnifying glass and considers bloodlines. Recently, he hit for $4,100 on a gelding named Hello Pop because that is how his grandson greets him at home.

“Now I’m playing with their money,” he said.

But horseplayers are a dying breed. While races run three days per week for five months, the book is open seven days per week year-round. On the first floor is a vending machine for lottery scratch-offs and futures bets sheets. Race simulcasts are shown; 36 flat screens offer odds. There are parimutuel bets and fixed odds.

“All in all, sports betting saved us,” said Drazin, who spearheaded the legal case that led to the U.S. Supreme Court striking down the federal ban on sports betting in 2018. “We lose money with racing. Sports betting makes up the difference and a slight profit. A wish list would start with the expansion of casino gaming to racetracks. If not a casino, then slots. Atlantic City strength has been too much to overcome.”

Raised in Rumson, Drazin first visited the track with his father, Louis, an attorney who bought his first horse when the state lottery and Atlantic City’s casinos did not exist. Dennis followed his father into the law, and grew the family’s horse total to 151. In 2007, Drazin helped Monmouth attract the Breeders Cup, and three years later he joined the New Jersey Racing Commission.

He counseled the horsemen as the equine economy contracted. In 2011, Gov. Chris Christie privatized four state-owned tracks and eliminated a requirement that casinos pay an annual subsidy to the tracks. Already faced with a steep loss of customers, the tracks struggled to keep pace with tracks elsewhere that had added casino gambling, or racinos, resulting in higher purses. Drazin saved Monmouth Park from going the way of Garden State Racetrack and Atlantic City Racecourse, which closed in 2001 and 2014 respectively.

Wins came. In 2013, Drazin led the challenge of the ban on sports betting. In 2015, Monmouth Park attracted American Pharoah to the Haskell after he became the first Triple Crown winner in 37 years, and more than 60,000 spectators set a track record.

In 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court sided with Drazin’s team, and Gov. Phil Murphy placed the first legal bet in New Jersey at Monmouth Park. But concerns about attendance and the handle, or total amount of money bet, grew. A race day that August drew 3,172 spectators and the handle was $131,903. Jersey breeding registered a crop of 65 foals, nearly half of what it was three years earlier. The racing product worsened as trainers took horses to states with larger purses.

Horsemen lobbied lawmakers for a purse subsidy, and Governor Phil Murphy committed $100 million over five years from the state budget. Ten million dollars goes to Monmouth Park annually; the other $10 million was split between Freehold Raceway and Meadowlands Racetrack. That summer, wagering on Monmouth Park races from outside sources was $184,592,101, an 18.92 percent increase over the 2018 total. Last summer, the total handle was $217,243,199.

Murphy increased the subsidy to $25 million last year. It will be back to $20 million in 2024.

“Governor Murphy and his Administration, through the New Jersey Racing Commission, have prioritized the health, safety, and welfare of both equine and humans by adopting several rules focused on safety procedures and protocols intended to protect those who compete in New Jersey’s racing industry,” Alexandra Altman, the governor’s deputy communications director, said in a statement.

To encourage crossover between horseplayers and sports gamblers, wagers that mixed pro sports and races were offered. But the grandstand’s upper deck is a gambling graveyard with rows of dusty betting machines resembling headstones. Russet water flows from bathroom sinks, and the escalator to the mezzanine is down. Even on race days, at times the only people at Caesars are a guard and three tellers.

“I marvel at why this isn’t more crowded,” Irace said. “I could walk into Chili’s on a Tuesday night, and I’d bet you it’s more crowded. I wonder what can be done.”

Still, Caesars doubled down on retail investments despite digital gambling being increasingly prevalent, vowing to build a $16-17 million space for its sportsbook, but no building has been done. Drazin maintains construction will start this fall after delays caused by supply-chain disruptions.

To attract crowds, Monmouth Park hosts events most race days. On June 11, the New Jersey Irish Festival started with 10 a.m. mass between the Eighth Pole Bar and second-floor betting windows. The day continued with a “human horse race,” which featured people in horse costumes. Finally, in the eighth race, two long shots entered the gate. Irish Boolum, the second-longest shot in the field at 21-1, had been idle since placing eighth on March 1, but romped over 16-1 Irish Meadow for his first career stakes win. The all-Irish exacta returned $170.20 for $2; the 7-3-1 trifecta, gamblers noted, could be rearranged to St. Patrick’s Day, or 3/17.

“Big payoff,” Drazin said, smiling. “All fun.”

Drazin remains a regular. He parks his baby blue Bentley convertible in the space closest to the paddock, wears gold-framed sunglasses and moves with an easy gait in white pants and navy suede loafers. The subsidy is in the 2024 state budget, but will need to be renewed next year. Lobbying is ongoing, and Darby Development will bring its plans to further develop Monmouth Park with 350 units of rental housing and a 200-room hotel before the Oceanport Borough Council Thursday night.

Though he only keeps eight horses in training, no one is more associated with the winner’s circle. While winners of the stakes races receive crystal candy dishes and double-handled vases, winners of undercard races get $100 certificates to Blu Grotto, the Italian restaurant Drazin owns across the parking lot. A bone-in ribeye steak goes for $75.

The Backside

“WHOA,” reads a red octagonal sign at the gate to the racetrack’s backside. A single security guard checks credentials of drivers, grooms, owners, trainers, breeders, jockeys, riders, veterinarians, hotwalkers, clockers, trainers, blacksmiths, cooks, urine collectors, bloodstock agents and unlicensed guests seeking entry.

“So many try to sneak in,” the guard said recently. “I have to check everyone and their mother.”

Comings and goings can be hard to track in the quaint but cutthroat community.

Even with lip tattoos and microchips in their horses’ necks for identification, owners have been known to enter ineligible horses kept on unlicensed farms. And in the federal case, investigators intercepted Michael Tannuzzo, a Navarro assistant, telling someone: “You know how many f—ing horses [Navarro] f—ing killed and broke down that I made disappear? . . . You know how much trouble he could get in . . . if they found out . . . the six horses we killed?”

The area has 38 low-slung barns, including eight on the far side of the train tracks that bisect the backside. Efforts have been made to spirit objects as small as needles and as large as 1,100-pound horses in and out.

This summer, 1,350 horses are in residence. Each day, the community stirs at 4 a.m. to bandage, saddle, ride, time, sponge, hose, rub and drug them. Workers muck stalls, push wood shavings in wheelbarrows and prepare feed from bags branded “PERFORMANCE ADVANTAGE.”

Some riders encourage horses with kissing sounds and feed them apples or carrots; others chide them as idiots, whip them harshly and pull their chains. If the animals do not move into starting gates by choice, crew members lock arms and push them forcefully. Horses spend nearly 23 hours per day in 12 x 12 stalls.

It is so insular that there is a firehouse next to a testing barn and a dentist office next to Ron’s Backstretch Kitchen, a greasy spoon with betting windows by the bathroom and a vending machine stocked with Newport and Marlboro cigarette packs for $12. At the register, a sign reads: “Don’t Flatter Yourself Cowboy I Was Looking At Your Horse.” The top seller is a six-meat sandwich listed as “Monmouth Mile AKA Killer.”

More vehicles with Florida license plates than New Jersey tags park on site. Most owners drive luxury vehicles; jockeys ride children’s bicycles between barns. The transient workforce, largely composed of Latino immigrants making minimum wages, lives in rooms attached to stables. Conditions range from stables with DirecTV satellites atop roofs to some with corroded water heaters. To keep the burning sun at bay, stable hands repurpose saddle towels and feed bags as drapes in windows while cereal boxes are used as insulation for air conditioning units in windows. A note on an AC unit says, “No Robar,” or Spanish for “Don’t Steal.”

“Ninety nine percent of the people who work the horses would take food off their own plate and give it to the horses,” Irace said. “They’ll sleep in stables with sick horses.”

But shed-row chicanery is as regular a presence as the hum of drum fans. Racing commission logs are lined with rulings regarding checks that bounced when sent in to pay fines and trainers inhibiting investigations. Elders still talk about the 2003 night when a former stable hand stabbed a current one through the heart.

Much is done to mask mischief. Two years ago, trainer Cody Axmaker, possessed a jug of clenbuterol, a prohibited substance, and it may have been labeled Aloe Vera, per the racing commission. Axmaker instructed an employee to administer Aloe Vera to Wishful, a 6-year-old mare; five days later, Wishful died. The necropsy indicated Wishful died of a clenbuterol overdose. Axmaker was suspended two years and fined $5,000. He did not respond to a request for comment.

Top trainers charge as much as $105 per day per horse, and competition is endless. Jorge Duarte, a trainer, works a short walk from the kitchen, where his mother, Carlota, takes orders.

“Long hours,” she said of his work before holding up her gloved hands to imitate a cat flashing its claws. “But he loves it!”

Last call

Round and round the ponies went on July 2, another Family Fun Day, at Monmouth Park. Children mounted them beneath a tent at the top of the backstretch, just over the chain-link fence from the equine ambulance, and were giggling when the fourth race went off at 2:07 p.m.

Madame Mischief, a 2-year-old filly, was the morning-line favorite for the fourth race’s $55,000 purse; Bingo’s Girl had the second-best odds at 4-1.

Momma Kim, a long shot, sped out of the gates first but by the time she reached the first turn, she clipped heels with Gold Alliance, who had taken the lead, and crashed to the turf. Momma Kim’s mount, Jorge Gonzalez, a 117-pound Panamanian, was thrown down. Then Bingo’s Girl fell over Momma Kim. Jockey Samy Camacho, a Venezuelan with hair dyed purple, crashed shoulder first. Momma Kim rose and continued, but Bingo’s Girl moved slowly. A worker drove the equine ambulance toward her.

“They were acting up going into the gate,” Drazin said, sitting in his box. “The horse threw the jockey. It happens. You pray nothing goes wrong. I want everyone to come home safe. And when it doesn’t it is tragic.”

The winner’s circle celebration went on as veterinarians tended to the horses and medical personnel checked the jockeys. The victorious rider, Samuel Marin, posed for photographs as the equine ambulance hauled Bingo’s Girl to the rake yard, past the pit and to the backside, beyond the public’s line of vision.

Two races later, Gonzalez returned to finish second, but that would be his last race of the summer. That evening, he was diagnosed with a lower back fracture.

Five days later, Bingo’s Girl was euthanized off site at a local clinic.

Thank you for relying on us to provide the journalism you can trust. Please consider supporting us with a subscription.

Kevin Armstrong may be reached at [email protected].