FHBPA/CALDER MEETING NOTES FROM FRIDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2013

PRESENT:   Calder- John Marshall, Mike Anifantis and Dr. Helena Carroll   FHBPA- Phil Combest, Kent Stirling, Bill White, Larry Bates, Gene Stevens, Ron Pellegrini and Phil Arnold
 
Secretary, Kathy Davey, was not present to take notes so that chore fell to me (Kent), and I’m sure these notes will not be as well written or as comprehensive as Kathy’s.
 
Stall applications for Calder’s Winter Meet should be on line tomorrow, Saturday, October 5th,, and in the Calder Racing Office on Monday.  The applications must be returned to Calder by October 25th.
Calder currently has 960 horses stabled on the grounds and John Marshall feels they can run a 3 day race meet with 900-1,000 horses.  Currently, Marshall has not set a limit as to how many stalls will be allotted, but it does not appear if they are going to attempt to fill all 1,850 stalls.  Two year olds will be permitted on the grounds in January, but Marshall indicated that with no Florida Stallion Stakes or Florida Million for the two year olds to prepare for at Calder in 2014, that the number of 2 year olds  admitted  to the grounds might be capped.
 
There was discussion about what will happen to the Training Center now that there are only a few head left there.  Marshall indicated he would leave the gate open so that horses could continue to swim there.
 
There was discussion about the two DPMW Workshops coming up later this month.  One is on some new proposed rules that eliminate barrel racing or flag drop races, but cause some unintended problems for Thoroughbreds.  This is the Workshop that we discussed with the Breeders earlier in the week.  The other Workshop is on how many days a week a track must race “live” in order to rebroadcast/sell signals into the State of Florida.  The way the proposed rules are written, they will stop Tampa Bay Downs from selling out-of-state signals when they are essentially “dark” from July 1st to December 7th, as they are doing this year.
 
Tampa Bay has apparently demanded that Calder pay them in excess of $200,000 in settlement fees on simulcasts.  Calder has in turn taken legal action against TBD suggesting that it owes Calder close to $4 million for “illegally” selling simulcast signals when they are really “dark.”  Over $1.8 million of this amount, if recovered,  would go back into Calder purses.
 
Stirling said that of the 60 plus Clenbuterol “positives” still pending for Calder and Gulfstream horsemen all of them are below the long-time threshold of 25 pg/ml.  The DPMW and the Florida Racing Lab changed to “zero tolerance” without notifying the horsemen.  Stirling and Green sent the DPMW a letter to this effect last week.  It remains unanswered.
 
Marshall announced that the Calder backside is now in compliance with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and DERM which I think is the Department of Environmental Regulatory Management.
 
Combest asked everyone to use the mobile manure bins rather than the manure pits, and if they need more than one bin to ask for it.  In turn, Calder will not collect the bins until after 10 AM.