IslaBets

Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse for the selfish, greedy, disgraceful pheasant-hunting @JockeyClub stewards, more shameless and flagrant conflicts of interest become incredibly evident. It seems like Bill “The Puppetmaster” Lear strikes again. Straight from the HISA website, guess who we find as a member of HISA’s Board of Directors??? Bill Thomason. The Puppetmaster’s brother-in-law. How convenient for the Jockey Club to have a family member sitting on the HISA Board of Directors. What a great way for the Jockey Club to potentially gain access to valuable inside information. You honestly cannot make this stuff up. At some point the entire industry has to ask a very simple question. How is this acceptable??? Because from the outside looking in it appears that the same small circle of people control the rules, control the information, and control the narrative. But wait…there’s more. If you are going to have family ties on the HISA Board, you also want to make sure the legal structure stays inside the same circle. Enter Sam Reinhardt, who serves as General Counsel at HISA. Prior to joining HISA, Reinhardt worked at Stoll Keenon Ogden, the law firm of Bill “The Puppetmaster” Lear. Another “coincidence” I am sure. And it does not stop there. Reinhardt’s father-in-law is Hank Zeitlin, who served as HISA’s interim Executive Director during the early development of the organization’s safety and anti-doping framework. Before that, Hank spent nearly 20 years as President and COO of Equibase, a company owned by the Jockey Club. If anyone wants to verify that, you can read about it in BloodHorse, another entity owned by the Jockey Club. So let us recap. The same organizations. The same law firm. The same leadership circles. The same families. And these are the people who are supposed to lead our sport with integrity and transparency??? This is honestly sad and embarrassing for our industry. You guys disgust me to the point that I sometimes ask myself whether I even want to continue participating in this broken system. But one thing I promise you. My fight for the people of this industry, transparency for this game, and real accountability will not stop. What do you think???