Stewardship or self-interest at the Jockey Club?

Have you ever gotten involved in something and wanted to get out, but kept feeling pulled back in? A few weeks ago I wrote an article after seeing an annoying pop-up ad for West Point Thoroughbreds in The Paulick Report. I wouldn’t have written the article if I hadn’t seen it and I only saw it by chance. Fast forward and I saw a segment of a Rail Talk podcast, and here I am again. I didn’t watch the whole episode, I would have preferred to see artificial grass growing. If I hadn’t seen that, I wouldn’t have written this.

The release of the Industry Impact Report 2026 from The Jockey Club was supposed to be a masterclass in transparency. Instead, for those of us who pay attention to the plumbing of this industry, it’s a masterclass in “Look at the hands, not the mouth.”

While the report emphasizes that it is over $112 million Reinvested in the sport since 2010, the “consolidated income statement” opens a Pandora’s box of questions about where the line is drawn between industry service and personal enrichment.

The conflict of “content”

Let’s look at the curious case of Super runner. The filly is undoubtedly a champion. But the optics are, shall we say, ‘stinky’.

• The player: Terry Finley, a Steward of the jockey club and director of West Point Thoroughbreds.
• The platform: America’s Greatest Race (ABR), a promotional arm that is funded and specifically mentioned in the Jockey Club’s impact report.
• The action: ABR has published feature content promoting the filly. That content was then syndicated Blood horsea publication 51% owned by the Jockey Club. This perfectly timed article about the West Point colt which came out on January 1, 2026, the Eclipse Awards were on January 22, 2026. In any other industry, a board member using a corporate-owned media conglomerate to pump up its own “product” (in this case, a horse that directly increases its valuation) would be a textbook conflict of interest. Is the Jockey Club a registry, or is it a marketing agency for its own Stewards?

• The race track conundrum: “Can’t” or “Don’t want to”? The story that comes from the Railroad conversation podcast – hosted by Jockey Club member Jon Green and a West Point representative – is that the Jockey Club “shouldn’t” buy a race track. This is fascinating, given that James Gagliano (President/COO) has reportedly indicated that the organization is sitting on a huge war chest, waiting for a “rainy day” to save the sport. If the ‘can’t buy’ rule is absolute then you have to wonder what they were doing giving an order feasibility study for Hialeah Park. If you can’t own a song, why study its reconstruction? Is the plan to ‘borrow’ those millions? If so, to whom? This becomes even more stark when you consider that Westlake stable and others have highlighted the Jockey Club’s role in “forgiving” millions in loans to HISA. As the Jockey Club deals with canceling massive debts for some entities while claiming their hands are tied with others, the “rainy day” begins to resemble a purposeful drizzle.
• A half-joking theory: Maybe we just missed a nuance in the conversation. Perhaps there is a secret drawer with a false bottom in the Jockey Club’s ledger, where ‘Non-Profit Stewardship’ and ‘Commercial Asset Management’ live together in perfect, conflict-free harmony. Or maybe – just maybe – the “podcast clowns” and the leadership are reading from two different scripts.
  One script says: “We are a modest registry with no power to intervene.” The other says: “We have the money, the media and the feasibility studies to decide who wins and who survives.” I don’t know the answer, but I do know exactly what Jim Gagliano told me during our recent conversation.
• The question for the industry: Is it ethical that an organization that controls the registry, data (Equibase) and primary media is also controlled by individuals whose private stables benefit from that same infrastructure? We’re not naming names – oh wait, we just did. But the question remains: is this leadership, or is it just a very expensive rainy day fund for a select few?What do you think? Should the Jockey Club be excluded from media ownership and influence, or is this simply the ‘new normal’ for a leaderless sport?

They pull me back inside: