NYRA Increases Focus on Safety With New Roles

Tim Kelly has been around racetracks throughout a lifetime that has spanned 58 years.

He's the son of the late Hall of Fame trainer Tommy Kelly and spent about 20 years working as a trainer before joining the New York Racing Association.

Kelly has a wealth of experience dealing with horsemen and equine athletes and now he's beginning a new role that may very well be his most important job yet.

Kelly, along with racetrack veteran Juan Dominguez, began work Feb. 21 as part of NYRA's new four-person Safety and Integrity Team, joining forces with Hugh Gallagher, currently NYRA's Safety Steward, and Jean Claude Jaramillo, NYRA's Equine Investigator Specialist. The primary focus of the two newly hired safety stewards and the team will be to monitor and enhance safety and integrity protocols at Aqueduct Racetrack, Belmont Park, and Saratoga Race Course while increasing backstretch and racetrack communication with horsemen and riders.

"It's an important job and a big step forward that I hope other tracks will follow going forward," Kelly said. "NYRA puts its integrity and safety programs first and it has assembled a good team with different areas of expertise. Between us we have a great group with different backgrounds and we will work very well together. No one's walking in cold turkey. We're looking forward to getting the job done and keeping everyone, both humans and horses, safe out there. That's what it's all about."

NYRA president and CEO David O'Rourke said the new positions are part of NYRA's long-standing dedication to safety, which was reflected in 2014 when Gallagher was hired by senior vice president of racing operations Martin Panza to become one of the first safety stewards employed by a United States racetrack.

Since April 2019, NYRA has joined a coalition of racetracks committed to phasing out Lasix and the medication will not be allowed in 2-year-old races at NYRA tracks beginning when juvenile racing resumes in April. It is also a founding member of the Thoroughbred Safety Coalition, which is bringing together numerous racetracks and organizations to advance safety reforms.

NYRA also has one of the top marks in the industry for equine safety. In 2019, from 14,912 starters, 99.89% of them returned without a catastrophic injury. That figure marked a slight improvement from safety marks of 99.88% in 2018 and 99.85% in 2017.

"A lot of the practices have been in place for a while," O'Rourke said. "They are not new employees; we're reallocating resources. It's a way to have people out there who are familiar with the operations. Both Tim and Juan have a lot of experience and it allows us to have people working with the trainers who understand their business and the way they operate so we can move forward cooperatively and get feedback, which is great."

For Kelly, his new role will allow him to return to the backstretch after becoming NYRA's clerk of scales in 2005. He grew up at New York tracks watching his father become a Hall of Famer by training the likes of Droll Role, Plugged Nickle, Colonel Moran, Noble Dancer II, Topsider, and Globemaster. He also worked as a groom and hotwalker for his dad before embarking on his own career as a trainer in 1980.

His training career featured 314 wins through 2001 with graded wins from Lottsa Talc and Imbibe.

"I came from a horse racing family and spent 20 years as a trainer. I've lived my whole life on the backside. It's good to get back there and see people you know. There's more responsibilities now and I'm excited about it," said Kelly, whose brother Pat trains on the NYRA circuit and brother Larry is a former trainer. "The horsemen we have here are the finest in the world. I cut my teeth here in New York so I know what it takes to take care of your horses in the winter time and deal with the cold, or heat in the summer, or the mosquitoes at Saratoga. I've already been dealing with these guys on a daily basis and now we're here to listen to them and acknowledge what they're saying and help in any way we can. We don't want to turn a blind eye to anything."

Dominguez also has a regal pedigree in racing as his late uncle, Laz Barrera, was a Hall of Famer who trained 1978 Triple Crown champion Affirmed. Beginning in 1991, he worked for nine years as a jockey agent before becoming a New York State Peace Officer and becoming a lead investigator overseeing NYRA's security barn. An alternate steward since 2017, Dominguez has played a key role for NYRA in bridging communications between the security, racing, and administrative staffs.

"Integrity is of the highest value here and that's a good thing for racing," Dominguez said. "Forming this team is an innovative idea. You have good people on it and you are tapping into the experience they have. I'm proud to be a part of the team and I'm looking forward to working with the men and women here that I have so much respect for."

Jobs will be interchangeable for the four-person team during what promises to be a full and beneficial workday. It will start with someone monitoring training at Belmont Park and Saratoga, even during the months before and after racing at the Spa.

"There are a lot of procedures and protocols in the morning that some people don't know about. It's not just training and riding horses and taking care of horses," Kelly said. "It's a matter of being around, listening, and watching everything. It's important to have eyes and ears on the ground and this achieves that on a daily basis."

Later in the day, team members will serve as jacks-of-trades, monitoring live racing from the paddock, starting gate, backstretch, and anywhere else they are needed so that their diligence and expertise can prevent problems from happening.

"We're all horsemen," Dominguez said. "At the end of the day we're all guys who are racetrackers who are looking forward to making our sport better."