Tuesday, August 18, 2026. Second dark day at the Spa.
Top story
Racing spent June trying to work out how private veterinary records reached the internet. On Monday the sport’s regulator said it had charged a member of the sport.
The Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority has charged the owner Marshall Gramm, a Jockey Club member, with fraud and unauthorised access of horse health records. In June, past performance reports for Deterministic and Griffin’s Wharf appeared on social media carrying confidential health data that is supposed to be visible only to a horse’s connections and the regulatory vets. They were posted by someone with no connection to either horse.
HISA’s first look found no break-in. Nobody had hacked the portal from outside. So it widened the investigation to ask a harder question: whether someone who was allowed in had taken data they were not entitled to see. HISA has said Gramm was the source. No hearing has concluded.
In its statement HISA said the harm caused to the racing community is significant, and that beyond its own enforcement action it will pursue remedies for the owners, trainers and vets who rely on the portal staying private, for Gramm’s fellow contest participants, and for the wagering public. It intends to hand what it has gathered to federal and local law enforcement and to state racing commissions.
June: the reports appear
Past performance sheets for two horses circulate on social media with veterinarian’s list information attached. Neither poster is connected to the horses. The Jockey Club, which runs the InCompass system that feeds some of this data to tracks, opens its own review.
Late June: no breach found
The Jockey Club confirms no unauthorised access to or breach of InCompass. It restricts how much vet’s list data track users can see. HISA reaches the same conclusion about its own portal: nobody got in who was not already allowed in. That narrows the field considerably.
Monday: the charge
HISA names Gramm and files enforcement action for fraud and unauthorised access. It says it will refer material to law enforcement. No hearing has concluded.
Why it matters beyond the individual: the vet’s list is the record of which horses have been flagged by regulatory veterinarians. It exists so that officials can stop unsound horses running. If that record leaks selectively, a handful of bettors get to see the medical file on a race and everyone else does not. That is the integrity problem, and it is why HISA is framing this as harm to the wagering public rather than a paperwork breach.
The sale
The New York-bred yearling sale finished its second session on Monday, 218 head catalogued from hip 401 onward. The auction house had not published the closing figures by press time, so the full two-day total leads tomorrow rather than being guessed at here.
What is settled is Sunday. Sixty-three sold from 79 through the ring for $7,622,000, an average of $120,984 and a median of $100,000, each down single digits on last year’s record opening night. The topper was a $360,000 colt from the first crop of Cody’s Wish. For context on how the two Saratoga sales differ: the select sale a week earlier averaged $777,730.
Saturday is a double header
Two Grade 1s on the same afternoon, one at each end of the country.
At Saratoga, the $600,000 Alabama, ten furlongs for three-year-old fillies, the race that stands in the same relation to the Travers as the Oaks does to the Derby. Counting Stars heads it, having beaten Always a Runner in both the Acorn and the Coaching Club American Oaks. Always a Runner, the Kentucky Oaks winner, is being aimed at the Cotillion at Parx next month instead. Chad Brown runs My Gun’s Loaded, a filly who has won both her starts this year at Saratoga. The Grade 2 Ballston Spa shares the card.
At Del Mar, the $1 million Pacific Classic has drawn eleven. Knightsbridge, second in the Metropolitan Handicap and a ten and a quarter length winner of the Monmouth Cup for Bill Mott, is the one they have to beat, a position he inherited when Nysos was retired to stud on August 3, sound, after a routine scan turned up something his connections did not want to race through.
Elsewhere
The Longacres Mile at Emerald Downs went to Adios Jojo by disqualification, the stewards taking the number down after the wire. On the same card Aloha Breeze set a track record.
Nitrogen, last year’s Alabama winner, will prep for the Breeders’ Cup in the Locust Grove. And a footnote with a number attached to it: a fifty percent share in Silent Tactic, a graded stakes winning three-year-old being pointed at the Travers, sold on Fasig-Tipton’s digital platform for $1.5 million to Victoriam Racing. Half a horse, ahead of the biggest race of the Saratoga meet.
What is next
Racing resumes at Saratoga on Wednesday after two dark days. Then Alabama day Saturday, and the Travers on August 29, where Golden Tempo meets Renegade for the third time this year, having beaten him in both the Derby and the Belmont.
Sourcing: regulatory statements from the authority that issued them. Sale figures from the auction house. Race and workout detail from official track material. No Equibase data used. The full brief lands by email every morning at 6am Eastern. Sign up below.