The noted historian Robert Montgomery Knight once said that if the NCAA had been in charge of planning the D-Day Invasion, the Allied troops would have landed in Portugal. Sadly, the same can be said for the organizations that govern thoroughbred racing.

Historically, racing’s leaders pay lip service to the concepts of teamwork and sacrificing for the common good. Every year that’s the consensus at the Jockey Club Round Table in Saratoga, not to mention countless other symposiums, seminars, and summits devoted to the industry’s health.

The trouble is, once the meetings are over, everybody immediately reverts to their selfish ways. Racing is a loose collection of fiefdoms, each protecting its turf to the extent that compromise is utterly impossible. There is no trust, no mutual respect, no sacrifice for the common good.

You can’t tell the players without a scorecard. There’s the NTRA, the NYRA, the TRA, THG, KEEP, the KTA, the HBPA, TOBA, the Breeders Cup, the Jockeys Guild, the Jockey Club, and heaven only knows what else. Each has an agenda that may or may not have anything in common with the other agendas.

Alliances shift with the winds of change. Today’s enemy is tomorrow’s ally, depending on the issue. The reins of leadership are tightly held, the same tired old thinkers moving from job to job in a mindless game of musical chairs. New thinking and new thinkers are unwelcome.

Nevertheless, as long as it had a monopoly on legalized gambling, the industry managed to get along despite itself. But everything changed with the advent of Off-Track Betting, simulcasting, TV and internet wagering, and the proliferation of casinos.

The brave new world of gambling has brought out the worst in just about everybody involved in the industry. Forget the sporting aspects of the game. It’s all about business now, and the prevailing emotion is pure, raw, undisguised greed.

The most flagrant culprit – but by no means the only one – is Churchill Downs, Inc., which has been taken over by flinty-eyed, cold-hearted businessmen who care only about the bonuses they will receive for squeezing every last dollar out of the betting public and the horsemen.

How cavalier was it that Churchill blew off the 2009 Breeders Cup simply because the Breeders Cup folks refused to cave in to Churchill’s demand for a greater share of the profits? Whatever happened to the idea of giving something back to the industry and the community that supports the track on a year-round basis?

Not content to stop there, Churchill declared war on its horsemen over, among other things, how the profits from advance-deposit wagering (ADW) would be cut up. When the horsemen didn’t let the track have its way, Churchill engaged in old-fashioned union-busting tactics, slashing purses across the board at all its tracks by 20 per cent.

Then Churchill had the audacity to file suit against the horsemen for impeding the track’s ability to reap the benefits from ADW. The ugliness just keeps escalating, no end in sight. Everywhere you look, somebody is drawing a line in the sand or making a threat or pointing a finger at somebody else.

Madness! Insanity! How can the industry possibly regain the public’s trust and respect when it’s rife with more warring factions than Iraq? It’s reminiscent of the stalemate between major-league baseball owners and the players union that halted the 1994 season and caused the World Series to be canceled.

And then there’s the industry’s predictable reaction to the public furor over the filly Eight Belles’ fatal breakdown in the immediate aftermath of the Kentucky Derby.

When in doubt or under duress, racing’s leaders issue statements, most of which are just a bunch of blather, and appoint committees. Racing loves committees because incompetents can hide in committees. After a lot of general all-around throat-clearing and thumb-sucking, the committees usually announce that…yes! – it’s time for the sport’s factions to put aside their differences and pull together for the common good.

It would be laughable if it wasn’t so sad.

What to do about equine safety?

For years, breeder Arthur Hancock III has been a prophet without honor. He has repeatedly warned his fellow breeders about the dangers inherent in permissive medication. When horses are so infirm they need medication to run, they only pass on their infirmities to the next generation, leading to a general weakening of the breed.

That has come to pass.

In addition, Hancock has repeatedly told the industry that in order to solve its image problems and regain its credibility, racing and breeding both must rid themselves of “thugs and drugs.” He’s talking about the horsemen and veterinarians who are always looking for new drugs that are ahead of the means to detect them.

For whatever reason, racing authorities have refused to make veterinarians more accountable. Everybody knows who trains Big Brown and rides him. Does anybody know who treats him? Why is that? When a horse tests positive for an illegal medication, shouldn’t the vet be held equally accountable with the trainer?

A few years ago, a reporter did a story about an infamous racetrack vet from Kentucky who had a reputation for tampering with races. The evidence against the vet, both factual and circumstantial, was overwhelming. Yet, typically, many industry leaders blamed the messenger instead of seriously evaluating the message.

As a family, racing goes far past dysfunctional.

Heck, in Kentucky, the industry couldn’t even get together long enough to work with the General Assembly on the terms of a proposed constitutional amendment that would legalize casino gambling in the commonwealth. The racetracks were over here, the horsemen over there, the legislators caught in the middle. Unsurprisingly, nothing got done.

Until the sport gets its act together, it’s going to be susceptible to the hysteria that groups such as PETA and various media blowhards predictably whip up in the aftermath of a tragedy. PETA’s attack, particularly on Gabriel Saez, the jockey who rode Eight Belles in the Derby, was reprehensible. Yet here in the age of the internet and the 24-hour news cycle, even the kooks can get all the air time they want. Racing must learn to react swiftly and effectively or else suffer the consequences.

If there’s any good to come from the Eight Belles tragedy, it’s that industry leaders will attach a new urgency to the debates that were already raging over medication and safety. Maybe artificial surfaces will help, and maybe they won’t, but it’s essential that the experiment continue.

But what needs to change more than anything are the attitudes of everybody involved in the sport. No longer can racing afford the factionalism that has impeded its progress. Now more than ever, the sport needs unity across the board. The time has come where it simply has no choice.

In a recent issue of Thoroughbred Times, breeder Brereton Jones, a former Governor of Kentucky, writes, “Racing must have a national governing body that oversees the enforcement of standard rules in every state (and I don’t mean the federal government)…Now, during this unprecedented period of bad publicity, the horse industry must united to bring about the changes that will ensure the vitality of our great sport.”

It will not happen overnight, but it must start now. Breeders must change their thinking. Racing authorities must gain the will to meaningfully address the problem of “drugs and thugs.” Veterinarians must be held more accountable.

Racetracks must work with horsemen instead of trying to break their will.

And, yes, it might be time to establish a meaningful national governing body that will have real teeth in terms of establishing uniform rules. But everybody – and that means every single jurisdiction and organization – must agreed to belong to the group and abide by its rules.

Greed and self-interest must be suppressed for the common good. Some will point to history and say that pigs will fly before that happens. But it simply must – there’s no other option – if racing is to gets its share of the sports and entertainment dollar.