Mullins not helping the sport ... or himself
In a recent Los Angeles Times article, trainer Jeff Mullins said, "If you bet on horses, I would call you an idiot." Contributor Jeremy Plonk reacts.
By Jeremy PlonkSomewhere on a playground in America, there's a 9-year-old kid who can empathize with trainer Jeff Mullins. Other than that, this guy is on his own. One of California's leading trainers the past three years, Mullins took horseplayers to task in a March 6 interview with the Los Angeles Times' T.J. Simers (also of ESPN "Around the Horn" fame). Mullins spewed venom toward the very people who make the industry of horse racing tick with their betting dollars going into race purses. You see, one of Mullins' horses recently tested positive for a non-approved performance-enhancing concoction known as a "milkshake" -- a bicarbonate solution that helps slow fatigue. Instead of accepting blame for doing wrong like a man, Mullins took the juvenile approach and cast an even wider net to incriminate all the kids on the playground. He blamed veterinarians, fellow trainers, racetrack management and statewide organizations -- even the horseplayers! It's like a kid saying it's not my fault for lighting up a Kool Menthol behind the school building; it's the fault of the tobacco company, the other kids, the school and the parents. That song and dance only works up to a certain age. Mullins turns 42 this month, and has been training since age 17. To quote Simers' column: "The problem, Mullins said, 'are all the addicts and idiots crying because they lost a $2 bet,' and then demanding a level playing field. 'It will never be a level playing field. There are a lot of things people don't know, and won't know'." "If you bet on horses, I would call you an idiot," Mullins also told The Times. "I don't bet; there's a reason they call it gambling. I train to win and that's all I care about. It's not my problem (if the general public is deceived). They ought to bring in slot machines, then we could run our horses and make a living without worrying about some crybaby calling the stewards and raising a fit." In other words, cheaters aren't the problem; those who expect you not to cheat merely are being unrealistic. Simply put: Mullins is the idiot. "The guy is way off ... way, way off," said Frank Lyons, a Breeders' Cup-winning trainer turned commentator for TVG. "Sometimes it's better to shut your mouth and let people think you're stupid then to remove your foot and remove all doubt. "First of all, we all should realize that without the fans, the sport wouldn't exist -- without the gamblers, that is. This sport is absolutely about the gamblers, and the whole industry has kind of neglected the gamblers as a focus throughout time. If Jeff thinks about it, he'll realize that he's doing what supposedly loves -- training horses -- because of the gambler. The bottom line: Jeff is terribly wrong with those comments." Lyons is a devout horseplayer who took down the Breeders' Cup Ultra Pick Seven for $22,513 in 1995, the same day he sent out Desert Stormer to win the Breeders' Cup Sprint. Now a horse owner and television personality, Lyons has an interesting perspective on the controversy. Mullins trained Castledale to victory in last year's Santa Anita Derby for Lyons and co-owner Greg Knee. Lyons owns a 15 percent interest in the Irish import, and said Knee controls any future decisions to be made in regards to continuing to employ Mullins. "I think we're way too lenient against the people who get caught," Lyons flatly admitted. "If you're going to blacken a sport, as far as I'm concerned, it's 'goodbye'. We need to keep allowable threshold levels of substances for the rare instance when a feed is contaminated and the like, but if you're a repeat offender, it should be 'goodbye'. And that goes for anybody, no matter who they are." Mullins has been a likeable, media-friendly guy up until this point. I've personally spent some time in his barn at Santa Anita, where he and his wife, Amy, were pleasant while talking horses during Santa Anita Derby week. But you get the feeling Mullins never has fit in since coming to California from Arizona, Wyoming, Oregon and his native Utah. He's more Jeff Foxworthy than Jack Nicholson, a Skoal-ring-on-the-Wranglers'pocket kind of guy. The mullet he once wore didn't belong in the boutique world of Julio Canani's wild mink hats and the Ralph Lauren pressed shirts and sunglasses favored by Bob Baffert. Maybe there was, as Mullins has suggested, a lynch mob of jealous rival trainers out to get him. His bodacious win percentage the past few years made him less than popular with many horsemen. You can feel for the guy in that regard; we've all thought someone was out to get us at one point or another in our professional lives. But it should be noted that milkshake testing in California also nabbed other violators in recent weeks, including Julio Canani and Vladimir Cerin. Mullins can feel "had" all the wants, but his guilty actions speak for themselves. Certainly, Mullins is not the only guy breaking the rules on the backstretch of racetracks. But he's definitely handled his "outing" the worst. "I'm the kind of guy that believes the sport is almost ruined by the amount of medication they're using these days," Lyons said. "If you're going to tell me that we have to use this much medication to race -- and remember, this is the Sport of Kings -- then, I'm sorry, we have to race the horses less. I firmly believe it should be a 'hay, oats and water' sport; that's what I grew up on; that's how I remember it back home in Ireland. If you keep pumping medications into these horses, you're only going to be breeding inferior racehorses to inferior racehorses and weakening the breed for generations to come." As long as there have been sports, there have been competitors trying to get an edge. Considering Olympic scandals and steroids in baseball, horse racing cannot be singled out as singularly problematic. Mullins is right when he said it will never be a level playing field. Someone will always be out there trying to get ahead. However, escalated cheating leads toward massive problems and corruption. Kudos should be extended to the racetracks and statewide organizations who are trying to stem the tide. And shame on the milkshakers like Jeff Mullins, especially when they won't "man-up" to their mistakes. I don't want a single dollar of my mutuel handle ever going into the pocket of someone so unappreciative of my investment and blatantly denying responsibility for his actions. That leaves me - as a consumer -- with some difficult decisions to make. Why should I bet on the tracks where Mullins' horses compete? And that's what puts the racetracks of America in a very difficult position in dealing with the cheaters. Jeremy Plonk is the editor of The HorsePlayer Magazine
