With the announcement of the new NRHA drug rule revisions, we have been hard at work with people hitting the telephones to find out how board members allegedly voted in “SediGate”. The provision to inject horses with a sedative 30 minutes prior to an event during warm-up times.
In the open letter to all members, NRHA President Rick Clark, advised it required a supermajority of 67% vote to pass the new drug rules and penalties; therefore requiring 12 votes minimum. The president can only vote in a tie-breaker, so he is excluded. People can only vote once.
Clark goes on to write “Like the industry, the board was split between the people who wanted the policy and those that were against it. We did not have the support to go to a no allowance for Romifidine (Sedivet) at this time. We were faced with some unfortunate but very likely scenarios if we did not get the support we needed to enact some changes.”
The Way it Allegedly Went:
18 votes on the Board of Directors and Executive Committee:
- 4 voted – No to Sedivet – 22%
- 14 voted – Yes to Sedivet – 78%
Each person can only vote once, even if on both the board and executive committee.
Individual member votes are shown below.
If a member of the Board of Directors or Executive Committee believes their vote is incorrectly reported, we invite the particular individual to write to us and advise their vote, and we will immediately update the information.
These Yes voters are the people who, as stated by Rick Clark, did not want any changes to the rules and agreed only if Sedivet was included as an approved drug.
With such a margin of difference, the likelihood of Sedivet being voted out is most unlikely in the foreseeable future. The possibility of the current new penalties being squashed or watered down is extremely high.
With the outcry on social media, their voting certainly does not represent the membership’s wishes.
