Following a “60 Minutes” piece in November that cast horse racing in a poor light, another television production with a negative slant is in the pipeline. It is scheduled to be streamed on Hulu at an unspecified date next year.
FX, a subsidiary of Disney Entertainment, announced in press and trailer releases an upcoming documentary, “The New York Times Presents: Broken Horses,” which it said would examine “systemic issues, questionable practices and urgent calls for change that have shaken horse racing to its core.”
New York Times reporters Joe Drape, Melissa Hoppert, Rachel Abrams, and Liz Day will examine a series of breakdowns in the sport this year. The documentary is also said to examine breeding and doping and the actions of “compromised veterinarians and trainers.” According to FX, the documentary includes information provided by “confidential documents, recordings and exclusive interviews.”
The trailer shows a clip of Kentucky Derby (G1)-winning owner and breeder Arthur Hancock, a longtime critic of the sport’s integrity and medication policies, saying, “We’ve got to get rid of the bad actors in the sport, and we’ve got to get rid of all these drugs.” Later, audio is played of two unidentified individuals discussing horse doping.
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The New York Times, which in the past decade sharply reduced its horse racing coverage aside from issues involving medication violations and scandals, disbanded its sports department this summer. Times editors said they would focus on “enterprise journalism about how sports intersect with money, power, culture, politics and society at large.”
