THE ‘JUICE MAN' AND THE JOCKEY CLUB

After a rash of suspicious wins, investigators started to probe horse racing. Eventually, 29 people would be indicted in a multimillion-dollar scheme to defraud bettors

- Jesse Hyde

STUART JANNEY III STOOD IN HIS BOX seat lounge high above the grandstands at Belmont Park in Elmont, N.Y. It was the middle of 2015’s fall season, and three of his horses were running that day.

Janney is a member of horse racing’s patrician elite: His family started one of the sport’s most fabled breeding farms, Wheatley Stable in Kentucky, which produced Seabiscuit, the Depression-era champion. He’s also chairman of Bessemer Trust Co., which started as a family investment fund and has grown into a wealth management company for 2,500 families, with $140 billion in assets.

Recently he’d been elected chairman of the Jockey Club, the registry for thoroughbreds that’s based in Midtown Manhattan. He saw it as his mission to protect the integrity of the sport, which was in decline.

Since 2000, 39 tracks across the U.S. had closed, and the number of foals born annually had plummeted from 40,000 to half that. Belmont’s days of hosting railroad tycoons such as Henry Phipps Jr. (Janney’s great-grandfather) and celebrities like Jackie Kennedy to huge crowds were long gone. Now the stands were mostly empty.

There were many reasons for the sport’s troubles, including the perception that it wasn’t safe for horses. Gruesome, high-profile breakdowns had drawn the ire of animal welfare activists who wanted a national ban. Eight Belles had to be euthanized on the track at the 2008 Kentucky Derby after finishing second and then breaking both front ankles; two years earlier, Barbaro fractured his right hind leg while running the Preakness, eventually leading to his being euthanized.