Photo:

New York Racing Association / YouTube – edited

Trainer Orlando Noda will start serving a 90-day suspension this week for an incident of alleged mistreatment of a horse that took place in 2021 at Saratoga. He had been appealing a suspension handed down by the New York State Gaming Commission for the incident since, but an appellate court judge denied his latest appeal in a decision Thursday.

Noda will serve a 90-day suspension, pay a $5,000 fine and participate in an anger-management program. The suspension is officially listed as being for conduct “detrimental to the best interests of racing” under the New York racing rules. The denial of appeal and the suspension were previously reported by David Grening of Daily Racing Form.

The allegations date back to morning training Aug. 5, 2021, at Saratoga. Noda was alleged to have struck Win With Pride seven times over the course of up to five minutes as well as cursing at him for refusing to train, according to a ruling published by the New York Gaming Commission. In 2022, hearing officer David Devaprasad recommended that the charges against Noda be dismissed, ruling that the commission did not investigate the incident thoroughly enough and that the rules were not specific enough to define what kind of crop usage during morning training qualified as mistreatment. The commission rejected the hearing officer’s ruling and reinstated the penalties.

Through attorney Drew Mollica, Noda appealed before the third judicial department of the New York Supreme Court’s appellate division. In a decision dated Thursday, the court confirmed the determination by the New York State Gaming Commission. The court found the testimony of witnesses David Ingordo and Tom Bush sufficient to establish conduct detrimental to racing, found that it was reasonable to interpret that the regulation about detrimental conduct would cover corporal punishment to a horse, and that the regulation was not too vague to apply to Noda’s conduct.

According to a thread of posts that Noda posted to X on Friday, he is serving the 90-day suspension “not for any wrongdoing, but because I’m tired of fighting a broken system …The system is designed to make you guilty until proven innocent, and even then, you have to pay to clear your name.” Noda told Daily Racing Form on Sunday that he wanted to appeal the decision further, but “financially I couldn’t afford it anymore.”