A horse named 'Austrian Painter' with a disturbing backstory exposed a glaring problem in horse racing
· Yahoo Sports
The official chart from a 2-year-old maiden race at Horseshoe Indianapolis racetrack on Monday shows a horse named Merrylegs as the winner.
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But as the race happened in realtime, the horse had a different and much more controversial name that roiled the sport and exposed, shall we say, some weaknesses in the way thoroughbred names are approved.
The original name was Austrian Painter.
Despite owner Scott Herbertson’s initial denials, it did not take long for commenters on social media to question whether the name was a reference to Adolf Hitler, who was born in Austria and had been an artist.
"I'm not changing the name," Herbertson wrote on X on Tuesday afternoon, insisting that he had named the horse after the late-1800s/early-1900s artist Gustav Klimt.
A day later, the Jockey Club — the organization that maintains a registry of all American thoroughbreds and is responsible for approving names — released a statement that Austrian Painter's name had been changed to Merrylegs after a formal complaint initiated a review.
"The Registrar determined that the name is ineligible under Rule 6.F.9.d, which prohibits names that "are likely to be offensive or threatening based upon factors including, but not limited to, color, creed, disability, ethnicity, gender, national origin, race, religion, politics or sexual orientation."
Austrian painter is a popular euphemism in some corners of the internet to discuss Hitler while evading censors. Herbertson's initial explanation did not hold up well when some online sleuths discovered in the Jockey Club's database that he had submitted backup names to the Jockey Club including My Struggle and Braunau Star.
My Struggle is the English translation of "Mein Kampf," the political manifesto Hitler wrote while in prison, which outlined the ideology that brought him to power in Germany and presaged his plan to exterminate Jewish people. Braunau is the town in Austria where Hitler was born.
Herbertson, who has been described as a pro poker player in various articles (he placed 796th at the World Series of Poker Main Event in 2019), told Horse Racing Nation that his grandfather was born in Braunau.
Connecting the dots through Herbertson's social media history, however, raises questions about his explanation. On May 19, for example, his X account responded to another account named "whitehopebx" discussing the primary election of Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie, saying: "If he loses you. Might as well rename our country the jewnited states." On March 21, Herbertson's account responded to an account that tweeted a picture of a Confederate flag asking, "Have you ever seen anyone with this flag in their yard?" His answer: "unfortunately no."
Attempts to reach Herbertson via phone and social media were unsuccessful.
According to Equibase, Herbertson's horses have made 561 starts and won $2.52 million going back to 2015. His previous horse names do not appear to raise any red flags.
But within horse racing, this episode is being viewed less about a particular owner's questionable behavior and more about whether the Jockey Club's system for approving names is antiquated.
"This isn't an uncommon problem," one industry source told Yahoo Sports. "It happens frequently where a sexual reference or something like that will get by them. Maybe just put things into a search engine. They're asleep at the wheel."
A different industry source said the Jockey Club's technological systems were "insufficient" on multiple levels.
It's unclear if the Jockey Club uses AI or how deeply they investigate submitted names to look for various euphemisms that might break their rules. A spokesperson for the Jockey Club did not immediately respond to Yahoo Sports' request for comment.
In another high-profile incident from 2021, trainer Eric Guillot was banned by the New York Racing Association and the Stronach Group (operator of Santa Anita and Gulfstream Park) when he tweeted he was renaming a horse he had claimed "in honor of" Ken Rudolph, a former horse racing analyst on FanDuel TV who is black. The horse made its debut for Guillot under the name Grape Soda, which Rudolph and many others interpreted as racist.
"If Chris Rock or David Chappelle had said it, it would be OK," Guillot told the Paulick Report, insisting it was meant to to be a joke and he had done nothing wrong.
Whether tracks will take action against Herbertson for this incident is unknown at this point. A spokesperson for the Indiana Horse Racing Commission, which licenses horse owners at the track where Austrian Painter/Merrylegs ran, said he could not immediately comment on the matter.