Alex Brown has worked in horseracing on-and-off in North America for 20 years. He spent most of this time at the Fair Hill Training Center. Alex also runs alexbrownracing.com, a site that initially focused on Barbaro’s recovery shifted its focus to address Barbaro’s ongoing legacy, particularly horse racing issues, horse rescue, and horse slaughter.

Based in Canada, he is an exercise rider for the trainer Steve Asmussen. He also has worked at Penn National, Presque Isle Downs, Keeneland, Churchill Downs, and Sam Houston Race Park. He has worked on three synthetic surfaces: the Tapeta Footings surface at Fair Hill, Polytrack at Keeneland and Woodbine. He is an unabashed advocate for these new surfaces.
During this year’s Triple Crown season, his blog was among those featured on the New York Times’ Web site.
Alex has an MBA from the University of Delaware. He taught Internet Marketing at the University of Delaware, first teaching this topic in 1997, when he was one of only two teachers of the subject matter anywhere at the time. Alex also worked at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania for seven years, and a boutique consulting firm Clearadmit.com, for two years. Alex has been a co-founder of a number of dot.com enterprises. He is originally from the United Kingdom.
Talkin’ Horses offers Thoroughbred fans and professionals an opportunity to pose questions to the people who make the headlines and create the memories we all treasure.
Guests include owners, trainers, jockeys, industry leaders, and newsmakers from around the world of Thoroughbred breeding and racing, offering timely analysis of coming events and emotional reminiscences of recent and historic moments on and around the track.

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Plainwell, MI:
Do you have any ideas or thoughts about how the current “claiming” system can be changed so that it takes the welfare of the horse into consideration?
Brown:
Certainly the current claiming system does not account for the welfare of the horse. It is too easy for horses to get “lost” in the system. The system, as it stands, is designed for efficiency for the industry I guess. How should it change? I think the claim slip should be dropped after the race, rather than before. More information is therefore provided about the horse at that stage. There has also been some discussion that the claim should have to clear a vet’s inspection some period of time after the race. I am not sure how practical that approach would be, especially as it would involve some level of subjectivity. Anyway, the claiming system as it stands is very troubling. Most horses running have extensive vet work done. There is no incentive to forward those vet records with the claimed horse