Parx Racing orders six trainers out, no reason given for evictions

Six trainers at Parx Racing were ordered to remove their horses from the Bensalem stable area by May 4, and the most explosive part of the move was not the deadline. It was the silence. Joseph J. Stathius, Parx’s assistant general counsel, sent the warning letter, but it did not say why the trainers were being pushed out.

The letter warned that if the stalls were not vacated and emptied, Parx would take additional action. Track management declined to comment, leaving horsemen to read the move as either discipline, politics, or both. That lack of explanation mattered even more because multiple reports said Parx had more than 200 empty stalls at the time, which undercut any obvious argument that the track simply needed the space for incoming horses.

Michael Catalano Jr. was among the trainers affected, and he said he believed his criticism of the racing office may have played a role in his removal. Catalano pointed to his years of public frustration with conditions at the track and said he had run for president of the Pennsylvania Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association in 2023. He also described that election as rigged, framing his removal as part of a deeper fight over power inside the backstretch.

That is why this story landed so hard with horsemen at Parx. This was not just a stall reassignment. It struck at livelihoods, at owners who have to move horses on short notice, at grooms and barn staffs whose work lives around stable assignments, and at trainers who build operations around the promise of a home base. When a track with open stalls orders six trainers out without explanation, every horseman starts asking the same question: who is protected, and who is expendable?

The Pennsylvania Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association says it represents horsemen at Parx Racing and works to protect horsemen’s rights and support the live racing program. Its offices are on the grounds of Parx, a sign of how tightly the organization is tied to the day-to-day operation of the track and the people who keep it running. That makes the dispute especially sensitive, because it reaches beyond one barn list and into the relationship between management and the horsemen it is supposed to serve.

The move also comes during a busy stretch for Parx. The track has recently been in the news for a spring turf-course renovation and for the 30-day suspension of jockey Eliseo Ruiz after his March 31 ride aboard Bailout Billy in race nine. Add this stall purge to the pile, and Parx looks less like a stable business making routine adjustments and more like a track still working through fractures that have not gone away.