Parx stall dispute leaves nine trainers facing forced relocations
Parx kept taking entries for Monday while nine trainers were told to clear out, turning a stall fight into a real-time race-card disruption.
Parx Racing kept accepting entries for the coming Monday even as nine trainers faced orders to move their horses elsewhere, turning a stall dispute into an immediate question of where the next group of runners would actually be based. For horsemen, the issue is bigger than a paperwork fight: without stalls, barns can break apart overnight, daily training schedules change, and owners can be forced into expensive shipping decisions that reshape field size and purse distribution.
Among those denied stalls were Mary Pattershall, Brenda Wilson, Michael Catalano Jr., Josue Arce, Patrick Ashton, Herold Whylie and Daniel Velazquez. Catalano and Velazquez had already moved their stables to Delaware, while Pattershall, who said she had been stabled at Parx for decades and kept about seven horses there, said she was first told to have her horses and property off the grounds by Thursday, April 23, a deadline later pushed to Saturday, May 16.
The dispute touched a horse already in motion on the entry sheet. Pattershall’s Kevin’s Strike was entered first, then she was told she could not run the horse under her name. The horse was transferred to Ronald Dandy, who agreed to take on training duties for five horses in total. In a blunt exchange over whether Pattershall could still enter horses while remaining on the grounds, Parx assistant general counsel Joe Stathius told her, “if she hasn't left her stalls, why would we take her horses?”
The fallout also sharpened concerns about how Parx is managing its stable area. One report said the track had more than 200 empty stalls, while a letter sent under Stathius’ name warned that failing to vacate and empty former stalls by May 4 would trigger additional action by Parx Racing. Whylie said he had been stabled at Parx since 1988, underscoring how deeply the move would unsettle longtime horsemen tied to the Bensalem circuit.
The timing matters because Parx’s 2026 live racing schedule covers 149 dates and leads to the $1 million Pennsylvania Derby on Sept. 19. Kathleen DeMasi, elected in January as the first female president of the Pennsylvania Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association, said the group was doing all it could to represent horsemen. For a track that has already had to adjust cards around weather and other operational shifts, the stall fight leaves one more open question: whether Parx’s stable policy is steady enough to support the horses that fill its races.
Know something we missed? Have a correction or additional information?
Submit a Tip
