By Greg Hazley
The Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation, which funds care for about 1,200 ex-racehorses, has retained Los Angeles PR firm Capitol Media Partners as it continues to grapple with reverberations from a damaging New York Times report earlier this month.
A front-page story by the Times' Joe Drape on March 18 reported scores of horses under contract for care through TRF have wound up "starved and neglected, some fatally," while noting the group's finances are in the red.
The article has sparked a state attorney general's investigation in New York, but the foundation has essentially fired a veterinarian who documented the animals' alleged neglect after she supplied the data to the Times before the foundation could review it.
Since the vet's firing March 20, the foundation lost a major benefactor, Paul Mellon, who had endowed $5M for the organization and financed the veterinarian's investigation.
CMP partner Richard Grenell, who was PR chief to the U.S. representative to the U.N. during the recent Bush administration and former corporate communications head for DaVita Inc., confirmed to O'Dwyer's that his agency has been hired by the foundation.
A statement from the PR firm March 29 blasted the Times report. "There have been some recent public criticisms of TRF and its oversight of our 1,100 horses from a reporter that took unsubstantiated claims and printed them without checking his facts," said the statement, attributed to chairman Tom Ludt.
CMP is led by Grenell and his former DaVita colleague, Brad Chase, a veteran of Hill & Knowlton and Fleishman-Hillard.
The foundation is based in racing mecca Saratoga Springs, N.Y.
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