America’s Best Racing has launched a monthly series to celebrate women in racing, explore the challenges they face in what has been a male-dominated industry, and highlight their achievements.

When Lisa Lazarus was among 50 women honored by Sports Business Journal for being “Game Changers” in sports in 2024, it meant the world to her.

It was not that the chief executive officer of the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority (HISA) needed to add to her distinguished résumé. Before joining HISA, the Fordham Law School graduate worked on behalf of the National Football League as its Labor Relations Counsel and its Senior League Counsel.

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She served as general counsel and then Chief of Business Development and Strategy for the Fédération Equestre Internationale, the international governing body for equestrian sports. After that, she established and led the equestrian practice at Morgan Sports Law, a London-based firm devoted to sports arbitration and litigation.

Résumé-building is certainly not a concern for Lazarus, 56, and she has never been about individual awards. But it meant everything to her to be recognized as a “Game Changer” because that is exactly her mission as HISA’s hard-driving leader.

“We at HISA are working very hard to change the game. That really is our goal, to make it a game that prioritizes horse welfare across the board and prioritizes integrity,” she said. “I don’t take it as an award for me personally. I take it as an award for the organization.”

Congress created the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority in 2020. Lazarus oversees all operations. That includes the Racetrack Safety Program, which began on July 1, 2022, and the Anti-Doping and Medication Control Program, initiated on May 22, 2023.

While HISA has often encountered stiff opposition and has sometimes found that it needed to alter course, its progress is indisputable and extremely encouraging for the future of an embattled industry. Equine fatalities have hit a record low since The Jockey Club’s Equine Injury Database began reporting those statistics in 2009.

Lazarus presents at 2024 Global Symposium on Racing. (Race Track Industry Program/David Sanders)

Of the 47 tracks in 19 states that HISA oversees, there was a racing-related fatality rate of 0.90 per 1,000 starts last year, approximately a 27% decline from the 1.23 rate the season before. The 2024 figure represents a steep drop of 55% from 2.00 per 1,000 starts in 2009.

Lazarus takes great pride in that.

“I view that as HISA’s greatest achievement. Above all, our most important objective is to protect horses,” Lazarus said. “When we protect horses from injury, we also protect their riders. The greatest risk to a jockey is a horse sustaining an injury.

“Basically, everything we do is to make sure the horse is protected as much as possible and has an ecosystem of care that it can rely on to protect it.”

Tom Rooney, president and chief executive officer of the National Thoroughbred Racing Association, knows how urgently such gains were needed.

“Lisa and HISA have given leaders in our industry the ability to respond to any negativity by saying, ‘We’ve never been safer,’ ” Rooney said.

Drew Fleming, president and chief executive officer of Breeders’ Cup Ltd., also grasps how critical Lazarus’ mission is. “I think it’s imperative that we get this done right,” he said. “Forever in the United States, racing has been fragmented. This is a wonderful opportunity to create uniform rules and regulations addressing safety and integrity and bringing the best practices to ensure that our sport is around for centuries to come.”

It says everything about Lazarus’ determination that she is far from content with the significant reduction in equine fatalities. “Our sort of motto at HISA is that we are going to work tirelessly trying to get to zero,” she said. “We may never get there, but that is certainly our goal. What we are seeing is we can make serious progress in short periods of time.”

HISA CEO Lisa Lazarus (HISA photo)

Lazarus was born and raised in Montreal. She has been married to Robert Coviello for 22 years. They have two children, Julian, 20, a student at Dartmouth, and Stella, a high school freshman.

Lazarus was introduced to harness racing at an early age. She has always been drawn to horses, making HISA a perfect fit for her. The Board of Directors named her CEO on Jan. 11, 2022. She started a little more than a month later.

“I took the position because of a deep love for horses. It was a great opportunity to be involved in an organization set up to protect them and protect the sport,” she said. “I also thought it would be a terrific challenge to build a brand new organization and to be able to take a blank piece of paper, structure how to run it and how it could be cost effective. It was a really unique opportunity that doesn’t come around very often.”

It is unclear whether her standing as a female leader in an industry long dominated by men has worked against her. “I don’t perceive it that way,” she said.

The certainty is that she and HISA have encountered a stiffer level of opposition than she ever anticipated. “It did surprise me, the degree of the hostility and the complete sort of rejection of authority and the unwillingness to change,” she said. “That’s the minority, for sure. But that is not what I expected and that is how it played out.”

Fleming lamented the resistance that has been encountered. “I do think it’s a shame that we’re spending a lot of time and money with lawyers fighting those who have brought lawsuits against HISA when it would have been better to use that time and money to continue to improve and make HISA as good as it can be,” he said.

Rooney praised Lazarus for her leadership, emphasizing her intelligence, her willingness to work with others, and her toughness in challenging situations.

“There have been many stages where there have been obstacles thrown at her, whether it be in the courts or politically or whatever, where a lesser person might have run screaming,” Rooney said. “She’s run head on into battle.”

Lazarus advises other women in leadership positions to “have your own voice.” She added, “You do not have to emulate the way a man might confront a challenge.”

In keeping to that, she has unquestionably changed the game of racing for the better in a short period of time. And Lazarus is the first to admit her work is far from finished.