The Kentucky Horse Racing and Gaming Corporation (KHRGC) on Friday rebuffed Maria Borell's latest attempt to regain her training license.Borell's attorney, Bob Heleringer, told TDN that it's back to Franklin Circuit Court now that his client's racing commission-level appeals have been exhausted.“We'll win the next heat,” Heleringer predicted. “The KHRGC has no facts and no law to continue its vendetta against Maria Borell, who has done absolutely nothing wrong, as the hearing officer held. Inevitable justice awaits us in the Kentucky courts of law.”After the Aug. 21 KHRGC meeting–at which Borell's fate was discussed only in closed session before board members reconvened for a quick, public voice vote–Borell alleged on social media that “selective enforcement” was behind the regulators' rejection of an independent hearing officer's report that had concluded the KHRGC “failed to provide adequate due process and failed to present proof” in keeping Borell from obtaining a license last year. The report also recommended that the KHRGC go ahead and grant her a license.Although Borell hasn't started a Thoroughbred in 10 years and compiled only a 6-for-46 record during the brief period between 2013 and 2016 when she did train horses, her saga has generated outsized news coverage over the last decade because of the polarizing nature of her career arc and the legal entanglement of horse neglect allegations that followed.Over the span of seven months in 2015 and 2016, Borell, now 43, went from conditioning a Breeders' Cup winner in just her 30th lifetime start as a trainer–the sprint champion Runhappy–to making national headlines for being a no-show in the face of animal cruelty charges at a Kentucky farm leased by her father.When sheriff's investigators found 43 underfed, confined horses with open sores, untrimmed feet, and no one seemingly present to care for them in mid-2016, the Kentucky Department of Agriculture stepped in to rehome the horses and provide them with veterinary care.Determining that those horses had been abandoned by Chuck and Maria Borell, Class A misdemeanor charges and arrest warrants were issued for the father-and-daughter pair.Chuck Borell was arrested on July 29, 2016. Two months later he pleaded guilty (without making an actual admission of guilt) in Mercer County District Court. He was to serve two years of probation in return for relinquishing any ownership interest he had in the 43 horses that subsequently got moved to 14 different farms.Maria Borell did not initially answer her charges and was widely reported to have fled her home state of Kentucky.For six years, authorities considered her a fugitive from justice. But, when queried by TDN at the outset of the case, county law enforcement officials admitted they did not have the resources to pursue alleged misdemeanor-level offenders out of state.In 2022, Borell turned herself in, and in an effort to clear her name, initially pleaded not guilty.In 2023, Borell's legal team negotiated a plea deal in which all the charges from 2016 were dismissed and expunged.That arrangement centered on a contention that the charges against her would be difficult to prove given that the affected horses were not under her immediate care at the time.Borell ended up paying the $7,500 bail bond (plus an additional $2,500 held in escrow) to Thoroughbred Charities of America, which had paid as much as $13,000 toward caring for the horses.She also reportedly negotiated a settlement for outstanding debt incurred at Rood & Riddle Equine Hospital.In September 2024, Borell was licensed as a trainer in California. The management at Santa Anita Park initially balked at granting her access, but she was eventually assigned stalls at Los Alamitos Race Course.Then the horse owner who had promised to send her Thoroughbreds came down with health issues and decided to keep his stock in Kentucky, so Borell never ended up starting any horses out West.In June 2025, the KHRGC's license review committee went into closed session to debate Borell's application for licensure. They then informed her in public that if she did not withdraw her license request, the committee's vote would “almost certainly result in denial of this application.”Borell's legal team withdrew the application, took the matter to court, and then followed through with the next procedural step, which was an administrative hearing held Mar. 31, 2026.That hearing resulted in the June 2 hearing officer's report that stated, “Borell's proof was more persuasive than the [KHRGC's] proof on the issue of whether her license should be renewed. The [KHRGC's] case lacked substance and was not convincing on the issues presented [and] the asserted grounds for denying Borell's license were vague and inconsistent throughout this matter.”At the Aug. 21 KHRGC meeting, the KHRGC was tasked with either accepting or rejecting that hearing officer's report and the recommendation to grant the license.The KHRGC's chairman, Jonathan Rabinowitz, explained at the start of the meeting that “the Borell matter” would be addressed by going into closed session.There was no testimony taken from Borell or her legal team, and the topic was not discussed at all during the public portion of Friday's KHRGC meeting.When the board reconvened after the closed session, Rabinowitz called for a vote to “reject the recommendation of the hearing officer and adopt appellee's proposed recommended order.”A voice vote affirmed the rejection, with one abstention. No one voted against the motion.After the meeting, Borell wrote on the X social media platform, “Today the board denied my license, and it wasn't a surprise to me. It's exactly what I expected.“They didn't want to deal with me, not the facts, not the hearing officer's findings,” Borell continued. “There is no legal or factual reason for this denial. The hearing officer spent 7 hours hearing evidence and testimony and concluded there was no evidence to support denial. He formally recommended reinstatement. That recommendation is part of the official record.”Borell then addressed the animal cruelty allegations from a decade ago.“I had zero involvement with the farm connected to the dismissed case. I was living over a thousand miles away and had no role in its operations. The case was dismissed by Kentucky's own court system, expunged, and legally treated as if it never occurred. Under Kentucky law, expunged matters cannot be used in licensing decisions.“My record in racing is clean: no drug positives, no disciplinary violations, and full compliance with every requirement. Meanwhile, this industry has a long, well-documented pattern: men are given second, third, and fourth chances, even after multiple medication positives, suspensions, and serious violations. I have none of those issues, yet I was denied.“The administrative process is now complete, and I am free to speak openly. This now moves to court, where decisions are based on evidence, law, and fairness, not personal vendettas, politics, or selective enforcement,” Borell wrote.The post KHRGC Rejects Independent Hearing Officer’s Recommendation to Grant Borell Training License appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.