Article on Equine Fatalities at Del Mar and Saratoga

[Palm_Beach]

Lots of good information and I’m glad the industry is reviewing the stats it collects and is trying to identify why breakdowns are happening and what to do to prevent them. Out of all the information, this kind of struck home with me,

[I]"These findings have prompted the CHRB to introduce an amendment requiring horses returning from a layoff of 120 days or more to undergo an examination by an official veterinarian.

Though that rule might not be enacted until the middle of the Del Mar meet, safety stewards will coordinate with the official vets to identify and “take a closer look” at horses deemed vulnerable to catastrophic injury, said Baedeker.

This includes horses that haven’t started at two, or until late into their 3-year-old careers, as well as horses with irregular work patterns. As an example, one of the horses fatally injured last year worked only sporadically in the weeks before running, said Baedeker.

“When you see the work patterns interrupted like that, that’s just another caution flag,” he added."[/I]

My vet feels that horses that are racing fit, and especially those that are older, do not need to train hard to maintain the level of fitness needed to race. So my horses don’t work much unless they are coming off some r&r at the farm. They very rarely work between races. And I like to bring them home if they run out of conditions or lose their form and seem like a little freshening will benefit them. To me, giving them time off and not laying them on the fence twice a week keeps them sounder for the long term.

And heck, Arrogate didn’t start until April of his 3 yr old year, which isn’t “late,” but he also does not run often. He has not run since March and just started breezing again this month. Would he be on the “interrupted work pattern” list? Who makes that judgment call? And how are they going to track layoffs? Are trainers now required to report the dates a horse goes out of training and then returns to training? What if the horse trains on the farm?

Here is the link, and there are many things in it that I did not touch on in my post.

https://www.thoroughbredracing.com/articles/equine-fatalities-why-pivotal-year-del-mar-and-saratoga/

[Texarkana]

Thanks for sharing this, Palm Beach. It was a really interesting read; and I commend the authors and contributors. Transparency is one of the changes needed to preserve our sport, and this is a great example of it.

But I agree with you that I’m not so sure that correlation equals causation with training and layoff patterns. Especially at places like Del Mar and Saratoga, where you have a disproportionate number of fast and well connected horses who tend to maintain lighter and more selective racing schedules. It would be an interesting statistic to compare # of days between races and layoffs for horses at Del Mar/Saratoga vs. Los Al/Finger Lakes.