It’s football bounce, not a basketball bounce!
To clarify, a text went around and all horses are getting a prerace exam, and the trainer is required to attend and have vet records available so if the state vet has any concerns they can be answered by the trainer and records reviewed. If the trainer is not there and the concerns are not addressed to the state vet’s satisfaction, the horse can be scratched.
I am happy to see the horseman are objecting to letting non horseman dictate how they train their horses. When you start making PR decisions based upon public perceptions and impose them onto the horsemen it’s over.
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I applaud their efforts, but I don’t think that anyone has proven that Lasix is the culprit, or even a suspect, and therefore banning Lasix won’t stop the fatalities.
I agree that it probably isn’t related to these recent breakdowns. But Lasix has been a hot button item for a while–so TSG settled on it as a good PR move.
It’s interesting to read that most trainers (at least the ones who agreed to be interviewed) aren’t against a Lasix ban, they are just against it happening without their being given any time to adjust to it.
We know a quite large CA trainer who told us he’s shipping all his horses to KY for the Keeneland and Churchill meets. He’ll hang out here until the dust settles in CA, and then decide what he wants to do next. I’m sure he’s not the only one with that idea.
I know this conversation has veered away from track surface, but it occurred to me–Santa Anita is a very old track, been there since the 1930’s. How often is the track surface renovated? And by that I mean, take the surface back down to bedrock, and rebuild it?
I’ve never been involved in regular track maintenance. Have always been just one of those who assume that things are done according to Hoyle, but what are the usual maintenance procedures, and how often is the surface completely rebuilt?
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I would like to see some control over the vets that are passing out meds like candy and doing whatever the trainers want. Until the vets start advocating for the horses’ heatlh and longevity, I dont think any drug rules can be effective.
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Re: Lasix. Pain causes stress. Horses who are stressed are more apt to bleed. Lasix helps prevent bleeding. Lasix, therefore, permits horses who are stressed due to pain run without bleeding.
So, to connect the dots: a horse in pain with no Lasix would bleed before it is showing other noticeable signs of pain. Give Lasix, which most do as a general rule, and you have no bleeding. But the horse still has an undiagnosed condition causing pain. In other words, you have masked a pain symptom (bleeding).
While I can’t entirely answer your question re: bedrock, I can say that Santa Anita renovated their entire dirt track from 2006-2007, installing a Cushion Track artificial surface. The Cushion Track wouldn’t drain right and was replaced with ProRide shortly afterwards. In 2009, Santa Anita had another atypically wet year with a rash of breakdowns. Because of all the problems they had with the artificial surfaces in the short time span, they decided to remove it and return to dirt at the end of 2010.
So the racing surface itself is fairly new. I don’t know what (if any) alterations they did to the base with all of those transitions.
Sidebar: I think the Lasix/whip bans are a knee-jerk attempt to appease the general public. Appeasing the general public needs to happen, or else racing will find themselves like the Florida greyhound industry. I completely agree with all rational horse racing voices who are unhappy with the manner in which this was done and skeptical of its ability to do anything but harm, but I can also appreciate why the Stronach Group made this type of move. I do wish there was a little more grace in execution.
I haven’t been following the other thread here on Off Course because I can’t even stomach this conversation with non-racing people online. I’ve been doing exactly what I loudly criticize racing leaders for doing, which is burying my head in the sand and waiting for this to blow over.
I also skipped a bunch of recent pages in this thread, so I’m sorry if my soapbox rant is completely inappropriate within the flow of the conversation or repeating topics discussed ad nauseam.
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That’s not how that works. That’s not how any of that works.
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I’ve read this three times and it still make no sense.
Bleeding is a heritable condition. It runs in some TB lines. But it can also be caused by outside factors. Horses that have never bled anywhere else can bleed in SoCal because the air quality is so poor in the barns. Northern horses shipping south for the winter are at risk of bleeding because they aren’t used to the heavy humid weather. Some bleeders just bleed. Some bleeders bleed a lot.
Lasix is not being given to mask pain issues. It’s being given to prevent bleeding.
If a horse has a pain issue it will show up during training. It will show up during fast works. It will get diagnosed. Racing TBs are the most minutely examined horses in the world. Nobody wants to race a horse that’s in pain. And nobody tries to mask pain with Lasix because that’s not what it’s meant to do and it wouldn’t work.
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Faulty reasoning - “stress from pain” does not contribute to a horse bleeding. It’s entirely physical - from the exertion of racing at top speed. And as others have pointed out, there may be other physical factors like air quality. You are not connecting the dots, you are making things up.
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Which vets are passing out meds like candy? If so, I want some. BTW, once again, they do post race drug testing. Pre-race too in some instances. They also do necroscopies. If drugs are causing the breakdowns, the cat would have been out of the bag a dozen or so deaths ago.
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Texarkana, you said what I was gonna say 
SA has gone from dirt to synthetic to dirt within the last 15 years. I have no idea how far down the surface was taken either in the dirt-synthetic conversion or back to dirt but my logical pea brain would think fairly far down (bedrock, not sure at SA how deep that really is) as I would guess that you need a different base if you’re racing dirt or synthetic.
I also agree that the Lasix and whip bans are a feel good for the public. Part of me agrees with things like race-day bans on Lasix and changing the whip rules, I just don’t, for the life of me, get how either of these have anything to do with what’s going on at SA. Plenty of other tracks in the US who don’t have bans such as these and they’re not dealing with the breakdown issues that SA is.
I agree with Laurierace. Letting the non-racing public dictate rules, guidelines, bans is a bad idea. 
I do like some of the other things that SA has implemented (not knowing much about how the implementation is actually being handled) about declaring works 24 hours in advance, full vet records, reviewing horses ‘at risk’, etc. But, I still think this is a bit of an avoidance on why horses are breaking down.
If anything, I would be more suspect of stats that show, over time, SA’s fatalities per 1000 starts appears to be higher than the national average for the last few years (2018 data not yet being available). That would be more suspect to me… a potentially longer term ongoing issue that is now coming to a head.
As I was poking around, I also stumbled over this article published in the Arizona Republic (dated 2/4/2019).
The Jockey Club, a registry organization for thoroughbreds that also monitors fatal injuries at tracks nationwide, reports an average equine death rate of 1.61 per 1,000 race starts. In Arizona during fiscal 2018, the rate was 3.41.
Why is no one howling over the fatality rate at Turf Paradise? Yes, a rhetorical question as I have my own suspicions.
Both Turf Paradise and Los Al participate in the EID but neither make summarized fatality stats available to anyone interested.
http://www.jockeyclub.com/default.as…vocacy&area=11 is a list of the tracks that participate in the EID.
While I support, in theory, some of what Stronach is doing to address the “issue”, I’m still struggling to understand how the proposed changes explain the spike in fatalities and what is SA doing to address those? As much as I like SA, if I was a trainer there, I’d be looking at where to move my horses where I felt they would be as safe as possible when training and racing.
The March 22 date to resume racing has been postponed.
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Bedrock? How far down below the track is bedrock? What engineering code or building code or other code or rule or even best practice states that something needs to be taken down to bedrock? Like a building or a highway, or anything?
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A late note to this specific comment of mine.
One might choose to say that pandering to the non-racing public is “important” for the future of racing.
Perhaps from a PETA point of view but they already want to abolish racing so not sure why caving to PETA in this area is a win.
Additionally, most of the “non-racing” public that is flapping their mouth on various internet sites without any solid knowledge or basis in face is perhaps inconsequential. These people are not the betting public for the most part. Racing and the racing industry isn’t in business, IMO, because of all the people that love to watch pretty horses run. All those people don’t have any vested dollars in the industry; they just don’t. Without betting, the racing industry (at least in this country) would probably cease to exist.
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The thought on the backside at Santa Anita is that it “was” the track and the condition of the track when we were hit with all of the rains. And the fact that management pressured the trainers to run when it was pouring rain. The riders have been giving positive feedback about the current condition of the track. I feel the most recent breakdown was horrible bad luck and happened at the worst possible time. I agree with all of the new rules that the Stronach group announced EXCEPT the banning of Lasix which has nothing to do with the current rash of breakdowns.
I have parts of 7 horses currently at the track and we are in a holding pattern. Many trainers are thinking of leaving unless the Lasix ban is phased in. They need some time to make adjustments on horses known to be bleeders.
It is not as easy as just “going to another track to run”. Del Mar is closed until July. Golden Gate does not card many races that fit the SoCal horse population. Turf Paradise has multiple issues. So, that leaves Kentucky, Oaklawn, New York. All quite a long van ride. What to do with the 12-25 K claimers. Worth shipping? Or no?
Most of the trainers here do right by their horses. Santa Anita has an excellent rehoming program called CARMA that owners contribute to with a percentage of purse money. Many trainers utilize this and occasionally do surgeries to treat injuries to give the horse a chance for long term soundness to have a second career as a riding horse.
It is a tough situation currently, but this will extend to all of racing if the industry cannot work together to find answers.
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I feel for you and everyone involved at SA Jolise. There are a lot of tough decisions for everyone as a result. I know for me personally there is no way I could send a horse of mine out there but I also know that is easy to say when it is hypothetical.
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Jolise, thanks for providing your “boots on the ground” thoughts on what is going on and a horseman’s perspective.
My personal thought was that there would be some level of ‘now what do we do’ when the first horse after the moratorium, broke down regardless of when that happened. It would happen. As Laurierace said, inevitable. The question for me was if this breakdown was the ‘normal course of events’ or was it related to the spate of earlier breakdowns. Without knowing what the root cause of the earlier breakdowns, hard to know. I do think that the current strategy of throwing a bunch of stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks by the Stronach Group is a panacea.
I am curious, because I really don’t know, what is the different in performance and physical impact to the horse, between a timed worked and racing at speed? Is a timed work that much less physically stressful to the horse than a race? Is it the speed or the distance? Is it really expected that horses working in training not breakdown while horses racing will break down? I don’t know enough to know.
Please show me a legitimate peer-reviewed veterinary journal article that supports your statement/assertion.
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