Alarming spate of racehorse deaths draws scrutiny of industry safety practices

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• John Yang:

  People will be watching this evening's Preakness Stakes in Baltimore to see if Derby winner Mage wins the second race in the Triple Crown and to see if all seven horses make it around the 1 mile oval safely. Already during one of the preliminary races this afternoon, a horse was fatally injured and euthanized at Pimlico.

  Racehorse desert tracks are alarmingly common. Over 10 days leading up to the Kentucky Derby, seven horses died at Churchill Downs, according to a group that opposes racing as inhumane. So far this year, 136 thoroughbreds have died, and last year, 901. That's more than two every day.

  Beth Harris covers the horse racing industry for the Associated Press. Beth, you've heard the numbers that we cited, and they do come from a group that opposes wants to see horse racing go away. What would you say to put into perspective and context?

• Beth Harris, Associated Press:

  Well, John, I think you also have to look at some other numbers, and these would be from the Equine injury database that the Jockey Club maintains, and they take their numbers and granularize them from various race tracks around the country.

  And those actually show that per 1,000 starters in 2022, the rate of fatalities declined. It was the fourth straight year that the rate has declined. So, everybody has their different sets of numbers, but that's generally considered the industry standard as the Equine injury database.

• John Yang:

  Are you saying that there is an acceptable level or is the industry saying there's an acceptable level of horse death?

• Beth Harris:

  I think the industry would say the acceptable level is zero, but they also realize and understand that you're never going to get to zero. It's just something that over time you can get as close to zero. But these fatalities have a slew of reasons behind them and it's just highly unpredictable in terms of sending horses and jockeys out to race every day what could happen.

• John Yang:

  Another thing that critics talk about is the medication and doping of horses. They say it allows or it's to keep horses competing who may be fragile in health and sort of threatening their health by doing this. What's the industry's response?

• Beth Harris:

  Well, the industry has gotten something called HISA, the Horse Racing Integrity and Safety Authority. It's going to kick in two days after the pregnancy in terms of its anti-doping and medication controls. They are hoping that this will be the so called central office for the Florida racing in the U.S. much like you have the Commissioner's office in baseball, football, hockey and basketball.

  This will be a centralized authority that will oversee the pre-race, post-race testing. They plan on doing extensive out of competition testing as well, and there will be a set level of standards that will be adhered to. Also, when there is a positive test, there'll be a set procedure and they plan to notify the parties involved in a quicker fashion than what we typically have seen when it's left up to the individual racing states, which is the way it's been for many years now.

• John Yang:

  I know that it was congressionally mandated after a high number of deaths at Santa Anita in 2018 and 2019. Has there been any opposition? Has there anyone fighting that either in the industry or in state racing commissions?

• Beth Harris:

  Very much so. There's a handful of states as well as an organization that represents about 30,000 trainers and owners in the U.S. who have filed multiple lawsuits against HISA, claiming that it's violating constitutionality. These groups would rather have the states and state elected racing officials mandate what's going on instead of turning it over to the higher power that Congress has approved.

• John Yang:

  You mentioned that there have been clusters of deaths, and there are multiple reasons for horse racing deaths. But when you get clusters like the one we saw at Santa Anita in 2018, 2019, I think 30 horses died during the racing season. You had a cluster of seven in a month at Laurel Park a couple of years ago. This string of seven at Churchill Downs. Is there a commonality through those clusters?

• Beth Harris:

  Yes, some of the injuries occurred during training. Some of them occurred in actual races, most recently with the death at Churchill Downs. It was a variety of situations. Two of them occurred in races on Derby Day. Another occurred when a horse flipped in the paddock. It apparently may have been spooked by something it saw and it flipped and hurt itself and was not able to be saved.

  So generally, there are a variety of causes. It could be a catastrophic leg injury. Some horses have dropped dead of heart attacks. Each case can be individual, and there's obviously standards by which they investigate these deaths. They do necropsies to analyze the animal, and much like we would have an autopsy in a human being. So there's a variety of reasons, and I think that's what's most befuddling to the industry and also to fans and the critics is that there just is no pat answer. There's no easy answer for why this is happening.

• John Yang:

  Beth Harris of the Associated Press. Thank you very much.

• Beth Harris:

  Thanks, John.

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