Racing in the US has come under heavy attack in recent weeks. Firstly PETA successfully lobbied TV broadcaster HBO to cancel their tv series "Luck" following the death of a third horse (over a 2 year period) during filming. In addition, Aqueduct racetrack in New York have seen a shocking 20 fatalities on their track since November 2011, and their are calls for the track to be shut down. Now, to add the icing on the cake, the New York Times launched, on the front page of yesterday's edition, the first in a 4-part "expose" on racing in the US. The statistics and facts are not in any way up for dispute, they have done their job thoroughly and well, but they are shocking to say the least. The article is very long, and there are literally hundreds of comments on it. If you have the chance, do read it. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/us/death-and-disarray-at-americas-racetracks.html?_r=2&ref=todayspaper%20 As I said, this is only the first in a 4 part series of articles. I can only dread to think what the other 3 will contain.
To add a bit of context, below is a response to the article which featured in today's Thoroughbred Daily News: TIMES MAKES BREAKDOWNS FRONT-PAGE NEWS The first installment of a four-part series on breakdowns in Thoroughbred and Quarter Horse racing entitled "Mangled Horses, Maimed Jockeys" ran on the front page of Sunday’s New York Times. The exposé states that, "An investigation by the New York Times has found that industry practices continue to put animal and rider at risk. A computer analysis of data from more than 150,000 races, along with injury reports, drug test results and interviews, shows an industry still mired in a culture of drugs and lax regulation and a fatal breakdown rate that remains far worse than in most of the world." It argues that inflated purses derived from casino revenues have contributed to breakdown figures because connections are more apt to run unsound horses when there are greater financial incentives. The piece focuses on incidents at race tracks in New Mexico, but also includes examples from other jurisdictions. It features comments from veterinarians across North America as well as prominent racing figures such as The Jockey Club President James Gagliano, Arthur B. Hancock III and George Strawbridge, Jr. Reached Sunday, Hancock, long an outspoken critical of permissive medication rules in the U.S., said, "It's sad, but true. That's the first thing I thought when I read the story. Sad but true. If this doesn't change, we're gone. Simply said, if this situation doesn't change, we're going to be a thing of the past. This will not stand.” Among other things, the piece charges that: *Breakdown rates in the U.K., where raceday medication is not allowed, are half what they are in the U.S. *Since the Eight Belles’s breakdown in the 2008 Kentucky Derby, when the industry pledged to police itself, 55 tracks promised to seek accreditation, requiring among other things pre-race inspections and postmortem examinations, or necropsies. Fewer than half have kept their promise. *The breakdown rate at Woodbine, where medication rules are stricter than in the U.S., is the lowest in North America. The lead author of the story was Walt Bogdanich, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winning author who has been an assistant editor for the Times's Investigative Desk since 2003.
Also in today's edition was a very good piece on the use, or lack thereof, synthetic tracks in the US: SO WHY DID WE DISMISS THE SYNTHETIC SOLUTION? Now the New York Times is pummeling horse racing. Weâve seen the first part of a four-part series and the âpaper of recordâ has all but come out and said that racing is a notch below cock fighting. PETA, as vitriolic as ever, has had its say, choosing the HBO series âLuck,â and by extension, the sport, as its punching bag. Even New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has chimed in, telling NYRA that horses better stop dying at Aqueduct, or else. When it comes to negative publicity and the sportâs image, there has never been anything quite like this dark month of March 2012. This is serious stuff and please donât think for a second that this is some small storm that will be weathered. The damage done by the Times, âLuckâ and the Aqueduct breakdowns is severe and irreversible. The industry keeps telling its many critics and enemies that as long as mankind races horses, horses will die. Unfortunately, thatâs true. But do they have to die at the alarming rate of1.88 horses per 1,000 starts? Thatâs the key. That number has to be sliced in half, at least in half. In the wake of the Eight Belles death and so much outside scrutiny, including pressure from Washington, D.C., the industry promised it would start fixing the problem, that it would make horse racing safer. As the New York Times pointed out in a series that began on the front page of its Sunday newspaper, not only did the sport fail to deliver on its promise, things have only gotten worse. So here we are, once again scrambling for answers and solutions, ways to get everyone off our backs. The funny thing is, we had the answer. And we threw it away. Those who manufactured synthetic surfaces and other proponents of these newfangled tracks assured the sport that they were safer, that they would save the lives of horses and cut down on injuries to the riders. They were right. According to recently released data from The Jockey Club, the rate of fatalities on dirt surfaces is nearly twice as high as they are on synthetic surfaces. In 2011, horses died at a rate of 2.07 per 1,000 starters on dirt surfaces as opposed to 1.09 per 1,000 on synthetic surfaces. The numbers couldnât be more obvious or more convincing, yet the anti-synthetic crowd, which is big and loud, keeps going out of its way to twist them in every which direction until they are unrecognizable. Their go-to argument is that the numbers are meaningless because so many high-class racetracks like Keeneland, Del Mar and Hollywood have synthetic surfaces and classier horses are less likely to breakdown than the ones who run over cheap dirt tracks like Finger Lakes and Suffolk Downs. Then how do you explain what has happened at Santa Anita? In 2009 and 2010 there were six fatalities over the synthetic surface at Santa Anita, for a rate of 0.76 deaths per 1,000 starters. Starting on Dec. 26, 2010, when Santa Anita returned to dirt and running through all of 2011, there were 2.96 deaths per 1,000 starters over the new Santa Anita surface. Thatâs nearly four times higher than the rate over the synthetic track. This is as apples-to-apples as you get, and the only possible explanation for the dramatic increase in deaths is that the Santa Anita dirt track is much more dangerous than the Santa Anita synthetic track was. In a story that appeared in Saturdayâs Los Angeles Times (yes, theyâre smacking racing around, too), it was reported that horses were twice as likely to die over Santa Anitaâs dirt track than they were over the stateâs three synthetic surfaces--Del Mar, Hollywood and Golden Gate. Despite the obvious--that synthetic tracks are safer than dirt tracks--too many in the sport couldnât turn their backs on these new surfaces fast enough. Somehow, it became conventional wisdom that the synthetic track experiment was a colossal failure. Clearly, Frank Stronach believed that. If not, he never would have gone back to dirt at Santa Anita. Most synthetic critics are either gamblers or trainers, two groups that like to bitch and moan. The gamblers said they couldnât figure the synthetic tracks out and didnât want to bet on them. How much do you want to bet that the exact same things were being said back in the early 30s when Hialeah became the first U.S. track to install a grass course? Yet, bettors didnât seem to mind synthetic tracks when they stepped up to the windows. Keeneland had a record handle increase when it went to Polytrack. To this day, there remains no credible evidence that handle has fallen anywhere due to synthetic tracks. As for trainers, synthetic tracks became a convenient excuse. They couldnât win because their horses didnât like these new tracks. That their horses were slow and that their training skills were suspect did not, of course, have anything to do with their losing. This sport has an obligation to do everything in its power to protect the animal. When it doesnât, this is what happens, a powerful voice like the New York Times will call it out and bloody it in the process. Sure, there are other problems and other reasons why horses breakdown. You can start with a sport that is way too lenient when it comes to drugs and racing commissions and commissioners who are afraid to do the right thing. This was a prevalent topic in the Timesâ series, which focused a lot of attention on an appalling lack of control and oversight in New Mexico. But dirt tracks are undoubtedly a huge part of the problem and, for the good of the horses, they needed to be replaced by a safer alternative. Thatâs what Nick Nicholson and a handful of others were saying six, seven years ago when they argued passionately that nothing was more important than protecting the animal. Instead, the majority rebelled against Nicholson and synthetic tracks. And look where it got us. On the front page of the Sunday New York Times.
Just finally, to round out the story in full, here is the article relating to the fatality statistics released by the US Jockey Club last week: Statistics released Thursday by The Jockey Club show that the prevalence of fatal injury per every 1,000 starts is 1.88, equal to the corresponding figure from 2010 and a slight improvement from the 1.98 reported in 2009. Based on an analysis of over 1.1 million starts during that three-year period, the total prevalence of race-related fatal injury was 1.91 per 1,000 starts. There have been two changes in the way reporting of these statistics now take place: the updates now encompass information received during the calendar year and only those injuries that resulted in fatality within the first 72 hours of the date of the race are included in the national figures. Using the previous parameters where all fatalities are included, the rate would have been 2.05 per 1,000 starts. “Continued growth of the database has shown variations among jurisdictions in follow-up reporting during the days and weeks after an injury was sustained, creating variation in the results,” explained Matt Iuliano, executive director and executive vice president of The Jockey Club. “We realize there are situations in which the outcome is not determined until much later than 72 hours after an incident, but our confidence level in reporting an accurate benchmark statistic is greatest when we utilize information available within 72 hours.” The tables include a three-year summary of statistics from the database broken out by age, sex, surface and distance as well as a summary of fatal injuries broken out by fatality date. In 2011, the likelihood of fatal injury on a synthetic surface was 1.09/1,000, 90% lower than the rate over conventional dirt surfaces (2.07/1,000). Fatal injuries on turf in 2011 were 1.53/1,000, 35.3% lower than dirt and 40.3% higher than on synthetic tracks. Tables here: http://pdfs.thoroughbreddailynews.com/generic_upload/pdf/supplementaltables_eid.pdf
The way US claiming races work has always baffled me. In this country horses are claimed after the race has been run. In the US the claim is put in before the race and is paid regardless of whether the horse wins, pulls up or breaksdown. This, in my eyes, encourages unethical trainers/owners to run horses that they know are unsound in the knowledge that they'll get paid whatever happens.
Turf tracks would solve all the problems run the horses on the surface they where made for this rubbish that a horse has a dirt pedigree is farcicle ! All horses are bread for living not for running at Monmouth on a ''sloppy'' track where they would have more chance surviving crossing the Atlantic !
Who thought about running Thoroughbreds from the Arabian line on sand and soft surfaces. Nutters the lot of them.
