The Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority, the industry’s first national regulating body, has issued its much-anticipated report on horse deaths at several tracks including Saratoga Race Course in New York. The findings and recommendations come after more than a dozen horse deaths at Saratoga last year. HISA says horse fatalities are almost always from a variety of causes, and says the response must be “all hands on deck.”
HISA CEO Lisa Lazarus spoke with WAMC’s Ian Pickus.
So what does it mean to have an all hands on deck response?
What that means is that it's not just one stakeholder group within the racing ecosystem that needs to look at practices or patterns and how to improve things and make things better. For example, it's not just about veterinary protocols and horse inspections and rules around veterinary care and treatment. We also need to look at surfaces, we need to look at weather, obviously medication, anything that might impact a horse's wellbeing.
So if somebody last year saw a number of horse deaths at Saratoga and they're reading this report, they're not necessarily going to find a single smoking gun.
Correct. There's really rarely one single factor. I think maybe these way to think about it is that, you know, when somebody has a heart attack, you often think or a doctor might say, you know, it might have been because they were overweight, might’ve been because they had high cholesterol, they're under a lot of stress. It's probably all of those things working in tandem. So it's not that we don't know what contributes, what has an impact. It's just that we can't say it's only the surface or it's only, you know, the horse’s veterinary history or its exercise history. It's sort of all of those things working together.
So in that case, what are some of the reasons that HISA discovered for the spate of deaths, particularly at Saratoga?
Sure, so we look at a number of things, we do a very deep dive into the horses’ veterinary history, the necropsy, which is essentially an autopsy for a horse, and all of its exercise history, how many works it had, how many races it had. There are a couple of things that really stood out there. The first is that horses that have more high-speed events, so in other words, more works and more races, within a shorter period of time, are in this case, with regards to this report, compared to a similar cohort of horses, are two and a half times more likely to have an injury. So we can see that overtraining can really be a thing, and that we need to look at what that means and how that happens and how to work collectively with trainers to maximize that the health and welfare of their horses.
We also saw an extraordinarily atypical amount of rainfall at Saratoga this past summer. And while we couldn't pinpoint a particular impact on the surface, we feel that that factor cannot be disregarded. And one of the things that we've done as a result is we have a racetrack services testing laboratory located in Lexington, Kentucky that regularly takes samples of all of our racetracks and analyzes them for consistency and other factors that impact safety. And so we're really going to be doing a deep dive on weather and making sure that we're integrating weather data in a way that helps us understand the patterns and the impact.
And the third thing that we found is the majority of horse injuries happen in the fetlock joint, which is really the ankle joint. But usually that number is about 50%. For the Saratoga injuries and fatalities, actually 90% of them were in the ankle joint. And what we discovered during that review of the horses’ history is that three of those horses had an intra-articular injection of corticosteroid to the ankle joint within 30 days of the race. And we had already submitted a rule to the Federal Trade Commission for approval, that's the body that actually approves all of our rules, then the federal government, banning those sorts of injections within 30 days of a race. We currently have a ban within 14 days. But we've asked for it to extend that out to 30 days. And we think now with what we saw in Saratoga while it's not conclusive, it certainly lends more credence to making that rule slightly more restrictive.
At the same time, the New York Racing Association in concert with HISA, is exploring changing to artificial surfaces at its three tracks. Is that seen as likely to cut down on the number of fatalities?
Absolutely. And David O'Rourke who’s the chief executive over at NYRA is really an advocate. And I think a visionary in that regard.
He’s on the committee that's looking into this.
Exactly. And he's really a leader. And he sees you have to have dirt, you have to have turf, but how they all work together. And bringing in more all-weather tracks is certainly a huge help. And what we found is especially a help in climates where weather is variable, where you do get a lot of rain and you need to maintain the service, the end of the day, the real issue that the data seems to suggest is that it's just hard to maintain a dirt surface. So if you have a lot of variable weather, maintaining an all-weather service is just easier.
One thing that stuck out to me in the report are two potential rule changes that are proposed that, as you say, the FTC would have to approve. One is that HISA would be able to essentially shut down a racetrack, it would be able to suspend the accreditation. The second is that it would be able to itself suspend someone's registration, a trainer or a jockey something like that, who works at the track, if they have reasonable suspicion about unsafe practices. So that would be a notable change from taking that sort of authority away from the state bodies and giving it to HISA, right?
Well, we'd have concurrent authority. So you know, we wouldn't be taking away their authority, they would still have the authority to shut down a racetrack for the reasons that are in violation of their rules. But it does give HISA the more specific tools or authority to address, you know, very serious situations. You know, we certainly think and our experience has been that if we can show a racetrack that there's something amiss that's causing horse injuries, they're more likely to work with us to repair it or shut down themselves. But in the case that we do have a situation where that doesn't happen, we will we will ultimately, as the FTC approves the rules, have the authority to do it on our own initiative.
What's the threshold under which HISA would want to be on the ground investigating a death or a number of deaths at a track? Is it a certain amount per week? Is it a certain amount per meeting? How does that work?
There's not one specific answer or number, because we look at the factors of the reasons., you know, if you have, you know, if you're unlucky, or it's unfortunate that there's a few deaths in a week, and they relate to two things that are, you know, sickness or illness or something happening in the stall, that don't really have any correlation to the track, well, that wouldn't be something that would necessarily get us concerned. But if there are multiple injuries particularly of the same nature on one particular track, and particularly around the same place on the track, that's something that we would obviously take very seriously. And we do have a track supervisory advisory group, basically some of the best track superintendents in the country. And we would dispatch them to look at the track and to engage with the track on basically what to do.
What were some of the bigger questions that remain unanswered, in your mind, having looked at the data from this particular report?
You know, that's a great question. For me, there's a couple things. One is, my instinct is that rain played a significant role, just because the increase in rain was so significant, and frankly, I was there, I was actually at the track quite a bit this summer. And so, I feel like that was very likely a significant factor, but we can't prove it scientifically at this point in time. And so that's why I hope the racetrack services testing laboratory can take it a step up in terms of analyzing weather data and integrating into all the other data points they look at. The other thing is, folks are constantly asking, is there anything in the breeding? Are we breeding a faster horse at the expense of a sturdy or a horse that has more sort of resilience physically? And I don't know the answer to that question. I'm not even sure we know exactly how to go about answering it. We certainly are looking at it. And the last thing, I think, which time will tell, is are our medication rules in the right place and are they playing a positive role? And again, I think I think they are. HISA took over the anti-doping program only in May of last year. So sort of after Churchill after the Derby and after the Preakness and before the Belmont. And we do see anecdotally some very positive signs, but I'm hoping that the data will tell us maybe in a year in what impact it's having if any and what we need to do better.
Related question: Saratoga is about to host for the first time the Belmont Stakes as part of a pre-regular meeting for the festival. Are there any risks associated with opening that track at a different time of year for such a limited amount of time? Will there be the testing that you're talking about and the adequate monitors in place for that shorter festival?
I really am confident that there will be. First of all, NYRA, Dave O’Rourke and Glen Kozak, who's their track superintendent, and is probably, you know, one of the most, if not the most talented, expert at track services that we have in the country. They have been incredibly cooperative. And you know, obviously they don't actually need us to tell them to do it, they on their own initiative are doing everything they need to do to make sure the track is ready. And I'm very confident with all the checks and balances in place that it will be. And also, we tend to have less problems at the beginning of a meet, particularly if it relates to the track, because it's over wear and tear and the maintenance that I think is probably more challenging. So I think it gives us an opportunity to make sure that there's a there's a good foundation in place, and that everything possible to minimize the risk of injury has been deployed.
Given this new report, I want to return to something I asked you when you were first hired as CEO of HISA. This report concludes as we said that there are a number of factors that go into a catastrophic horse breakdown in racing. Can racing be conducted safely in a way that eliminates fatalities?
So, I believe that racing can be conducted safely. I believe that we can continue to make strong progress. We've got a number of tools at our disposal, but we haven't fully maximized their value yet. And I know that we can get close to or be sort of analogous to our international peers, who have very admirable fatality and injury rates. No horses? Will we get to a point where we have zero fatalities? I certainly hope so. That's a very difficult metric, most people would say it's impossible, because horses are living beings, and just like they encounter things in the wild that put them at risk. Those same things would replicate themselves day to day, but I think we can get it to a point where the risk and the outcomes are, are better. I think they're already better than they probably would be in the wild, but that we can really maximize all the tools at our disposal to minimize injury and have a very safe sport.
Just one more thing. How much of this comes down to, you know, environmental factors and just inherent danger? ‘The surface has been used for X number of days, it's rained this amount, and then you have bad luck with maybe some bumping down the stretch and, and a horse goes down,’ versus bad human actors, who are employing doping or giving shots outside of a prescribed period or cutting some corner that we don't even know about?
Yeah, I mean, listen, I believe that with the amount of data that we're collecting, and the tools we have at our disposal now, we can really vary dramatically minimize the things that we can control. And I think I said a minute ago, that one of the unanswered questions for me at this point in time is what impact our much more stringent medication program is having on horse injury or horses’ risk for injuries. And I think, with some more time, we'll have a much better picture of that and I'll be able to answer that question better. But for now, I think that we've made a lot of progress where we're still consistently on a national basis reducing injuries, but we need to continue to do better and we will.
The New York Racing Association responded to the report in a statement, saying:
“Continuously improving equine safety is a fundamental responsibility shared among racetrack operators, regulators, trainers, breeders and owners. HISA’s review of the 2023 summer meet at Saratoga Race Course enhances our understanding of the myriad factors that may contribute to injuries sustained during training or racing. To prevent serious injuries before they happen, NYRA is embracing science and technology to provide veterinarians and trainers with the tools necessary to identify underlying conditions and further reduce the frequency of equine injuries. Beyond the adoption of biometric wearables and artificial intelligence, NYRA is working with the University of Kentucky and Racing Surfaces Testing Laboratory to expand our understanding of how weather conditions impact racetrack performance. Ensuring the safety of horses and jockeys competing on the NYRA circuit is our highest priority, and we thank HISA for investing the time and resources to develop an informative review of the 2023 summer meet.”
