Armed with a wealth of data and a path to more valuable information in the years ahead, presenters at the Welfare and Safety of the Racehorse Summit expressed optimism that North American racing could follow its already significant strides in improving equine safety with even further improvement.
Jamie Haydon, president of the Grayson-Jockey Club Research Foundation, opened the 11th Summit by noting that many of the ideas put forward over the years at this event have become reality as he welcomed regulators, track operators, veterinarians, researchers, and other industry participants June 25 to the conference in a room at the University of Kentucky football stadium. The Summit, which also was streamed live to a wider audience, is presented by Grayson-Jockey Club and The Jockey Club.
The optimism springs from the data accumulated over 15 years of statistics gathered through The Jockey Club’s Equine Injury Database as well as the capability of the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority to contribute consistent, detailed data in the years ahead.
The current model of the EID is one of those ideas that traces to the initial Summit in 2006. The information it has provided from millions of starts is used to examine 300 possible risk factors that are fed into the model, said Tim Parkin, head of the veterinary school at England’s University of Bristol who Tuesday provided an update on the EID.
“There’s so much statistical power here that actually we’re now able to (analyze risk factors and the efficacy of safety measures) quite efficiently,” said Parkin, who has consulted on the EID since 2009. “It means that this new model has in excess of 25 statistically significant risk factors in it.”
That information has helped the industry craft changes that have led to a statistically significant reduction in equine fatalities in North American racing in the past 15 years. The two most recent numbers are the lowest in that stretch, and the 2023 rate of 1.32 per 1,000 starts is down 34% when compared with 2009. In 2023, 99.87% of flat racing starts at racetracks participating in the EID were completed without a fatality.
Racing statistics, information being collected by the Racing Surfaces Testing Laboratory, and data are being gathered by HISA, which fully launched last year to oversee the sport’s anti-doping and medication control as well as its safety. The collaboration has United States racing looking forward to further improvement in the years ahead. McKinsey & Company partners Dan Singer and Ben Vonwiller outlined these opportunities from a report completed for The Jockey Club.
“There really has been a significant reduction,” Vonwiller said. “That said, there’s still a substantial gap between the North American average and what we call the international standard (essentially Australia, Great Britain, Hong Kong, Japan, and New Zealand). That gap points to further opportunity.”
(Vonwiller said that McKinsey was not overly concerned with slight differences in how these statistics are collected in these countries, as those differences do not impact comparison in any statistically significant way.)
McKinsey identified several opportunities to improve equine safety in the U.S. and close the gap with these major international jurisdictions. They include a move of every U.S. track to top-level postentry screening, further study, and use of wearable technologies to monitor horse health, further protections for horses in claiming races, an improved approach to surface management, transforming some tracks to all-weather surfaces, and adding transparency on the safety performance of trainers as well as breeders.
In terms of prerace exams, McKinsey would like to see more tracks in the triple A category that it identified as tracks that have the most vets, exams, and time examining horses after entry and before a race. McKinsey found that these efforts are translating to safer performance as these tracks have 30%-45% fewer breakdowns. (For consistency, this portion of the study compared dirt tracks with other dirt tracks.)
But only 15% of North American tracks are in the triple A category—a group of tracks with four or five regulatory vets available for oversight; as compared with double A, which had three or four regulatory vets and accounted for 25% of tracks; and single A, which had two or three regulatory vets and accounted for 60% of tracks.
Those triple A tracks also see regulatory vets meet together to go over evaluations. As McKinsey also considers cost analysis in its report, it noted that such panels could be conducted for a group of tracks—providing some streamlining.
Parkin noted that one of the strengths of this information is the ability to see what is working and making an impact. McKinsey saw a real impact in the highest level of veterinary scrutiny ahead of races.
“The advantage has increased even more in the last three years for the triple A tracks,” Singer said. “The advantage is growing.”
Along with that, McKinsey called on more prerace information for horses’ previous claiming race participation and performance to be used in prerace assessment.
In the area of wearable technology, which is being used to help identify any changes in a horse that might point to unsoundness, McKinsey noted the potential but called for further scientific study. Numbers were presented where this technology is delivering useful information but other instances where it was coming up short. But the potential is there.
“They can play a meaningful role in bringing down breakdown rates,” Vonwiller said.
In the area of track maintenance, McKinsey presented data showing dirt tracks can perform well. It found nine of the 17 safest track surfaces in North America from 2020-22 were dirt. These top third of performing tracks already are in line with international standards.
While strides in the study of track surfaces were applauded—the study found improved track maintenance is associated with lower fatality rates—McKinsey noted that a move toward more technology in this area could provide further improvement. This technology would provide more frequent measurement updates—looking at track surfaces every half hour as opposed to once or twice a day—that would aid track superintendents in their decision-making.
McKinsey called for some expansion in the use of all-weather surfaces as opposed to dirt. The report said the best candidates for this change would be dirt surfaces that race in hot and cold temperatures and are heavily used in terms of racing and training. McKinsey said that converting six dirt tracks that land in this category to all-weather would result in an 8%-12% reduction in the overall fatality rate.
Read More: Top Priority, Racing’s Efforts to Improve Safety
Changes involving surfaces—whether a move to all-weather or improved maintenance—could yield significant change, as the 17 least-safe North American tracks account for 39% of equine fatalities.
While the EID does not identify individual horsemen, McKinsey applauded states such as New York and California for disclosing equine fatality rates for trainers who compete in those states. It called for such transparency on a national level and suggested that HISA would be in position to provide that information. Singer noted such information could provide an opportunity for the safest trainers to provide best practices and would create more accountability.
“It’s already the case in New York and California that the data on fatalities are published. You can go right now onto the website and search to your heart’s content and calculate statistics on frequency of fatality,” Singer said. “Our belief is, and this is based on a lot of interviews at tracks that have this, is that when you have accountability for fatalities you start to build a culture of safety where everyone works together to end or avoid fatalities.
“There’s more awareness, there’s more teamwork. The attending vets can work together to help trainers make good decisions for the health of the horse.”
Improvement in this area also could produce results as McKinsey found that 50 trainers at the low end of the safety record accounted for 13% of fatalities from just 5.7% of all starts.
McKinsey also called for further information on breeders and breeding, noting that 50 breeders at the low end of the safety scale accounted for 8.4% of all fatalities from just 4.2% of all starts.
Some of the areas of concern previously identified by EID study include races of six furlongs or shorter being more risky than longer races, geldings seeing a slightly elevated level of risk, the age of a horse’s first start (younger is better), and any stays on the vets’ list. In a Summit-opening presentation, Parkin noted that the EID now provides more depth to many of these issues.
For instance, a trip to the vets’ list increases a horse’s risk during racing but that risk is most acute in the first 30 days back from that stay and is further reduced the more time passes (although it never gets back to the level of a horse without a single trip to the vets’ list). The EID also can now gauge the severity of reasons for a horse’s stay on the vet’s list with more significant issues seeing increased risk.
A change in trainer previously was identified as a risk factor but the current model now goes deeper to note when that risk is most acute (the first start is highest, and first four starts are elevated). It also has shown a potential risk factor for horses who raced frequently with a previous trainer and are now racing less frequently with a new trainer.
While it’s been well documented that regulatory veterinarians are able to use these risk factors in determining which horses need further scrutiny in prerace exams, Parkin noted that the information also should be used by others. For instance, if a new trainer is aware of the added risk in a horse’s first four starts, he or she can provide added scrutiny of such horses.
“It’s not just for regulation. There’s plenty of use of this data. It can help owners and trainers understand the level of risk their horse has,” Parkin said. “Every horse has a different profile, which will contribute to the risk that horse has. Its risk profile will change as it goes through its racing career. At some point the owner or trainer may see that the risk profile has reached too high a level and then may make the decision to retire the horse.”
Short of retirement, the risk profiles also could point horsemen to which horses may need increased scrutiny before works or races or be candidates for wearable technology to track any subtle changes.
It’s the type of approach in today’s industry that has made a huge investment toward gathering information, determining what that information means, and putting it to use to improve equine safety.
