In shock. That’s probably the best answer to the question of how racing people felt as the 2023 racing season at Saratoga Race Course ended. I’ll assume it wasn’t all that different from how people felt at Churchill Downs in the spring. And I know it’s the same feeling people walked away from the 2023 Preakness Day at Pimlico.
Horses suffered catastrophic injuries on big stages at Saratoga, Churchill and Pimlico this year, leaving a wide swath of people grasping for reasons why. Racing is supposed to be safer than it was. Fatality numbers have trended down for several years, in statistically significant scientific studies. Veterinary protocols are stricter. Horse welfare is a regular concern of everyone in the industry.
Then why did 2023 bring confidence-rattling calamity on the scale of Ruffian, Go for Wand, Eight Belles? Over and over. Nobody knows. Not for sure. And that might be the biggest issue with trying to do something about it. That might also be racing’s biggest opportunity. There are so many factors at play – breeding, training, the sales, racing surfaces, medication, diagnostics, veterinary practices, race-riding, race conditions, weather, schedules, regulation – that the sport might actually be able to do something about the problem.
When discussions turn to these topics, cost frequently becomes a talking point but I’m not buying it. Many states granted the Thoroughbred industry lifelines when connecting revenue from slot machines and alternative gaming sources to purse funds, breeder incentives and facility improvements. As a result, purses have never been higher and are up 10 percent (average by race day) over last year through August. In many cases, some of that money funds horse safety and welfare. More of it should.
In New York, Belmont Park is being reconstructed to include a synthetic racetrack to complement its dirt and turf courses. The same scenario could be coming for Saratoga. Florida’s Gulfstream Park did it a few years ago. Presque Isle Downs in Pennsylvania, Turfway Park in Kentucky and Woodbine in Canada all use synthetic tracks, as do several training centers. There is no doubting the safety record of synthetic tracks, and they should be a part of American racing. Part of. Nobody should be trying to convert all dirt tracks to synthetic the way California knee-jerked itself into a bind in the mid 2000s, but dismissing the concept is akin to telling the world you’re OK with horses dying on the racetrack.
While we’re on the subject of racetrack surfaces, don’t stop trying to make dirt and turf courses safer. Slow the races down, somehow. Card longer races, somehow. The two big-stage fatalities at Saratoga – Maple Leaf Mel in the Test-G1 and New York Thunder in the Allen Jerkens-G1 – were 7-furlong races that started with half-miles in :44 and change. Would the horses still be in their barns if that fraction started with a :45 or :46? We’ll never know.
Deeper in this magazine you’ll see an article about StrideSAFE, software that collects data about horses’ strides and gaits. A smartphone-sized device in a saddle towel of a horse training and/or racing can detect minute changes that could signal a pending injury – before it happens. Churchill Downs and other tracks have tested the system, and the potential could be game-changing. It’ll take further data collection, a bigger embrace from owners and trainers, and continued refinement of the software, but there’s something there.
Technology and data will be part of any progress on racehorse safety. Racing should harness it, in as many ways as possible.
Dr. Luis Castro, a racetrack veterinarian in Florida and New York and a frequent on-call veterinarian for live television coverage of racing (meaning he explains racehorse injuries to the public, live, under pressure, when it counts) pointed toward another tool in the aftermath of Saratoga. At 9:43 p.m. Aug. 26 – about five hours after New York Thunder died – Castro posted on social media about expanded use of PET scanners and received more than 17,000 views on Twitter. Traffic wasn’t the point. Utilizing a better tool, one that exists and works, to find issues before they become life-threatening to horses was.
A positron emission tomography scan uses a radioactive tracer to discover changes to bones that might not otherwise appear in an X-ray, CT scan or physical examination. The day after New York Thunder’s death, I talked to Castro for more than an hour about PET scans and scanners. He wants one in New York. He wants one at as many racetracks and training facilities as possible. He thinks PET scans help diagnose and prevent catastrophic injuries. He tried to explain the technology to me – well, he explained it and I tried to understand it – and I’ll write about it next month.
In wildly basic terms, he compared the various diagnostic imaging tools veterinarians (and doctors use) to mapping. A topographical map of a volcano, for example, will show you where everything is – the crater, the peak, the valleys and various undulations on all sides – but can’t tell you much about the lava, which is the important stuff. X-rays and other tools can show horses’ joints and bones. A PET scan can show what’s going on inside joints and bones.
As with a volcano, the sooner the better.
