Robin Goodfellow’s Racing Tips: Best bets for Thursday, December 16
Sportsmail's racing expert Robin Goodfellow dishes out his tips for Thursday's meetings at Exeter, Ffos Las, Southwell and Chelmsford City.
Month: December 2021
‘Can’t Ignore These Injury Rates’: CHRB Grants Golden Gate Six-Month License With Increased Monitoring
At Wednesday's meeting of the California Horse Racing Board, the Daily Racing Form reports that discussion centered around the equine fatality rate at Golden Gate Fields in Berkeley, Calif. Seventeen racehorses have died in racing (four) or training (13) at Golden Gate this year, with four fatalities coming during an eight-day span in November.
In March of 2021, Golden Gate was the site of an on-track protest against horse racing organized by Direct Action Everywhere (DXE), whose spokesperson Cassie King, said DXE was spurred to action by the deaths of three horses during a recent four-week period.
CHRB vice chairman Oscar Gonzales introduced a motion to grant Golden Gate a three-month license in order to review its safety policies, but that measure failed on a vote of 3-4. Instead, commissioner Dennis Alfieri suggested monitoring the track's safety record every 30 days, and a six-month license was approved on a vote of 4-3 (racing from Dec. 26 to June 14, 2022).
Gonzales, Wendy Mitchell, and Brenda Washington-Davis voted against the six-month license. Alfieri, Damascus Castellanos, Alex Solis, and chairman Dr. Greg Ferraro voted for it.
Ferraro said he had traveled to Golden Gate with executive director Scott Chaney and equine medical director Jeff Blea to talk about the injuries.
“We can't ignore these injury rates,” Ferraro said. “We're willing to work with them and try to improve the situation.”
At last December's meeting of the CHRB, the fatality rate at Los Alamitos (29 in a one-year period) came under scrutiny when preparing to grant that track's race dates for the year. Board members voted to grant the track a six-month license, instead of one year. In January 2021, after Los Al enacted a series of protocols to improve safety, the CHRB voted to restore a full-year license with enhanced scrutiny.
Read more at the Daily Racing Form.
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Medina Spirit’s Necropsy ‘Currently Underway’
Medina Spirit's necropsy is “currently underway” and a report on last week's sudden death of the GI Kentucky Derby winner is expected to be publicly released by mid-February, California Horse Racing Board (CHRB) equine medical director Dr. Jeff Blea said Wednesday.
“Completion of sudden death case file reports takes weeks and months to complete due to the in-depth level of analysis involved, and we fully expect a final report in this case in approximately two months,” Blea told commissioners at the Dec. 15 CHRB meeting.
“Tissue samples and specimens will be stored for further testing should the need arise,” Blea said.
Medina Spirit appeared sluggish then collapsed at Santa Anita Park after finishing a five-furlong workout Dec. 6.
The colt's admirable, overachieving career arc of going from a $1,000 yearling buy at a public auction to winning America's most important horse race only glowed for about a week before it was overshadowed by news that the Bob Baffert trainee had tested positive for an overage of betamethasone after winning the May 1 Derby.
No ruling has been issued for that 2021 Derby drug positive, although it has sparked a firestorm of controversy for occurring on the heels of four other Baffert horses testing positive for medication overages within the previous year, two of them in Grade I stakes.
“A sudden death in racing is defined as acute collapse and death in a closely observed and previously determined healthy Thoroughbred racehorse during or within one hour after exercise,” Blea said.
Like with all fatalities that occur on licensed CHRB premises necropsy, the regulatory agency is obligated to perform a necropsy and investigation.
Medina Spirit's necropsy is being carried out by pathologists at the California Animal Health and Food Safety Laboratory, which works in conjunction with the University of California (Davis) veterinary school.
That particular lab, Blea said, is “arguably one of the best in the country, if not the world.”
Blea explained that “Additional tissue specimens and samples will be shared with other departments at UC Davis, including toxicology, analytical chemistry, and genetics, as well as other university laboratories in the country to help determine the cause of death.”
But a definitive cause might never be known.
Blea called sudden death circumstances “frustrating,” and cited a published study that concluded only 53% of sudden equine deaths eventually turn up a definitive diagnosis. A presumptive cause of death is given 25% of the time, with the remaining 22% “unexplained,” he said.
The post Medina Spirit’s Necropsy ‘Currently Underway’ appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.
Researchers Move Closer To In-Life Diagnosis Of Disorder Caused By Traumatic Brain Injuries
A Boston University study has moved researchers closer to being able to diagnose one type of traumatic brain injury in living patients, reports the Boston Herald. Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, or CTE, is a disorder caused by repeated head trauma that first made headlines when several famous NFL players were diagnosed after their deaths. The disorder received additional headlines in 2015 with an Eclipse Award-winning Paulick Report feature about the dangers of multiple concussions for jockeys.
CTE can only be confirmed after a patient's death, but sufferers report dramatic mood shifts, cognition problems, and loss of coordination.
The new study utilized MRI scans of 55 deceased brain donors with CTE and 31 healthy brains, and showed that those with CTE had shrinkage of the brain in regions like the frontal lobe, temporal lobe and other structures such as the hippocampus, which has a major role in learning and memory.
Dr. Jesse Mez, study co-author, director of the Boston University Alzheimer's Disease Center, and a BU CTE Center investigator, explained that MRI might be able to be used to diagnose CTE in living patients. Diagnoses are vital for the development of treatments for the disorder.
“The only way we can develop a treatment is if we can diagnose it in life and have people with the diagnosis try the treatments,” said Dr. Mez.
A follow-up story in the Paulick Report in 2020 showed that the U.S. racing industry is still struggling with implementation of concussion protocols, and that some states have made more progress than others.
Read more about the Boston University CTE study at the Boston Herald.
The post Researchers Move Closer To In-Life Diagnosis Of Disorder Caused By Traumatic Brain Injuries appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.
