Last year's meet at Rillito Park generated the kinds of headlines no racetrack wants. The track saw seven deaths from 63 races in the first four weeks of its meet, several of which came on opening weekend.
This year's season was a different story.
The Arizona Department of Gaming has the track's 2023 record officially as showing two fatalities during the meet, but Rillito management considers that the meet was free of any racing-related deaths. Dr. Ed Ackerly, president of the Rillito Park Foundation, points out that neither fataility was related to musculoskeletal injury sustained during racing. One was a Quarter Horse who died in the gate; a subsequent necropsy showed the horse died of natural causes. The other was a Thoroughbred who was overcome with heat exhaustion and died after being vanned back to the barn.
Either way, the improvement is significant from the prior season.
It corresponds to additional veterinary resources Arizona tracks have had so far this year.
“If I had to try to attribute that to anything, I think that again, I did have a second veterinarian working alongside me with pre-race exams during the months of March, April, and May,” said Dr. Sue Gale, equine medical director for Arizona at a meeting of the Arizona Racing Commission in May. “All the horses were getting complete exams.”
Between March and May, there were 41 horses scratched from races for lameness and added to the veterinarian's list.
Although statewide racing fatalities in Arizona are still higher than the national average recorded by the Equine Injury Database, Gale points out that the state is trending lower than in past years. For the fiscal year 2023, overall Thoroughbred fatalities are at 2.24 per 1,000 starts compared to 2.59 last year. (The national average for 2022 was 1.25.) Turf Paradise is down to 2.14 versus 2.31 last year; Arizona Downs showed an increase from 0.97 last year to 2.17 this year but that was prompted by one additional death in its very short meet.
Since Arizona resumed cooperation with the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority, it has adopted a void claim policy, which historically it did not maintain. From March until May, the state recorded 100 claims at Turf Paradise, nine of which were voided, and 14 claims at Rillito, none of which were voided.
Rillito's figure was down to 1.64 fatalities per 1,000 starts (if the two non-musculoskeletal deaths are included) this year compared to over 10 last year in what Gale called a “tremendous improvement from one year to the next.”
Rillito Park general manager Mike Weiss said that a trial use of the StrideSafe sensor helped veterinarians provide additional screening for horses who may be at risk of injury. StrideSafe relies on motion sensors to detect changes in a horse's motion and provides a green, amber, or red rating for a performance demonstrating how much deviation the horse's movement showed from normal.
Complete data can't be released publicly since the use of the sensors was part of an academic study, but Weiss said the trial, which cost $45,000 for 18 race days, was an encouraging first experience from the track's perspective.
“Because this was an experiment and it wasn't official, we didn't take the red ratings and put it straight onto a veterinarian's list,” said Weiss. “However, we contacted the trainer and said, 'Your horse red-lighted; we'd like you to have a vet look at the horse prior to re-entry.' If or when the horse did enter, whether it was weeks or whatever later, we had our own equine wellness program in place where we had vet students and vets pre-check every single horse. They went through every horse anyways, with the direction, 'Do not be afraid to scratch. This is about safety. This is about equine wellness.'”
Support our journalism
If you appreciate our work, you can support us by subscribing to our Patreon stream. Learn more.For StrideSafe CEO Dr. David Lambert, the trial at Rillito demonstrated a useful shift in culture for the trainers and veterinarians who received the data. He's hopeful that the system, which provides better readings the more times an individual horse is monitored, will ultimately create a mentality of collaboration between regulatory vets, private vets, and trainers to get horses the diagnostics they may need and avoid many musculoskeletal fatalities.
“I think the thing that was most rewarding about it was the way in which the culture changed, right in front of my eyes,” he said. “When we showed up, there was a lot of resistance. But when we started giving the information to the veterinarians and they'd talk to the trainers, explaining the kinds of things we'd seen. Instead of pushing back, they started absorbing things and taking a look at their horses in greater detail.
“It only took one or two of them to find things and it spread a little bit like wildfire around the place that this was revealing stuff.”
Lambert said the sensor picked up on one abnormal run from a horse who ended up having a chip in a fetlock. Another horse got an unusual rating while moving through a turn, and was later found to have a broken tooth which had cut into the horse's cheek on one side, inhibiting steering.
“These little unique anecdotes got the ball rolling a little bit and people were interested,” said Lambert. “Trainers were very curious to learn more. I think they were pleased when they learned we weren't scratching horses. This isn't a technique to scratch a horse. What it is really, how I want them to look at it, this is a post-race welfare and soundness assessment. If trainers and owners can see it in that way, and see it as an early warning system that something just shook loose, that changes the feeling behind it. If the trainers start looking at it as one more hoop to jump through, that scares them, but it's not for that. If we just get the information to go to the trainer, that's it. It doesn't need to go anywhere else.”
The post With Extra Veterinary Help And StrideSafe Sensors, Arizona’s Rillito Park Was Much Safer In 2023 appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.
