Month: August 2023

The Jockey Club's Thoroughbred Safety Committee issued two new recommendations at the breed registry's annual Round Table Conference on Matters Pertaining to Racing this week.

One recommendation urges public disclosure of the track surface measurements that racetracks are required to take by the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority. The national regulations require tracks to have a plan for daily tests of racing and training surfaces and to report those test results to the Authority within one week. These tests include geometry and slopes of straights and turns, cushion and base geometries, as well as daily monitoring of moisture content, cushion depth, weather, and penetration and shear (for turf tracks) at each quarter mile marker pole in at least two spots.

“The Thoroughbred Safety Committee today calls for that information to be frequently measured at periodic distances and made available to the public,” said Kristin Werner, senior counsel to The Jockey Club. “Working with other key industry stakeholders, especially the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority and the Racing Surfaces Testing Laboratory, The Jockey Club recommends exploring the best methods for providing the racing surface data to the horsemen and public, including through an app, website, or other electronic feed. As with all of its recommendations, The Jockey Club will help provide resources to ensure this recommendation is met.”

The other suggestion from the committee was that regulators should consider intervening in situations where trainers have two or more race-related fatalities in a short period of time. National regulations via HISA require that any on-track fatalities undergo a necropsy, and many states require a mortality review in which the equine medical director meets with the trainer to look at the horse's workout, race, and medical history to see whether the trainer could do anything differently in the future to prevent recurrence.

“The regulations suggested are not intended to be punitive,” Werner said. “Instead, the focus is on recognizing the trainer as a risk factor upon the occurrence of two or more race-related fatalities, and identifying opportunities for intervention, such as continuing education, rest, diagnostics, and veterinary consultation and care.

“In a similar fashion to other regulations in the realm of safety and integrity, the number of horses in a trainer's stable is not taken into consideration in applying the strategies. However, genuine accidents would not be included in the case criteria for intervention.”

Read our previous reporting on the ways mortality reviews can assist trainers and regulators for improved safety.

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The Jockey Club will begin a project to trace recently-retired horses as part of an attempt to improve traceability of first exit from racing. Kristin Werner, senior counsel to The Jockey Club, outlined the organization's coming efforts at today's Round Table.

The breed registry will reach out to last known racing connections for horses foaled in 2017 or earlier who have started in the past decade and whose status is not on record. This refers to horses that are not actively racing or breeding, were not officially registered as retired from racing, were not exported, do not have a Thoroughbred Incentive Program number and have not been reported dead.

Werner said the program will work to identify and exclude horses that have been adopted through a Thoroughbred Aftercare Alliance-accredited organization.

“Owners are reminded that they can, at any time and free of charge, update ownership information with The Jockey Club through Interactive Registration and should report deaths to the registry in a timely manner,” Werner noted.

Physical registration papers have been replaced with digital foal certificates starting with foals born in 2018 or after. These foal crops were also required to be microchipped rather than have lip tattoos applied to improve traceability since tattoos can become difficult to read as the horse ages. The Jockey Club will contact the digital certificate managers for horses whose status is unknown to find out where they are, although Werner did not detail what the group will do with that information. The registry's online system will also trigger a prompt in its software that will go to certificate managers for horses born in 2018 and after whose status isn't officially registered with the organization. The prompt will include an explanation about why it was triggered and ask the user to select a response indicating the horse's status.

“When they have submitted a response, the certificate manager will be sent a message related to their selection, including how to transfer the digital certificate or complete the Transferred as Retired from Racing process, or aftercare resources for those horses consigned to non-racing auctions or sales,” said Werner. “In addition to collecting the data, the database will include a reporting function to monitor failures to reply and analyze the responses to assist with aftercare efforts.”

The breed registry has also made the process of transferring a horse as retired from racing digital. While it previously required that a seller and buyer submit a notarized signature in hard copy along with the physical foal registration papers, digital signature verification enables those transfers to happen online. This registration status means that someone cannot buy a horse at the track under the auspices of transitioning the horse to a second career and then put it back into training to race.

“Though much progress has been made in the area of Thoroughbred aftercare, we continue to see Thoroughbreds at low-end auctions, in kill pens, and in cruelty or neglect situations,” she said. “This population includes horses that do not enter the breeding or racing population, horses retired from racing, horses retired from breeding, and horses exiting the sport horse and recreational riding population.”

Kill pens and “bail pens” purport to offer time-sensitive sales of horses to the general public before the horses are allegedly shipped across the Canadian or Mexican borders for the purposes of slaughter. Pens will set tight deadlines for sales and provide no opportunity for veterinary or other inspection of horses before they're allegedly shipped. (It remains unclear how many of these pens do indeed send horses over the border, as horse exports for slaughter have dropped significantly in the past 10 to 15 years.) Thoroughbreds often command higher prices than other breeds when sold via online bail pen groups because they're easily identified and can be traced back to a racing or breeding record, resulting in higher social media engagement on their sale posts. We've reported extensively on the bail pen economy. Read previous coverage here.

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