racing surfaces testing laboratory | Horse Racing Free Tips

HISA Review Finds A Multitude of Factors Contributed to Saratoga Fatalities

The Horse Racing Integrity and Safety Authority (HISA) on Thursday released the report covering its investigation of the rash of fatalities that occurred during the 2023 Saratoga meet. The report found some factors that may have contributed to the fatalities, while also concluding that there was no link that covered all 14 deaths.

“This report concludes that there are a multitude of risk factors that likely contributed to the fatalities during the 2023 Meet. These findings will drive HISA's data collection, recommended racetrack practices and regulatory scheme going forward.” the report concluded.

HISA examined several factors, including the racetrack surfaces, the potential impact of weather, the veterinary histories of the horses that broke down and the necropsy reports that were done following their deaths, the exercise history of each horse and a review of any potential HISA rule violations that may have contributed to the injuries.

The closest HISA came to pointing a finger at one particular factor was its conclusion that weather may have played a role. It was a particularly wet meet at Saratoga with 11.03 inches of rain coming down during the racing season. In 2022, 7.76 inches of rain fell.

“…the significantly increased rainfall during the 2023 Meet compared to previous years cannot be overlooked and available data suggests that the rainfall could have played a role in the increased risk of fatal injury during the 2023 Meet,” the report read. “HISA is working cooperatively with the Racing Surfaces Testing Laboratory to collect and analyze additional track surface data to better understand the effects of weather on racetrack maintenance.”

Three of the 11 horses that suffered fatal musculoskeletal injuries received corticosteroid injections in the affected joint within 30 days of racing. HISA is in the process of trying to change its rules regarding corticosteroids so that they cannot be injected into a horse within 30 days of it racing.

HISA also discovered that there may be red flags associated with horses who undergo an excessive amount of exercise.

“…an analysis of the exercise histories of the deceased horses showed that horses having participated in more frequent high intensity exercise and furlongs were 2.5 times more likely than the control group to be injured.”

The report also found that one of the horses that suffered a fatal injury was on the veterinarians list as unsound at the time of the injury. Two others had previously spent time on the vets list.

Following the report, NYRA Vice President for Communications Pat McKenna issued a statement, which read: “Continuously improving equine safety is a fundamental responsibility shared among racetrack operators, regulators, trainers, breeders and owners. HISA's review of the 2023 summer meet at Saratoga Race Course enhances our understanding of the myriad factors that may contribute to injuries sustained during training or racing.”

“To prevent serious injuries before they happen, NYRA is embracing science and technology to provide veterinarians and trainers with the tools necessary to identify underlying conditions and further reduce the frequency of equine injuries. Beyond the adoption of biometric wearables and artificial intelligence, NYRA is working with the University of Kentucky and Racing Surfaces Testing Laboratory to expand our understanding of how weather conditions impact racetrack performance. Ensuring the safety of horses and jockeys competing on the NYRA circuit is our highest priority, and we thank HISA for investing the time and resources to develop an informative review of the 2023 summer meet.”

The post HISA Review Finds A Multitude of Factors Contributed to Saratoga Fatalities appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

Source of original post

Q&A on Churchill/Ellis with Track Surfaces Expert Mick Peterson

Dr. Michael “Mick” Peterson, Jr. is the executive director of the independent Racing Surfaces Testing Laboratory. He is a mechanical engineer who is widely considered the preeminent track surface specialist in North America.

His team has conducted the ongoing testing at Churchill Downs, and it will be tasked this week with being sure Ellis Park is ready to handle a race meet in expedited fashion while also helping out with the continued surface analysis at Churchill.

TDN spoke with Peterson early Friday evening in the wake of the 12 horse deaths at Churchill that caused that track's corporate ownership to move a portion of its remaining spring meet to Ellis, which has not hosted racing since last summer. An edited version of that conversation follows.

TDN: Please describe your team's role, what's been done so far at Churchill, and what are the next steps at both Churchill and Ellis.

MP: I'm a professor at the University of Kentucky, and the university has set up with the racing industry to allow me to spend half of my time running the non-profit Racing Surfaces Testing Laboratory in Lexington. We now have six full-time people, and we work for the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act (HISA) Authority doing testing. We also work for racetracks doing testing, and we do materials testing. Our standards, quite a few of them, have been adopted as international standards. Others, we're working on getting them accepted as international standards.

Our next priority is to do anything we can to help Churchill, and to evaluate the Ellis surface for HISA, because we're moving there and we need to make sure, to the extent that we can, that [Ellis is ready and safe to race].

We've got this really systematic “pre-flight” process we go through before each race meet. We did our testing 2 1/2 months ago to get ready for the Churchill race meet, and then we repeated it after [GI Kentucky] Derby week. It involves ground-penetrating radar, biomechanical surface testing, and we measure grades.

At the start of the race meet, everything looked good. It looked good after the Derby, too. We just didn't see anything out of whack.

I'm not going to pretend we know everything. That's not a part of what we're doing. We can work on consistency. But we've still got a lot to learn about safety. And that's really the wonderful thing about HISA. We're going to be doing this now at a [nationwide] scale, and it won't depend on who the general manager [at any given track] is. It will be every [track] just does the same thing.

So I've been thinking we're on the cusp of something good. And then the [12 fatalities at Churchill] happen, and it just makes you think, “What don't we know? What are we missing?”

TDN: What's next?

MP: At Churchill, we'll go back and I suspect we'll do some more testing. [West Coast track surfaces consultant] Dennis Moore has finished up [a round of testing this week], and I just talked to him right before you called, and we're just making sure we understand everything that we're looking at. He hasn't found anything of any note there. But we're going to keep looking.

What we're scheduling now [at Churchill] is the same testing we do for every other racetrack. We'll be doing 72 tracks this year according to the schedule. And we'll be doing the same thing at Ellis. Ellis was on the schedule for next week anyway. We're just going to [expedite] it, and if we find anything, we'll fix it. It's a seasonal track, so it's got its own set of challenges. My understanding is that before the announcement, [Churchill representatives] were over there [to try to figure out if Ellis] was ready.

I think [moving the meet to Ellis] is a good thing. We've got to figure out what was going on [at Churchill] and look at everything. And I don't mean just the track: Horse population, the history of the horses, et cetera.

TDN: Ellis hasn't hosted racing since last summer. Most dormant dirt tracks get rolled and compacted when not in use, then gradually get opened up with harrows prior to the meet starting. Where are they in that process?

MP: I don't know. We need to follow up. We just got the announcement [Friday]. But keep in mind that Del Mar, which incidentally, is a dirt track that has been the safest major track in North America for the last couple of years, they've got the [San Diego County Fair] on that [compacted] surface until like a week and a half before [racing begins].

What we generally say is the trick is to do three days of simulated racing, [which can be condensed into] a 24-hour period. We're talking watering, harrowing [and that repeated cycle]. That's how we make sure that the track is fully set up. Dennis Moore is the one who has probably perfected that.

TDN: Back in 2014-15, when Aqueduct had a spate of 12 catastrophic fatalities, TDN interviewed several veterinarians who suggested that absent of any identifiable problems, the deaths could be explained statistically as a “bad run of numbers.” That can make mathematic sense, but the theory tends not to go over well when people are demanding quick answers and causes. Could that be the case at Churchill?

MP: Remember, I'm not a veterinarian. I'm not even close. I'm a PhD engineer. But I'm pretty good with numbers. [And] if you look at this, this absolutely [could be what the New York vets] were talking about.

TDN: You've been working on track safety for the better part of three decades. Given the more intense focus on horse deaths, do you find increased pressure to come up with “magic bullet” types of answers to difficult, multi-factorial problems?

MP: The comparison that I like to make is that what I do is like the National Transportation Safety Board when they have a train derailment. I'm one of the pieces that goes into the puzzle for them to understand it so they can respond and do the analysis. But it isn't going to be just one piece. It's going to [involve] necropsy results. The drug testing. The past performances of the horses. The training history. All those pieces fit together, and then that's what a good post-mortem exam is going to look like.

It doesn't happen quickly, and it's probably way slower than it should [be], which is something that I think HISA has got to focus some effort on. But my role is to give them the track part of it. I think we've gotten to where we do a better job at that than we did. I'm not 100% satisfied. But we're working on it.

TDN: What, specifically, are you working on that could be a future game-changer?

MP: We have a prototype of a sensor that goes on the harrow, and it will give us moisture content and cushion depth in real time between every race. That really will be a “black box” that goes with the overall process. [Think of] our pre-meet testing as the pre-flight checklist. As we go forward, our goal is to make [the sensor] the black box [like the one that records in-flight data]. That's where we're headed. For better or worse, these are the sorts of events that [spur] progress.

The post Q&A on Churchill/Ellis with Track Surfaces Expert Mick Peterson appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

Source of original post

Lazarus: No Need to Shut Down Racing at Churchill…At Least for Now

With the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority (HISA) having called a veterinary summit to try to get to the bottom of what is going on at Churchill Downs, where 12 horses have died since Apr. 27, HISA CEO Lisa Lazarus said Tuesday that she is hopeful some answers will emerge in the days ahead that will help explain the situation. In the meantime, though, she said her group is not ready to recommend that racing be halted at the home of the Kentucky Derby.

“That is one of the things we are trying to determine through this process,” she said when asked about a potential shutdown. “Given that nothing was flagged or clearly a concern from the surface standpoint, that was not an action we thought was necessary or appropriate at this time.”

Of the 12 horses that have died, seven died as the result of musculoskeletal issues while racing on the main track. Another death occurred on the turf course.

Lazarus said that Dr. Mick Peterson, the executive director of Racing Surfaces Testing Laboratory, has been to Churchill a number of times over the last month to examine the racing surface and has not uncovered any problems with it. She said additionally that several jockeys and trainers based at Churchill Downs have been interviewed by the HISA team and that none expressed any issues with the track.

“We have been talking extensively to jockeys and to trainers to try to determine if they believe anything is different with the track,” Lazarus said. “What has been so challenging is that I have not had a single jockey or trainer tell me they believe the track is a factor in these fatalities. That's why we have to approach this from different angles and perspectives.”

She said that Dennis Moore, a track consultant and the long-time track superintendent at Santa Anita, has also been brought in to look at the racing surfaces and to be a “second set of expert eyes.”

Should Moore or anyone else brought in to take part in the veterinary summit come up with reasons why Churchill should cease racing, Lazarus said that HISA does not have the authority to force the track to shut down.

“Under the rules, we do not have the authority to make a racetrack stop racing,” she said. “We can deprive the racetrack from being able to send out their simulcasting signal. I can tell you I have had multiple, long conversations with top-ranked executives at Churchill Downs over the weekend and they are really committed to doing the right thing. My strong view is that if we were to make a recommendation to Churchill Downs to shut down racing that they would accept that recommendation.”

In addition to the inspection of the track surface, those taking part in the veterinary summit–a list that includes veterinarians and other experts representing Churchill Downs, the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission and HISA–will look at a number of other potential factors that may help explain the cluster of breakdowns. Lazarus said that other issues that will be examined will be veterinary review and veterinary oversight and the possible misuse of medications.

“Because there is no discernable pattern among the fatalities that have occurred at Churchill Downs since late April, veterinary oversight is the most important piece of the puzzle that we have called for,” she said.

It is quite possible that those who have come together under the HISA umbrella to take a look at the rash of breakdowns will not come up with any firm conclusions. Lazarus recognized that that might end up being the case, but she said she was confident that if there are any underlying problems that explain why so many horses have broken down recently at Churchill, the team brought in will find them.

“We have the best people in place with the greatest amount of access and knowledge that are coming together,” she said. “That's why we're having this summit, to make the right decisions going forward. I really trust this group implicitly and that's why I have tasked them with this process. I believe they will come up with the right next steps.”

The post Lazarus: No Need to Shut Down Racing at Churchill…At Least for Now appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

Source of original post

Racecourse Manager Certification Program To Launch In June At University Of Kentucky

The National Thoroughbred Racing Association (NTRA), the University of Kentucky College of Agriculture, Food and Environment, and the Racing Surfaces Testing Laboratory (RSTL) announced Friday the dates for the launch of a joint initiative offering a Racecourse Manager Certification from the University of Kentucky.

The initial three-course program, entitled “Turfgrass as an Equine Sports Surface,” is designed for those already engaged in careers with turf surface maintenance. Free online classes will begin June 7 and will be archived. Individuals who complete the video courses and pass a test that requires a $50 fee will receive a certificate of completion from the University of Kentucky. Participating Thoroughbred racetracks that enroll their personnel will receive credit toward future accreditation by the NTRA Safety & Integrity Alliance.

The “Turfgrass as an Equine Sports Surface” courses are:
June 7: Selection of Turf for Climate Zones
June 14: Cultivation of Turf for Compaction and Wear
June 21: Measurement of Turf Condition

The curriculum for the turf management course was developed by Michael “Mick” Peterson, Ph.D., Director of the Racetrack Safety Program at the University of Kentucky and Executive Director of the Racing Surfaces and Testing Laboratory (RSTL). Other participants in the online courses include turf experts:

Mike Boekholder, Boekholder & Associates;
Logan Freeman, Mountain Branch Golf Club, Joppa Maryland;
Michael Goatley, Jr., Ph.D., Professor and Extension Turfgrass Specialist, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University;
Beth Guertal, Ph.D., Professor of Crop, Soil and Environmental Sciences, Auburn University;
Gregg Munshaw, Ph.D., Director of Agronomy, Mountain View Seeds; and
Geoffrey Rinehart, MS, Turfgrass Management Lecturer, University of Maryland.

Participating experts in equine biomechanics include:

Dr. Sarah Jane Hobbs, University of Central Lancashire;
Alison Northrop, Nottingham Trent University; and
Lars Roepstorff, Swedish University of Agriculture.

Racing industry leaders participating include:

Brian Jabelman, Senior Director of Track Operations, New York Racing Association;
Jim Pendergest, Director of Racing Surfaces, Keeneland Racetrack;
Jamie Richardson, Racetrack Superintendent, Churchill Downs; and
Sean Gault, Equine Racing Specialist, DCS & Associates.

Individuals interested in receiving additional information and pre-enrolling for the online sessions can visit https://www.ntra.com/rmcp/.

“This is exactly the type of collaboration we envisioned when the Racing Surfaces and Testing Laboratory (RSTL) joined forces with the University of Kentucky Ag Equine Programs. The benefits of this interaction are undeniable as we seek to further protect the welfare of the horse and develop the industry's future workforce,” said NTRA President and Chief Executive Officer Alex Waldrop.

“We have assembled a powerhouse line-up of instructors to cover multiple equine disciplines ranging from turf racing to polo to eventing,” said Peterson. “This will be a science-based curriculum for individuals who are serious about their profession and desire to be leaders in their chosen fields. We are starting with a turf curriculum, but future modules will focus on all types of surfaces and will include hands-on training with track maintenance equipment.”

“We are thrilled to see this program get off the ground and appreciate the support of NTRA. Our college has a strong commitment to getting our best information out to those in the real world who can use it,” said Nancy Cox, UK Vice President for Land Grant Engagement and College of Agriculture, Food and Environment Dean.

“The science driving progress on racing safety includes not only the horses and riders themselves, but also clearly the racing surfaces on which they compete. It is exciting to see the optimization and application of knowledge from turfgrass science applied to the management challenges of turf racing,” said James MacLeod, director of UK Ag Equine Programs and Elizabeth A. Knight chair and professor of veterinary science at the Gluck Equine Research Center.

About the Racing Surfaces Testing Laboratory
The Racing Surfaces Testing Laboratory is a non-profit (501c3) organization that carries out on-site and laboratory testing and data services for surfaces used for horse racing and equine sports. Founded in 2009, the lab is able to compare data from a wide range of surfaces used in the horse racing industry including dirt, turf and synthetic track surfaces. In 2020 the mission of the laboratory was expanded through a major gift which will allow improved on-site testing capabilities and expanded database services. In addition to racetrack testing and the development of tools to improve the consistency of the surfaces, the laboratory works with the University of Kentucky on the study of alternative racetrack surfaces and equipment, and the development and the development and promotion of standards for racetrack surfaces. All of these efforts are focused on increased consistency of racing surfaces as a part of broader efforts for the protection of horses and riders.

About the University of Kentucky Ag Equine Programs
UK Ag Equine Programs serves as the front door to equine work being done at the University of Kentucky, representing the breadth and depth of all things equine in the College of Agriculture, Food and Environment. It exemplifies the college's long-term commitment to serving the equine industry and horse enthusiasts regionally, nationally and internationally.

About the Equine Sports Turfgrass Alliance
The Equine Sports Turfgrass Alliance, (ESTA) is a recently formed group of university and industry turfgrass experts in partnership with Dr. Mick Peterson. ESTA as an organization is dedicated to conducting research and providing education about turfgrass surfaces for racetrack, eventing, polo and other-use equine surfaces. This education event is their first offering. However, future research and educational opportunities for horse owners, trainers and equine facility managers are currently being developed. It is the goal of ESTA to bring science-backed maintenance practices to the forefront of equine turfgrass systems.

About the NTRA Safety & Integrity Alliance
The NTRA Safety & Integrity Alliance is a standing organization formed in 2008 with the goal of establishing national uniform standards in the areas of safety and integrity. Alliance accreditation standards cover six broad areas: (1) injury reporting and prevention; (2) creating a safer racing environment; (3) aftercare and transition of retired racehorses; (4) uniform medication, testing and penalties; (5) safety research; and (6) wagering security. The standards are revised annually to adopt new and progressively more stringent requirements.

About the NTRA
The NTRA, based in Lexington, Ky., is a broad-based coalition of more than 100 horse racing interests and thousands of individual stakeholders consisting of horseplayers, racetrack operators, owners, breeders, trainers and affiliated horse racing associations, charged with increasing the popularity, welfare and integrity of Thoroughbred racing through consensus-based leadership, legislative advocacy, safety and integrity initiatives, fan engagement and corporate partner development. The NTRA owns and manages the NTRA Safety & Integrity Alliance; NTRA.com; the Eclipse Awards; the National Horseplayers Championship (NHC); NTRA Advantage, a corporate partner sales and sponsorship program; and Horse PAC®, a federal political action committee. NTRA press releases appear on NTRA.com and social media.

The post Racecourse Manager Certification Program To Launch In June At University Of Kentucky appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

Source of original post