Tag: The Paddock

In “Making Claims,” Paulick Report bloodstock editor Joe Nevills shares his opinions on the Thoroughbred industry from the breeding and sales arenas to the racing world and beyond.

National coverage outside of the three Triple Crown weekends has been coveted by horse racing for as long as I've been following the sport, but what we've seen over the past weekend is likely not what anyone had in mind.

Mainstream attention to equine safety at Churchill Downs ramped up in intensity in the days leading up to the Kentucky Derby, and once that crack in the armor was established at one of the sport's flagship tracks, every ensuing death became an easy story for a variety of outlets to write. As the number went up, so too did the public pressure to act upon the situation.

If and when Churchill Downs Inc. decided to do something significant with its ongoing meet, it was going to be national news, and that's exactly what happened last Friday when the company moved the remainder of its spring meet in Louisville to Ellis Park.

In the long-term, the move to sleepier Henderson, Ky., far-flung from the spotlight of a metropolitan area, should cool things down a bit. In the short-term, the relocation would mean one last trip through the media cycle (for now, at least).

One piece of that puzzle was an appearance by Dr. Mick Peterson, director of the University of Kentucky's Racetrack Safety Program, speaking to anchor Jim Acosta on CNN on Saturday. Let's take a look at a clip from that, and the full text from the interview can be read here.

“What do you say to folks who think this is just an inhumane sport…?” @Acosta asked the Director of Racetrack Safety @universityofky, He said, “This sport needs to get better.” #ChurchillDowns suspended all horse racing after 12 horses died
In the past month. pic.twitter.com/jNPXpJLJAV

— Rebecca Aguilar (@RebeccaAguilar) June 4, 2023

Taking an informal straw poll of social media in the aftermath, I saw a fair bit of reactions dragging Dr. Peterson's responses, including some from people within the Thoroughbred industry. Those are the ones I found particularly disheartening.

If Dr. Peterson went out there with the hard-line stance of, “This is fine. Everything is fine,” he'd have been perpetuating the narrative that we truly don't care about the equine injuries and deaths that have occurred. That perceived refusal to address safety issues is part of what has gotten us into this public relations mess in the first place.

Trying to deny a problem, or discredit rational discussion on how to improve safety only furthers the “they don't care” argument.

On the other side of the coin, if Dr. Peterson, an expert in racetrack safety, went on CNN and said, “Yes, horse racing is inhumane,” he'd have signed the industry's death warrant on live television, giving anyone looking to kill a racetrack the exact clip they'd need to further their cause. Certainly, he knew that.

When I watched the interview, I noticed Dr. Peterson took his time with his answers, especially when Acosta dangled a pitfall-laden question like, “What do you say to people who think horse racing is an inhumane sport? Where it's gotten to the point where it's out of control?”

I think he realized the weight of his answers, given the medium and audience, and he chose his words carefully. It takes only seconds for words said out loud to appear on a chyron below your face on a news program, and he answered questions in a way that his words wouldn't get away from him. From the perspective of minimizing harm to horse racing's social license to operate, the interview couldn't have gone much better.

This is not a time for saber-rattling. If we only do that, we will lose, and we will eventually die. It's concerning how many people in this industry openly fail to acknowledge this. The situation with Churchill Downs has further displayed that the horse racing industry has lost control of its own narrative in the public forum – whether the people within it believe that to be true or not.

This is a time for making public, data-backed plans to improve, showing our work every step of the way, and following through on them. If we can do it without significant blocs of the industry trying to kick, scream, and sue their way out of it (further perpetuating the “they don't care about equine safety” argument), all the better. That's how we regain the narrative.

Take note that I said nothing about capitulation. I get the impression a lot of the resistance against measures to make racing safer are rooted at least somewhat in a fear of caving to the anti-racing activists, who will never be satisfied. I get that. That's not what I want, either.

Industry-linked scientists aren't activists. Young people in racing who are afraid there might not be a major U.S. Thoroughbred industry for them in 20 years (myself included) aren't activists. There are trustworthy people with a vested interest in the future of the industry who have fact-based ideas to keep the business alive. Don't push them away.

Most voters aren't activists, but they want to see racing do better with safety. Most congresspeople aren't activists, but they're going to legislate where the votes and lobbying dollars guide them. There are people who know nothing about horse racing whose votes could one day save the industry or push it into oblivion. Bring the front row seat to them. The “if the naysayers only came to the backstretch and saw how well the horses are treated” mentality is as hollow as it is impractical. Hearts and votes are won by outreach, not invitation.

I'm of the mind that there is a path forward between “concede nothing” and “cave to the activists.” If we lean too far either way, we're done for. Finding that balance, and acting upon it with earnestness, is the key to survival.

I wish I knew what the answer was to achieving that balance, but right now, we're at a point where getting a little attention from cable news is potentially life or death for the business as we know it.

We're nowhere close to balance, and there are too many people proudly tipping the scale toward “concede nothing” to make me confident that we'll find it anytime soon. Dr. Peterson was correct: The sport needs to get better. But first, its population must want to get better.

The post Making Claims: Let’s Talk About That CNN Interview With Dr. Mick Peterson appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

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Longtime owner and breeder Earle Mack wrote an op/ed for the Thoroughbred Daily News this week proposing a solution to the 12 fatalities at Churchill Downs and burgeoning public relations crisis facing the entire racing industry: a switch to synthetic surfaces.

“Tradition holds great power in our sport, with our most prestigious races historically being run on dirt tracks,” Mack wrote. “However, the stark and troubling statistics demand a shift in thinking. We must abandon old norms and embrace new practices that prioritize the safety and welfare of our noble equine athletes.  The benefits of synthetic tracks are not mere conjecture; they are a proven truth. Their superior safety record and fewer injuries make their adoption not just an option but an ethical imperative.”

Specifically, Mack called on the independent directors of the Churchill Downs Corporation to lead the way for a switch to synthetic surfaces, thereby “proactively and boldly addressing the crisis of equine safety instead of reacting to a growing regulatory and societal movement to ban the sport.”

Belmont Park is already installing a synthetic surface alongside its dirt course, Mack pointed out.

“Next year marks the historic 150th anniversary of the Triple Crown,” he concluded. “This milestone should be more than a nostalgic reflection on the past; it should be a fervent pledge for a safer future. A future where our sport remains a thrilling spectacle but also evolves into a beacon of safety, integrity, and respect for our equine athletes.”

Read more at the Thoroughbred Daily News.

The post Mack: Switching Triple Crown To Synthetic Surfaces Is ‘An Ethical Imperative’ appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

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If I've learned anything from our readership through the years, it's that it is human nature to seek answers in the wake of disappointment or confusion. People like simple, concise explanations for things they find upsetting. Unfortunately, horses (and horse racing) have taught me that reality is rarely so simple.

In each of the so-called fatality spikes that we've seen in the last decade – Aqueduct in 2011-12, Santa Anita in 2019, and now Churchill Downs – racing fans have been justifiably horrified and saddened, and wanted an explanation for why so many horses were lost in a short time. In the wake of the first two events, regulators, veterinarians and safety experts worked together to identify potential risk factors and to make new rules to better protect horses going forward. A racing fatality is thought to be a little like a plane crash in that there isn't just one reason it happens, but a cluster of risk factors converging at just the same time.

And what many of us tend to forget, therefore, is that even the most renowned minds in the field never were able to sketch us out an explanation as to why exactly the spikes in New York and California started when they did. What many people do seem to remember is roughly how many horses died, and that they felt badly about it.

I bring all this up because the difference between the Churchill spike and the others is that most of horse racing is now regulated by the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority, thanks to a federal law passed in 2020. People have pinned all kinds of hopes and fears onto the Authority, often without actually reading the law or the Authority's regulations first.

I feared at the time of its creation that people would believe this organization would mark an end to fatality spikes like we saw at Santa Anita, and it's probably true that those perilous months when racing was close to losing its social license to operate helped push the passage of the federal law. I've seen many people question in recent weeks why the Authority doesn't put a stop to the fatalities or why they don't shut down racing at Churchill Downs.

The reality is that the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act tasked the Authority with making safety and medication rules to promote safety and making those rules national, not specifically halting fatalities. The goal was to require states like Arizona, which has had a well-documented problem with higher-than-average fatalities and has outdated safety regulations, to come into line with states like California and Kentucky, which are among the strictest in these areas. It was also to bring together experts from a range of subject areas to constantly improve safety and medication rules based on data and scientific research, which is why they're monitoring the current Churchill situation so closely. And that's a good thing.

But the reality is that people wanted a centralized authority that would make racing safer. And “safer” means, on a practical level, something different to different people. I've always thought the Authority could do that, but maybe not immediately in the one way the public expected – by stopping these multiple fatality events from happening in the first place.

The Authority's racetrack safety arm tries to make the sport safer by codifying best practices and requiring all tracks to adhere to those practices in order to keep their legal ability to send out a simulcast signal. But in a state like Kentucky, a lot of those regulations were already in place before the Authority's existence. Between the state and the track, horses at Churchill are already subjected to pre-race veterinary examination, the required surface testing was already happening, and pre-race authorization from private veterinarians was already required. There's no evidence I'm aware of that the Authority's rules weren't followed this spring, and no reason they wouldn't have been, since they're not new to horsemen, vets, or track managers there.

That means that while Lazarus acknowledged the Authority could recommend Churchill pause racing if it found cause to do so, it can't independently choose to suspend racing there. It can (and is) leading discussion and investigation to try uncovering additional risk factors, and will probably use that information to inform the creation of new rules in the future. But if what you'd expected was either total prevention or unilateral control over an “emergency shutdown lever,” this solution is not that.

From a legal perspective, it's probably a challenging idea to map out a set of circumstances that could trigger an automatic shutdown of racing at a given facility. And rightly so. As Lazarus pointed out in a media call May 30, people's livelihoods rest on horses entering races and earning money. Many people live on the backstretch, which will only keep providing housing as long as horses are stabled there. A disruption in training/racing cycles could also, over time, alter a horse's skeletal remodeling and we don't know whether that would be a net loss for the horse's safety. It can't and probably shouldn't be that easy to bring things to a sudden, crashing halt.

But stakeholders must remember – these complexities don't seem relatable to much of the public, be they casual racing fans or once-a-year watchers of the Derby. They just want answers. And they want the breakdowns to stop.

The post Voss: On Churchill Fatalities, HISA, And The Answers We May Not Find appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

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