You'd think the Thoroughbred industry would have learned something from the death of 2006 Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro, who suffered what would ultimately be a fatal injury in the opening stages of that year's Preakness Stakes.
Or the 2008 death of Eight Belles, who was euthanized on the racetrack with two broken legs after finishing second in the Kentucky Derby.
Or the winter of 2011-'12 when 21 horses died at Aqueduct over a 3 1/2-month period.
Or the Southern California winter of 2019 when 29 horses lost their lives at Santa Anita.
In each case, good-faith efforts were made to get a better understanding of why horses suffer catastrophic injuries – sometimes at an alarming rate. And with that understanding came recommended changes to make racing a safer sport for horses and riders.
The high-profile injury to Barbaro, and the extraordinary efforts to save him, helped lead to a much-needed gathering of experts for the inaugural Welfare and Safety of the Racehorse Summit, organized by the Grayson-Jockey Club Research Foundation. Many good recommendations have come out of that regularly scheduled event, but scientists and veterinarians can't make or change policy.
From the death of Eight Belles and in cooperation with Welfare and Safety Summit leaders came the Equine Injury Database, managed by The Jockey Club. For the first time, the United States racing industry would collect and analyze racing statistics, including fatalities, giving it benchmark figures and an apparatus to search for data-driven solutions.
From the Aqueduct spike in fatalities came a governor-directed New York Task Force on Racehorse Health and Safety to study each incident, look for commonalities, and make recommendations for changes to regulatory and track officials.
And from the Santa Anita deaths, at the urging of Gov. Gavin Newsom, came the most stringent safety measures undertaken in North American racing, developed by track owner Belinda Stronach's management team and the California Horse Racing Board with the cooperation of horsemen. Those policies had a dramatic impact: Santa Anita went from 20 racing fatalities in 2019 to a low of four in 2022, according to Equine Injury Database statistics.
Now we have Churchill Downs, at the most high-profile moment in the racing year, dealing with the same problem. Churchill management's short-term solution, while making no sense from a practical standpoint but brilliant from a public relations perspective, was to move racing 130 miles west from the Louisville home of the Kentucky Derby to Ellis Park. Out of sight, out of mind.
But it's almost as if Churchill Downs management and its horsemen, along with the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission, were unaware of some of the risk factors identified by the Equine Injury Database, the recommendations from the New York Task Force, or the policies put in place in California. Kentucky racing has progressed in many ways, including safety enhancements, but it didn't go as far as it could have.
Perhaps Kentucky horsemen and its regulators (which overlap considerably) feel there is a protective wall around the Bluegrass State, that such problems with equine fatalities and the public outcry that follow can't happen here. After all, Kentucky is the Thoroughbred capital of the world. If that's what they thought, however, they were wrong.
Instead of proactively looking to make its racing as safe as anywhere in the country, by taking from what is working elsewhere, Kentucky racing – and the sport in general – is now dealing with the wreckage of a public relations disaster. And make no mistake, there is a cumulative effect on the general public that builds from one spike in racing fatalities to another.
In the immediate aftermath of 12 deaths in a short period of time around the Kentucky Derby, the track's parent company announced the Churchill Downs racing office would now have performance standards required to enter a race – something that should have been done years ago – and that it would stop incentivizing horsemen to run no-hope horses to pad field size. It's a start, but there's more to be done.
The Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority was created to deal with this subject on a national basis, but there has to be a spirit of cooperation among all the parties –racetrack owners, horsemen, and state regulatory agencies – for this to work. Everyone has to buy in to the reforms. Making the sport as safe as possible will require a team effort, and it's not easy to do that when more than a dozen state horsemen's organizations, the National Horsemen's Benevolent and Protective Association, several racetracks and racing commissions have filed lawsuits in federal court in hopes of putting HISA out of business.
Kentucky's horse culture does not immunize itself from mainstream media scrutiny, which Churchill Downs and its horsemen have now learned can spread like wildfire.
Other states could be next in the firing line. If it can happen in Kentucky, it can happy anywhere. Don't repeat the mistakes from the past. Learn from them.
That's my view from the eighth pole.
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