The mainstream media's interest in racing-related fatalities spilled into a different region last week as NJ Advance Media published an extensive investigative feature about equine deaths and welfare concerns at Monmouth Park in New Jersey.
(If you missed it, you can read their investigation here.)
Racing insiders could no doubt spot some errors – the original version of the story attributed Ruffian's fatal breakdown to the flight of a bird from the infield, and indicated SGF-1000 was used to reduce horses' heart rate – but the overarching premise was similar to coverage of the spike in fatalities this spring at Churchill Downs and several seasons ago at Santa Anita Park. Reporters found that Monmouth's fatality rate has risen over the past three seasons and that last year it tracked higher (2.05 deaths per 1,000 starts) than the national average (1.25 per 1,000 starts).
The authors (totally fairly) also point out that Monmouth was the haven for former trainers Jason Servis and Jorge Navarro, who both pleaded guilty to a felony and whose wiretapped conversations revealed they made friends with security personnel at various tracks to avoid being found when doping their horses. They note the decline in on-track attendance and handle, and the desperately-needed cash infusion casino revenue and state subsidies brought to prop up the racing business in New Jersey. It's not the same as the obituaries mainstream media wrote for Greyhound racing in the past few years, but there are certainly similar themes.
You could criticize the article for describing in detail (as so many mainstream pieces have done) the horror of the moments in which a horse falters and is swept up by tarps to hide an anxiety-riddled end to their life. But in reality, that's what stays with people. That's what sticks out to a reporter who's delving into our world for the first time, and it's probably what sticks out to a fan, too.
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If you appreciate our work, you can support us by subscribing to our Patreon stream. Learn more.Plenty of thinkpieces have already been written on the problem of risk and injury in racing; I don't need to rehash the agony of the simultaneous truths that the industry must work to get its fatal injury rate down to 0, while knowing that there is no way to remove all risk from a high-impact equine sport.
I was as much concerned about the depiction of life on the backstretch for horses as I was about the details provided about their deaths.
“Some jockeys encourage horses with kissing sounds and feed them apples or carrots; others chide them as idiots, whip them harshly and pull their chains. Safety measures have vacillated of late. In 2021, the New Jersey Racing Commission banned whipping by jockeys, which was the most stringent restriction in the country; in 2022, the ban was rescinded. During this summer's meet, there is a 4-year-old gelding who races under the name U Kant Whip It, and chart writers refer to whipping as “urging” in their summations. If the animals do not move into starting gates by choice, crew members lock arms and push them forcefully. Horses spend nearly 23 hours per day in 12 x 12 stalls.”
Racing spends a lot of time and money worrying about the most obvious public relations problem – racing and training-related fatalities. But the watchdogs, the public, the mainstream media and the animal rights groups have their pick of problematic welfare issues they can point out when they choose to. I think most insiders assume aftercare is the other big problem we may have in the eyes of the public, as ex-racehorses or former breeding stock still end up in bail pens around the country, but the way active racehorses live may eventually be a liability, too.
Horses living at many racetracks do indeed spend most of their day in a stall, as many track locations don't typically allow for turnout. This is not unique to horse racing; many gaited horses live for years with limited turnout, and certain types of show horses stay on the road for weeks at a time in temporary stabling and don't see fresh grass. It's clear horses can survive this way, as evidenced by the thousands of horses that retire from the racetrack each year and live many more years in a different job.
Veterinarians and academic researchers alike will tell you that part of the remedy for so many common medical problems in horses – colic, ulcers, stereotypic behaviors, arthritis, and more – is to increase turnout time. Horses' bodies are evolved to graze on forage in mixed social groups for most of each day, and the way we manage many of them is totally counter to this. This has been shown over and over in research and in practical affect for years; the fact of it is really not something that people in other equine sports question anymore. Racehorses are not the only horses who experience these health problems, and they don't experience them only because they're stalled for prolonged periods, but one of the most basic components of their day is associated with an increased risk of these problems, and there's just no getting around that.
If you've been on the backstretch, you've likely seen a wide range of horsemanship there. I've seen riders, grooms, and starters who are poetry in motion, praising a horse for their effort or quietly and calmly teaching them about something new and challenging. Some of the best work I've seen with horses has been in the Thoroughbred industry – but so has some of the worst. As smart phones allow people to record and opine on everything, it's going to get harder to excuse the gate crew that ear twitches an unwilling participant into a race or a rider that loses their temper in the morning. Bad horsemanship isn't just present in racing either of course, but it's one more layer on top of other, much larger problems that someone can use to say, 'See what these horses live with? The whole system's broken.'
I'm not sure what the answer is here. Training centers are a great place to allow horses some turnout time, but they can also be a place people will go to be out of the reach of regulatory or racetrack authority, so they're not a perfect solution, either. Owners can prioritize good horsemanship when they hire a trainer, but they have no way to know the qualifications of every person that will put hands on their horse, let alone control for it. But one thing I do know – the worst kind of public relations challenge is one that takes you by surprise. We have to assume there's more where this came from.
The post Voss: Racing Fatalities Are A Big Problem, But They’re Not The Sport’s Only Problem appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.
