On average, 24 horses die each week at racetracks across America. Many are inexpensive horses racing with little regulatory protection in pursuit of bigger and bigger prizes. These deaths often go unexamined, the bodies shipped to rendering plants and landfills rather than to pathologists who might discover why the horses broke down.
Little regulatory protection for race horses
Analysis shows that bigger purses resulting from casinos near race tracks may be contributing to horse fatalities.
Is the fact that casinos are now locating near race tracks a factor in more horse and jocky injuries and fatalities?
A computer analysis of horse racing data done by The New York Times looked at more than 150,000 races, along with injury reports, drug test results and interviews. The data showed, the horse racing industry to be mired in a culture of drugs with a fatal breakdown rate that is far worse than in other countries where horse racing is a popular sport.
Faced with a steep loss of customers, racetracks have increasingly added casino gambling to their operations, resulting in higher purses but also providing an incentive for trainers to race unfit horses. At Aqueduct Racetrack in Queens, New York, the number of dead and injured horses has risen sharply since a casino opened there late last year.
In 2008, after a Kentucky Derby horse, Eight Belles, broke two ankles on national television and was euthanized, Congress extracted promises from the racing industry to make its sport safer. While safety measures like bans on anabolic steroids have been enacted, assessing their impact has been difficult because many tracks do not keep accurate accident figures or will not release them.
Most trainers who illegally pump sore horses full of painkillers to mask injury and then race them are neither fined nor suspended and owners of those drugged horses usually keep their winnings.
The failure of regulators to stop that cheating is reflected in the numbers. Since 2009, records show, trainers at United States tracks have been caught illegally drugging horses 3,800 times, a figure that vastly understates the problem because only a small percentage of horses are actually tested.
In the same period, according to the Times analysis, 6,600 horses broke down or showed signs of injury. Since 2009, the incident rate has not only failed to go down, it has risen slightly.
The greatest number of incidents on a single day — 23 — occurred last year on the most celebrated day of racing in America, the running of the Kentucky Derby. One Derby horse fractured a leg, as did a horse in the previous race at Churchill Downs. All told, seven jockeys at other tracks were thrown to the ground after their horses broke down.
A state-by-state survey by The Times shows that about 3,600 horses died racing or training at state-regulated tracks over the last three years.
In one 13-day stretch of racing in 2010 at Sunland Park Racetrack and Casino in New Mexico, nine horses died racing, five were hauled away in ambulances and two jockeys were hospitalized, one in critical condition.
Even some of America’s most prestigious tracks, including Belmont Park, Santa Anita Park and Saratoga Race Course, had incident rates higher than the national average last year, records show.
Why racehorses break down at such a high rate has been debated for years, but the discussion inevitably comes back to drugs.
Laboratories cannot detect the newest performance-enhancing drugs, while trainers experiment with anything that might give them an edge, including chemicals that bulk up pigs and cattle before slaughter, cobra venom, Viagra, blood doping agents, stimulants and cancer drugs.
Illegal doping, racing officials say, often occurs on private farms before horses are shipped to the track. Few states can legally test horses there.
Legal therapuetic drugs including pain medications pose the greatest risk to horse and rider. In England, where breakdown rates are half of what they are in the United States, horses may not race on any drugs.
Breakdowns can be caused by a variety of factors, including poor track surface and jockey mistakes. But drugs, often used to mask existing injuries, are the prime suspect.
Necropsies are considered essential to determining if an existing injury contributed to a fatal breakdown. However, only 11 states require them, a Times survey found.
In California, where necropsies are required, researchers found that a “large majority” of horses had existing problems at the site of their fatal injuries.
The Times obtained hundreds of necropsy reports on racehorses that died racing in Pennsylvania and found problems that included “severe degenerative joint disease,” “severe chronic osteoarthritis” and pneumonia with “severe, extensive” lung inflammation.
One horse had 50 stomach ulcers. Another had just one eye. Pathologists also found metal screws in two horses that had broken bones from previous accidents.
In the United States, horses are usually allowed to run on some dose of pain medication, usually bute. The question, fiercely debated in the racing community, is at what level do therapeutic drugs make racing unsafe?
Another question that needs to be addressed is: Are economics a factor in causing trainers to "medicate" horses because of the higher purses made possible by nearby casinos that provide bigger purses as an incentive for trainers to race unfit horses?