What is horse racing doing to prevent catastrophic injuries?

The deaths of seven horses at the home of the Kentucky Derby has once again intensified the debate over the safety of horse racing

BETH HARRIS The Associated Press May 8, 2023 Updated 4 hrs ago

The deaths of seven horses at the home of the Kentucky Derby has intensified the debate over the safety of horse racing.

Two of the deaths occurred as the result of race injuries on Derby day, when more than 150,000 people jammed Churchill Downs.

“While each incident reported has been unique, it is important to note that there has been no discernible pattern detected in the injuries sustained,” the track said in a statement that called the incidents “unacceptable.”

In recent years, the industry has instituted a series of veterinary and medication reforms, which led to the fatality rate dropping. ... Here’s a look at what horse racing is doing to try to prevent injuries and deaths.

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HORSE RACING

Dark week at Churchill Downs sparks questions about horse racing’s future

By Chuck Culpepper
May 7, 2023 at 1:42 p.m. EDT



Horses leave the starting gate during Saturday's 149th running of the Kentucky Derby. (Brynn Anderson/AP)

CORRECTION
This story has been updated to correct the rate of horse deaths in 2022.

LOUISVILLE — When the chief veterinarian from the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission visited Barn 39 at Churchill Downs on Saturday morning, he did so in the milieu of May 2023. The old days had gone. The nation’s sensibilities about animals had changed at least somewhat. A sport with 1.25 horse deaths per 1,000 starts in 2022, down by almost half since 2009 while still exceeding that of other lands, reeled in the bizarre nightmare of a venerable track on the biggest stage, with five horses dying in the previous nine days ahead of two more fallen later Saturday.

The scratching of Kentucky Derby favorite Forte, about 10 hours before post time, owed to a bruised right foot, the kind of ailment shy of injury that very well might not have forestalled a run 50, 25, 10 or even five years ago. It happened after Forte had galloped and jogged under observation. It left some ticklish scenes.

It left the veterinarian, Nicholas Smith, declining comment to Louisville TV station WDRB as they walked, a baffling failure of communication given all the accepted arguments for caution. It left Mike Repole, a co-owner of Forte, to relay in various interviews that Smith had said in discussions Forte had seemed “a tick off.”

By Sunday morning, it left a telltale rearrangement of a sentence from mega-trainer Todd Pletcher, spoken as Forte stuck his gorgeous head out of his stall down the way just before an angry thunderstorm kicked in. ... “There are different levels of disappointment,” he said, “and when you have to scratch the — or have the Derby favorite scratched …”

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By Chuck Culpepper
Chuck Culpepper covers national college sports as well as some tennis, golf and international sports for The Washington Post. He wrote previously for Sports On Earth/USA Today, The National (Abu Dhabi), the Los Angeles Times (while London-based), Newsday, the Oregonian, the Lexington Herald-Leader and, from age 14, the Suffolk Sun/Virginian-Pilot. Twitter https://twitter.com/ChuckCulpepper1