Death and Disarray at Americas Racetracks
 

I would love to hear what the community has to say on this investigative piece from the NY times. Personally I didn't know that New Mexico was such a standout in incidents involving both horses and riders.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/us...acetracks.html

Interesting results. It's all there in their chart comment based data.

Did you know that while cheaper claiming races are more dangerous, Finger Lakes is the safest thoroughbred track in NY? Next thing you know they'll say Saratoga must be the worst, right?

Incidents per 1,000 starters at New York tracks:

5.5 Saratoga
5.3 Aqueduct
4.8 Belmont Park
2.5 Finger Lakes


Source: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2...isks-vary.html

:faint:

Racing has a new PR director. Dr. R.Arthur.

For the alternate view here's the link to the Equine Injury Database data on Saratoga's Racing fatalities over the past three seasons:

http://jockeyclub.com/pdfs/eid/_Saratoga.pdf

Summary (fatalities per 1,000 starters):
2009: 0.98
2010: 1.52
2011: 0.93

It should be noted that those numbers the NYT estimates include breakdowns and "signs of injury" culled from racing reports, vs confirmed fatalities in the EID report. So it's not surprising there's a disparity.

Racing in the US is just going to continue to plummet to its own death as long as it doesn't clean up its act. You can make up any argument you like, but in the end the simple fact is that the use of drugs leads to more breakdowns, and every breakdown is a little disaster for the sport. One year of little disasters is merely a blip on the bottom line. 20 years of these little disasters form a major turn-off for entire generations of potential fans.

Some breakdowns are inevitable. Olympic athletes aren't being steered with over 100 lbs on their backs at high speed. Nice horses from nice barns break down.

However, I would like to see the stats on cheap claimers vs. higher level horses. Trainers enter compromised horses hoping they get claimed all the time and these types should not consider themselves true horseman...... Maybe a change to the claiming rules (breakdown=no money) would help.

Anyone that has a problem with this is part of the problem.

Per the graph on the right side of the article:


Claiming price Incidents/1,000 starts

$0 to $5,000 6.5
$5,000 to $7,500 6.1
$7,500 to $20,000 4.9
> $20,000 4.3
Non-claiming 4.5

Devastating article

When is part 2?

Right on the mark, just an awful indictment of racing

Racing has a new PR director. Dr. R.Arthur.

Quote:
“It’s hard to justify how many horses we go through,” said Dr. Rick Arthur, the equine medical director for the California Racing Board. “In humans you never see someone snap their leg off running in the Olympics. But you see it in horse racing.”

Yeah, but a few years ago a weight lifter dislocated his shoulder and it looked even worse than snapping a leg.

How about how many baseball pitchers go thru Tommy John surgery or never make it out of the minors due to injury? Or the concussions and other injuries football players get?

Granted they don't die (and it is tragic when horses do) but athletes get hurt.

Cleaning up the drugs would be a big step forward....but the whole sport seems to need a clean up that i doubt will happen.

I'm inclined to agree.

When he spoke out during the "Refinery" case , I stopped taking hm seriously .