State regulators investigate four racing fatalities in week

Four horses suffered fatal racing injuries over last week’s racing at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Ky., state racing regulators confirmed Tuesday, a statistical abnormality that has led regulators to closely examine the cases as the Breeders’ Cup event at Churchill approaches.

The breakdowns occurred one each on the four days of racing held Sept. 20-23. The bodies of all four horses are being necropsied, according to state racing regulators, who are attempting to find evidence for any common causes or factors that could be countered.

“We’re looking at everything,” said Dr. Mary Scollay, the equine medical director of the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission, on Tuesday morning. “It is clearly an unacceptable rate of occurrence. We’re accumulating evidence right now and looking at it very hard.”

The causes of fatal injuries are multi-variant, and it is difficult, especially in the earliest stages of an investigation, to determine if there is a common element to the breakdowns. Scollay said that racing regulators continue to conduct aggressive pre-race examinations and that Mick Peterson, a professor at the University of Kentucky who is an expert on racing surfaces, has surveyed the Churchill Downs racetrack.

In a statement, Churchill Downs spokesman Darren Rogers said that Peterson “reaffirmed that we have a safe racing surface” after his Monday analysis. Churchill Downs has been accredited by the Safety and Integrity Alliance, an industry initiative that requires tracks to adhere to best standards for equine safety.

“Safety is always a topic of great importance to us, and we place the highest priority on the health and welfare of our equine and human athletes,” Rogers said in the statement. “These recent incidents have been unfortunate, and we’ll continue to monitor.”

The breakdowns have occurred six weeks prior to Churchill hosting the two-day Breeders’ Cup on Nov. 2-3. The event is the focus of the sport’s fall racing season and attracts horses from around the world.

Kentucky’s racing commission has been one of the national leaders in embracing measures intended to identify at-risk horses prior to racing, and the state’s racetracks generally outperform other U.S. racetracks in long-term fatality rates of horses. Still, racetracks across the United States can experience spates of fatal injuries that defy long-term rates, which can lead horsemen, regulators, and the public to grasp for answers in an area in which there are seldom clear-cut explanations.

The four horses that suffered fatal injuries were Ricochet Bay, a 3-year-old maiden trained by Steve Assmussen who broke down Sept. 20; Conquest Hiosilver, a 6-yearold lifetime winner of six races trained by Tom Amoss, who broke down Sept. 21; Medlin, a 3-year-old winner trained by Aaron Shorter (Sept. 22); and Lilt, a 4-year-old trained by Brendan Walsh who has finished in the money six times from 10 lifetime starts (Sept. 23).

All four broke down in dirt races. The track was listed as fast for the races in which the first three horses broke down, and sloppy (sealed) for the fourth breakdown.

While the condition of a racing surface is always a popular target for criticism in the wake of breakdowns, research on fatal injuries has shown that they occur for a wide variety of reasons, including pre-existing microscopic bone fractures that are sometimes difficult to detect.

Walsh said that he did not have an explanation for the breakdown of Lilt, who broke a sesamoid bone, one of the most critical stress-bearing structures in a horse.

“Who knows?” Walsh said. “It’s very hard to assess stuff like this. Unfortunately, these things happen, and they happen everywhere.”