Bri Bri is fourth death at Del Mar

A horse suffered a catastrophic injury Monday morning in training at Del Mar and had to be euthanized.

Trainer Jim Cassidy said the unraced 3-year-old filly Bri Bri suffered a broken pelvis after a four-furlong workout out of the starting gate under exercise rider Abel Hernandez. Bri Bri was prepping for an upcoming maiden race at Del Mar, Cassidy said. Hernandez was not injured.

The death is the fourth since July 17, the start of the summer meet at Del Mar. All have been during training. The first two came July 18 when horses collided and the third was a breakdown July 29 on the main dirt track. There have been no deaths in 171 races.

Del Mar is the first major Southern California race meeting since 30 horses died during the winter/spring meet at Santa Anita. Cassidy, who at the time was president of the California Thoroughbred Trainers (his term recently expired), trained one of the 30; that horse also died of a broken pelvis, he said.

Santa Anita and Del Mar both took measures to improve oversight and safety after the spate of fatalities. At Del Mar, the steps were added to those it instituted two years ago following the 2016 summer and fall racing seasons in which 23 horses died in racing or training. In the last two years, Del Mar’s horse deaths dropped to eight in 2017 (five in summer, three in fall) and seven in ’18 (six in summer, one in fall).

In a 2018 report from the Jockey Club Equine Injury Database, Del Mar ranked best in safety among nearly two dozen self-reporting tracks, with a rate of 0.79 fatal injuries per 1,000 starts — or fewer than half the national average for deaths (1.68). The database includes only horses who died during racing, meaning Del Mar’s rate this summer is zero.