An annual report from the first national horse racing regulating body finds racing-related deaths are down at tracks it oversees.
With less than a month until the Kentucky Derby kicks off Triple Crown season, Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority officials say they continue to improve conditions at regulated tracks.
CEO Lisa Lazarus presented collected data from 2024, including a fatality rate of .9 per 1,000 starts at nearly 50 tracks in 19 states.
“It’s a 27% decrease from last year. 35% from when HISA first launched the racetrack safety program which was the first of its two programs. As I said the decrease started well before HISA and it’s more than 50% [down] since 2009 when the EID began reporting racing fatalities,” said Lazarus.
Lazarus also emphasized the difference between HISA-enrolled racecourses and those that have not yet signed on with the regulating body.
“The HISA tracks have had a consistently lower fatality rate than the non-HISA tracks overall. There are some non-HISA tracks that are consistent with HISA tracks but there are obviously many that are not and have much more concerning numbers. Unfortunately, the trend that we’re seeing is that as the HISA tracks improve their safety metrics, the non-HISA tracks are getting worse,” said Lazarus.
According to the report, non-HISA tracks saw fatalities increase from 1.63 per 1,000 starts to 1.76 per 1,000 starts from 2023 to 2024.
Tracks including those on the circuit run by the New York Racing Association, like Saratoga Race Course, have faced mounting criticism in recent years for high-profile horse deaths. The Congressionally-authorized HISA is overseeing efforts to improve racing surfaces, implement anti-doping measures, and improve health screenings for horses.
Beginning last year HISA also began to track training fatalities, coming in at .5 deaths per 1,000 workouts.
“We talked a lot about what the denominator should be for training fatalities. We ultimately settled for published works. Unlike starts, it’s an imperfect denominator because we do actually include, as I said earlier, horses that gallop, horses that are doing any exercise activity on the backside when they’re injured. And so it’s actually quite a conservative number, because if we were able to track all of those activities the number would actually be quite lower,” said Lazarus.
Lazarus adds that there wasn’t much of an increase in scratches, or horses being pulled from races, following HISA’s implementation.
“If you compare the first 30 months of HISA to the 30 months prior, which were not under HISA, you have less than a 1% difference in scratches nationally. Now, that’s a national number, it doesn’t reflect what’s happening on individual racetracks. And also it doesn’t break down with regards to the reasons for the various scratches – what categorizes, which categories have the most scratches, which have the least et cetera. So, that’s something that we’re looking at closely for 2025,” said Lazarus.
Executive Director of the Horseracing Integrity and Welfare Unit Ben Mosier said they collected more than 76,000 post-race blood samples from horses in the past year.
“Just from an overall positivity rate, or adverse analytical findings, as called in the rules. About .48% of all sample collection sessions, or tests, resulted in an adverse finding. And I’m always quick to point out as well the percentages of banned substances to controlled medications. We have an extremely low rate of controlled medication positives,” said Mosier.
New York Racing Association Vice President of Communications Pat McKenna says in collaboration with HISA, NYRA has “adopted new technology, increased veterinary scrutiny on all horses training or racing, and continued to refine our track maintenance practices.”
“It is incredibly encouraging. There has been a 55% reduction in the most serious equine injuries since 2009, and that is also reflected here in New York where Saratoga had the safest year on record in 2024. These are sustained and significant enhancements,” said McKenna.
Saratoga Race Course had .6 fatalities per 1,000 starts last year.
The Belmont Stakes will be run at Saratoga for a second time in June. With an additional July 4th weekend of racing, The Spa will host a record 49 days of racing this year.
