The Key to Success with the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act

November 20, 2021 by Leave a Comment
Lasix for horses

Lasix is legal and given to both horses and humans

By Barry Irwin [founder of Team Valor] — The Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority (HISA) is not scheduled to begin operations until July of next year, but with release of the initial guidelines issued for public consumption last week and any number of Op/Ed pieces appearing in industry trade publications, the direction of the Authority that will steer the ship seems to be given plenty of helpful hints for its future navigation.

As the one who got the ball rolling in a 2004 Op/Ed in The Blood-Horse by urging industry members to consider a way of hiring the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency to oversee drugs in horseracing, I must at this early juncture in the start-up of the Authority register my fears regarding the ultimate success of the new entity and its potentially sweeping changes.

Germination for wishing to get USADA involved in the struggle to rid cheaters from the game was to use CEO Travis Tygart and his team to devise a plan to form an investigative unit capable of discovering through traditional and new-wave policing methods which designer and human drugs were being used to tilt the playing field in North American racing.

If the world of international sport had learned one thing from the 2002 Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative (BALCO) it was that testing was best used not to apprehend suspects but to confirm that they were cheating. The gold standard in catching the crooks was by finding the actual illegal substances first, then developing a test and using that test in the future to nail the bad guys. Testing without knowing what one was testing for was like trying to find a needle in a haystack…

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Equine Injury Database – Update from The Jockey Club

March 10, 2013 by Leave a Comment
  • There continues to be a reduction in the risk of fatality on synthetic surfaces.
  • The risk of fatality on synthetic surfaces was significantly lower than the risk of fatality on turf surfaces, which was significantly lower than the risk of fatality on dirt surfaces.
The Jockey Club just released an updated North American fatality rate for Thoroughbreds that includes four years’ worth of data collected in the Equine Injury DatabaseTM, the North American database for racing injuries.Based on an analysis of 1,532,418 starts collected during the four-year period January 1, 2009, through December 31, 2012, the prevalence of race-related fatal injury was 1.92 per 1,000 starts. For individual years, the prevalence of fatal injury per 1,000 starts was 2.00 for 2009, 1.88 for 2010, 1.88 for 2011, and 1.92 for 2012.

“The causes of racing injuries are often very complex and involve multiple factors interacting together over time,” said Dr. Tim Parkin, a veterinarian and epidemiologist from the University of Glasgow, who serves as a consultant on the Equine Injury Database and performed the analysis.

“While the fatality rate has remained fairly static over the course of the past four years, the real significance today is that, with 1.5 million starts in the database, we have now established a baseline and we can begin to analyze the relationships between each of the individual factors. In the future, we will be able to design interventions based on these data and recommend actions that will reduce injuries and fatalities.”

Only injuries that result in fatality within 72 hours or less from the date of race are included in the national figures. It should also be noted that statistics from previous years are sometimes updated due to the addition of tracks or corrections in the EID fatality data originally submitted by participating racetracks.

Parkin’s analysis also found that:

 

  • There continues to be a reduction in the risk of fatality on synthetic surfaces.
  • The risk of fatality on synthetic surfaces was significantly lower than the risk of fatality on turf surfaces, which was significantly lower than the risk of fatality on dirt surfaces.
  • Female horses were at no greater risk of fatality when racing against males than they are when racing against other females.
  • 2-year-olds were at significantly reduced risk of fatality compared to older horses when racing on dirt.
  • Moving a race off the turf onto dirt or synthetic surfaces does not increase the risk of fatality.

Table 1 contains a four-year summary of statistics from the EID stratified by categories of age, surface type and distance.

The Equine Injury Database contains a suite of reports for racetracks to analyze data collected at their respective facilities. The Jockey Club also maintains a website that enables racetracks to make public their data in a standard, summary fashion at (jockeyclub.com/initiatives.asp?section=2).

Summaries of fatality statistics for a participating track include the year, number of race days, number of starts, age of the horse, distance of the race and the surface on which the incident occurred. A list of racetracks that have signed up to participate in the Equine Injury Database, including those who are now reporting their statistics publicly, can be found at jockeyclub.com/initiatives.asp.

The Jockey Club, through two of its for-profit subsidiary companies, InCompass and The Jockey Club Technology Services Inc., has underwritten the cost to develop and operate the Equine Injury Database as a service to the industry. By agreement with the participating racetracks, from time to time The Jockey Club may publish certain summary statistics from the Equine Injury Database, but will not provide statistics that identify specific participants, including racetracks, horses or persons.
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