Racehorse injuries

Racehorse injuries and fatalities are a side effect of the training and competition of horse racing. Racehorse injuries are considered especially difficult to treat, and often result in euthanizing the horse. A 2005 study by the United States Department of Agriculture found that injuries are the second leading cause of death in horses, second only to old age.
Two years after Secretariat's record-breaking US Triple Crown took the sport in the United States to a new level of popularity, the breakdown and death of Ruffian brought on a new era of safety concerns. The breakdown and death of racehorses at races had been known of for centuries, but had never before been witnessed in an event so widely seen as the great match race between Ruffian and Foolish Pleasure at Belmont Park, with 18million viewers. The horse racing industry has been trying to adapt to increased safety concerns ever since.

History

Accidents and disputes were so bad in the early 1700s in England that soon after nobility first started racing Thoroughbreds, participants were ending up in court. The "Sport of Kings" has been described as an exercise in controlled chaos, with the jockeys described as "daredevils," and the racehorses as "unpredictable." As a response to this, stewardship of racing began to evolve in 1751 when the first set of recorded racing rules were printed and in 1752 when Britain's Jockey Club started to become racing's first regulatory authority.
In 1990, apprentice jockey Benny Narvaez was paralyzed from the chest down after his horse threw him while jumping over another horse who had broken down directly in front of him during a race at Tampa Bay Downs. A jury found that Tampa Bay Downs was responsible for Narvaez's injury because the track veterinarian failed to perform an adequate pre-race examination on the horse that broke down.
National television coverage of the Breeders' Cup by NBC helped generate millions of dollars in revenue and publicity for Thoroughbred racing in the mid- to late 1980s. Since the inaugural running of the event in 1984, there has been an injury in almost every Breeders' Cup race. This national publicity backfired when horse racing increasingly came under attack from animal rights groups in the early 1990s. In the 1990 Breeders' Cup Distaff, champion two-year-old and three-year-old filly Go For Wand got back up after breaking her ankle. She was unable to finish the race; however, she did stand up. Handlers caught her and made her lie down; she was immediately euthanized on the track. In the 1992 Breeders' Cup Sprint, the five-year-old European horse Mr Brooks fractured his cannon bone and fell on top of his jockey, Lester Piggott. Piggott had told fellow European jockey Walter Swinburn before the race that the horse did not warm up well. Mr Brooks had also been reluctant to go in the starting gate before the race. There was so much controversy over the handling of Mr Brooks that the Breeders' Cup implemented rigid pre-race inspections in 1993. The resulting media pressure from the deaths of Go For Wand and Mr Brooks prompted racing industries around the world to make a concerted effort at determining the extent of the problem and the causes.
As evidenced by the death of 2006 Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro, not all racehorse fatalities are the direct result of injury. It was not the break in Barbaro's leg that necessitated his destruction, but the hoof disease laminitis. Barbaro's team of doctors, led by Dr. Dean Richardson, were able to repair his broken leg, but not the excruciatingly painful laminitis that followed. Support limb laminitis, which is the specific type Barbaro had, is caused by over-stressing the good leg during recovery from an injury in the opposite limb. A 1986 survey done by the Morris Animal Foundation found that laminitis was the fourth leading cause of death among horses. AAEP members ranked laminitis as the most important disease needing further research in 2009.
After the death of Barbaro in 2006, the North American Thoroughbred industry realized that individual studies were not adequate tools for evaluating ongoing efforts in injury prevention. The idea for an equine injury database came from the first Welfare and Safety of the Racehorse Summit in 2006. The database has three objectives: 1) to identify the frequency, type, and outcome of horse racing injuries using a standardized format that will generate valid composite statistics; 2) identify markers for horses at increased risk of injury; and 3) to serve as a data source for research directed at improving safety and preventing injuries. The Equine Injury Database was launched in 2008 following a one-year pilot project where injury reports were submitted by racetracks in a hard copy form. InCompass Solutions, Inc. and The Jockey Club Technology Services, Inc., subsidiaries of The Jockey Club, underwrote the costs of the database. Since the start of the EID, there has been a downward trend in the rate of fatalities. This trend has been found to be statistically significant.
In 2020, the federal Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act of 2020 was passed, establishing the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority. In 2022, the Horseracing Integrity and Welfare Unit was established as the anti-doping and medication control arm of HISA.

Year	Fatal injuries	Starts	Fatalities per 1000 starts
2009	790	395,897	2.00
2010	727	387,671	1.88
2011	713	379,285	1.88
2012	709	369,565	1.92
2013	643	339,104	1.90
2014	583	308,923	1.89
2015	500	306,654	1.63
2016	483	314,359	1.54
2017	493	305,929	1.61
2018	493	293,555	1.68
2019	441	288,565	1.53
2020	333	254,200	1.39
2021	366	264,200	1.39
2022	328	262,761	1.25
2023	336	253,640	1.32
2024	273	244,743	1.11

Classification

Racehorse injuries are distinguished in their classification by whether they are considered accidents or injuries. Injuries are considered to follow predictable patterns, and accidents are unpredictable. The science of injury prevention has demonstrated that injuries and the events leading up to injuries are not random. Like disease, they follow a distinct pattern. Studying these patterns has made it possible to learn to predict and prevent injuries from occurring. Injuries, whether unintentional or intentional, can be considered any physical damage or harm caused to the body resulting in impairment or destruction of health. Injuries lead to death, disability, and financial loss.

International Thoroughbred fatality rates

Comparing injury and fatality rates among countries can be difficult due to different definitions used in collecting data.

Flat racing

In Japan from 1985−1994, 0.32% of runners died or were euthanized as a direct result of fractures sustained while racing.
In Venezuela, at Hipódromo La Rinconada in 2009, 7% of horses in training died, including 51 due to limb fractures.

Country	Injury rate	Definition	Time period
Hong Kong	2.8	Fracture incurred during a race	2004−2011
Australia	2.9	Euthanasia or failure to race within 6 months	1988−1995
South Africa	0.56	Retirement or immediate euthanasia	1998−2011
New Zealand	0.93	Failure to finish and associated veterinary event	2005−2011
South America	1.82	Musculoskeletal injury incurred during a race	2005−2015
Brazil	2.68	Serious injury incurred during a race or death/euthanasia within 24 hours of a race	1996−2006

In Japan from 1987−2000, 1.83% of runners had an acute bone fracture incurred during a race that resulted in failure to race within three months or permanent retirement, euthanasia, or death.

Jump racing

Jumps racing has long been steeped in controversy due to its high mortality rate. This brand of racing requires Thoroughbred horses to leap over a succession of fences and are generally longer distances than non-jump races. There are hurdle races, and steeplechase races. Animal welfare groups have been campaigning for around 30 years to abolish hurdle and steeplechase events in Australia. Many aspects to the sport pose serious risk to horses, and it harms horses at a higher rate than flat racing. In 1991, an Australian Senate Select Committee address on animal welfare concluded they had serious concerns about the welfare of horses in jumps races and recommended that state governments across the country phase out jumps racing over a three-year period. New South Wales and Tasmania abandoned the sport in 1997 and 2008 respectively, but Victoria and South Australia continued the races. Jumps racing has never been the massive industry in Australia that it is in Britain and Ireland, but even there some tracks have discontinued National Hunt racing. Nottingham was the first to discontinue jumps racing in 1996, followed by Windsor in 1998 and Wolverhampton in 2002. Lingfield and Kempton have considered discontinuing jumps racing as well.

Country	Type	Fatal injury rate	Definition	Time period
Australia	Hurdle	6.3	Immediate euthanasia	1988−1995
Australia	Steeplechase	14.3	Immediate euthanasia	1988−1995
New Zealand	Hurdle	5.9	Died or euthanized on race day or euthanized within 72 hours of race completion as a result of musculoskeletal injury or sudden death	2011−2022
New Zealand	Steeplechase	5.4	Died or euthanized on race day or euthanized within 72 hours of race completion as a result of musculoskeletal injury or sudden death	2011−2022
Great Britain	Hurdle	4.6	Death or euthanasia whilst still at the racecourse subsequent to a race start	2000−2009
Great Britain	Steeplechase	6.2	Death or euthanasia whilst still at the racecourse subsequent to a race start	2000−2009
Great Britain	National Hunt Flat	2.7	Death or euthanasia whilst still at the racecourse subsequent to a race start	2000−2009