Regulatory veterinarians who have been inspecting horses entered in the Breeders’ Cup races on Friday and Saturday at Del Mar in Southern California have been conducting heart examinations on the horses for the first time this year, officials said Wednesday during a press briefing outlining safety protocols for the event.
The use of heart exams is an outgrowth of recent work conducted by a working group at the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority that earlier this year identified a risk factor for sudden death among horses who exhibited abnormal heartbeats at rest.
Last year at the Breeders’ Cup, also at Del Mar, Jayarebe, a 3-year-old French-bred horse, collapsed during his gallop-out after finishing seventh in the Turf and died of a suspected “cardiac event,” according to a statement issued at the time. The statement had added that cardiac events are “nearly impossible to predict in a horse that’s training well.”
No horses last year suffered fatal musculoskeletal injuries at the Breeders’ Cup.
Dr. Will Farmer, the co-veterinary lead at the Breeders’ Cup, said at the Wednesday press briefing that all horses will be examined either with a stethoscope or electrocardiogram while in their stalls in the days leading up to the races. Any horses that exhibit an abnormal heartbeat during the exam will be tagged for further evaluation by an equine cardiac specialist and the horse’s regular veterinarian.
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HISA began prioritizing research on sudden deaths after deaths from catastrophic injuries began falling significantly over the past several years. According to a HISA release issued earlier this year along with a recommendation for horsemen to regularly check their horses for abnormal heartbeats, sudden deaths accounted for 8 percent of the racing fatalities among Thoroughbred horses at U.S. tracks in the first six months of the year and 18 percent of the training fatalities.
HISA’s chief executive officer, Lisa Lazarus, said during the briefing that sudden deaths – which are defined under the catch-all term of “exercise-associated sudden death” – had been a “black box” at the end of 2024. Necropsies of horses who suffer a sudden death are frequently unable to identify a precise cause of death for various reasons, one of the reasons that HISA began funding two research projects last year to explore the phenomenon.
“We’re very much at the beginning, but we’re grateful to the Breeders’ Cup for being open to incorporating some of that newly found information into the procedures today,” Lazarus said. “I think over time, as we continue to progress, we'll be able to incorporate more and more each year.”
The veterinary team also will be using an application called Sleip that analyzes a horse’s gait to potentially detect abnormalities. The application analyzes video of a horse while it is running to detect the abnormalities, in contrast to other gait-analysis technologies that must be worn by the horse while it is moving at speed.
Farmer said that the app has been used in multiple international racing jurisdictions, including Australia, Britain, Dubai, Hong Kong, and Saudi Arabia. The app will be available to all 21 regulatory veterinarians on the team, Farmer said.
Under HISA, the duties and powers of regulatory veterinarians have expanded, and some horsemen have publicly questioned the decisions of veterinarians to scratch their horses, especially when the horses have exhibited abnormal gaits in the past but have not suffered any injuries due to the abnormalities.
Scott Chaney, executive director of the California Horse Racing Board, whose regulatory veterinarians form part of the Breeders’ Cup team, addressed that criticism in public remarks at the briefing, contending that data collected by CHRB officials has shown that horses who have been ordered scratched are far more often to need extra time to return to racing, if they return to racing at all.
“In other words, regulatory veterinarians are exceedingly accurate at identifying at-risk horses,” Chaney said. “Will an otherwise sound horse be scratched on occasion? Absolutely. However, the statistics demonstrate that this is exceedingly rare, and I am certain that it is entirely worth it when compared to the risk and cost to the horse racing industry if a questionable horse is permitted to run, much less suffers a catastrophic injury.”
In 2019, after a spate of spring deaths at Santa Anita Park that led to calls for racing to be banned in the state, Mongolian Groom suffered a fatal injury in his left hind cannon bone in the stretch of the Breeders’ Cup Classic at Santa Anita. A report commissioned by the Breeders’ Cup said that the horse had lesions in both hind legs going into the race, and a number of independent observers said that the horse exhibited signs of lameness in his workouts.
Since then, the Breeders’ Cup veterinary team has been erring on the side of caution, according to Chaney.
“Make no mistake, the scratch of a Breeders’ Cup entrant is heartbreaking for the connections and fans, but criticism of the regulatory vets is misplaced and ultimately does damage to the promotion of animal welfare and the image of horse racing generally,” Chaney said.
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