Horses training at U.S. tracks under the jurisdiction of the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority had a fatality rate of 0.73 per 1,000 workouts in the first quarter of 2025, according to a report issued by HISA on Tuesday.
The 0.73 quarterly fatality rate was much higher than the 0.50 training fatality rate recently published by HISA for the 2024 calendar year. Because the incidents are relatively rare, quarterly data can show larger swings than data that is aggregated over an entire year.
Also in the report, HISA said that the racing fatality rate in the first quarter was 0.85 horses per 1,000 races, a slight decline from the 0.90 rate posted for the entirety of 2024. The 0.90 rate was the lowest annual rate recorded in the U.S. racing industry since data began to be collected on fatalities in 2009, and a 27 percent decline from the year prior.
According to the report, 94 percent of the racing fatalities were due to musculoskeletal injuries, with 3 percent attributed to sudden death, such as heart attacks, and another 3 percent attributed to “other causes,” such as a traumatic injury not related to a musculoskeletal injury.
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