LEXINGTON, Ky. _ This year, horse racing made national news for the horrific and mysterious deaths of at least 23 horses in three months at Santa Anita Park in California. What almost nobody noticed was that last year Kentucky had a similar problem.
Horse fatalities at Kentucky's tracks nearly doubled in 2018.
At the February meeting of the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission, equine medical director Dr. Mary Scollay outlined the problem: Fatalities went from 20 in 2017 to 36 in 2018, an 80 percent increase. The rate of fatalities rose as well, from 1.33 per 1,000 starts to 2.39, she said.
Kentucky hasn't reported fatality rates like that in the 13 years that the state has tracked them, according to racing commission data.
"It's unprecedented," she said.
In fact, the problem in Kentucky might actually be far worse: Unlike Santa Anita's numbers, Kentucky's do not include horse fatalities during or as a result of training because the Kentucky racing commission only counts racing fatalities.
Even so, the change was dramatic: The deaths were across all Kentucky tracks, as were the increases, according to Scollay.
She has no clear answer as to why there were more horse deaths but she noted one shift: The horses that died were younger.
Data on horse fatalities, in Kentucky and across the country, for years has established the riskiest age for a racehorse as 3 to 4 years old. But last year's Kentucky deaths were more likely to be 2- and 3-year-old horses, Scollay said in an interview.
"It made me wonder if something had changed in the horse population," Scollay said. "Because I knew we hadn't changed our pre-race vet checks or protocols," which are designed to catch horses that shouldn't be racing before they go out to the starting gate.
Somehow, those horses were getting through.
