SAN JOSE, Calif. _ Last year, four days after Christmas, a 3-year-old filly named Blazing Amanda broke from the gate in a race at Golden Gate Fields in Albany, Calif. It was her fourth race in two months, and her 11th that year.
As she rounded the last turn of the race, her left front cannon _ the long, thick bone between knee and hoof _ shattered, piercing the skin and tearing tendons and ligaments, according to racetrack and necropsy documents obtained by this news organization. Other bones fractured and destroyed the fetlock joint, an equine version of the human wrist.
Blazing Amanda was euthanized on the track.
Much of the racing world's attention has been focused in recent months on Santa Anita Park in Arcadia, where 30 horses have died since Dec. 30, the latest last weekend as the season closed. The deaths have inspired protests by animal rights activists, who have called for a ban on the sport, and led some lawmakers and industry leaders to champion reforms to increase track safety. On Wednesday, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill giving the California Horse Racing Board more enforcement authority.
Publicity over Santa Anita has left the industry reeling, put owners, trainers and others on the defensive and led some to speculate that the controversy will spell the end of thoroughbred racing.
But Santa Anita isn't the only track where horses die each year. Blazing Amanda was only one of 18 horses that, a state racing board official said, died at Golden Gate Fields this winter season. From July 2008 to June 2018, 330 horses died at Golden Gate while either racing or training, 26 of them in the 2018 fiscal year. The deadliest period was fiscal year 2009-2010, when 53 horses died running the track. In only four years during that decade did the total number of deaths drop below 30.
Other tracks in California and around the country also have had high numbers of horse deaths. At Los Alamitos in Orange County, for example, 73 horse deaths after training or racing were reported in the 2008-2009 fiscal year, according to fatality statistics from the California Horse Racing Board. And even Churchill Downs, the site of the Kentucky Derby, has a higher death rate per number of race starts than Santa Anita, according to a database kept by the Jockey Club, the breed registry for all thoroughbreds in the United States.
Animal rights activists and some inside the industry have argued that Santa Anita is different, that more than 20 of the deaths "clustered," and that something about the track, the trainers who run horses there or the track's owners is to blame. Both Santa Anita and Golden Gate Fields are owned by the Stronach Group, a Toronto-based company that owns race tracks in several U.S. states.
A variety of theories have been put forward to explain the high death rate, including greediness on the part of Stronach, with some saying the owners have put profits ahead of animal welfare. The track's surface also has been proposed as a factor, as have wet conditions on the track after years of drought.
But other industry experts say that Santa Anita does not differ significantly from other American racetracks. They point to broader industry issues such as the use of performance-enhancing drugs, the conditions of tracks across the country and the practice of running young horses that are susceptible to breakdowns because their bones and muscles are not fully developed.
And many in the racing industry believe that it is not so much that more horses are dying as it is that people no longer think the same way about racing.
"What changed more than anything are not the numbers but society and views toward animal welfare," said Jockey Club President James Gagliano.
"Actions are going to be taken a lot more seriously than they have in the past," he said. "Everyone is on notice."
