Across the Board, What is the Rate of Injury?

Time to look at the stats. And, yes there are some, even though injury rate stats nationally will come in the future. So, we put together what's available, in the blog's attempt to prove the sky is blue and conventional trainers injure horses.

As RR is training a horse and will suffer the results including those based on false premises, I'd like to avoid a minefield of bogus conclusions. We strive for accuracy even while this seems available only as educated guess work.

Everyone has their own opinions about race horse injuries, and so, in this blog, I'd like to approach it from my perspective and experience for somewhere since I got into racing I developed this realization of the large injury problem in the sport.

During my handicapping days at Ak-Sar-Ben in the second summer, I was happy to see some old favorites back to race. Such memorables as Nebraska filly Sandhill Diamond, Mr. Wire to Wire, Roses Turn, Herb Riecken trained Who Dr. Who, Alum Fork and others. Equally noticeable to this ever more experienced handicapper of that time, most of last year's horses had disappeared, unable to find them with a search warrant. And so from RR the very first hmmm and uhmms as to these disappearing acts.

Next was the novice, wide eyed thoroughbred owing RR right on track at the brand new Prairie Meadows, Altoona, Iowa with his three horse stable in the shedrow of the infamous Griz Trittle, trainer of record, but sworn on his winstrol and flipping halters never to touch my horses. Hard to escape notice in this period that only a few of the 40 horses in the barn with their several trainers were racing. And then some shedrow tours with new trainer friends that still reverberate in the memory: "this one has a splint, that one a chip, the one over their races with a bow" as the trainer pointed to the leg of each animal. "Do you ever gallop these horses?" new owner me deep in Stage III of a Tom Ivers protocol wanted to know. "Naaah, we just race 'em as long as we can."

By the time I hit the Kentucky Horse Center in Lexington in 97-98 I was taking whole facilities into the injury equation observing this time that maybe 2-300 of the 1000 horses on ground were actually shipping to Turfway or River Downs. Again the wheels were spinning, here in the capital of racing this being the case, might it be so everywhere?

Indeed it is. First we see it in the field sizes, racing secretaries begging for entries from trainers with shedrows full of horses most of them hurt. And, we can quantify this problem by looking closely at the entry rate of any meet. I'll take the recent Woodlands meet as an example. We have a back stretch with 1000 horses, trainers falling all over themselves for stalls, and 25 racing days spread over 6.5 weeks. Might we hope each horse would race at least 4 times during this meet?

There were 250 races and let's project the national average 7.6 starters per race though at Woodlands it would be less. This is 1900 starters for the meet. Had each horse raced 4 times we would have 4000 starters for the meet. In percentage terms 47.5% of horses eligible entered. 52.5% stayed in their stalls.

We have other more peripheral indicators. If you watch the Santa Anita track cam here at the outset of the season you'll see numerous horses galloping. As the meet progresses you'll see less and less. Then there are the various studies, seminars, compendiums and other alarums across the industry. Regional studies here and there invariably point to a 30-50% injury rate.

And then there is that endangered species the disappearing owner. So many of them have reached that point where horse after horse was hurt, they bite the bullet and get out. The City owner in our area, and I suspect over much of the country, has gone the way of the dinosaur, dust covered wingtips giving way exclusively to cowboy hats and boots on the backstretch.

Of course the injury rate is a fluctuating figure. Any attempt to pin it down always has a margin of error. Much study and examination have supported the initial RR speculations: a 65% per year career ending injury rate for 3 and up with 10% margin of error, and 50% unable to race at any given moment due to injury with again a 10% margin of error. Unfortunately, I doubt this is, in the slightest, overblown.

Today's training:
2/2/o7: Rest. Frigid conditions.
2/3/07: Rest. Ditto.
2/4/07: The weathermen exaggerated the cold in our area. Today I was pleasantly surprised that the ground had softened. The expected slow gallop pasture romp turned into a 4f sprint.
The Art report: Art was drafting in second for a couple furlongs, and then bursts to the lead and flashes a bit of speed. I've decided to keep weight off for the present as we seem to be in a growing period.