Injury Rate: Disclaimers and Conclusions

I've taken a lot more time than planned in setting out the obvious. Lots of race horses get hurt-- Santa Anita, or Belmont, Beulah or Delta Downs, its all the same. Half of this year's participants or more will move on next year to new careers due to injury. All across the training food chain from Lukas down to hard working Steve Jones at Eureka, they all quickly hurt almost everything.

The blog has hardly produced a smoking gun. This information we have to ferret out. No one keeps stats. A microscope on Lukas and Mandella, Equibase a few of their horses to confirm findings, a little more reading here and there, Baffert, Nafzger, the Green Monkey as Exhibit A, a look at scattered available data, and personal information and observation provide the conclusions.

Despite all this, a few things still give pause for thought regarding any conclusions set in stone. First, it's been three years since RR is regularly stabled on a backstretch. We've shipped in for a while due to personal circumstance, and so, I puzzle whether things perhaps have changed. It's more difficult to keep finger on the true pulse from far away.

Additionally, you consider how things are now compared to, perhaps, 50 years ago. Did they have this same horrific injury rate then, or maybe even more. If it was then otherwise, how did this current situation evolve. What is the history of it? I wonder if anyone even knows.

There's also some logic we have to consider, for how in heaven's name is this topic anywhere but on the front pages continually until we get some answers. Of course, Barbaro provided temporary publicity. But, even his tragedy has served as much to cover things up as expose. The analysis of how the Barbaro injury, Pine Island, and others occurred, the lack of pre-race diagnostics, etc., have been quickly swept under the rug.

Along this same line, when will we see the first owner lawsuit against a trainer for injuring an animal? Where are all those owners suffering these continuing losses? Why is nobody screaming bloody murder?

All the above are valid points, and these and others should cause continuing analysis on this issue. Has the blog overestimated, puffed it up? I doubt it, but the question of what really is the overall injury rate will remain till they start keeping stats.

Next post: Some conclusions about what the injury rate is doing to the sport.

Today's training:
2/3/07: Rest due to frigid weather.
2/4/07: Day 3: by the accident of a 4f riderless pasture romp all out after a 10 minute warmup we get a Burch Training Day 3, and we're back at it.
2/5/07: Day 1: Rest due to frigid weather and yesterday's speed work. I've decided to keep weight off for now since we seem to be having a growth spurt.