Santa Anita had its second horse death in four days when a horse was injured during a race Sunday and was later euthanized. UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine professor Susan Stover says recent deaths have been a result of multiple factors. (May 21) AP, AP
Synthetic racetracks are indisputably safer and undoubtedly endangered.
Despite equine fatality rates consistently superior to dirt and grass, artificial surfaces are far less in vogue now than they were during their earliest iterations. Of the nine North American tracks that ran on synthetics in 2009, only five remain, with no new additions. The number of race starts on synthetics has dropped by more than half during the last decade, to less than 10% of the total.
The most prominent early adapters — Del Mar, Keeneland and Santa Anita — have all reverted to dirt since 2010 and have all experienced a sharp rise in catastrophic breakdowns.
At best, the trend is counterintuitive. At worst, it tempts fate.
With pressure mounting from politicians, prosecutors and animal welfare advocates, thoroughbred racing has recently embraced a range of reforms aimed at reducing its disturbing death toll: Medication restrictions, additional veterinary screenings, whip limitations, etc. Yet an industry admittedly in crisis continues to resist change that arguably represents the clearest connection to enhanced safety.
“We’ve had all of this catastrophic publicity, this onslaught against our industry, and yet nobody is willing to recognize one of the most obvious things that we can do by conversion to safer surfaces,” said Bill Casner, owner of 2010 Kentucky Derby winner Super Saver. “The data is there. It’s not speculation … (But) we’ve always been an industry of ostriches. We bury our heads. We think these problems will go away.”
More coverage: Horse fatality reports made public for first time by KHRC
Synthetic tracks have shown a lower fatality rate than dirt tracks every year since the Equine Injury Database, or EID, was launched in July of 2008, and they have lost horses at a lower rate than turf courses in eight of those 10 years. Overall, synthetic tracks have averaged 1.2 fatalities per 1,000 starts; turf has averaged 1.47 and dirt 1.97.
To appreciate the statistical significance of those averages, project them over a decade’s worth of races. Had dirt and turf tracks matched the mortality rates of synthetic surfaces from 2009 through 2018, it would have meant 2,031 fewer race-related fatalities, nearly one-third of the 6,134 reported by the EID during that span.
“To me, anybody who wants to race on a dirt surface has accepted the challenge of achieving a safety rate that is equivalent to a synthetic,” said Dr. Mary Scollay, equine medical director for the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission. “Otherwise, you do have some explaining to do.”
Keeneland’s fatality rate has more than doubled since it switched from Polytrack to dirt between meets in 2014, from 0.89 per 1,000 starts (2009-2014) to 2.16 per 1,000 starts (2014-2019). Keeneland Vice President Bob Elliston’s explanation is that track surface is only one piece of a multifaceted puzzle.
“I don’t believe it to be a singular issue — synthetic surface versus a dirt surface,” Elliston said. “It’s the continuum that has to be addressed: Medication rules, monitoring of candidates that are going to be racing or training, whip use, prerace examinations … with the track clearly being a component of that.”
Elliston says Keeneland’s decision to return to dirt was motivated by a concern “our product had become less top-end,” as reflected by the diminished stature of its signature Kentucky Derby prep race, the Blue Grass Stakes. Casner, former chairman of the Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association, suspects the move was more of a case of self-interest trumping safety.
“We know Keeneland is run by a small group of powerful people that have stallions,” he said. “That was the reason Keeneland switched. They blamed it on the trainers. I talked to I don’t know how many trainers and I asked them if they’d been called in and interviewed. There wasn’t one. You couldn’t find one trainer — Charlie LoPresti, Nick Zito, Mark Casse — none of them were questioned on it. It was a spin they put on it so they could reconvert to dirt so that dirt stallions could have the advantage. …
“In short, decisions in our industry never seem to be made in the best interest of the horse. They’re always made for individual agendas. And it’s catching up with us now. We’re fixing to lose our industry. And unless decisions are made that are in the best interest of the horse, we will lose it.”
Elliston disputes Casner’s theory and his view of the stallion marketplace. “These sires were in demand, period,” he said.
“We felt none of that pressure here,” he continued. “We could see if we stayed in the synthetic environment, we were not going to be in that national discussion.”
The company line at Churchill Downs has been that a properly maintained dirt track can be just as safe as a synthetic surface and, indeed, New York’s Belmont Park has been statistically safer than synthetics four times in the past six years. Still, the broader the basis, the more difficult the comparisons become.
Churchill Downs’ spring meet ended Saturday with three fatalities in 3,148 starts, an 0.95 per 1,000 fatality rate that was its best since 2010, but the track lost 43 thoroughbreds to race-related injuries from 2016 through 2018. Pennsylvania’s Presque Isle Downs, running a comparable racing schedule on a synthetic surface, had just 14 racing fatalities during the same period.
Even before its highly publicized 2019 problems, Santa Anita’s fatality rate had almost quadrupled following its 2010 switch from Pro-Ride synthetics to dirt.
“All those detrimental laws of physics that occur on dirt surfaces are greatly diminished on synthetic surfaces,” Casner said. “There is an energy absorption. Synthetic surfaces are much softer. They absorb energy when that horse hits the ground, whereas on a hard dirt surface, that energy goes right back up the leg.”
Trainer Michael Dickinson, whose synthetic Tapeta tracks are in place at Golden Gate Fields, Presque Isle Downs and Canada’s Woodbine, compares dirt tracks to improvised explosive devices.
“It blows up in your face without any warning,” he said. “Dirt racing can’t conduct without a load of fatalities and a shed load of drugs. Those are two things that the public won’t put up with.”
Racing executives recognize the disconnect between the data and their direction, and the risks they run by placing horses in harm’s way — “It’s hard to have an argument when the numbers are so drastic,” Del Mar President and CEO Joe Harper acknowledged — but decisions driven by financial and competitive considerations do not always assign top priority to horses’ health.
When Keeneland announced its intention to return to dirt in 2014, the Washington Post’s influential Andrew Beyer saw it as a step toward regained relevance for the track. He described the perception that racing surfaces were primarily responsible for breakdowns as “a simplistic view of a complex problem.”
“The push for synthetic surfaces in 2006 was ill-considered, hasty, and a bit arrogant,” Beyer wrote. “A small number of the sport’s leaders were saying, in essence, ‘We are going to change the fundamental nature of horse racing in America, and we want everyone to fall in line with us.’ Upon seeing what the future would look like, too many people — the sport’s customers, especially — wanted no part of it.”
Numerous owners, trainers and bettors objected to artificial surfaces because of the belief that they compromised speed horses and eliminated some of the advantages of astute handicappers. Rachel Alexandra, the 2009 Horse of the Year, was withheld from that year’s Breeders’ Cup at Santa Anita because of owner Jess Jackson’s concerns about the synthetic surface.
Harper’s staunch support of synthetics led to a heated exchange with Ahmed Zayat, later owner of American Pharoah, who abruptly pulled his horses from Del Mar in 2007 in a dispute over the inconsistency of the surface between morning workouts and afternoon racing. Trainer Bob Baffert, probably the most prominent figure in the sport, threatened to take his stable to Saratoga unless Del Mar’s Polytrack surface was removed.
Some horsemen have claimed synthetic tracks cause more soft-tissue injuries thandirt tracks do — injuries that can be career-ending though not fatal — but those claims have been largely anecdotal.
“We have not seen any statistical or scientific information that would support that,” said Turfway Park General Manager Chip Bach, whose synthetic Northern Kentucky track has bettered national dirt fatality rates nine times in 10 years. “And we’ve chased after that data … We just didn’t see anything that would suggest that horses were leaving here and falling off the grid.”
Harper said the “main gripe” he heard during Del Mar’s Polytrack era concerned horses being bred and trained for speed on a surface that rewarded stamina.
“I wouldn’t accept that argument,” Harper said, “I said, ‘Maybe if you trained for longevity, you might do a lot better in the long run.’ ”
Ultimately, though, Harper understood he was fighting a lonely, losing battle with unanticipated maintenance costs.
“What happened was the petroleum in the wax started eating away at the base, which is basically a macadam road,” Harper said. “If you look at a parking lot where you park a car that’s dripping oil on it, that macadam breaks up into little pieces. That’s exactly what was happened with us. All of a sudden we were seeing chunks of asphalt working its way up through the Polytrack. Even I could figure that out; that it wasn’t safe. …
“By that time, Santa Anita had lost interest, Hollywood Park was out of business and Keeneland, which we were all kind of following their lead, they said, ‘No, we’re getting rid of it, too, because none of the horsemen like it.’ There was a pretty good segment of top trainers who wouldn’t run on it. What do you do?”
The New York Times reported last week that Stronach Group President Belinda Stronach said she would consider switching back to a synthetic surface at Santa Anita because “The numbers don’t lie.”
Jockey Club President Jim Gagliano says the answer may lie in applying technology developed on synthetic tracks to existing dirt surfaces, using sensors to monitor and adjust moisture levels.
Dickinson contends that synthetics’ lead is widening thanks in part to the work of his wife, Joan Wakefield, and her Tapeta version 10. (Tapeta is Latin for “carpet.”)
“Dirt’s been around over 100 years and it’s not getting better,” Dickinson said. “Synthetics are getting better. If a California trainer said, ‘I don’t like synthetics,’ I don’t blame him, but he’s 10 years out of date.”