Task Force on Racehorse Health and Safety

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Aqueduct racing deaths are not the whole story

Posted by noonante on January 21, 2015
Posted in: Horse Racing, Political/Social commentary, Politics. Tagged: , , , , , , , , . 1 Comment

Recent news accounts have focused on the dramatic increase in fatalities occurring in races on the Aqueduct inner track.  The 12th catastrophic injury since early December occurred on Friday.  It seems to be a sharp reversal from the progress made by the New York Racing Association since a similar increase in the 2011-12 meet.  Yet that progress has not been replicated in reducing the fatalities that occur during training hours.  Just as troubling, however, is that recommendations by a special Task Force following a spike in racing fatalities in 2011-12 are not being followed.

I studied the record of all fatalities from the web site of New York’s Gaming Commission for the same three-month period, September through November, for each of the last four years.  Racing fatalities had dropped significantly, from a high of 13 in 2011 to a low of six in 2013 and then eight in 2014.  Conversely, training fatalities had increased from a low of six in 2011 to a high of 14 in 2013 before dropping to 10 in 2014.  When the number of racing and training fatalities are totaled, there has been almost no change.  We went from 19 in 2011 to 18 in 2014, with the intervening years being 16 and 20.

The inverse relationship between racing and training fatalities is curious.  It is further amplified when one considers that the high number of racing fatalities in 2011-12 and 2014-15 was matched in each instance by almost no training deaths on the inner track.  In this current period, there has been one fatality in the morning (but three at Belmont).  When a task force in 2012 looked at that meet’s 21 racing fatalities, it found no training fatalities at Aqueduct (but there were seven at Belmont).

Dr. Scott Palmer, New York’s Equine Medical Director, is aware of the disparity between New York’s overall success in reducing racing fatalities in contrast to the lack of success in cutting the numbers from morning training.  I asked him about this last summer, and he identified the factors that made identifying at-risk horses during training so much more difficult than for those racing.

Each horse who is entered to race is examined in the morning by a NYRA veterinarian to determine if the horse is sound, or has a condition that warrants the vet scratching the horse.  The vet should also equipped with records pertaining to the horse that might cause a red flag.  Horses in training, however, do not receive any scrutiny by NYRA’s vets.  While NYRA has on-track personnel to look for problems, including a new position of “Safety Steward,” it is close to being an impossible task to catch every potential problem.  Dr. Palmer did say that he continues to work on possible solutions to the training track fatalities.   NYRA did not respond to my request for comments on training breakdowns.

The spike in Aqueduct’s racing fatalities must be doubly embarrassing for NYRA.  The fatalities in 2011-12 were one of the factors supposedly used by Governor Andrew Cuomo to seize control of NYRA and replace it with a Board of Directors consisting mostly of state appointees.  And last week, the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission announced that it had experienced 12 racing fatalities for all tracks for the entire year.

Catastrophic breakdowns are a difficult issue with many possible causes.  All one has to do is look at a thoroughbred’s legs to realize that an awful lot of weight is being supported by those legs travelling at high speeds.  New York investigated the causes that led to the 2011-12 Aqueduct fatalities by appointing a blue-ribbon Task Force that issued a comprehensive report identifying several possible causes.  The Task Force also made over 100 recommendations that could serve as a bible for any racing jurisdiction seeking to reduce fatalities.

Unfortunately, it is not clear how committed New York has been to implementing the recommendations of its own task force.  Teresa Genaro, writing in Brooklyn Backstretch, has recently written about two shortcomings.

One has to do with the state’s monitoring of compliance with rules and protocols concerning the administration of corticosteroids.  Corticosteroids is a class of therapeutic medications used to treat a broad range of medical conditions (according to the Task Force Report).  It can also, however, have a side effect of masking unsoundness if administered too close to a vet examining the horse.  Repeated administration can also have serious long-term consequences.  The Task Force Report identified it as a potential factor in several of the horses suffering catastrophic injuries during the 2011-12 meet.

Even though treating a horse with intra-articular corticosteroids required a report to the state’s regulatory agency (now the Gaming Commission), the Task Force concluded that the agency neglected to monitor compliance with the regulation, describing it as a “serious deficiency.”  The Task Force recommended that the existing rule be enforced, and that a trainer who claimed a horse should be provided with the record of all IA corticosteroids within 48 hours by the prior trainer.  This last requirement is particularly important given the potentially harmful effects of over-administering the drug.

Nonetheless, monitoring of these requirements by the Gaming Commission has been deficient, according to Genaro.  While the Commission did conduct an audit in 2013, they do not appear to be aware of the extent of compliance with the reporting requirement.  Just as troubling, the transfer of records from one trainer to the claiming trainer appears to be close to non-existent.

According to the Genaro piece, the Gaming Commission spokesperson said that while 600 horses were claimed in 2013, he did not receive a single request for records.  Trainers are understandably reluctant to pursue the issue with a trainer they just claimed from.  The Gaming Commission has developed a software program that will enable the Gaming Commission to notify the claiming trainer of corticosteroid injections reported on the ESAL, a Commission database, and that it should be running in a few weeks.

A second troubling shortcoming identified by Genaro is the manner in which the state has implemented a panel charged with examining the cause of any exercise-related fatality that occurs on a NYRA track.  The Task Force recommended that the NYRA top racing official, the horse’s trainer and attending veterinarian, as well as others be part of the review.  Importantly, the Task Force recommended that the  “report of the review board proceedings should be made part of the [Gaming Commission] investigative report.”

But Genaro found that those recommendations have been substantially watered-down.  The top NYRA racing official, Martin Panza, does not attend the meetings.  [NOTE:  The following has been deleted from the original post because it is not an accurate restatement of Genaro’s article, which can be read in its entirety from the link.}  Many trainers do not attend, according to Genaro, because Rick Violette, representing the New York Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association, is a competing trainer.  While she does not mention if the attending veterinarian attends, I suspect that if the trainer is not going, neither is the vet.  If all this is not bad enough,  In addition, there are no reports generated.  In true government fashion, Panza shifted the blame, saying that a report would have to come from Dr. Palmer of the Gaming Commission, even though the panel is a NYRA responsibility.

But the failure to implement either the letter or the spirit of the Task Report from 2012 does not end there.  In a response to the series of recent breakdowns, the NYRA Communications Department issued a list of what NYRA has done recently to address fatalities.  One of those innovations is that all fatal breakdowns, both racing and training, would be sent to Cornell for a necropsy.  This was recommended by the Task Force Report of September, 2012.  But it was also something NYRA stated it was doing in the summer of 2013.  Apparently, this is yet another important safety recommendation that has fallen through the ever-widening cracks at NYRA.

Given the effort that went into the 2012 Task Force Report by four of the industry’s most respected figures  –  Dr. Palmer, Dr. Mary Scollay from Kentucky, Alan Foreman and Jerry Bailey  –  any serious inquiry into what is happening at Aqueduct should measure the state’s performance against what was recommended.  Instead, NYRA has come up with steps to address the crisis, several of which seem to be of questionable utility.

One is to not allow a horse to race if it has raced in the past 14 days.  Of the 12 recent fatalities, four had a race within the preceding 14 days which might make this seem to be a sensible step.  (Three of the four also had poor finishes in the last race, finishing more than 20 lengths behind the winner.)  But many well-regarded trainers will bring a horse back in a shorter period of time, and I have never observed any relationship between a quick turnaround and a breakdown.  If anything, trainers who do that as a matter of course have a good record with it.

Another is to reduce the number of races.  Again, I am not aware of any causal relationship between the number of races on a card and breakdowns.  But this is something NYRA wants to do anyhow  –  this is the second time the current leadership has proposed this with the stated purpose of safety  –  and I am skeptical when a purported safety rationale comports with what they want to do for other reasons.

If NYRA explained their rationale with supporting data, it would be one thing.  But this smacks of nothing more than a PR fig leaf to get past a crisis.  There are, however, meaningful steps they could take to address this problem, although none of them would provide the short-term jolt that an ill-conceived press release provides.

The most important thing NYRA and the Gaming Commission can do is a serious audit of which Task Force recommendations have been implemented fully, and which have been altered  –  with an explanation for any changes.  If they are fully compliant  –  which obviously appears to not be the case  –  then there is a problem of a different magnitude.  Needless to say, this report should be made public, as was the Task Force Report itself.

One area in particular deserves serious scrutiny.  The Task Force Report detailed practices by the NYRA vets when conducting their pre-race exams that were disturbing, if not shocking.  What has NYRA done to implement the Task Force recommendations in this one area?  Since this is the most proximate exam by a vet before a race, it is of special importance.  If the Task Force Report recommendations are not being followed in this instance, it could provide an answer to the current crisis.

Interestingly, this is not the first time the Cuomo-controlled Board of Directors has faced what seemed to be a troubling increase in inner track fatalities.  That time, back in 2013, Board Chairman David Skorton seemed to panic, coming up with a series of possible steps, including stopping winter racing.  When the situation calmed down, so did Skorton.

But if NYRA and the Gaming Commission do not get on top of this issue, the next crisis will arrive and they will have nothing but PR stunts to address it.  It would be far better if they took the basic management step of measuring what they are doing against the thoughtful recommendations by the 2012 Task Force.

Time for racing leaders to get their heads out of the sand

Posted by noonante on December 8, 2013
Posted in: Horse Racing. Tagged: , , , , , , , . 7 Comments

The forces opposed to drugs in horse racing now have their poster child  –  or poster horse if you will.  The recent Congressional hearing on the subject will not be the last time you hear the name Coronado Heights bandied about.  The four-year old gelding broke down in his third career start and had to be euthanized.  What has elevated this $7,500 claimer to prominence is being featured at the Congressional sub-committee hearing on legislation, HR 2012, that would provide federal oversight on the administration of drugs to racehorses.  The hearing ended with Congressman Joe Pitts asking two witnesses how the 17 injections given Coronado Heights in the week before his death was “putting the horse first.”

The Congressman, a Republican from Pennsylvania, is one of four co-sponsors of HR 2012.  The legislation would authorize the United States Anti-Doping Agency, the organization that finally dropped the hammer on Lance Armstrong, to regulate drugs that can be administered to racehorses, and establish penalties for those individuals violating its rules.  The key standard to be used in administering drugs is the principle of the Veterinary-Client-Patient Relationship set forth in the ethical rules of the American Veterinary Medical Association.  The essence of a VCPR is that a veterinarian’s treatment of the patient  –  in this case a racehorse  –  must be predicated upon the health needs of the animal and the independent professional judgment of the vet.  If medication is to be administered, it must be necessary to treat a documented medical condition.

Coronado Heights came to the attention of those who did not handicap Aqueduct’s 10th race on February 25, 2012, when his death was featured in a New York Times article by Joe Drape and three other reporters.  The article, published the week of the 2012 Kentucky Derby, included a graphic of 17 syringes depicting the drugs administered to the horse before his fatal race.  The accompanying article stated the gelding experienced pain and cartilage damage from a degenerative joint disease, and had been injected 13 times in the month before the race to treat that condition.  Coronado Heights was trained by Todd Pletcher who, as I write this, not only leads the nation in purses won this year with $24 million, but is $10 million ahead of number two.

The catastrophic breakdown of Coronado Heights was one of 21 fatalities experienced during the Aqueduct meet of 2011-12.  This prompted a call by Governor Andrew Cuomo for an independent review to ascertain the causes of the fatalities and to make recommendations.  The Task Force on Racehorse Health and Safety could not identify a single factor leading to the breakdowns, but did recommend a regulatory change to increase the time that one of the drugs administered to Coronado Heights in the week before the race could be administered.  The drug  –  Depo-Medrol®  –  had “been demonstrated to have degradative effects on articular cartilage,” according to the Task Force Report.

At the Congressional hearing, Philip Hanrahan, CEO of the National Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Association  –  the only witness who opposed the legislation of the six testifying  –  answered Congressman Pitt’s pointed question by quoting from the Task Force Report:  “Pre-race medication administered to the fatally injured horses  was similar  to that administered to the uninjured horses that raced.”  (The Report also said that trainer Pletcher “reported that the pre-race medication program for [Coronado Heights] was standard practice for all of the horses in his stable.”)  Hanrahan noted that wide-scale drug testing produces negligible results for impermissible medications and concluded that HR 2012 addresses a “problem that in reality does not exist.”

While Hanrahan’s comments may seem tone deaf, they are probably reflective of the industry consensus.  I think there are three components to the debate on drugs:

  • Drugs for which there is no therapeutic use  –  there appears to be universal agreement that such violations should be treated severely.  (The most recent notorious example being Demorphin, produced from the skin of South American frogs.)
  • Lasix  –  generally the only medication permitted on the day of a race, and at the heart of many of the most heated debates within the thoroughbred community.  Advocates of its use point out that it reduces pulmonary bleeding and is not a performance-enhancing drug.  It is the latter assertion with which I have the most difficulty.  The weight being carried by a horse is a major component of racing.  That’s why we have handicap races, assign differing weights based on age or gender, and why apprentice jockeys get a weight allowance.  If a three-pound difference in a race among older male horses is important, why is not the 20 pounds a horse may lose in water weight because of Lasix also significant?  To say this is not “performance-enhancing” flies in the face of much of racing history and thinking.
  • Legal therapeutic medications  –  all the medications Todd Pletcher had administered to Coronado Heights were legal.  For many in racing, that is where the inquiry should end.  What HR 2012 would require, however, is that any administered medication must address a specific diagnosis.

While the use of Lasix on race days draws most of the attention within the racing community, it is this third category that is the most troublesome if one’s concern is the widespread perception of rampant drugging.  The same day as the Congressional hearing, the California Horse Racing Board released its report on the sudden deaths of seven horses trained by Bob Baffert over a 16-month period ending early this year.  “Sudden death” is the acute collapse of a seemingly healthy horse, and is distinguished from the more common musculoskeletal injury that is the more typical cause of a racing fatality.  While sudden deaths during training or racing are not uncommon, it was the clustering of such a large number from the Baffert barn that led to the investigation.  The investigators concluded the causes of the deaths “remains unexplained,” while also noting that there was “no evidence” of illicit activity or rules violations.

There was one drug, however, that drew extra attention in this Report.  Baffert informed investigators that Thyro-L (levothyroxine) was used on all of his horses.  The medication  –  use of which is legal  –  is for treatment of hypothyroid conditions.  The report stated that it is a medication most commonly used to assist in weight loss for overweight horses returning from the farm.  Baffert, however, thought the medication was used to help “build up” his horses.  While it must be prescribed by a veterinarian, the Report concluded that Baffert used it more as a supplement and it was regularly added to feed tubs by barn staff, including grooms.  The Report further added that in its discussions with veterinarians, “prescribing thyroxine without evaluating thyroid levels is consistent with the standard of care for prescribing and dispensing thyroxine at the Thoroughbred race tracks in southern California.”  Also,  Baffert’s “use of medication and veterinary services … can best be described as moderate.”  Baffert discontinued the use of thyroxine in April following the sudden death of his seventh horse.  According to one report, he has not had a sudden death injury since then.

The most frequent argument of those defending the use of drugs in racing is that the percentage of horses testing positive in a post-race sample is negligible.  And they would be correct.  The number cited by Phil Hanrahan in his Congressional testimony is that less than one percent of tests over a four-year period were positive, and a much smaller percentage (142 of 368,900 tests) were for substances that were illegal.

When your prime argument boils down to the seemingly rampant drugging of racehorses being OK because the drugs are legal therapeutic medications  –  without addressing whether a particular horse needs the medication  –  you are missing the essential point of the case made by those opposing the racing industry’s use of drugs. I doubt there is a sensible person who would oppose medications for an animal who needs it.  But when the nation’s two leading trainers are administering drugs  –  albeit legal ones  –  without regard for the medical needs of a particular horse, we are no longer talking about therapeutic drugs, but rather drugs they hope will be performance enhancing.  Todd Pletcher said the drugs given Coronado Heights were consistent with what his horses received;  Baffert administered the same drug to all his horses without even knowing what the purpose of the drug was.  If they give the same drugs to all horses irrespective of an individual’s medical condition, what possible motivation would they have other than enhancing the horse’s performance?

If the top purse earners nationally are acting like this, what do you think will be the message sent to all trainers and owners?  If Pletcher and Baffert are engaged in this level of drugging  –  once more I will emphasize it is legal  –  why would a lesser trainer not try to stay competitive, particularly when it is becoming increasingly more difficult to compete with the guys who consistently get the best horses?  If racing’s leaders do not think this presents a major problem, both for the perception of racing in the general public as well as the many struggling to make a buck in this business, it really is time to get their heads out of the sand.

That brings us back to the main purpose of HR 2012.  It’s not that the sponsors want to kill horse racing.  It’s that if an animal is being asked to compete in an inherently stressful event for our entertainment, that animal should not be required to absorb drugs that are not needed to address a medical condition.  How can this industry oppose legislation that would require that drugs administered to a racehorse be ones necessary to address a medical condition?  That’s the main thrust of HR 2012.  The bill would not prevent a Coronado Heights from receiving the drugs he did in his last week if they were medically necessary.  Of course, if he did need that level of medication, sensible minds might wonder why he was racing at all.  And that is the real threat to our sport.

NYRA backtracks on safety – UPDATE

Posted by noonante on November 15, 2013
Posted in: Horse Racing, Political/Social commentary. Tagged: , , , . Leave a comment

Earlier this week I wrote that NYRA’s President and Chief Executive Officer had reversed a significant reform implemented after the Report of the Task Force on Racehorse Health and Safety was released over a year ago.  The Task Force recommended that NYRA’s veterinarians should report to a separate state agency  –  the Gaming Commission  – or, if that was not feasible, to the stewards.  The panel had identified the NYRA practice of the vets reporting to the Racing Office as a “critical conflict of interest” that “must be changed immediately.”  The conflict arose from the differing objectives of the Veterinary Department and the Racing Office.  The former was responsible for ensuring the safety of horses entered to race so that only sound horses are allowed to run.  The Racing Office, by contrast, had a major focus of providing large fields for bettors, because large fields meant an increase in the wagering handle  –  and more revenue for NYRA.

In October, 2012, NYRA had changed the reporting relationship so that the Veterinary Department would report to the stewards.  CEO Christopher Kay had decided to change this relationship when the new Senior Vice-President of Racing started later this month, with the vets once again reporting to the racing operation, thereby reviving the “unacceptable conflict of interest” identified by the Task Force.

NYRA’s spokesperson has informed me that NYRA will not change the reporting relationship, so that the veterinarians will continue to report to the stewards, and “will not report to the incoming Senior VP for any purpose.”