DEL MAR – It has been five years since a horse died as a result of racing in Breeders’ Cup. It was 2019, a year that was both the best and the worst for a sport struggling for relevance in the sports landscape.

Racing deaths have become a national obsession as horses kept dying at Santa Anita. Mongolian Groom suffered a fatal injury to his left hind leg at the top of the stretch the biggest Breeders’ Cup raceThe classic. He was the 37th death on the track since December 30 of the previous year.

A Breeders’ Cup investigation found the death could have been prevented.

“Veterinarian examiners made the right call on 252 horses,” the report said. “That’s a 99.6% accuracy rate. The decision was wrong for only one horse: Mongolian Groom.”

The tragedies at Santa Anita stimulated the Stronach Group and California Horse Racing Board to institute a series of rule changes that made the sport safer. Much safer. Since 2019, California racing fatalities have been reduced by 40%. Without intense public and media scrutiny, it is unclear what safety improvements would have been implemented. In a tragic, crisis-free way, the sport may not have evolved so quickly to solve the problem.

California has been the model for change, with most of its policies adopted by the Horse Racing Integrity and Safety Authority (HISA), the national organization charged with creating uniformity in racing rules and regulations. HISA was created after Santa Anita.

But with all the progress being made and a real effort to solve this problem that generally turns people away from the sport, the numbers are starting to climb back up in California. According to statistics provided by the CHRB, the state had 128 deaths in 2019, 96 in 2020, 71 in 2021, 64 in 2022 and 82 last year.

Unfortunately, 2019 was not the low point. In 2016, 209 racehorses died in California.

It begs the question: Has horse racing grown in its effort to make the sport safer? One fact you can’t escape is that horses will die in races, despite your best efforts.

“I don’t think there’s a bottom because there are a lot of untapped areas that we can work on,” said Lisa Lazarus, HISA’s executive director. “There are analytics, which we are improving all the time. Then there are the surfaces. But there is still much we don’t know and research that is available.

“Will we be able to get down to the levels we did this year? Probably not. Will we have some years that are better than others? Probable. But I don’t think there’s a bottom other than zero, it’s unlikely.”

In the second quarter of this year, the fatality rate at HISA tracks was 0.76 per 1,000 starts. In the first quarter it was 0.84 and in the fourth quarter of 2023 it was 0.89.

The problem is that it only tells half the picture. Figures refer to race fatalities only, not training fatalities. Lazarus says he is working on a new metric that includes training fatalities and hopes to implement it next year.

Racing is not above trying to play with statistics to present a misleading view of the dead.

At the conclusion of the winter/spring season at Santa Anita, the track issued a press release claiming it was “the safest track in North America among those with a comparable volume of racing and practice.”

It cited a 99.97% safety record based on a composite schedule of the 2023 fall meet and the 2024 long winter/spring meet. It also excluded tracks that did not compete as often as Santa Anita, like Del Mar, which had no race-related fatalities in 2023 on a shorter race schedule.

Santa Anita had two racing fatalities during that time. But nowhere did he mention the seven horses that died in training. Five from musculoskeletal injuries and two from sudden death.

White Abarrio, center, gallops ahead of the pack to win the 2023 Breeders’ Cup Classic at Santa Anita.

(Mark J. Terrill/Associated Press)

Asked why training deaths were not included, a track official said: “Not all jurisdictions make their training statistics available, although HISA is pushing for them to be included in the Equine Injury Database.”

Despite the deception, there is no doubt that racing and training in California is much safer than it used to be.

“In a very real way, we’ve addressed a lot of low-hanging fruit with drug reform, expanded veterinary examinations, more observations and things like that,” said Scott Chaney, CHRB’s executive director. “Going forward, to continue to reduce these numbers, we will use more technology. AI will definitely be important in the future.

“But it’s fair to admit that when you get to a certain number, it becomes more difficult to get off the next one. We’re committed to this and we won’t stop until it’s zero.”

Virtually everyone in the industry agrees that zero is an unattainable number.

“We have the next wave, which will really help us,” said Dr. Will Farmer, who heads the Breeders’ Cup veterinary team. “Things like wearable technology and advanced diagnostics like the PET machine will help.

“We have some very significant pieces of technology on the horizon that can really help us move to the next level. We’ve hit a plateau, but we have things that can bring that number down even further.”

Some animal rights groups would like to see horse racing go away for good. If this were to happen, the thoroughbred breed would disappear in the United States, as thoroughbreds are bred almost exclusively for racing.

But, being a racehorse is much safer than horses living in the wild or even on farms.

“One thing that is difficult to convey from a public relations standpoint is that the veterinary care that thoroughbred horses receive is far superior to what horses would receive in the wild,” Lazarus said. “They get the best possible care. It’s not like they’re out in the wild suffering for six hours if they’re hurt. There is no good way to say this publicly.”

Another factor is that there are likely to be fewer deaths because the foal crop is in serious decline, which means fewer racehorses.

Of all the issues in horse racing, there’s no doubt, especially because of 2019, that this is an issue that racing considers a major priority.

The problem never goes away, but sometimes, like Friday and Saturday, with Breeders’ Cup at Del Mar, public control is at a very high level.