Did the spate of horse deaths at Santa Anita have to happen? When it happened before elsewhere, officials sought solutions that often led to change.
“This is a funny sport with a very short memory,” said Dr. Mary Scollay, chief equine veterinarian in Kentucky and a member of the New York task force. “It has a short-range view looking forward. The next overnight [entries] is the future.”
Seven years ago, there were some commonalities among the horse deaths in New York. Seventeen were during claiming races, in which the horses are up for sale for a certain price. The other four were in maiden special weights, races for horses that have never won. All occurred on the same dirt surface.
The track also experienced an equally unusual run of safe racing and training between April 29 and May 17, when there were more than 7,000 timed workouts and almost 800 race starts without a catastrophic injury. There has been speculation that the hard surface over which the horses were running created micro-fractures that later manifested into breakdowns.
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