Safety panel to confer with trainers and vets
By GREGORY HALL | Louisville Courier Journal | September 16, 2008
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LEXINGTON, Ky. — The Kentucky Horse Racing Commission’s new equine medical director is calling for mandatory reporting of horse injuries during morning training at the state’s tracks — something industry officials have lacked data on for years.
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Commission members who are on a safety and welfare committee yesterday expressed support for veterinarian Mary Scollay’s proposal, but said they’d like to work with trainers and veterinarians to gain their support before recommending a mandate to the full racing commission.
The high-profile breakdowns of 2006 Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro in the Preakness Stakes in Maryland and of this year’s Derby runner-up Eight Belles while she was pulling up from the race at Churchill Downs both led to public scrutiny of how many horses are injured in racing.
The industry has lacked answers, but Barbaro’s breakdown led to a national injury reporting database — started as a pilot program last year with the help of Scollay when she worked in Florida.
Dan Fick, executive vice president of The Jockey Club, said 64 tracks — including Kentucky’s — now are participating, representing 75 percent of the races run in North America.
But the focus of that effort has been incidents revolving around races, leaving undocumented the morning training hours that see far more horses on the track than during a day’s races.
A computerized program, recently developed by a subsidiary of The Jockey Club, for the racing reports also allows regulatory veterinarians to make reports on morning incidents.
So far, the database has relied on reports from regulatory veterinarians, but Scollay said morning training reporting also would need reports to the regulatory vets from the private-practice vets working in track stable areas. She said that she wanted the committee to recommend to the commission that the reporting be a condition of the license to practice at Kentucky tracks.
“It’s just time,” Scollay said, for the data to be compiled.
The information provided to the database is confidential — although the horse’s name is used — and is not given to track racing offices or the “vet’s lists” that are kept of horses not allowed to race, she said.
Commission and committee member Foster Northrop, a private-practice veterinarian, said he supports the effort. But he predicted resistance because vets rely on trainers for work and trainers might be concerned about the information being made public.
At Fick’s initial suggestion, the safety subcommittee and Scollay agreed to convene a focus group of trainers and veterinarians to help assure them of the confidentiality efforts in the database, so that they would support broader reporting.
Also yesterday, the safety and welfare committee recommended a ban on one-handed whipping in harness racing.
The rule would require a standardbred driver to hold a line in each hand and keep both hands in front of the body throughout a race. Previously, a driver could hold both lines in one hand and the whip in the other during the homestretch of a race.
The commission will consider the changes at its Sept. 22 meeting.
The committee also is working on a rule with new whip specifications for thoroughbred racing.
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The information provided to the database is confidential — although the horse’s name is used — and is not given to track racing offices or the “vet’s lists” that are kept of horses not allowed to race, she said.
Commission and committee member Foster Northrop, a private-practice veterinarian, said he supports the effort. But he predicted resistance because vets rely on trainers for work and trainers might be concerned about the information being made public.
TH says: Those who have nothing to hide, hide nothing. Still, it is progress of sorts. We commend Mary Scollay for her work.
