Racing to Death

Let me lay this down for you... 24 horses a week die on American/Canadian soil at the race track, that's roughly 3 per day/3 per 1,000 starts. Killed on track or on track grounds. Many of them killed right there in front of a watching crowd, after the tarps go up. This does not account for the ones that are hauled away injured and later euthanized due to injuries while running. That is far higher nowadays than the 1.6 per 1,000 starts back in 1992. More racehorses are dying these days that ever before.

In Britain the death-rate is higher due to jumps racing, while it's still higher in Japan simply because of the number of animals running and track conditions.

A 2005 study by the United States Department of Agriculture found that performance injuries are the second leading cause of death in horses, second only to old age, and beating out colic by a landslide.

The reasons for so many catastrophic breakdowns are broken down into 3 groups: Age, Conformation, and Other.

Age: Racing colts at just 2 years old means they are often trained as yearlings. Some are even raced as long yearlings because of the global Thoroughbred birthdate in the Jockey Club being January 1st (Northern Hemisphere)/August 1st (Southern Hemisphere) for all horses registered. 87-93% of all racehorses (TB, STB, QH) will exhibit pulmonary bleeding at least once. The bones in the knees do not finish maturing until age 5, the spinal bones of the lumbo-sacral joint at age 7. Maturity overall isn't until well after 2 years of age. They are racing babies, literally, into the grave.

Conformation: Very thin streamlined legs, huge ribcages with large lungs, long pasterns, fine boned animals. The number one injuries for a race horse are injury to the sesmoid, or ankle bones, and knee injuries. When a horse’s leg hits the ground at racing speed on a straightaway, it bears a load that is three times its weight (with the exception of harness racing). When negotiating a turn, centrifugal force increases the load to between 5 and 10 times body weight. 70% of thoroughbreds develop a condition called bucked shins, which is a cannon bone injury caused by the young colt's inability to adapt to the grueling training regimen. Tendon injuries will also affect 66-70% of all racehorses. Ruptured tendons, as in a complete sever of the tendon, will happen to 3% of all racehorses.

Other: Trips, missteps, underlying issues such as heart/brain issues are also factors.

Fatal breakdowns as a result of injury are separated by percentage:

Musculoskeletal: 97%
Respiratory: 1%
Integumentary: 1%
Cardiovascular: 1%

Quarter horses are 29% more likely to suffer injuries or breakdowns than Thoroughbreds, and 64% more likely than standardbreds. This is due to the fact that Quarter horse sprinters run faster and harder for a shorter period of time.

Drugging is also rampant to get injured horses to run as if they were't. Since 2009, records show, trainers at United States tracks have been caught illegally drugging horses more than 3,800 times. In the same time period more than 7,000 horses have broken down or shown signs of injury. Since 2009 the injury rate has not only not gone down, even with all of the new 'safety' measures implemented, it has risen.

The greatest number of incidents on a single day — 23 — occurred in 2011 on the most celebrated day of racing in America, the running of the Kentucky Derby. One Derby horse fractured a leg (Archarcharch), as did a horse in the previous race at Churchill Downs. All told, seven jockeys at other tracks were thrown to the ground after their horses broke down.

New Mexico has the worst injury/death rate for both horses and riders of any state in the US while Ireland churns out more horses that die from catastrophic breakdowns and injuries than any other country.

In one 13-day stretch of racing in 2010 at Sunland Park Racetrack and Casino in New Mexico (Worst track record in the US), nine horses died racing, five were hauled away in ambulances and two jockeys were hospitalized, one in critical condition.

California researchers have noted that as much as 90% of horses that break down have previously existing injuries often masked by drugs.

35+ horses have died just at the Belmont Park track since last year's Belmont Stakes race alone.

As one Daily New York News reporter put it:
“The thoroughbred race horse is a genetic mistake. It runs too fast, its frame is too large, and its legs are far too small. As long as mankind demands that it be trained too young and run at high speeds under stressful conditions, horses will die at racetracks.”