Lazarus: Churchill Downs report positions HISA to adjust rules

The report released Monday by the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority about equine fatalities at Churchill Downs positioned the agency to improve its efforts on track surfaces and data collection, and it could lead to a rule change regarding corticosteroid injections.

The report, which found no singular reason for the deaths, is “a significant step forward,” Lazarus said during a news conference. “We sort of have our blueprints and our map on how we're going to proceed. And we have spent a whole lot of time talking not only amongst ourselves, but to industry leadership to sort of put together what that strategic response looks like.”

During the process of putting together the 197-page report, she said, “we've made a lot of progress on working together as an industry when it comes to surface review.”

Another positive, Lazarus said, is that “we've been able to essentially collect a lot more data than the industry has previously been able to collect because of the mandate we have from Congress. And so the data analytics piece of this with Amazon Web Services and Palantir is really exciting for me, because we can now try to harness that data and actually see what it tells us.”

Lazarus said she expects a HISA rule change regarding corticosteroid injections to be “approved shortly by the Federal Trade Commission.” The rule would move “the standard downtime for corticosteroid injections in the fetlock joint to 30 days. And that's one that California has actually already enacted and they saw a lot of progress. The data from that rule change was very, very positive. And looking at that data, and also looking at the fact that 80 percent of the injuries to horses are in the fetlock in the ankle joint,” that was a really important initiative for HISA to get behind.”

Dr. Susan Stover, chair of HISA’s race track safety program, and a veterinarian at the University of California-Davis, said at the news conference that HISA will have new tools at hand to evaluate horses.

“We recognize that the training surfaces is an important risk factor,” she said. “But we also recognize that these injuries are a result of fatigue, meaning they develop over time and ultimately can become a catastrophic injury. So with that knowledge, we have an opportunity to look at other factors related to the horse. And I'm very optimistic that we have opportunities for looking at those factors as well as being able to not only monitor the horse, but the emerging technologies will help guide us in doing that.”

Lazarus said a similar response report is being prepared regarding Saratoga, which also had 12 horse deaths during its recent meet.

“It's very much under way,” she said. “But the situation is different. There are different factors in play at Saratoga than were in play in a Churchill, and I'm optimistic that we're going to learn a whole lot from that investigation as well that will allow us to fine tune and do even a better job going forward. And one of the things you may notice is that NYRA is going to be leading the initiative on synthetic tracks. They really believe that that's an important area to look into and analyze. And I know that with their new construction, they're very seriously looking at incorporating a synthetic track.”

A similar report is being prepared about the rash of deaths at Laurel Park in the spring.

Going forward, Lazarus said, the strategic response report issued Monday will become HISA’s “bible.”

“We are going to work sort of everyday to implement the elements of it, things are going to change a little bit as we get more information.”