Report: Officials meet to consider calling off Saratoga Sunday

The New York Racing Association will convene an "emergency meeting" with state and federal racing officials to decide whether to postpone Sunday's card at Saratoga after the deaths of two horses on Saturday's Travers Stakes card, Daily Racing Form reported late Saturday.

DRF said NYRA officials would meet with officials of the federal Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority and the state gaming commission Saturday night before deciding whether to proceed with the 11-race Sunday card, which includes six stakes races for New York-breds.

It quoted NYRA president and CEO David O'Rourke as saying the meeting would include an examination of medical records of the 12 horses who have died during the current Saratoga meet and an analysis of NYRA's data used to assess racing surface conditions.

“It’s a lot of conversation,” DRF quoted O’Rourke as saying. “We have a lot of experts here. We are going to put our heads together, look at the backgrounds, look at the medical records of the horses. We obviously have the data on the (racing surfaces), and we will take a fresh look at it now. We have to get to the bottom of this, and we have to be proactive and aggressive if there are answers to be found, if there is a direction to be found.”

The report surfaced hours after the deaths of two horses on Saturday's Travers Day card. Nobel broke down during the gallop-out after the fifth race. New York Thunder suffered a catastrophic leg injury just yards from a potential victory in the H. Allen Jerkens Memorial Stakes (G1)

“The safety of horses and jockeys competing at Saratoga Race Course is paramount,” the statement said. “NYRA is continuing to investigate these catastrophic injuries with (Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority) officials, the New York State Gaming Commission and the New York state equine medical director. We will immediately consult with HISA's track-surface advisory group to further examine the overall condition of all three racing surfaces at Saratoga prior to Sunday's program. In addition, NYRA will convene a group of relevant outside experts to evaluate our current safety protocols and procedures.

“While NYRA has made meaningful and sustained progress reducing the frequency of serious injuries over the last 10 years, there is always more work to be done to build upon that progress now and in the future."

Separately, BloodHorse interviewed the state's equine medical director Dr. Scott Palmer, who said a tremendous effort was being made to determine whether there is a common link among the fatalities.

But BloodHorse reported that Palmer stopped short of calling for a suspension of racing at Saratoga, saying the evidence does not support such an action.

"That's to be determined," BloodHorse quoted him as saying. "It's certainly on the table, but we need evidence to do that. It has to be an evidence-based decision. We're not talking about optics here. Optics are very straightforward, but that's not the world we live in. We make decisions based on evidence, and we don't have any evidence that we should stop racing at Saratoga."

HISA said this week it had been investigating the deaths since Aug. 5, the day Maple Leaf Mel broke down in the Test (G1) under circumstances that were similar to those of New York Thunder's breakdown. The statement did not mention whether the investigation in cooperation with NYRA and the gaming commission had uncovered any commonalities in the fatalities so far.