Saratoga Breakdown Report

[Horse’s Rear]

There are several topics of conversation that I would be interested in raising, but I will start with the recently issued report on the rash of breakdowns at Saratoga in (I believe) 2022.

I am starting there because it's easy to start this conversation quickly, and I am sure some will have thoughts. I will be back in a reply (assuming this posts) with a link to the report, and some initial thoughts to prompt discussion.

[Horse’s Rear]

Time flies when you're my age. The breakdowns were just last year (2023).

Here's a link to the report:
http://i.bloodhorse.com/pdfs/HISA_SaratogaReport.pdf

[Horse’s Rear]

Let me start with a disclaimer right up front: I think that in the long history of bad things racing has done to itself, HISA is one of the worst, and may prove to be the last. It is testimony to the damage people with good intentions can do when they throw their weight behind a coalition of the ignorant and malevolent; and we are only beginning to start what will be a cascading of crises and self-harm that flows from good intentions.

Not surprisingly, I see this report as further evidence of that. HISA purports to be a neutral body bent on "saving" the industry. But as that rhetoric suggests, it is heavily tilted to White Hat/Black Hat oversimplifying reformist zeal that characterized so much reckless discussion at TBC decades ago.

What HISA has been doing has been targeting medication positives, running some small barns out of the business completely, and (less noticeably) providing a screen for major stakeholders like CDI, Stronach, and NYRA.

It's easy to see why they need to do that, as those stakeholders have effectively driven everyone else (except the Cella family) out of business; and if they fail (as all are currently doing) it all implodes quickly.

So I come to this report expecting that it will tell me two things: the track is not responsible; and trainers are. My own view, going in, is that three or four causes are likely to have converged: weather, track condition, questionable horsemanship, and overly aggressive actions by human agents at all levels.  To those, one could also add bad fortune, if one believes in such things (as I do).

One of the first direct statements is this: " HISA did not find any rule violations but did identify several contributing risk factors."

No rule violations. Yet that finding is quickly followed by a recommendation for additional restrictions on therapeutic treatment, saying that since 3/11 catastrophic breakdowns occurred on horses who had received shockwave treatment within 30 days of racing, the window of prohibition should be extended from its current two weeks out to 30 days out.

There are problems with that reasoning, but without even getting into that, I am struck how a finding that every barn was in compliance with regulation leads to a call for additional regulation.  This is the precise opposite of how the reviews the responsibility of track management:

"The investigation did not find any issues related to the maintenance of the track surfaces, finding the protocols to be consistent with standard operating procedures."

Here, it is sufficient to note that protocols were followed. No suggestion is entertained that those protocols are inadequate.

Yet the most high-profile catastrophic breakdown, the heartbreaking death of Maple Leaf Mel occurred the day after the track had to cancel the second half of the card due to torrential rain.

That was the culmination of the greatest inundation in a meet marked not only by multiple breakdowns, but multiple significant rainfalls. And yet the surface Maple Leaf Mel died on was labeled fast.

That's especially important when you consider that the statistical analysis used to evaluate the role of track condition relied on that labeling as a key metric. If there's interest, we might discuss this and other topics in more detail, but I mostly wanted to point to the quite different ways in which HISA frame responsibility, and what that's likely to mean for the reformist trajectory and its chances of success.

[Horse’s Rear]

Oh, one more postscript.

Of the horses who died catastrophically at Saratoga, two were making their next start after the same race.

Some people handicap key races; what are the chances that two horses exiting the same race will both break down catastrophically in their next starts.

HISA's report takes no notice of this anomaly, much less does it address the question of how one should consider the role of immediately prior races in analyzing breakdowns.