Horse racing has a Kentucky Derby winner heading to the Preakness with a chance at the Triple Crown.
Hall of Fame trainer Shug McGaughey and his wife, Alison, are fielding messages from friends outside horse racing about the spate of deaths at Churchill Downs leading up to and including Kentucky Derby day.
“They’re texting, ‘What’s going on?'” McGaughey said. “They don’t want to hear that (is happening), so that’s something we’re going to have to address.”
The Derby was the second most-watched sporting event of 2023 behind only the Super Bowl. Those viewers witnessed the deaths of seven horses in 10 days at the track before watching Mage win the race. He’s now headed to Maryland to compete in the Preakness Stakes with a chance to win the Triple Crown. However, the recent deaths in Kentucky have raised ongoing concerns for the sport and for trainers confident in their horses running on May 20 at Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore.
“You’re not going to be right every time you work, but I think it’s very concerning what went on at Churchill that week,” said McGaughey, who is set to have his first Preakness starter since 2013. “I don’t know that we’ll ever get to the bottom of it. But seven deaths in a week and they had three at Keeneland (in Lexington) that made it 10 deaths that we know about in a month, and that’s too many. I don’t think it’s something we should sweep under the rug. I think we need to be very transparent about what’s going on.”
National Thoroughbred Racing Association president and CEO Jim Rooney called this stretch “difficult for those of us who love our sport.” He said while the industry needs to find out what happened to two horses trained by Saffie Joseph Jr. who died suddenly of unknown causes, work must continue on track safety, testing, and other factors that could contribute to the catastrophic musculoskeletal injury that may have caused the other five deaths.
“We’ll continue to try to find the right equation for having the tracks be safe,” Rooney told The Associated Press by phone Friday. “I have a responsibility — the industry has a responsibility — to the fans that obviously love the sport or they wouldn’t have tuned in but also for the horses and the jockeys that we’re making sure with modern technology and racetrack safety and antidoping and fairness that we have something that we can be proud of.”
Pimlico will host the 148th edition of the Preakness. According to the Equine Injury Database, one horse died among the 1,510 who raced there last year, less than half the national average of 1.25 per 1,000 starts — the lowest rate since they began tracking in 2009.
Rooney said it might speak to the soundness of the old track. He said industry leaders don’t want a repeat of this situation at Churchill Downs. The seven deaths there were far above the norm.
“Bad timing, unfortunate circumstances, who knows?” said Steve Asmussen, who has the most career wins of any trainer and could have two horses in the Preakness. “Tremendous pressure. There’s just a tremendous amount of variables I think went into (that) week.”
Certain medications given to horses can have negative effects that contribute to breakdowns. Regulations have varied on a state-to-state basis. However, the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority’s antidoping and medication rules, which aim to standardize rules across the U.S., go into effect on May 22. That’s two days after the Preakness.
Matt I. Lazarus, CEO of HISA, said Thursday the authority will conduct its own independent investigation into the deaths beyond the Equine Catastrophic Injury Review being conducted by the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission. That is expected to include review of each horse’s records, Churchill Downs’ recent death rates and racetrack maintenance, plus interviews with veterinarians and management officials.
Tracks in Kentucky do not participate in the Equine Injury Database, and the state does not have mandatory reporting requirements like New York and California.
“The primary goal is to assist efforts to better understand, to the extent possible, the root causes of the fatalities last week at Churchill Downs,” Lazarus said in an email outlining HISA’s response. “The findings associated with such investigations will also be recorded and aggregated with industrywide data for complex analysis to eventually establish a baseline for identifying with greater specificity factors that could contribute to the likelihood of injury.”
Five horses were scratched from the Derby for various reasons. They included favorite Known Agenda, who won’t run in the Preakness after trainer Todd Pletcher was recently suspended for the colt’s positive drug test at Saratoga in September.
Asmussen said his Derby horse, Drain, came out of the Derby fine. Similarly, fellow trainer Brad Cox was proud to have 21 horses run at Churchill during the week without issues.
Cox said all he can do is his best “to send out a happy, healthy horse” and hopes to do the same with Known Agenda in the Preakness. Still, he understands why there’s some trepidation among the public when multiple horses die at the same track in a short period of time.
“I understand it’s a concern to the racing fan and just someone who doesn’t really know much about the sport that’s looking at it as a problem — the perception and sort of how it looks,” Cox said. “It is concerning.”
BAFFERT BACK
Two-time Triple Crown-winning trainer Bob Baffert will have a horse in the Preakness again after confirming National Treasure is heading to Pimlico. He was unable to enter one last year due to a Kentucky suspension that Baltimore honored and has been banned from the Derby in 2022 and ’23 because of a Churchill Downs suspension.
Baffert is tied for the most Preakness wins with seven, the most recent coming in 2018 with Justify.
