Four horse racing deaths cast tragic shadow over upcoming Kentucky Derby

As the days count down to Saturday’s 149^th running of the Kentucky Derby, four horses have died at the iconic track since last week. It most certainly will cast an unwelcome and tragic shadow over the world’s most famous race.

One of the horses, Wild on Ice, was scheduled to run in the Derby but suffered an injury to his left hind leg last Thursday. The winner of the Sunland Derby was pulled up on the backstretch during training. The 3-year-old gelding walked onto the horse ambulance and was evaluated at the track and then shipped to an equine hospital in Lexington, where the horse was euthanized.

It would have been the first Kentucky Derby start for trainer Joel Marr. The horse would have been ridden by Ken Tohill, who at 60 would have been the oldest jockey ever to ride in the Kentucky Derby.

Two horses died on Tuesday. In the fifth race, Take Charge Briana, a 3-year-old filly trained by Wayne Lukas, broke down in the upper stretch during a turf race and was euthanized. Chasing Artie, a 5-year-old gelding, had just finished the eighth race and collapsed near the winner’s circle. The horse was trained by Saffie Joseph Jr. and owned by Ken Ramsey.

Parents Pride, a, 4-year-old filly also trained by Joseph and owned by Ramsey, was pulled up in the stretch on Saturday and collapsed and died on the track.

“We’ve got the preliminary autopsy back on Parents Pride, and the blood was good,” Ramsey told Horse Racing Nation on Wednesday. “They couldn’t find anything wrong. The preliminary report on Chasing Artie was similar. So, I don’t know what happened to them, but it’s very perplexing that the two deaths were so similar, and that both of them were fit and healthy before the race.”

In California, a horse that collapses and dies without euthanasia, is initially called a “sudden death” pending a necropsy. In more than half the cases a cause of death is never determined despite a rigorous amount of postmortem testing.

On Wednesday, That Khenny, a 5-year-old gelding trained by Genaro Garcia, was pulled up around the turn in the third race and was vanned off. In the fifth race, Loot the Moon, a 5-year-old horse, was pulled up in mid-stretch and also vanned off. There was no immediate report on either horse’s condition.

Churchill Downs issued a statement on Wednesday to address the four known deaths.

“While a series of events like this is highly unusual, it is completely unacceptable,” the statement read. “We take this very seriously and acknowledge that these troubling incidents are alarming and must be addressed. We feel a tremendous responsibility to our fans, the participants in our sport and the entire industry to be a leader in safety and continue to make significant investments to eliminate risk to our athletes. We have full confidence in our racing surfaces and have been assured by our riders and horsemen that they do as well.”

California and New York are very aggressive in their reporting about horse deaths. Kentucky has no such transparency. The Equine Injury Database, run by the The Jockey Club, collects data on thoroughbred deaths only in racing but not training. All the California tracks, except Los Alamitos, allow the EID to report their statistics in detail. Churchill Downs allows its data only to be used in national averaging, but its individual statistics are not made public.

Laurel Park racetrack in Maryland closed for a few days last month after five horses had to be euthanized in April. The track has since reopened. Laurel Park, like Santa Anita and Golden Gate Fields, is owned by the Stronach Group, which has rebranded its racing division 1/ST Racing. The company has been very aggressive in enacting safety reforms after 2019 when 37 horses died at the Arcadia track.

Since then, fatalities in California have decreased by 55%. This racing year at Santa Anita, which dates back to Dec. 26, has had five musculo-skeletal fatalities and none since March 18. There have been three sudden death fatalities and one that is still undetermined.