The overall fatality rate for horses racing at U.S. tracks is expected to drop for the first time to a rate below 1 horse per 1,000 starts at the end of 2024, according to figures provided by Lisa Lazarus, chief executive of the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority, during an opening address at the Global Symposium on Racing in Tucson, Ariz., on Tuesday morning. Lazarus said that the racing-fatality rate from Dec. 10, 2023, to Dec. 10, 2024, was 0.88 horses per 1,000 starts, a figure that would represent the lowest on record since the industry began tracking fatalities in 2009. The rate also would be a 28.5 percent decline from the rate recorded by HISA for the previous 12 months, according to the data provided by Lazarus. The drop in the fatality rate over the past 15 years has been one of racing’s most least-publicized success stories, with spates of injuries at tracks now gaining more attention, not less, than those that occurred 20 years ago, due almost entirely to worldwide cultural trends that have elevated issues related to animal welfare.  In 2009, the overall fatality rate at U.S. tracks was 2 horses per 1,000 starts, well above the rates in nearly all foreign racing jurisdictions that collected the data. At that time, a number of U.S. racing constituents expressed doubt that the number could be reduced significantly, citing factors that were believed to make U.S. racing inherently more dangerous, such as racing primarily on dirt, the lack of offtrack training yards, and an emphasis on speed. But over the next 15 years, the number did indeed come down significantly, dropping to 1.25 fatalities per start in 2022, a reduction of 37.5 percent compared to the 2009 rate. The rate ticked up in 2023, however, to 1.32 fatalities per start, during a year in which clusters of deaths afflicted two of the most high-profile tracks in the country, Churchill Downs and Saratoga. If Lazarus’s figure for 2024 holds through the end of the year, the reduction in the fatality rate from 2009 will be 56 percent, to a number that is believed to be among the lowest worldwide in racing. :: Get the Inside Track with the FREE DRF Morning Line Email Newsletter. Subscribe now.  During the past 15 years, racing organizations in the United States have devoted resources toward identifying risk factors for racehorses and building databases, analytical models, and communications tools designed to place those at-risk horses under additional scrutiny. Simultaneously, racing regulators have adopted stricter rules on the use of many drugs, especially those that can mask pain or injury.  In her remarks, Lazarus was quick to point out that the reduction in the fatality rate was a result attributable to industry-wide efforts. “It’s not just HISA, it’s because the entire industry has been working together to prioritize equine safety,” Lazarus said. Still, the one-year reduction cited by Lazarus for 2024 is easily the most significant short-term reduction since the racing industry launched the Equine Injury Database 15 years ago. Although the rate has increased several times during that timeframe, the rate has generally trended downward, and the largest one-year drop occurred previously from 2014-15, when the rate dropped from 1.89 to 1.62, a 14.3 percent decline. Lazarus said that HISA remains focused on addressing injury and fatality rates, through “three pillars” –  veterinary protocols, safe surfaces, and the organization’s Anti-Doping and Medication Control program. HISA has been collecting veterinary treatment records for several years, and the organization now has 4 million records databased, Lazarus said. By working with a platform developed by Palantir, the enormous technology company, those records have been combined with injury data and other records to consistently enhance the organization’s “risk factor assessment,” Lazarus said.  The risk factor is a numerical rating distributed to regulatory veterinarians to assist in pre-race exams. HISA is close to launching its second iteration of the program, Lazarus said, and the third iteration, which will crunch “trillions of trillions” of factors, is already in the works, with the goal, Lazarus said, of lowering “false positives and negatives.” Zoe Nengite, an enterprise technical lead and senior architect at Palantir who has been working with HISA, credited HISA personnel with doing the heavy lifting to utilize its AIP artificial-intelligence program. Nengrite spoke on a panel following Lazarus’s remarks that served as a primer on artificial intelligence as well as outlining current AI efforts in racing. “The overall goal here is to reduce horse fatalities,” Nengrite said. “And you’ve seen those results.” 1/ST Racing, the racetrack company, has been using a data-driven system at Santa Anita for the past four years, after a spate of fatalities in 2019 drew national attention and led to an existential crisis for racing in the state (which, to be frank, has not abated despite the track’s fatality rate cratering over the past four years). That system uses platoons of video cameras to monitor both training and racing, with the cameras identifying gait changes or other abnormalities to generate alerts to racing personnel and horsemen. That system has improved markedly over the past three years as 1/ST began employing machine-learning and AI to improve the accuracy of identifying horses that are truly displaying gait abnormalities, according to Dr. Dionne Benson, chief veterinary officer for 1/ST. “The program has become smarter,” Benson said. “The first sets we got, we got a lot of canter videos. . . . We’re seeing so many fewer false positives and false negatives. As it’s getting smarter, we are able to follow up on these horses and seeing more consistency on the horses that have issues and the horses that have been flagged by the camera.” 1/ST Racing recently combined Santa Anita’s multiple systems into a program it calls “Racehorse 360,” and that system, Benson said, is expected to be installed at Gulfstream Park in the near future. Gulfstream is the only track other than Santa Anita that 1/ST will operate in 2024 after closing Golden Gate Fields earlier this year and handing over control of Laurel Park and Pimlico Race Course in Maryland to a nonprofit state agency.  At Santa Anita, the results have been nothing short of remarkable, according to Benson, who said that the track’s fatality rate for racing in 2024 was 0.4 horses per 1,000 starts (Santa Anita will resume racing Dec. 26). According to the Equine Injury Database, the rate at Santa Anita in 2019 was 3.01, which fell to 1.17 in 2020, jumped to 1.45 in 2021, and then fell to 0.64 and 0.63 in the next two years, when the data efforts began to generate dividends. Those figures, of course, only represent racing fatalities, not training fatalities, and so the full picture of fatalities at U.S. tracks has not yet been fully represented by the data. However, HISA began collecting data on training injuries this year, and Lazarus said the figures for 2024 will be released with HISA’s quarterly progress report after the first quarter of 2025. The numbers on training fatalities will then be released each successive quarter, Lazarus said. In the meantime, data collection and analysis, specifically through new machine-learning and artificial-intelligence tools, is likely to make further inroads in every aspect of racing, including the generation of handicapping products, sales tools, and automated tools to perform functions previously done by humans, like setting morning lines. One of the speakers on the AI panel, a department head of systems and industrial engineering at the University of Arizona, called the current age the “AI Spring.” “It’s really powerful,” said Michael Novak, an entrepreneur in the racing space who has developed a tool that analyzes condition books for horsemen, who also spoke on the AI panel. “There are a lot of technologies here where you can do things now that were unheard of just a few years ago.” :: Want to learn more about handicapping and wagering? Check out DRF's Handicapping 101 and Wagering 101 pages.