The New York Racing Association said Saturday night that it would convene an emergency meeting of New York State Gaming Commission and Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority officials before deciding to run Saratoga's Sunday card following two additional horse deaths on the Saturday card. On Saturday, Nobel, a 4-year-old horse making his first start in the U.S., broke down during the run-out of the fifth race, becoming the fifth horse at the Saratoga meet to suffer a catastrophic musculoskeletal injury during a turf race. Then, in the H. Allen Jerkens Memorial Stakes four races later, New York Thunder suffered a horrific catastrophic breakdown in front of the grandstand when leading in deep stretch. The injury also required euthanasia. The breakdowns occurred one day after NYRA, the New York State Gaming Commission, and HISA acknowledged that they were conducting an “expanded” review of the deaths that have occurred at Saratoga. Including the two Saturday deaths, seven horses have died during racing, according to NYRA, while four horses have died during training hours. David O’Rourke, NYRA's chief executive officer, said after the Saturday card concluded that the meeting on Saturday night would entail a review of the medical records from all of the fatalities, along with an analysis of data that NYRA uses to assess the conditions of racing surfaces. “It’s a lot of conversation,” O’Rourke said. “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 cancellation of the Sunday card would mean scuttling a program devoted to New York-bred horses. On Sunday, six $200,000 races restricted to New York-breds are on the card, with many prominent New York owners and breeders expected to attend. This is the second time in four months that racing has faced a crisis over safety issues at one of its major tracks. Earlier this year, a review of substantially similar parameters involving HISA and Kentucky racing and regulatory officials was launched after 12 horses died at Churchill Downs in the span of 30 days. Churchill ultimately elected to cease live racing and moved the remainder of its spring-summer meet to Ellis Park, a track the company owns in Western Kentucky. Two of the breakdowns at Saratoga have occurred in a most horrific, high-profile fashion: deep in the stretch, in front of Saturday crowds. Four weeks ago, Maple Leaf Mel suffered a similar injury to New York Thunder's during the stretch of the Test Stakes and was also euthanized on the track. Robert Williams, the executive director of the New York State Gaming Commission, said that the commission is hoping to “provide resources” to both HISA and NYRA during the ongoing review. “The one thing we do have is a lot of people who have been assisting on this,” Williams said after the Saturday races. “It’s been a cooperative effort between the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority, ourselves, and NYRA. At the end of the day, everyone is looking for the same result, which is to produce the most safe environment in which the horses and the jockeys operate.” Dr. Scott Palmer, the equine medical director for the New York State Gaming Commission, said that he believed that HISA would have the final say on whether a racetrack could run under a safety review. HISA began enforcing its safety standards at most U.S. racetracks in July of last year. While blame for racetrack injuries usually focuses on the condition of the racing surfaces, epidemiologists say that the causes of catastrophic injuries are multifactorial. Over the past 10 years, racing has committed an enormous amount of resources to identify factors related to breakdowns and create interventions for at-risk horses. The effort has succeeded in cutting the fatality rate by 35 percent at U.S. racetracks over the past 13 years. “There’s a lot of analysis to try to identify why this is occurring,” Williams said. “The one great thing about horseracing is that it is a data-rich sport, and it has the ability to use some of that data and epidemiologists and statisticians … to analyze that data and detect trends to see if there is anything fixable, curable, anything that could prevent these tragedies from happening.” NYRA officials said that they will determine whether to go on with the Sunday card sometime tomorrow morning. :: Want to learn more about handicapping and wagering? Check out DRF's Handicapping 101 and Wagering 101 pages.