An abnormal string of horse deaths at Churchill Downs over the past week has cast a pall over the track’s Kentucky Derby preparations and put horsemen and racing officials on edge at time when the national spotlight is beginning to swing toward the racing industry. Although any rash of deaths is unusual, the five deaths that have occurred since last Thursday are highly abnormal in the sense that three of them were not related to musculoskeletal injuries, by far the leading cause of death in racehorses. As a result, horsemen and racing officials are not clamoring over the racing surfaces at Churchill looking for deficiencies in the tracks or delving into the practices of the regulatory veterinarians who examine horses prior to every race. Instead, horsemen are shaking their heads and trying to find causes for some of the deaths, including Saffie Joseph Jr., who had two horses die after collapsing on the track within a 72-hour period. “Until we get some type of information it leaves you shattered, it leaves you broken,” said Joseph, who said that he has never had a horse collapse and die after a race until the two incidents this week. “It’s different when you have a horse get hurt as far as an injury, you have answers, you know what the cause was. When you don’t know the cause that’s the troublesome part, that’s the nerve-wracking part.” In addition to the two Joseph horses, the fatalities included a horse that was put down on Saturday night after it flipped multiple times in the paddock and suffered a broken neck. Another occurred as a result of a breakdown on the turf on Tuesday. And, perhaps most notably, last Thursday the Derby entrant Wild On Ice suffered a catastrophic injury while training over the Churchill main track early in the morning and was later put down. Under state regulations, all horses that die at licensed racing and training facilities are necropsied. The examinations include toxicology tests and examinations of veterinary records. The results of the tests, which can take weeks, are not normally made public. The Kentucky Horse Racing Commission, which oversees the regulatory veterinary practices at Kentucky racetracks and the state’s necropsy program, declined to answer questions about the recent rash of deaths and would not make the state’s chief veterinarian, Dr. Bruce Howard, available for an interview. “The KHRC is aware of the incidents and is looking into it,” said Kristin Voskuhl, a spokesperson for the state Public Protection Cabinet, which oversees the KHRC. Dr. Will Farmer, the equine medical director for Churchill Downs Inc., did not return a phone call by early afternoon. Farmer had replied earlier to the phone call by text, saying that he was in a “series of meetings.” In a statement released by Churchill Downs Inc. on Wednesday afternoon, the track said that the “series of events” over the past week was “highly unusual” but “completely unacceptable.” “We take this very seriously and acknowledge that these troubling incidents are alarming and must be addressed,” the statement said. It went on to note that the dead horses will be necropsied and said that “we continue to press for answers and are working with regulators to conduct swift and thorough investigations.” The injuries are occurring at a time when the racing industry has been relatively successful in efforts to reduce catastrophic injuries. Thirteen years ago, the industry created a database to track injuries and fatalities, and it has used that data to put in place policies designed to identify at-risk horses, crack down on the use of painkilling drugs, and improve veterinary practices. Since the creation of the database, the fatality rate at North American tracks has fallen 37.5 percent, from 2.00 horses per 1,000 starts to 1.25 horses, a rate that compares favorably to most other major racing countries. Not surprisingly, animal-rights organizations are circling the waters. PETA, which is seeking to abolish horse racing, issued a statement on Tuesday night demanding that Churchill “close down immediately” while an investigation is conducted. PETA, which doesn’t yet have significant influence in the state of Kentucky, has consistently seized on horse deaths over the past five years to draw attention to its cause and cast racing in a negative light. “The biggest horse race of the year is now preceded by a body count,” PETA said. The string of deaths “means injured, sore or sick horses are being forced to race.” The two horses trained by Joseph who collapsed and died were Parents Pride, a 4-year-old filly who was pulled up entering the stretch of the eighth race on Saturday, and Chasing Artie, a 5-year-old gelding who was eased in the eighth race on Tuesday. The races were both held on the turf. Unlike Parents Pride, Chasing Artie crossed the finish line while well back of the field, but he collapsed on the dirt main track as he was making his way back to the unsaddling area. He died behind the screens that are put up to shield grandstanders from the results of injuries or health incidents on the track. Both horses were based at Keeneland prior to shipping to Churchill, and, as a result, Joseph said that he had veterinarians pull blood on all the horses at Churchill that shipped from Keeneland to see if there were any abnormalities. Joseph is based in South Florida at Gulfstream Park, and the Keeneland string was overseen by an assistant during the track’s recent spring meet. “All the bloods came back good, nothing’s showing,” he said. “We’re testing everything – feed, hay, supplements – [to see] if it’s anything on our part. A lot of thoughts run through your head. If you think too much it can drive you insane.” Joseph has a horse entered in the Derby, Lord Miles, who is listed on the Daily Racing Form morning line at 30-1. In his last start, Lord Miles won the Wood Memorial by a nose at odds of nearly 60-1. Following the Wood, he was shipped back to Gulfstream, where he had two works on April 21 and April 28. He was shipped to Churchill on Sunday and will gallop into the race. After Joseph spoke to Daily Racing Form, he scratched Accomplished Girl from Wednesday’s Mamzelle Stakes at Churchill Downs. Accomplished Girl, who was 8-1 on the morning line, was based at Keeneland during the spring meet. The causes of sudden deaths are very difficult to determine, even after full necropsies, with only approximately 50 percent of all necropsies returning a “definitive” diagnosis. Most are attributed to “cardiac events,” or abnormalities in heart function. Some are caused by hemorrhaging in organs like the lungs or stomach, and others can be caused by internal bleeding, such as when a horse suffers an injury to a massive bone like the pelvis. The horse who suffered a broken neck, Code of Kings, a maiden 3-year-old gelding with six starts, was scratched from the 10th race late on Saturday night after flipping in Churchill’s temporary paddock, according to her trainer, Tim Glyshaw. The horse seemed to be fixated on lights at a nearby DJ booth just prior to flipping, Glyshaw said. As Code of Kings was being unsaddled, the gelding flipped again, and then another time. Blood began coming out of his mouth, Glyshaw said, at which point he arranged with Churchill officials for the horse to be transported to Rood and Riddle, an equine clinic outside of Lexington. Churchill provided the ambulance, Glyshaw said. After arriving at Rood and Riddle, Code of Kings was diagnosed with a broken neck. Glyshaw consulted with his owners and said that they made a “really hard decision” to put him down. “We all have horses we worry about in the paddock. We all have first-timers who have little problems going to the paddock,” Glyshaw said. “This was a really chill horse, and he had already had six starts, some of them under the lights at Turfway. It was just a really tragic thing.” The horse who suffered the musculoskeletal racing injury was Take Charge Briana, a 3-year-old Curlin colt trained by D. Wayne Lukas who was a homebred for Willis Horton. Take Charge Briana, who was making her 12th start and had earned $150,150, suffered the injury in the stretch of the turf course and was vanned off but was later euthanized. Churchill installed a new turf course over the winter of 2021-22, at a cost of $10 million. But the course became a source of complaints for horsemen in the spring-summer meet in 2022, and racing was eventually suspended over the turf for the remainder of the meet. Churchill raced exclusively over the dirt main track during a brief September meet last year and carded very few turf races during the fall meet. In its Wednesday afternoon statement, Churchill said that “we have full confidence in our racing surfaces and have been assured by our riders and horsemen that they do as well.” Wild On Ice, who would have been one of the longest shots in the Kentucky Derby field, suffered an injury to his left hind leg during a pre-dawn workout at Churchill last Thursday. The horse, who was trained by Joel Marr, was transported to the Equine Medical Center on the Churchill backstretch, where the injury was stabilized before being transported to Rood and Riddle. The horse was euthanized after the injury was examined at the clinic. Most musculoskeletal injuries to racehorses are sustained in the front legs due to the higher amount of loading that occurs on the front bones and tendons while running at high speed, with recent studies estimating the incidence of forelimb deaths at approximately 80 percent of all lower-leg injuries. --Additional reporting by David Grening :: Want to learn more about handicapping and wagering? Check out DRF's Handicapping 101 and Wagering 101 pages.