Santa Anita, shown on March 5, has stopped its racing program in the wake of 22 horse deaths since Dec. 26.
Imagine being a car owner with tires that keep going flat. You change the windshield wipers and install new brake pads. Hey, it’s safer. See? But … um … why are the tires going flat?
You did something, without answering or addressing the question.
That’s the alarming lack of dot-connecting happening at Santa Anita Park in the wake of yet another horse death at the track. The facility in Arcadia, reeling from 22 fatalities since Dec. 26 — including one Thursday, a day after re-opening the main track for training — came across as a flailing misdirection.
The decision to, among other things, ban the use of the medication Lasix sent trainers and those who care for horses into outraged orbit.
The dominoes, crushing and possibly permanent.
“I think they’re going to cause a mass exodus from California,” trainer Joe Herrick said. “Lasix has nothing — nothing — to do with the soundness of a horse. If they want to really do something, cut anti-inflammatories in half or altogether so when a vet diagnoses a horse in the morning, they really know what’s happening. I look OK when I have three or four Advil. If I don’t, I limp around pretty good.
Lasix is a potent diuretic that controls pulmonary bleeding in horses prone to that. If all of it sounds too inside-baseball, boil it down to this: Santa Anita had to do something to address far too many horse deaths, but picked the wrong something. In fact, they picked the exact something that could tear apart the sport at its California seams.
If any of this sounds like an argument in support of the sport soft-shoeing its approach to safety, that’s nowhere close to being the case. In fact, nothing is more important to its financial and moral survival.
It’s a matter of being smart and, as much as anything, on-target about decisions that send ripples through an industry already on fragile footing with an aging fan base, animal-safety concerns and a range of other challenges. Racing supports an estimated 50,000 jobs and $2.5 billion in annual economic impact in California alone.
Carlsbad horse owner and handicapper Jon Lindo reinforced Santa Anita’s confusing response.
“The announcement they made, it’s completely separate from the breakdown problem they’ve been having up there,” said Lindo, whose horse Skye Diamonds ran twice in the prestigious Breeders’ Cup Filly & Mare Sprint. “To me, this statement has nothing else to do with what’s going on at Santa Anita.
To Santa Anita’s credit, doing something almost always trumps doing nothing. The Stronach Group, which operates the track, made the remarkable step to stop races and training in an effort to identify what was claiming so many horses. Soggy conditions also have turned Southern California into Seattle South, wreaking havoc on racing surfaces.
When answers related to the track itself proved elusive, though, the announced changes came across as throwing as much against the wall as possible — hoping and praying something would stick.
In 2016, Del Mar suffered through 23 horse deaths at its summer and fall meets. A range of surface-specific salves included hiring renowned track superintendent Dennis Moore, increasing the amount of veterinarians and checks, cutting a week from the schedule to increase track prep time and much more that turned the tide.
The fatalities in the summer meet dropped from 17 to an average of 5.5 the next two years, while fall deaths tumbled from six to three to one.
A news release from Santa Anita included a quote from Del Mar CEO Joe Harper. Though he supports Santa Anita’s ban on riding crops for any use other than safety-related race correction and the other suggested steps, Harper stopped short of saying his track would ban Lasix.
That move in particular, Harper realizes, has the potential to cause the most damage inside the sport.
Santa Anita also faces uncomfortable timing. The track is scheduled to host the Breeders’ Cup in November. If the Kentucky Derby is horse racing’s Super Bowl, the Breeders’ Cup represents its World Series.
The dark cloud of unsafe racing has the potential to rattle the confidence of decision-makers for the event, which delivered a reported $97 million in economic impact to Del Mar in 2017.
Something had to be done at Santa Anita. They’re no closer, though, to solving why horses keep falling on their track. To make matters worse, they’ve enraged many of the stakeholders critical to addressing the issue.
New wiper blades and brake pads are nice.
Better yet: Fix the car — or don’t drive it until you do.