Del Mar Thoroughbred Club

Last week, a Santa Anita press release had the misfortune of arriving amid the squall of a busy news cycle. In a nutshell, the release shared this not insignificant titbit: The track had wrapped a 16-day race meet, and a one month and 20-day training period, with zero fatalities. Since the beginning of the winter/spring meet last December, there have been five racing fatalities--zero on the main dirt track--from 5,069 individual starts. The resulting ratio for the year of an average of 0.98 fatalities per 1,000 starters made Santa Anita...

The Thoroughbred Safety Coalition has added eight medical and operational reforms to its platform. The group's Steering Committee, made up of executives from the Breeders' Cup, Churchill Downs Incorporated, Del Mar Thoroughbred Club, Keeneland Association Inc., the New York Racing Association (NYRA) and The Stronach Group, voted unanimously to adopt the reforms with the ultimate goal of uniform implementation across racing jurisdictions. The following reforms have been added to the Coalition's platform: Strengthen race entry and eligibility requirements; Work with state racing commissions to apply racing regulations surrounding prohibited substances...