LOUISVILLE, Ky. — A total of 12 horses died at the track last year; five before Kentucky Derby 149, two on Derby day, and then five more after Derby.
"Last year, last Spring Meet was really tough," Dr. Will Farmer, Churchill Down's Equine Medical Director, recalled.
Due to the tragedies at the track, Farmer said he worked 114 straight days as he and other equine veterinarians tried to figure out why there were so many breakdowns.
At the same time, the track was re-inspected without finding any real problems.
Soon thereafter, the decision was made to move the rest of racing for the meet to Ellis Park in Henderson, Kentucky.
Horses barned at Churchill Downs were transported over two hours each way.
"I never thought it was unsafe," trainer Mike Tomlinson of Tomlinson Thoroughbred Training said. "Even when we moved the racing to Ellis Park, we continued to train here [at Churchill Downs]."
Tomlinson has been racing at Louisville's historic track for almost 30 years.
"I think most of the horsemen feel pretty good about the racetrack condition this year," he said.
Churchill Downs has invested in that confidence, adding more than 2,200 tons of specialized dirt and buying several new hydraulic harrows to work the dirt.
"We can really control, fine tune the depth at which they're going," Farmer explained. "We've got a great surface, again, we're very confident that we're going to have a great meet."
The track certainly hopes the improvements will help prevent a repeat of last Spring Meet, especially after an extensive investigation led by the Horse Racing Integrity and Safety Authority (HISA) was unable to find a single factor linking the horse deaths.
"Not having the same factor, cause each fatality doesn't mean that we don't know about the risk environment," Lisa Lazarus, HISA's CEO, emphasized.
Hoping to manage risk, HISA has developed a model using artificial intelligence and came up with 44 risk factors for horse injury.
"What's really exciting is that we have the potential to see which of these factors really matter, really have an impact," Lazarus said.
HISA is also maintaining a growing horse history portal where veterinarians can access a covered horse's past injuries, training records, as well as the types of medications it was given.
Lazarus said the system has over 2 million records already, with about 5,000 added a day.
She said safety at Churchill Downs is dependent on that information coming from previous racetracks.
As far as the Kentucky Oaks, Kentucky Derby 150, and all of Spring Meet 2024 goes, Lazarus said "there's nothing more that could be done to make the meet as risk averse as possible, as safe as possible."
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