FERNANDO NA ISSUE 24_Jerkins feature.qxd 15/04/2012 22:43 Page 1
SID FERNANDO
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N an above-the-fold front page expose on Sunday, March 25, the Times unleashed a damning 6,000-word multimedia piece by Drape and three co-writers, about high rates of injuries and breakdowns – “incidents per 1,000 starts” is how the paper categorizes them, not to be confused with the standard “fatalities per 1,000 starts” – told with tawdry tales of drug abuse that gave it a Wild West flavor. The backdrop to the article is Ruidoso Downs and Casino in New Mexico, but the suggestion is that it’s Anytrack, USA. If the late Arnold Kirkpatrick was still penning this column, he’d say – with his trademark wit, a straight face, and a twinkle in his eyes – to industry leaders about the expose, “And if you didn’t know this was coming, fellas, with all the McKinsey Reports and RCI meetings and Round Tables we so solemnly hold every so often about improving this sport, about making it safer and cleaner, but forget about as quickly on the way home after a day or two of desk pounding and chest thumping, then we’re in greater trouble than I thought.” After that, again with eyes twinkling, he’d probably dress down the authors and editors of the Times piece for shoddy, sensationalistic journalism and questionable science for lumping together Quarter Horse and Thoroughbred racing injury statistics in New Mexico as the focal point for indicting the Thoroughbred industry as a whole. “I may be a tottering old poot,” he might have said, “but I know journalism, son, and that’s not it.” What the Times piece did, unfortunately, was to further fragment an already leaderless industry, because no one body speaks for racing as a whole. And this became loud and clear from the article’s responses (or lack thereof), which sputtered out in bits and pieces, mostly in defensive postures for the agendas of some of these organizations. The National Thoroughbred Racing Association (NTRA) and the Jockey Club responses were the most notable. The NTRA, without questioning the thesis of the article, capitulated right away and said in earnest that “participants must consider all options for
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Scratching beneath the surface of the injury debate The New York Times has, during the tenure of its racing writer Joe Drape, crusaded against drugs in racing, and it has long suggested that breakdowns and injuries are the results of rampant drug usage. enacting nationwide reform.” But it patted itself on the back, too, with this: “Over the past several years, the industry has instituted a number of significant safety and integrity reforms, including such initiatives as the Equine Injury Database, the NTRA Safety and Integrity Alliance and the Thoroughbred Aftercare Alliance.” The Jockey Club, which has been on a mission of its own to ban raceday medication, issued an update to its Reformed Racing Medication Rules on March 30, featuring a broader categorization of drugs and stiffer penalties for violations after its president, James L. Gagliano, told the Times in a March 29 article, “The Jockey Club continues to believe that horses should run only when they
“Both studies make it patently clear that incidents per 1,000 are significantly greater in the sun-baked, arid West – especially in New Mexico, Arizona, and California – than anywhere else”
are free from the influence of medication and that there should be no place in this sport for those who repeatedly violate medication rules.” What apparently neither the NTRA nor the Jockey Club has done in its haste to comment and further its agendas is examine the raw Times data in depth, which, to a great degree, has been corroborated by a Thoroughbred Times study published on April 7. The Thoroughbred Times found the average incident per 1,000 was 4.33 versus the Times rate of 5.2 for Thoroughbred and Quarter Horse starts but that the geographic patterns of incidents were essentially the same. And in both studies, the patterns that emerge about injuries and breakdowns transcend the Jockey Club’s singular focus on raceday medication and the NTRA’s myriad initiatives and are at odds with parts of the Times thesis itself, which ignores racing surfaces. For example, both studies make it patently clear that incidents per 1,000 are significantly greater in the sun-baked, arid West – especially in New Mexico (with Ruidoso Downs tops at 13.9 incidents per 1,000, according to the Times), Arizona, and California – than anywhere else. And both studies corroborate that the synthetic surfaces outside of California at Presque Isle Downs and Casino in Pennsylvania, Keeneland in Kentucky, and Woodbine in Canada (the Times alone) are the three safest tracks in North America. Presque Isle’s rate is 1.3, Woodbine’s is 1.4, and Keeneland’s is 1.6, according to the Times. (According to Thoroughbred Times, Presque Isle’s rate is 1.05 and Keeneland’s is 1.65). Based on the information provided, track surfaces play a major role in injury rates, everything else being equal, and synthetic surfaces outside California are apparently the best safeguard against injury and breakdowns yet this hasn’t been addressed by the paper or the organizations it has on the run. Arnold Kirkpatrick, who liked factoids, would probably suggest that the Jockey Club, the NTRA, and the Times get their heads out of the sand – the real stuff, anyway. n