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Message: [QUOTE="IthacaBarrel, post: 4660357, member: 363"] The sport needs to be cleaned up for sure and has for years and has to make changes for the future as many sports do and have done.. Thoroughbred horses are a pretty fragile breed, they get hurt and will always be injuries and yes some catastrophic, it has, is and will always be part of the game. It's never going to be 0% fatalities. NEVER. Much like the construction industry will never have zero accidents or fatalities. IMO, there are 3-4 things that contribute to the these breakdowns all which can be controlled and lead to improvement. Random testing at all major tracks will also help. And certain injuries to horses while sometimes seem simple for humans or ever other animals can become life threatening and that is also one of the complecations of the breed. 1. much much stricter penalties for trainers with a serious infraction for using PED's, masking agents and percentage overages of on certain legal medications. Not every overage is a performance enhancing infraction either. Vets, Tracks, jurastictions, etc know what is and what isn't. Better testing and random testing should be done. 2. Stop breeding for just speed and horses with serious confirmation issues as well certain medical issues. Need to be more diligent here for sure but the sales, agents, breeders are where they make the money. Probably should start following the Japanese here and take notes 3. Agreed with clifton, there needs to be a national governance of the sport. It's still too different from state to state. what's allowed ( medications, shoes,even licensing,etc) what isn't varies considerably from state to state, track to track. 4. Much better track maintenance and slowing down the hard dirt surfaces on these bigger racing weekends. Santa Anita had a ton of issues with their dirt track a few years ago, they re- did it, it's softer and slower right now and cut back on injuries considerably. Churchill will need to do the same after this past week. There was something wrong with the dirt surface and everybody knows it. A horse training on this surface 6-7 days a week, leads to soft tissue type stuff and just getting worn down. Should probably all train on a synthetic track to be honest, softer easier on the legs and joints. 5. This past week, I think you had two trainers that should be shown the door in Saffie (chemist) where both horses suffered cardiac type of events ( the odds of two going down like that are 1/10,000,000) and D wayne Lukas, who is infamous for training and running sore horses. Watched his horses at Saratoga too many times. That's 3 horses the other 4 horses, refer to ( 1-4) Not good All of these factors contribute to where they are at and having the sport under continued criticism on it's biggest week of the year. The sport can't get out of it's own way and the people making all the $ are just fine where it's at regardless of what they say publicly. Those would be the biggest breeders, farms, sales companies and select few trainers and owners. The sport reaps what it sows. But again, people who don't follow or hate horse racing and hey I get it, not for everyone but there's always going to be risk of injuries and yes always going to be some deaths no matter what is done. Never going to be 100% safe. But the industry can do a lot better and they have to day in day out so that the 3-4 days a year where there is some focus on the industry they can focus more on a horse like Cody's Wish and the story behind that than deaths. I will also say there are a ton of good people in the industry that do things the right way and take phenomenal care of their horses. There are still a few bad apples and most who follow the industry know exactly who they are. [/QUOTE]

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