More than 30 horses had died at Santa Anita Park in training and race mishaps and public unrest was swelling into a tsunami that threatened to sweep the industry into extinction. Trainers were on edge. The warning siren at Santa Anita Park race track was blaring with eerie regularity.
The dreaded sound meant that either a horse was loose or had suffered a catastrophic injury. The trainers would hold their breath, waiting ominously to see if the horse ambulance would roll out onto the track to euthanise a fallen animal.
“We were at our last straw,” Dr Vale explained.
“One more fatality, one more fracture and racing could be done.”
Dr Vale says the American public’s perception of horse racing in 2019 hit rock bottom and the shock waves spread throughout the world.
In response to the public disquiet in California and across America, the Los Angeles District Attorney ordered an investigation into the Santa Anita deaths.
The California Horse Racing Board (CHRB) launched a parallel inquiry.
This is where Dr Vale entered the fray. She was asked to sift through trainer interviews and industry feedback to help compile the CHRB’s report.
They needed to find out how these horses were being injured – most of them had sesamoid bone fractures – why it was happening and what they could do to plot a safer path forward.
“That report ended up taking months to sort through,” Dr Vale said.
“But one of the key regulations that CHRB adopted was that every equine fatality would have a full review.”
Dr Vale, 38, became the chief inquirer. She would pore over a deceased horse’s training record, medical records, racing records and the post-mortem report before sitting down with the trainer and their practising veterinarian to ask questions.
She was looking for red flags – anything that could explain or pinpoint why a horse had developed a subclinical lesion that would later lead to a fatal injury.
“Often a horse that suffers a catastrophic fracture does not show obvious lameness, so it might be something as simple as the trainer changing a horse’s exercise program a month or two before the incident,” Dr Vale said.
She said trainer education became a key component of their reforms. CHRB oversees 371 trainers and almost 4000 horses in work.
“There have been some barns (stables) that have closed or moved out of state,” she said. “I don't see that as a bad thing. I think that we really need only those that are able to provide the highest standard of care.”
The report threw up a series of recommendations, including the introduction of regulations that outlawed bad practices.
Cameras were introduced to stables and numerous monitoring vets were posted around the state’s tracks to watch the morning exercise of every single horse. Those that showed lameness were immediately stood down, while others with peculiarities were later inspected in the stables.
“Those horses that are showing obvious pain, those are the easy ones we can catch. I feel like we have reduced all those fatality numbers,” Dr Vale said.
“It’s the subtle lesions that are deep within the bone where the fetlock joint is not swollen and not hot and painful. It’s these lesions that are really hard to detect.”
Technology has played a major part. The development of 3D imaging, or equine PET scans, by UC Davis radiologist Dr Mathieu Spriet late in 2019 was a major step forward – they can now locate lesions in the sesamoid bone before they develop into complete fractures. PET scans are said to have benefited more than 500 horses in the past three years at Santa Anita.
Blood monitoring is another potential step forward.
“One of the research projects we are working on with the University of Kentucky are biomarkers,” Dr Vale said.
“So pulling a blood sample and looking at markers of inflammation so that we can predict horses that are possibly at increased risk of injury.”
Medication rules were changed and certain drugs were banned.
Dr Vale said the CHRB vets are constantly sharing information with other jurisdictions around the world, including Victoria.
She said the pre-race screening test introduced for Melbourne Cup runners was “a very bold move” and an area they would monitor and possibly emulate for their high-profile races in coming years.
She says Racing Victoria has expressed interest in using a PET scan as a safety measure in the lead up to future Melbourne Cups.
Dr Vale said it is hard to quantify what impact the welfare reforms have had four years later. She says there are fewer horses, smaller fields, fewer race days and smaller breeding crops. “But we still have a lot of unmeasured things we need to address,” she said. “We still have too many fatalities. We are never going to get to zero.
“I would say the fact that we are still racing means that it shows how much we care and how much we are trying”
