Photo:

The Jockey Club / YouTube

The head of the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority offered
an upbeat report Tuesday on a plunge in Thoroughbred deaths only hours before a
Hall of Fame trainer used the same stage to raise concerns about the federal
regulator’s medication testing.

Lisa Lazarus, the CEO of HISA, told the Global Symposium on
Racing in Tucson, Ariz., that the nation’s racehorse fatality rate was expected
to be less than one per 1,000 starts in 2024. That would be the first time it has
been so low in the 15-year history of the equine-injury database.

“It’s not just HISA,” Lazarus said, according to Daily
Racing Form. “It’s because the entire industry has been working together to
prioritize equine safety.”

Lazarus said the fatality rate dropped to 0.88 horses per
1,000 starts during the 12 months ended Tuesday. That would be a 33% decline from
2023 and a 30% drop from the previous low in 2022.

The equine-injury database, however, does not account for
training deaths. HISA previously promised those specifics, including per-track
figures, this winter.

During an afternoon session of the symposium, Pletcher said positive
drug tests such as the one that flagged Forte during a juvenile championship
season in 2022 may have been the result of laboratories currying favor with
HISA.

“I think what was happening at that time, and no one said
this to me … a lot of the labs were positioning themselves to try to be
selected by HISA, so they were cranking up the tests to test for lower and
lower levels to try to demonstrate to HISA what their capabilities were,”
Pletcher said, according to Paulick Report. “And that’s why you saw a
rash of positives in human-prescribed medication that I don’t think any horsepeople
would give to horses.”

Nevertheless, Pletcher said he supported HISA as did fellow
Hall of Famer Bob Baffert, who shared the stage with him Tuesday. In fact,
Pletcher is a member of the horsemen’s panel that advises the regulator.

“I think the potential end result of HISA is going to be
good for the game,” Pletcher said. “The way we were going, there were a lot of
issues.”

Lazarus admitted there have been growing pains for her
organization, which was not fully deployed for safety and medication regulations
until May 2023.

““We had to just get things up and running,” Lazarus said,
according to Thoroughbred Daily News. “But now we’re at a point where we
can take all of that work and everything that we’ve gotten from the industry and
give back to the industry in terms of information and products and really
bringing the industry to the next level.”