Statistics and bluster

With Congress breathing down its neck, the racing industry, in the form of Racing Commissioners International, has gathered and released statistics on deaths among rachorses (including thoroughbreds, standardbreds, and quarter horses).

How you interpret those statistics, of course, determines whether the glass is half-full or half-empty.

Briefly, the RCI report, which compiles data from 19 of the 38 racing states — time and other issues precluded the inclusion of all states — found that 3,035 horses had died at racing facilities over the last five years. An Associated Press report, which surveyed the 29 states in which at least 1,000 thoroughbreds had started a race last year, estimated 5,000 thoroughbred deaths in the same period of time — numbers that seem to square with each other. These deaths included in-race breakdowns, training-related fatalities, and non-racing related deaths that occurred on the backstretch from natural causes — such as colic — and from accidents.

The RCI report further indicated that there had been more than 2.4 million starters in races during the five year timeframe.

All of which means what, exactly?

If you’re the Associated Press (here), the stats show that horses break down “regularly,” that the industry is “lax,” and that “countless” additional horses died but were not reported.

If you’re the New York Times (here), the statistics indicate that more than three horses per day die and demonstrate “the peril racehorses face.”

If, on the other hand, you’re the RCI, the statistics demonstrate that fatalities amount to barely more than one per 1,000 starters. “When you look at the numbers, what they show is that 99.875 percent of the time when a horse starts a race, they walk off safely afterwards,” said RCI president Ed Martin.

The question of what these statistics mean, in other words, is not just an academic one.

One issue is for public relations purposes. Of course, there’s an inherent bias in either presentation: the five-year compilation allows newspapers to present a big, splashy number — 5,000! — while the per starter figure allows the RCI to minimize (or deny altogether) the existence of a problem (99.9 percent of starters survive — what’s the problem with that?!?).

In the long run — and for the well-being of horses — what is even more important is this: what bureaucracies (government, corporate, etc.) choose to measure, and how they choose to measure it, determine how they act (interesting article about this fact, in an entirely different context, here). That doesn’t mean they always act sensibly in pursuit of their goals, but it does define their goals.

And racing’s odd, split governing system — wherein racetracks and horsemen are separate entities with overlapping but not entirely congruent goals — has left horses in a difficult place. Racetracks — which are in the best position to track injury and fatality statistics — have historically had little incentive to do so. It never seemed to serve their bottom line. Horsemen, most of whom care deeply about the well-being of their horses — and whose bottom line it does affect — typically don’t have the wherewithal to effectuate a circuit-, state-, or nationwide system.

The very incompleteness of the data on racehorse fatalities is, perhaps, a more telling indictment of the industry than are the raw numbers.

It’s a sure bet that, in the upcoming Congressional hearings (scheduled for Thursday), some members of Congress will cite these statistics as proof of the industry’s negligence. Others will note the low fatalities per starter number to minimize the problem. Neither will accurately capture the issue.

What racing should do on this point going forward is clear:

1) Create and implement a uniform system of tracking deaths at racing facilities, including breakouts by breed and by racing-related, training-related, and all other deaths;

2) Agree upon accurate metrics to measure horse safety. If, as New York’s numbers in the RCI report indicate, about 10 percent of horse fatalities were training-, rather than racing-, related, then the fatalities per start number comes short of an accurate measurement. On the other hand, adding up the numbers and saying, “Wow, 5,000!” doesn’t enlighten us either. A more accurate analysis would tell us the likelihood of fatality in racing and in different kinds of training — including issues like horse age, number of starts, surface, hard workouts versus easy ones versus races, etc.

3) Require (somehow…) each racing body to generate and implement an action plan to improve on each of their metrics.

The debate on horse well-being has had one major problem: too much heat (in the form of overblown rhetoric, shrill claims, and knee-jerk reactions) and not enough light (in the form of reliable data, information, and analysis). Truly protecting horses will require more than simply accepting the “conventional wisdom” about the problems and how to solve them, and it will require more than simply sweeping the problem under the rug. It will require a thoroughgoing commitment to identifying the issues, analyzing them accurately, and acting in accord with the findings.

If we’re going to get serious about horse safety, we’re going to need to start measuring it, accurately, fairly, and completely. Anything else is just more bluster.