Soundness and safety are factors in field size, which is an important variable in the volume of wagering

by Don Clippinger

TWO VERY important meetings were held in mid-October. Unfortunately, they were held on the same days and 700 miles apart. In fact, they were talking about the same topic.

One was the annual International Simulcasting Conference, sponsored by the Thoroughbred Racing Associations and held in Philadelphia. The other was the Welfare and Safety of the Racehorse Summit, coordinated by the Jockey Club and the Grayson-Jockey Club Research Foundation and held in Lexington.

At the heart of the simulcast conference is the issue of money--more wagering money to support the racetracks and the owners who buy and breed the racehorses that fill races around the continent. The Lexington summit focused on the safety of horses.

But their themes were so closely intertwined that they kept bumping into the other conference's subject matter. "Anyone who hopes to make a new fan has to understand the importance of safety to the general public," said Chris Scherf, the TRA's executive vice president.

In Kentucky, renowned veterinarians rolled out statistics to illustrate how the average number of starts and the average length of the racing careers of horses have declined over 3 1/2 decades.

Specifically, the average number of career starts for a foal of 1965 was 34.76, and the average duration of its racing career was 3.37 years. For the foal crop of 2000, the average number of starts had declined to 16.85, and the career duration was 2.64 years.

A further and rather startling fact was that the number of starts for the 1965 crop, 452,754, was larger than the number of starts for the 2000 crop, which had 424,134 through the end of the reporting period.

But here is the disturbing part. The registered foal crop was 18,846 in 1965; the 2000 registered North American foal crop was 37,745, or twice as large as the 1965 crop.

To an extent, this is not news. "All About Purses," an annual review of purses and related information that appears in Thoroughbred Times each March (it can be found at www.thoroughbredtimes.com/allaboutpurses/allaboutpurses.asp) has documented this trend for several years.

A factor in the average number of starts is the group of horses that made only a few starts. In 2005, the largest single group of starters was horses that made only one start, 8,036 of 72,487 starters, or 11.1%. Horses with two or fewer starts accounted for 21.9% of all starters.

Commercial breeders took some heat in this discussion, and some prominent industry members conceded that the breed is less durable than it was in 1965. But stud farms cannot be blamed for standing stallions that are fast and won major races.

To be sure, breeding decisions should consider speed, precocity, and soundness. But one factor that has not received much attention until now has been the surface on which the horse trains and runs. For anyone who has ever watched a racetrack being constructed, one obvious observation is that racehorses are running on hard, highly compacted racing surfaces that have a few inches of dirt atop them.

The horses pound over a hard, often unforgiving surface just about every day, and then they run on a slightly tighter version of the same surface.

From all evidence, synthetic surfaces are changing that dynamic. True, it has taken a bit of time. "If we had gone any slower, we would have gone backwards," said trainer Michael Dickinson, who is the developer of the Tapeta Footings artificial surface that will be installed at Golden Gate Fields.

But the early evidence was sufficiently compelling to lead Keeneland Association to install the Polytrack surface at Turfway Park, which it manages as co-owner, and at its Lexington track. The California Horse Racing Board has stepped forward to mandate synthetic surfaces by 2008, and horsemen who train at Hollywood Park have praised its Cushion Track surface.

Soon, we will have better numbers on the safety of the synthetic surfaces. If they are safer for horses, they will be safer for jockeys and exercise riders.

Safer, sound horses will mean more starts, and that will mean larger fields, which in turn will yield more betting dollars. Safety and simulcasting are inextricably interrelated, and they should be addressed in one forum.

Don Clippinger is editorial director of Thoroughbred Times.