According to a March 8 Jockey Club release based on information collected in the Equine Injury Database (EID), fatal injuries in North American Thoroughbred races stayed about the same in 2012 at just under two per 1,000 starts.

Based on an analysis of 1,532,418 starts collected during the four-year period Jan. 1, 2009 through Dec. 31, 2012, the prevalence of race-related fatal injury was 1.92 per 1,000 starts. For individual years, the prevalence of fatal injury per 1,000 starts was 2.00 for 2009, 1.88 for 2010, 1.88 for 2011, and 1.92 for 2012.

The updated North American fatality rate for Thoroughbreds includes four years’ worth of data collected in the EID, the North American database for racing injuries. The available information should provide the opportunity for meaningful study and comparison.

"The causes of racing injuries are often very complex and involve multiple factors interacting together over time," said Tim Parkin, BSc, BVSc, PhD, DECVPH, MRCVS, a veterinarian and epidemiologist from the University of Glasgow who serves as a consultant on the EID and performed the analysis