The public session that opened the Welfare and Safety of the Racehorse Summit Monday morning in Lexington, Ky., didn’t provide just food for thought. The speakers and panelists served up a huge banquet of data, ideas, anecdotes, and opinions while kicking off the two-day event, which was coordinated and underwritten by The Jockey Club and the Grayson-Jockey Club Research Foundation. Keeneland is hosting the summit.

More than 40 representatives of the Thoroughbred industry–including veterinarians, sale company officials, breeders, owners, and trainers–are participating. Following the public session, they divided into six working groups to discuss welfare and safety issues and to make recommendations about how to deal with problems.

“The end product will be the development of specific action plans,” said Grayson Foundation president Ed Bowen. “They might be in the form of subjects for veterinarians and researchers to pursue, the development of additional statistical matter, or a combination of both. The racehorse of today makes far fewer starts both per year and in its career than was true only a relatively few years ago. We want to know what factors account for this pattern.”

Monday morning’s session started with several scientific presentations. Dr. Larry Bramlage, a well-known equine surgeon, reported on a study that looked at the average years raced and average lifetime starts for North American Thoroughbreds. Horses foaled in 1965 averaged 34.76 starts and raced for 3.37 years. In comparison, horses foaled in 2000 started 16.85 times and raced for 2.64 years