Verifying thoroughbred racehorse fatalities through Equibase chart review.

Overview

• This study evaluated the accuracy of a publicly available dataset on racehorse fatalities by comparing it to official race records, finding strong agreement between the two sources.

Background

• Equibase (EQB) produces official records for North American Thoroughbred horse races, including details on race outcomes and incidents such as injuries, euthanasia, or ambulance transport.
• The Equine Injury Database (EID) uses international definitions to classify fatalities, focusing on deaths occurring within 72 hours of a race, which may exclude some fatalities reported in other sources.
• Horseracing Wrongs (HRW) is an advocacy group publishing horse-level fatality data, but its accuracy and completeness needed independent verification against official race documentation.

Objectives

• To verify the accuracy of HRW’s Thoroughbred fatality listings for the year 2024 using the official EQB race charts.
• To compare the verified HRW fatality counts with the publicly reported EID fatality totals from 22 racetracks that report to EID.

Methods

• All Thoroughbred fatalities listed by HRW for 2024 were examined.
• Each fatality was cross-checked against EQB charts to confirm specific details: horse identity, racetrack, race date, finishing status (e.g. did not finish), and any notes on incidents.
• Verified HRW fatality numbers were then compared to official EID counts for the 22 racetracks that submit data to EID.

Results

• Out of 381 fatalities listed by HRW, 275 were confirmed as race-related Thoroughbred deaths.
• Of those 275 deaths, 268 (97.5%) were directly verified through EQB chart review; only 7 (2.5%) could not be confirmed.
• Among the verified fatalities:
  • 78% were recorded as “did not finish” in the EQB charts.
  • 84.3% included footnotes indicating serious incidents related to the fatality.
• Comparison with EID fatality counts showed that HRW totals closely matched official EID data.
• The only discrepancies were six fatalities reported by HRW that occurred more than 72 hours after the race and thus fell outside EID’s reporting window.
• For 20 out of the 22 tracks reporting, HRW and EID numbers matched exactly.

Conclusions

• EQB chart review demonstrates high concordance between HRW accident listings and official EID fatality data.
• HRW’s publicly accessible horse-level fatality data is a reliable source that can be independently verified with official race records.
• This validation supports the use of HRW data for research and advocacy while highlighting that some fatalities occurring beyond the 72-hour limit used in official databases may be excluded from regulatory statistics.