'We’ve already seen the value of it' - BHA to make review scheme on equine fatalities permanent

The BHA has committed to taking forward a review on equine fatalities on British racecourses full time at the end of a pilot scheme, run by the sport's Horse Welfare Board and partly funded by the Racing Foundation. 

Widening the scope of previous work in the field, the BHA began an enhanced process of reporting and reviewing every racing fatality in September 2023 with the introduction of questionnaires to all relevant participants and video analysis after every incident, including cases in which a horse lost its life or was put down within two days of having run. 

Although the BHA will wait until it has accumulated sufficient data before sharing recommendations, director of equine regulation, safety and welfare, James Given, believes there has been enough benefit already from the exercise to warrant making the review process permanent.

"We’ve already seen the value of it and will take over all the funding on behalf of the industry," said Given. "Ultimately, this is a pilot which has been partly paid for by the Racing Foundation, to whom we are very grateful for helping us get it off the ground and proving the concept. 

"The pilot will go through to at least September, maybe December, and have it run for one year and a bit. We at the BHA are committing to pay for this going forward, to have this counted as business as usual."

James Given: part of the vet team at a recent Breeders' Cup meetingCredit: Edward Whitaker

Given spoke of a "lightbulb moment" when receiving text confirmation of two fatalities at the same meeting in Britain while working with other regulatory vets at the 2022 Breeders' Cup at Keeneland.

"I felt we should be doing more and I feel that every horse that dies on a racecourse deserves to have the incident looked into to see if we can avoid it in the future," said Given.

"It struck me that the way we should look at this is along the lines that air accidents are investigated, which operate in a no-blame culture. What can we learn from this to make sure it doesn’t happen again, or at least can we reduce its incidence?"

The project is being run by the Horse Welfare Board utilising former jump jockey and steward Simon Cowley, who also sits on the monthly review panel alongside another former jockey and now inspector of courses, Wayne Hutchinson, as well as BHA veterinary officers, Graham Potts and Katie Byam-Cook. 

The project is also backed by the Royal Veterinary College's department of epidemiology, to bring what Given described as "scientific and statistical rigour".

Although the accumulation of sufficient data will require time before the project team can start feeding back results to the wider industry, Given pointed to concrete results that had emerged over a much shorter timescale. 

A vet looks on in the winner's enclosure after a race at CheltenhamCredit: Edward Whitaker

"This is a rolling process with timescales of monthly meetings, but when we do have one of those dreadful days like we had a Newton Abbot, it can be accelerated, getting the report through and early indications of what we’re seeing.

"What we saw on that day was four horses with very different injuries, and we were confident in saying they were unrelated."

Given added: "If we see 30 incidents of something across the year, that is quite a big number to us, but the likelihood that any one trainer will experience that incidence more than once is not high.

"An individual trainer might think, ‘That was an awful thing that happened, but it’s only happened to us once.’ They see it vertically but we see it horizontally, and if we feel something is happening across the industry, we can connect that together across the industry."

Given, who also sits on the Horse Welfare Board, said he did not believe the equine fatality review project was a "silver bullet" in the fight to reduce racecourse deaths, but was instead part of a jigsaw of improvements to safety and welfare which included pre-race checks, improved imaging and wearable technology, and the use of AI to analyse ECG heart readouts. 

Read these related articles:

Marginal drop in equine fatality rates recorded in British racing last year 

BHA determines 'no issue' with racing surface at Newton Abbot following four fatalities 

The reaction to HorsePWR shows we are on the right track, but now we must go further 

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