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Fatalities on racecourses were up last year on both flat and jumps.
The BHA once again blamed the dry summer (seems there excuse for everything) and now have pledged to take action.
Add to these statistics the horses that are fatally injured in training also – you should not do one without the other.
It would be interesting to know if this increase is accompanied by whether there is an increase in the amount of runners over the year.
If this is so then surely it should be compared as a percentage of runners rather than an actual isolated figure.
And before anyone says I am uncaring that is not the case at all. I am just always suspicious of figures that portray stats without due consideration.
This is done as a percentage raymo. 0.22% (or 22 in every 10,000 runners) fatalities in 2018 compared to 0.18% in 2017. 0.22% compares with the rate in 2014. Overall in the last 5 years this shows a rate of 0.2% so 2017 was low whilst 2018 was high in relation to present day figures. This compares to 0.29% 20 years ago. It will be interesting to see what 2019 brings.
It would also be good to know the % split between the following, if anyone has these to hand :-
Turf Flat
All Weather Flat
Jumps (Winter) say Nov to April.
Jumps (Summer) say May to Oct.The sensationalism shown by the RP and others regarding a 0.04% rise in fatalities is mad. Makes the situation seem a million times worth than it actually is. 75% of the variance can be attributed to the Grand Annual alone FFS.
Don’t think there is any sensationalism in the article myself. All it does is states facts and provides quotes. Even the headline is just stating a fact. These matters should be reported for transparency.
The RSPCA response that the rise was “unacceptable” is a bit strong although they are only looking out for the welfare of the horse. This is hopefully just a blip and we will continue to see a downward trend in future years. Blaming a dry summer or one freak race, as Kev has done, is no excuse and lessons must be learnt from this in the future to protect our sport.
Thanks for that Homer
My only comment would be “maybe 2018 was an anomaly ? ”
And if someone wants to interpret the stats in this way. We are improving horse welfare compared to twenty years ago but that wouldn’t make very good headlines.
You say a downward trend Homer, but when does it reach a percentage were we say that is a reasonable tolerance?
I work for an oil company and the industries number 1 thing is safety performance. Everyone knows this will never be 0, incidents and errors occur. The industry is aware of this and there is a benchmark set to compare against.
Racing is exactly the same, injuries will happen and horses will be fatally killed, but as an industry it has to set a bench mark IMO.
Being 0.04% over an average variance which includes the lowest totals ever recorded is not something where lessons need learning, it’s variance.
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