CHRB Chairman Richard Shapiro Resigns

[Sysonby]

Catastrophic injuries are down. I would boldly challenge the injury list

Same here. As long as we are talking anecdotally, there's a trainer at Hollywood who purportedly had 30 + horses in his shedrow--he's down to 18 now because a bunch have had to go to the farm.

As for field size, I scanned the races this past week at Hollywood and Golden Gate. There were a bunch of 5 and 6 horse fields--the only races that consistently had fields above that were the maiden claimers in both venues and the bottom up north. On December 12th, every race at Golden Gate had 5 and 6 horses and 3 of the 8 races at Hollywood were that small. Now some of that is the economy: if the horses aren't making some money, no one can afford the exorbitant dayrates. But I have yet to see the bigger field size and better product promised 2 years ago and the economy hadn't imploded yet at that point.

As for the type of injuries, that's a philosophical debate. Is it better to have the horse go down in the afternoon and be dispatched quickly and/or even be surgically repaired or to bow in the morning and face an uncertain fate? There's not an overabundance of people looking for relatively green young bowed horses to turn into projects. Generally you can't give those horses away. Bones can heal better than ever--suspensories and tendons not so much. This whole catastrophic vs soft tissue injury debate misses the point I think when you look at reality and the future for these animals.

[Dave C]

Steward I think your blaming government regulation for problems brought on by managerial mediocrity. The problem, and it is global in scope, is that brown nosers with only basic managerial skills have been elevated to the most senior levels of business and government. As long as there isn't a serious problem to address immediately these people can appear competent. Many of the global financial problems are due to businesses and gov't's adopting the 'Dilbert' business model, and I think the CHRB did the same.

[zinn21]

Same here. As long as we are talking anecdotally, there's a trainer at Hollywood who purportedly had 30 + horses in his shedrow--he's down to 18 now

because a bunch have had to go to the farm.

My sources tell me the track life at Hollypark is dead and the reason for the increased breakdowns. The key problem, I believe, with synthetics-a very short life span.

[Tucumcari]

Catastrophic injuries are down. I would boldly challenge the injury list

Same here. As long as we are talking anecdotally, there's a trainer at Hollywood who purportedly had 30 + horses in his shedrow--he's down to 18 now because a bunch have had to go to the farm.

As for field size, I scanned the races this past week at Hollywood and Golden Gate. There were a bunch of 5 and 6 horse fields--the only races that consistently had fields above that were the maiden claimers in both venues and the bottom up north. On December 12th, every race at Golden Gate had 5 and 6 horses and 3 of the 8 races at Hollywood were that small. Now some of that is the economy: if the horses aren't making some money, no one can afford the exorbitant dayrates. But I have yet to see the bigger field size and better product promised 2 years ago and the economy hadn't imploded yet at that point.

As for the type of injuries, that's a philosophical debate. Is it better to have the horse go down in the afternoon and be dispatched quickly and/or even be surgically repaired or to bow in the morning and face an uncertain fate? There's not an overabundance of people looking for relatively green young bowed horses to turn into projects. Generally you can't give those horses away. Bones can heal better than ever--suspensories and tendons not so much. This whole catastrophic vs soft tissue injury debate misses the point I think when you look at reality and the future for these animals.

Great post!
That's not an abnormal situation at present. People had full barns last year during Hollywood. By the end of the meet, people were down in numbers. People who had big split barns at both tracks lost #'s. Buy the end of Del Mar the numbers were shockingly reduced. So many turned horses out at a rapid rapid rate.
I agree wholeheartedly about preferring bone to soft tissue. What do we do with all of the soft tissue injuries that we can't even give away? Chips, fractures we can bring alot of those back very successfully. Tendons and ligaments. That's a whole different ball game!