Racehorses are incredible athletes, and for centuries, humans have been impressed by their brawn, beauty, and lightning speed. Unfortunately, there’s an important power they cannot exhibit: control over the substances that go into their bodies.
Human athletes who take performance enhancing substances do so, in most cases, by making a conscious choice to dope, to cheat, and to win at all costs. Racehorses cannot make that choice. Instead, they are at the mercy of their owners and trainers. The industry should therefore protect these athletes from those who place winning above the lives and wellbeing of both horses and the jockeys who ride them.
While many professional sports have taken crucial steps to rid their games of illegal doping, the racing industry continues to lag behind—not because of a lack of leadership, but because too many players want to maintain the status quo, which allows them to circumvent regulatory oversight. The widespread use of both legal and illegal drugs is killing an industry that employs 400,000 Americans. It’s also hurting and killing our horses and jockeys at alarming rates. An analysis of data from the Jockey Club’s Equine Injury Database, or EID, released on March 19, 2018 shows an increase in the rate of fatal injury in 2017 (1.61 per 1,000 starts) compared to 2016 (1.54 per 1,000 starts).
Under the current system, there are 38 state racing jurisdictions throughout the U.S., each with its own set of regulations. This hodgepodge of rules allows unscrupulous owners and trainers to simply move racehorses from one jurisdiction to another. Weak restrictions and consequences allow people to continue to dope horses and avoid penalties. Each state racing commission allows different medications and varying levels of permissible medications, imposes different penalties for violations, and has different rules on which horses are tested for drugs. Different laboratories test samples for evidence of doping. Without one single regulating body or uniform set of rules, owners and trainers who are barred from racing in one jurisdiction can simply move their business elsewhere, seeking out jurisdictions where state regulators who value profit above all else endorse weak penalties for doping .
To stop these players from hopscotching their way through racing jurisdictions, oversight and regulations are needed at the federal level. Unlike other sports that have regulatory bodies to provide oversight and that can sanction those who flout industry rules, horse racing has no governing body that can regulate the industry. Imagine the confusion if the NFL had no national standards or consistency, with different rules in each of the 32 professional football stadiums. The horse racing industry needs national uniform standards to stop unethical trainers and veterinarians from doping horses to improve their chances of winning.
Doping horses for racing is more dangerous today because some drugs weaken the already delicate bones of young horses, making them more vulnerable to breakdowns than they were even 10 or 20 years ago. Race tracks are turning into crash sites and it is time for Congress to take action – and the fix is a federal bill known as The Horseracing Integrity Act, H.R. 2651.
This bipartisan legislation has been introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives by Reps. Andy Barr, R-Ky., and Paul Tonko, D-N.Y. It will establish a uniform set of rules, testing procedures and penalties, created by the non-profit U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, the same agency that monitors Olympic sports in the United States, to rid racing of unethical drugging of horses. Such legislation is crucial to protect the animals and jockeys in an industry that has proven it will not regulate itself.
Animal welfare groups such as The HSUS and Humane Society Legislative Fund support this reform, and support for reform is also rapidly growing throughout the racing industry with leading track owners, horse owners, trainers and other industry insiders coming together to call for this bill’s passage. Supporters include the New York Racing Association, which operates Belmont Park and Saratoga Racetrack; Frank Stronach, owner of several tracks including Pimlico Race Course; The Jockey Club; The Breeders Cup; Keeneland; and the Water Hay Oats Alliance, which includes 65 racehorse trainers.
Horse racing is $40 billion a year industry that fuels our economy. Without reform, including the passage of the Horse racing Integrity Act, horses and jockeys will continue to die, and support from fans will decrease, as they will increasingly reject sports where champions are determine by anything other than athletic prowess. Legitimate sports don’t include a syringe loaded with performance enhancing drugs.
Marty Irby is the Senior Advisor at The Humane Society of the United States and Humane Society Legislative Fund in Washington, D.C.
