Dear Thoroughbred racing participants,

At the Breeders’ Cup World Championships earlier this month, the best of the best in our sport came together to compete on the track and celebrate the wonderful culture and lifestyle of racing. Meanwhile, Breeders’ Cup CEO Drew Fleming and I convened a meeting of some of the leading executives across the sports industry to discuss what we can all learn from each other as we work to protect the health and safety of our athletes and the integrity of our sports.

We were joined at Del Mar by leaders from the NFL, NHL, NWSL, UFC, U.S. Soccer Federation and U.S. Equestrian Federation, among others. We discussed the work HISA is doing to ensure consistent safety and integrity standards for horses and riders nationwide, as well as the work that many other organizations across racing are doing to prioritize safety. We asked these leaders to share their perspectives and were eager to hear their thoughts on what we could be doing better based on their experiences. Our conversation covered a wide range of issues, including emerging technologies, head injuries, emergency preparedness, mental wellness and anti-doping. I think we were all surprised by how many similarities there are in the challenges we all face.

My three biggest takeaways from the insightful meeting:

1. True change requires buy-in from the bottom up and the top down. Creating a culture of safety in racing means a collective sense of purpose and a willingness to invest in the future of the sport. That means funding new technological solutions and scientific research and a commitment to working together to prioritize safety above all else. The sports represented didn’t achieve full buy-in quickly or easily, and neither will we, but we have to keep working toward it and keep proving both the value of, and the business case for, safety.
2. Racing has to tell its safety story. It’s not enough to put the right rules in place, to enforce them or even to significantly decrease equine fatalities if no one knows what we’ve accomplished. You’ll notice that the NFL runs a commercial during every game about the health and safety work they’re doing to “build a better game” even in moments without acute crises. I’ve heard some in racing say we should only talk about safety when we absolutely have to – when we’re in crisis – but we need to all get comfortable with talking about it year-round and proactively sharing the collective progress we’ve made with the public. It’s not enough to sell the fun and excitement of racing, we must also ensure that the public knows we’re prioritizing safety every single day, especially if we are to attract new, younger fans to this great sport.
3. We need to get creative. Speaking with leaders in other sports emphasized not only how much work there is to do to ensure our horses and riders are safe, but also how many ways there are to go about that work. We’ve already been engaged with leading technologists about how we can use data to advance our safety goals, but there are many other new and innovative ways we should be pushing what’s possible. Whether that’s crowd-sourcing ideas for new wearable technology solutions or engaging in partnerships to provide much-needed health care to riders, we can and should do more. I’ll rely on our Next Generation Advisory Group – and anyone else with smart, fresh ideas – to be vocal about those ideas so we never feel limited in the tools at our disposal to make racing safer.

One area in which I’m acutely aware of our collective need to do more is around exercise-associated sudden deaths. We must do everything we can in partnership with our international peers to better understand these fatalities and determine how to prevent them. To those ends, HISA has committed significant funding to independent academic research studies currently underway at the University of Minnesota and the University of Pennsylvania to explore possible genetic predictors of sudden cardiac deaths. We are also working with Palantir to mine our data for any common factors in these cases that can provide some insight into how to prevent them going forward.

After our meeting with the other sports leagues the morning of Friday, Nov. 1, we got everyone out to the races. Several of these executives had never been to a horse race, and I think at least a few of them caught the bug. Racing has so much potential to grow and bring in new fans, but only if the public trusts we are doing all we can to prioritize the health and safety of our athletes.

Thank you again for all you do to ensure that we’re moving forward together. 

Lisa Lazarus
CEO
HISA