Interesting Stats

I know stats can be looked at in different ways but in trying to find out the injury rate amongst horses on sand, turf and polytrack I found these stats that are interesting and disturbing. Fatal injuries per 1000 flat runners in America 2009/10, Dirt/sand 2.14, Turf 1.74,Poly 1.55. Career ending injuries America 2008/9 , Dirt/sand 3.99, Turf 2.39 and Poly 2.19. Worse though was the jumping vs flat. 8.3 per 1000 runners against 0.44!(these figures look like they come from Australia but I cannot be sure) They also evaluated Training, moisture, medication and surface. The reason for fatalities was over 4.5 times higher due to jumping than any other factor evaluated in the study.

That does make for interesting reading I love the jumps but if it is to the detriment of the horse they should consider making it safer or stopping it, at the end of the day its about the horse

Dirt rate is far higher than the other flat track statistics

The UK HA says that currently 2 in every 1000 runners over Jumps are Fatalities and 0.6 on the Flat

I am sure that those stats are for jumping in Australia then where the going is much harder. UK jump fatalities are then 3.33/1 to flat racing which is much better than the 18+/1 quoted in my stats. As I said, someone was trying to tell me that some Americans had told them that sand/dirt racing was safer for horses than the Polytrack but as you can see they are wrong. Trying to protect their sand racing culture I have been told. A lot of breeding industry want the dirt/sand races at the expense of the Polytrack as the majority of their horses are bred for that but I don't know enough about the subject and would love to hear Mr Irwins thoughts on the subject.