SEOUL, South Korea – Around the world, racing industries are grappling with many similar problems, as can be obvious to any attendee at an international racing conference. An urgent one, the aftercare of horses, took center stage on Thursday on the closing day of the Asian Racing Conference, held this week in Seoul, South Korea. Speakers on the conference’s Thursday opening panel universally described the pressing need for racing industries in jurisdictions world-wide to develop programs and policies to ensure that racehorses are provided with the funding and opportunity to live out their lives after being retired. While those programs differ significantly – largely as a function of local costs and cultural issues – speakers coalesced around one theme: in the face of cultural sea changes about the use of animals for sport and entertainment, and the rapid, often rabid dissemination of criticism in a globalized world, racing industries will not survive unless they can defend the use of horses by providing quality aftercare. “Considering the immediate access to global news via the internet and social media, how our sport is perceived and how we treat the Thoroughbred athletes who are the lifeblood of our sport is more important than ever,” said Jim Gagliano, the president of The Jockey Club, as part of the opening panel on Thursday. In his remarks, Gagliano first outlined the goals and progress of the International Forum for the Aftercare of Racehorses, a discussion and collaboration group that was started in 2016. IFAR held its second conference earlier in the week at the Asian Racing Conference, in which representatives outlined their programs to provide aftercare to other member jurisdictions. Gagliano then showed the conference attendees a video outlining a U.S. initiative, the Man O’ War Project, which is using horses to provide therapy to U.S. veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Founded and supported by the American horse owner Earle Mack, the program is being conducted in concert with academics who are collecting clinical data on the results of the therapy, under the hopes that positive clinical results will not only give credence to the anecdotal evidence that troubled individuals can benefit from equine therapy, but also to qualify for government grants available to programs that have demonstrated their efficacy. “We believe this has the possibility of unlocking millions of dollars in public government grants to aid these veterans and horses,” said Gagliano. That would go a small way toward addressing the U.S. racing industry’s most urgent need, which is, simply, money (or, the inability or unwillingness of the U.S. racing industry to provide an adequate amount of it). While there are no good estimates on how much money it would take to provide for the aftercare of the thousands of horses that exit U.S. racing each year – and the thousands that never make it to the track – everyone in the U.S. agrees that current needs far exceed what the industry and outside groups presently provide, despite significant efforts over the past decade to close the gap. Money is not generally a problem for the Hong Kong Jockey Club, one of the richest racing authorities in the world. Amanda Bond, the executive manager for equestrian affairs for the HKJC, outlined the association’s own aftercare program, which starts with a simple choice for the owner who decides to retire a horse: either provide for the horse’s export from the tiny territory, or donate the horse to the HKJC, which will then take care of the rest, at association expense. Bond said that the HKJC has a number of options for donated retired horses, including retraining for use in local riding programs, apprentice jockey schools, or other equestrian events; conversion into either a racetrack or stable lead; or designation for overseas export, often as breeding stock. Bond also acknowledged that “in rare cases” veterinarians will recommend that a retired horse be euthanized, an option she said that the industry should continue to consider even in the face of criticism over the choice, as long as it is based on a thorough evaluation of the horse’s post-racing quality of life. In an interview after her presentation, Bond said that approximately 400 horses are retired from the Hong Kong resident population of 1,200 horses each year, and approximately 150 of those retired horses are donated to the HKJC. Expenses for the aftercare program are $4.6 million, but revenues to the program, which include fees that owners must pay as a condition of importing horses to Hong Kong, reduce the total cost to $1.4 million, Bond said during her presentation. In Australia, racing authorities recently put in place a traceability program that requires a horse owner to alert regulators to the retirement of a registered racehorse, according to Frances Nelson, the chair of Racing Australia, the national body that represents the sport. Data on the reasons why horses were retired and the owners’ initial plans for the horses are then collected and analyzed, according to Nelson, as a first step to developing policies. For example, according to the data collected so far, 41 percent of horses were retired because of an injury, while 37 percent of horses were retired as an “owner's decision,” Frances said. Only 9 percent were retired specifically to start a breeding career. “That gives us knowledge for the drivers of racehorse retirement … and is an aid in shaping policy responses,” Nelson said. Management of injuries also plays a role in retirement decisions, and in two Asian countries, Japan and South Korea, the racing authorities provide owners with funds if a horse is seriously injured, according to officials of the countries, a stipend that influences retirement decisions and affects the post-retirement options for horses. Makato Inoue, the presidential counselor for international affairs at the Japan Racing Association, said the funding gives owners incentives to provide proper rest to injured horses, while Hee Un Song, the manager of the Korean Racing Authority’s Equine Medical Center, said that the policy encouraged owners to rehabilitate injured horses. Building on comments made during a presentation on Wednesday, Peter Curl, the executive manager of veterinary regulation for the HKJC, said on one of the Thursday panels that racing jurisdictions worldwide should also participate in a global database tracking injuries. The U.S. has been collecting detailed data on injuries of racehorses for 10 years, and racing officials there have stated that the identification of several risk factors culled from the data has had a positive impact on policy decisions. Fatality rates have also dropped since the database was launched, though it is not clear if the policies derived from the database project are directly related to the decline. Another major topic of the conference on Thursday was the effort to combat illegal betting and money laundering in Asian and Pacific countries, a problem that speakers said was both growing in size and importance. Several speakers contended that illegal gambling has the potential to corrupt parimutuel racing and foster addictive behavior in ways that legal gambling does not, and others said that the specter of money laundering creates hazards for legal gambling operations because increased scrutiny results in higher regulatory and compliance costs, as well as damaging the gambling industry’s credibility. In outlining the problems facing the Asian nations, it also became clear that many of the region’s racing authorities are in large part battling to give their customers more legal ways to access their pools, but they have been stymied by religious opposition to wider gambling choices. In Singapore and South Korea, for example, bettors cannot use the internet or mobile devices to bet on horses, despite the legality of parimutuel wagering in those countries and the nearly universal availability of internet and mobile services. Officials said that those restrictions have only served as pathways to illegal gambling operators, who mainly operate through internet platforms. Chang Hun Lee, an academic who was paid by the Korean Racing Authority to conduct a study on the size of the illegal gambling market in the country and analyze possible policy subscriptions, gave a detailed presentation on the rigorous methodology he used to arrive at his figures (after first criticizing the numbers he has seen presented by other sources and the methodologies behind them). His estimate for the total illegal parimutuel market in South Korea was $11.1 billion, compared to the legal market of $7.2 billion, and he said that policy makers had two options to deal with illegal wagering: a “crackdown” on the illegal operators, or the legalization of wagering on internet-connected or mobile devices. His analysis of each option certainly pleased those in Asia who are arguing for giving their customers more options. The crackdown option would lead to a $1 billion transfer from the illegal gambling market to the legal gambling market, Lee said, while legalizing remote wagering would lead to a $4.1 billion transfer. That would seem to make the choice clear. “Policing is not the best option,” Lee said. (Editor’s note: The Korean Racing Authority, which is the host of the Asian Racing Conference, paid for the reporter’s travel to Seoul and hotel accommodations there.)