Laurel Park cancels two weeks of racing due to equine herpesvirus

Laurel Park has canceled live racing through next weekend as it continues to struggle with containing an equine herpesvirus outbreak among the state’s Thoroughbred population, track officials said Friday during a conference call with horsemen and state veterinary officials.

Prior to the call, Laurel officials had already announced that they had canceled the three live cards scheduled for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, but Craig Fravel, chief executive officer of racing operations for Laurel’s parent company, said during the conference call that the track’s three live race days for next weekend also had been called off.

“As racetrack operators, it’s not in our DNA to cancel racing,” Fravel said, “but we live in a world right now where caution is the better part of valor.”

During the call, Dionne Benson, the chief veterinary officer for 1/ST, said that 18 horses at Laurel have tested positive for equine herpesvirus in the past week, along with one horse at Pimlico. The positive horses have been moved to a training center at Bowie and are being quarantined. They will remain in quarantine for 21 days, Benson said.

A total of 26 horses who have tested positive in the past two weeks are now housed at Bowie, according to Benson.

As a result of the new positive at Pimlico, which was disclosed Thursday, horses stabled at Pimlico will not be allowed to ship to Laurel to race, and each property is now being treated as a separate quarantine facility. A number of horses stabled at Pimlico had already been entered in the races at Laurel this weekend, necessitating the cancellation of this weekend’s cards, track officials said.

The backstretches at Laurel and Pimlico will be locked down for at least the next 21 days, Benson said, though horsemen could ship their horses to a private training center or farm with the approval of state veterinary officials. That policy received some pushback from horsemen on the call, but Benson said that most racetracks would not accept horses from Laurel or Pimlico given the breadth of the outbreak.

“I don’t know that another track will take anyone right now,” Benson said.

Equine herpesvirus is a highly contagious disease that can be fatal. A horse that tested positive two weeks ago at Laurel “did not respond to treatment,” according to the state veterinarian, and was euthanized.

Benson told horsemen during the conference call that they should all attempt to increase air circulation in their barns to mitigate against the spread of the disease.

“The more we can open those barns up the better,” she said.