The fatality rate at North American racetracks that participate in the Equine Injury Database (EID) fell in 2025 to its lowest level ever recorded, at 1.07 per 1,000 starts, according to statistics released Tuesday by The Jockey Club, which maintains the database. The 1.07 rate is a 47 percent drop in the rate since injury and fatality data began being collected by the Thoroughbred industry in 2009. The rate that year, when the U.S. racing industry began to be put under enormous pressure to improve its safety record, was 2.00 per 1,000 starts. “The Thoroughbred industry should be very proud of the work done to improve the safety of its athletes and to know that the initiatives supported by The Jockey Club and so many other organizations are proving to be effective,” said Dr. Tim Parkin, an epidemiologist currently at the University of Bristol who has consulted on the EID since its inception. “A nearly 50 percent drop in the rate of fatality since 2009 is impressive, and it’s especially encouraging to see eight-furlong and shorter races at historic lows.” :: Access the most trusted data and information in horse racing! DRF Past Performances and Picks are available now. While the overall rate dropped to a historic low, the data for 2-year-old horses jumped dramatically, from 0.90 fatalities per 1,000 starts to 1.44. However, the jump represented a 10-horse increase in 2-year-old fatalities during the year, with 27 in 2025 compared to 17 in 2024. As in previous years, the data underlying the 2025 rates will be analyzed in the months to come to identify any factors contributing to either decreases or increases in the categories tracked by epidemiologists. Parkin is scheduled to give an update on those factors at the upcoming Health and Safety of the Racehorse Summit on June 29-30 at Keeneland. By surface, races on turf had the lowest fatality rate, at 0.87 per 1,000 starts, followed by artificial surfaces, at 0.97. The rate on dirt in 2025 was 1.13 per 1,000 starts. Dirt racing has always had a higher fatality rate than either turf or synthetic, but the difference between the rates has narrowed considerably over the past 16 years. By age, 2-year-olds had the highest rate by far in 2025, though the figure appears to be anomalous. For 3-year-olds, the rate was 0.87 in 2025, the lowest on record, while for older horses, the rate was 1.10, also the lowest on record. By distance, there was no statistically significant difference between any of the rates. The rate for races shorter than six furlongs was 1.07, the lowest on record; between six furlongs and eight furlongs, it was 1.08, also the lowest on record; and for races longer than eight furlongs, the rate was 1.01. :: Subscribe to the DRF Post Time Email Newsletter: Get the news you need to play today's races!  Racing officials have used the results of the data-tracking to implement more stringent veterinary and medication requirements on horses, which most officials credit for cutting the fatality rate nearly in half over the past 17 years. In addition, the culture in racing has changed substantially in the past decade, with many horsemen and racetrack executives far more cognizant of the debilitating impact of fatalities on the sport’s public image. Also on Tuesday, the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority released a report showing a fatality rate of 1.04 per 1,000 starts at tracks under its jurisdiction. The rate is not statistically different from the rate reported by The Jockey Club, which gathers data from tracks representing approximately 99 percent of the races in North America. In the report, HISA said that the rate of training fatalities, which are not recorded in the EID, was 0.55 per 1,000 official workouts. HISA began tracking training fatalities at the beginning of 2025, the first U.S. racing organization to do so. The report noted the uptick in 2-year-old fatalities in 2025 and said that officials would examine the 27 incidents in an attempt to identify any underlying causes. “HISA is examining whether an increase in the raw number of such cases in 2025 reflects any meaningful differences in horse backgrounds or management practices,” HISA said. :: Want to learn more about handicapping and wagering? Check out DRF's Handicapping 101 and Wagering 101 pages.