Racing Symposium: HISA looking to employ data analysis to help reduce horse attrition

TUCSON, Ariz. – The Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority will focus some of its immediate data-analysis efforts on finding markers that would reduce the “attrition” of horses from the racing population, officials of HISA said on Wednesday during the final panel of the Global Symposium on Racing.

The analysis effort is being led by Dr. Susan Stover, the chair of HISA’s Racetrack Safety Standing Committee, who displayed several charts showing that early interventions for the detection of minor soundness issues led to much lower rates of horses needing time off to deal with injuries later on. The effort will focus on what metrics could be used to trigger those early interventions, Stover said.

If those metrics could be identified, Stover said, then horsemen could “perhaps change management, or change some other factors to keep these horses in the pool and happy and healthy.” Stover said the benefits of reducing attrition will be a reduction in costs, higher field sizes and higher active horse populations, and fewer serious injuries for horsemen to manage.

Stover and five other officials from HISA and its drug-and-medication program enforcement arm, the Horseracing Integrity and Wagering Unit, appeared on the panel to report on the progress the two organizations have made in 2023 and report on its future plans. A similar panel closed the 2022 session at the Symposium, a reflection of the impact of HISA on the national racing industry, along with the confusion and controversy surrounding some of its policies.

:: Bet the races with a $200 First Deposit Match + FREE All Access PPs! Join DRF Bets.

Almost all of the panelists acknowledged growing pains since HISA’s safety program launched last year and the Anti-Doping and Medication and Control program launched in May of this year. The panelists said that they wanted to focus on “collaborations” with industry constituents throughout the next year, in the hopes of ironing out problems with its rules or programs or addressing complaints throughout the industry’s ecosystem, from trainers to test-barn workers.

“We have learned to take as much value from constructive criticism as we have from the hard conversations, the critical phone calls, and the eye rolls,” said Kate Mittelstadt, HIWU’s chief of operations. “Those conversations matter, so we need to keep having them collectively if we’re going to make this work.”

It was clear at the end of the session that HISA and HIWU’s role in the industry remains a significant source of frustration with horsemen. Multiple horsemen took to the microphone to complain about HISA’s policies and its performance, including Eric Hamelback, the president of the National Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Association, whose criticisms ranged far and wide and led to somewhat hostile exchanges with the panelists and Lisa Lazarus, HISA’s chief executive officer, who answered some of the criticisms from the audience.

The National HBPA and its affiliates have filed several suits and appeals over the past two years seeking to invalidate HISA through legal arguments challenging the constitutionality of its enabling legislation and formation. While one U.S. Circuit Court has upheld HISA’s constitutionality, a different court, the U.S. Fifth Circuit, is still considering a challenge based on substantially similar arguments. The Fifth Circuit ruling is expected within the next several months.

During the panel, Ben Mosier, the executive director of HIWU, attempted to address concerns over the turnaround times of laboratory samples. He said that HIWU requires labs to adhere to certain turnaround times in their contracts, but he acknowledged that those times were not being achieved at all laboratories. He said the turnaround times “have gotten better over time,” but said that the process was ongoing.

Dr. Mary Scollay, the chief of science for HIWU who held top positions within the racing industry prior to the advent of HISA, focused much of her presentation on HIWU’s efforts to harmonize the capabilities of the six testing laboratories that are being utilized by the organization. The capabilities of the labs came into question earlier this year when HIWU threw out several cases involving the banned substance metformin because of different standards at the labs.

Scollay said that the process of harmonization is ongoing, and she said horsemen “were rightly concerned” about the capabilities due to the metformin variances. The metformin positives were also a source of one of Hamelback’s post-source criticisms.

Scollay also said that HIWU is now collaborating with the International Federation of Horseracing Authorities on screening limits, data collection, and research into testing. Prior to the formation of HISA and HIWU, racing regulators in the U.S. collaborated sparingly with IFHA, which recommends drug-testing standards for racing jurisdictions worldwide.

“We’re not at the kids’ table anymore,” Scollay said.

Other parts of the panel focused on how HISA is conducting its investigations into potential violations, including its policies and protocols when conducting barn searches, which has been another source of irritation to horsemen. Mosier had said earlier in the panel that HIWU has searched 140 barns since launching the program in May.

Stover’s presentation also included details on a product that HISA is attempting to develop for trainers that would be called a “horse history signature” that would show the history of a single horse’s training sessions, races, and layoffs. That history could be overlaid with other data points showing medication treatments, vaccinations, or other events.

“We can lay over any other information you might want for the horse,” Stover said. “The idea is to make information readily available to you about the horse’s career.”

After Stover concluded her presentation, the first of the panel, Ann McGovern, HISA’s director of racetrack safety, attempted to reassure horsemen that the products being developed by HISA were not meant to suggest that trainers would no longer need to rely on horsemanship, a frequent backstretch complaint in the era of Big Data.

“I have a comment for my trainer friends out there,” McGovern said. “Our goals are the same. We want to reduce attrition. We want to keep horses healthy. We don’t want to train your horses.”

:: Want to learn more about handicapping and wagering? Check out DRF's Handicapping 101 and Wagering 101 pages.