Safety protocols to have different format at Del Mar

A five-person panel of veterinarians and racing officials will review the race, medical, and training records of horses entered at the Del Mar summer meeting, continuing a practice that began at Southern California tracks last month.

A panel reviewed the records of horses entered to race in the final two weeks of the Santa Anita spring-summer meeting, which ended on June 23. A similar program is in place at the Los Alamitos meeting, which runs through July 14. The Del Mar summer meeting begins July 17.

At Del Mar, the panel will have a slightly different format, according to racing officials. The records of horses will be reviewed after entries are completed. Any horse deemed unfit to race will be withdrawn at scratch time. At Santa Anita and Los Alamitos, horses deemed unfit to race were not allowed to be entered.

The new procedure was announced in a statement released by the California Horse Racing Board on June 29.

The panel at Del Mar will consist of veterinarian Rick Arthur, California’s equine medical director; state veterinarian Tim Grande; veterinarian Will Farmer; chief steward Darrel McHargue; and steward Luis Jauregui.

The review panel was formed last month after California Gov. Gavin Newsom published a statement in mid-June criticizing a series of equine fatalities at Santa Anita and calling for greater veterinary oversight.

Del Mar announced Tuesday it will increase out-of-competition testing, enhance stable security, disallow the use of whips in morning training, and continue a practice from past years of having veterinarians monitor horses during training.

The summer meeting will be the first at Del Mar under the racing board’s current medication rules, which require horses to be withdrawn from nonsteroidal anti-inflammatories 48 hours before a race or workout, compared to the previous rule of 24 hours, and restrict the therapeutic use of corticosteroids within 14 days of a race instead of three days. Similar measures are in place at the state’s other tracks.