Officials with the Horseracing Integrity and Welfare Unit urged local horsemen and regulatory personnel to establish lines of communication to the agency in order to improve their investigations of illegal doping during a panel on Wednesday morning at the Global Symposium on Racing in Tucson.

Hall of Fame trainers Bob Baffert and Todd Pletcher both appeared together on a panel at the Global Symposium on Racing five years ago, when the symposium organizers first launched a series featuring racing personalities in a quasi-intimate question-and-answer session.

They were back in the same setting Tuesday morning, and, as the moderator, 1/ST Racing’s Amy Zimmerman, noted right off, wow, what a five years it has been.

“I hope the next five years are a lot smoother than the last five years,” Baffert said.

The overall fatality rate for horses racing at U.S. tracks is expected to drop for the first time to a rate below 1 horse per 1,000 starts at the end of 2024, according to figures provided by Lisa Lazarus, chief executive of the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority, during an opening address at the Global Symposium on Racing in Tucson, Ariz., on Tuesday morning.

Churchill Downs Inc. and the New York Racing Association, the two largest contributors to the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority, are currently in arrears to HISA for a total of $5.8 million, according to documents posted on HISA’s website on Friday.

Wagering on U.S. races in November was up slightly compared to the same month last year, but a relatively larger jump in the number of races held during the month drove the average betting per race down, according to figures distributed Friday by Equibase.

Total wagering jumped 1.2 percent during the month to $921.1 million, but the number of races held during the month increased 2.1 percent. That led to a 0.9 percent drop in average wagering per race, to $397,721.

Churchill Downs Inc. and the New York Racing Association have filed a joint lawsuit against the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority alleging that the organization has not adhered to its own rule determining funding assessments.

Total handle on races held at Del Mar Thoroughbred Club in Southern California during the 16-day meet that concluded Sunday, including the two-day Breeders’ Cup event, was $283.9 million, according to an analysis by Daily Racing Form, compared to $301.7 million in handle at a 15-day meet in 2021, when the track last hosted the Breeders’ Cup.

Michael Shiffman, a former senior producer at ESPN, has been hired to be the senior vice president and executive producer for FanDuel TV, the channel formerly known as TVG that currently devotes the vast majority of its live sports coverage to horse racing.

Shiffman, who during his 24-year career at ESPN was involved in many of the network’s flagship productions, will “be responsible for leading the creative and operational direction of FanDuel TV’s sports and racing programming,” FanDuel said in a release. He will report to Mike Raffensperger, the network’s president of sports.

The purses of two claiming races at Los Alamitos in September and October have been ordered redistributed after jockey Barrington Harvey was twice cited for excessive use of the whip.

The $13,200 purse of the seventh race at Los Alamitos on Sept. 21 was ordered redistributed by Del Mar stewards on Nov. 9. According to a ruling issued in September, Harvey used his whip 12 times, or six times over the limit on race winner Smarty Nose.

All-sources handle at venues throughout California showed a decline of 6 percent through October compared to the corresponding period in 2023, according to figures presented at Thursday’s California Horse Racing Board meeting.

Handle at all meetings – Thoroughbreds, harness, and the lower-level Thoroughbred and Quarter Horse evening meeting at Los Alamitos – totaled $2.289 billion, compared to $2.434 billion in 2023.