Excessive number of horse deaths are killing the US racing industry

As Britain gears up for the 1,000 Guineas race this weekend, Joe Drape speaks to Kentucky breeders about tackling the conditions that saw a shocking 10 deaths a week at US racetracks last year

This year is the 145th Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs (Getty)

One hundred and nine years ago, Arthur B Hancock moved his thoroughbred breeding operation atop a slab of mineral rich limestone carpeted by thick, lush bluegrass. He called it Claiborne Farm. It is to horseracing what the New York Yankees are to baseball: the bedrock of more than 75 champions and the land where the immortal Secretariat stood as a stallion.

Now, Walker Hancock, who is the fifth generation of his family to run Kentucky’s Claiborne Farm, is afraid there will be nothing left to pass down to the sixth. This weekend, Britain will be gripped by the 1,000 Guineas Stakes race at Newmarket in Suffolk – where questions may be raised once more about the health of the animals. However, the situation is worse in America. Horses have been dying in high numbers at California’s premier Santa Anita Park track and while nobody knows exactly why, the treatment of the animals – before, during and after racing – is under the harshest scrutiny in years.

“The way it’s going right now, it’s not sustainable,” Hancock says of the sport. “We have to change the public’s perception and clean this thing up if we are going to survive.”