Race-Level Reporting of Incidents during Two Seasons (2015/16 to 2016/17) of Thoroughbred Flat Racing in New Zealand

Abstract

The objective of this study was to describe the incident and non-incident reports of Thoroughbred flat racing in New Zealand. Retrospective stipendiary stewards’ reports of race day events during the 2015/2016 and 2016/2017 racing season were examined. The primary injury and reporting outcomes were analysed to assess the horse- and race-level risk factors associated with the occurrence of incident and non-incident reports. The number of incident and non-incident events and binomial exact 95% confidence intervals were calculated per 1000 horse starts. Most reports were for non-incidents and examinations were requested for poor performance (10.3 per 1000 races, 95% CI = 9.5–11.1). Horses running in open-class races had greater odds of having an incident than horses in lower-rating classes. The incidence of musculoskeletal injuries (1.3 per 1000 races, 95% CI = 1.13–1.40) and fractures (0.6 per 1000 races, 95% CI = 0.39–0.74) were low and similar to previous New Zealand reports. There was a low incidence of epistaxis (0.8 per 1000 races, 95% CI = 0.69–0.92) possibly due to trainers screening susceptible horses before entering them in races, due to the regulatory consequences of an episode of epistaxis during a race.

Race-Level Reporting of Incidents Using an Online System during Three Seasons (2019/2020–2021/2022) of Thoroughbred Flat Racing in New Zealand

“…The cleaned dataset, including the race level results and stipendiary steward reports for the 2015/16 and 2016/17 seasons used by Gibson, et al [ 1 ], was retrieved to enable the comparison of clinical findings from historical data using the old paper-based system with the new online system used in the current dataset.…”

“…Clinical outcomes generated for the 2015/16 and 2016/17 racing seasons published by Gibson, et al [ 1 ] were used as a proxy for the old paper-based system. This method is referred to as the “notes field derived” in the current study.…”

“…The reporting of examinations within stipendiary steward reports for Thoroughbred flat racing in New Zealand using the historical paper-based reporting system has been published and provides baseline data on race day injuries and regulatory reporting (2015/16–2016/17 seasons) [ 1 ]. The paper-based system used a series of tick boxes and free text fields that were filled in by the official veterinarian or steward.…”

“…However, the lack of constraints on the input details with the paper-based system was associated with variations in the descriptions used for clinical outcomes, requiring additional categorisation. In addition, the manual entry of the paper-based reports into the electronic system was associated with a low frequency of errors, such as incorrect race dates, misspelt horse names, and misclassification of horses (i.e., harness racing horses in the Thoroughbred racing dataset), requiring time-consuming data cleaning [ 1 , 2 ].…”

“…The frequency of no observable abnormalities detected (NOAD) as a clinical finding increased in both incident and non-incident examinations, indicating that most examinations were associated with routine screening rather than an “event”. However, due to differences in racing speed, gait, and risk factors, changes in the harness racing incident reports are unlikely to reflect what has occurred in Thoroughbred racing [ 1 ].…”