HISA Report Shows Racing Fatality Rate Rises Slightly to 1.04 per 1,000 Starts

Racetracks operating under HISA's rules logged a racing-related fatality rate of 1.02 per 1,000 starts in the third quarter of 2025, part of a year that ended at 1.04 per 1,000 starts across the full 12-month period. That annual figure, the headline number in HISA's 2025 Annual Metrics Report released today, sits fractionally above the 24-month rate of 0.95 per 1,000 starts, which the agency described as "unprecedentedly low."

The slight uptick carries real texture when you peel back the quarterly data. The nationwide racing-related fatality rate was 1.06 per 1,000 starts for the first half of 2025 and 1.02 per 1,000 starts for the past 12 months as of June 30, 2025. The second quarter was where the year got complicated: between April 1 and June 30, racetracks under HISA's rules reported 1.24 racing-related fatalities per 1,000 starts, up sharply from 0.76 per 1,000 starts during the same period in 2024. The 2025 Saratoga meet compressed those numbers further, with five racing-related fatalities across 3,201 runners, a rate of 1.56 per 1,000 starts.

HISA CEO Lisa Lazarus pushed back against reading too much into any single quarter. "When you take slices of the year," Lazarus said, "you're going to see a bit of a bell curve, a bit of up and down." She said she remained "confident that we're going to still end up in the same place as last year by the end of the year." Lazarus added there was "no specific contributor" she could identify as driving the uptick in catastrophic injuries, and that the agency is studying multiple factors. HISA analyzes data from 47 racetracks in 19 states that operate under its rules, though the Q3 snapshot specifically covered 41 racetracks.

The Q3 detail worth flagging for the tracks: HISA completed a specific analysis of fatalities at Saratoga Race Course in 2025 compared to other horses in the same races and workouts, finding that horses sustaining fatal injuries had significantly higher rates of high-speed exercise in the six to ten months preceding the fatal event. The report underscores the importance of monitoring horses in intense high-speed exercise programs and adjusting training and racing intensity to mitigate risk.

In Q3, the racing-related equine fatality rate was 1.02 fatalities per 1,000 starts, meaning 99.90% of Thoroughbred racehorse starts occurred without a fatality within 72 hours of racing due to race-related injuries. Three tracks drove the concentration: Thistledown recorded six racing-related fatalities in the quarter, while Prairie Meadows and Saratoga Race Course each posted five. On the training side, HISA saw a 10% year-over-year decrease in training-related fatalities, with the rate dropping to 0.38 deaths per 1,000 workouts from 0.42 in the same period the prior year, a figure also 24% lower than the 2024 full-year rate of 0.50.

The report period also captured a crisis that, while outside HISA's Thoroughbred-only jurisdiction, shook the California racing landscape. Three Quarter Horses sustained fatal injuries at Los Alamitos on November 23, 2025, with the three incidents occurring in three separate dashes in a 90-minute span. The California Horse Racing Board reacted firmly, demanding enhanced veterinary measures and restrictions on injections at Los Alamitos, with CHRB executive director Scott Chaney writing in a letter to Los Alamitos president Cathy Allred that an emergency board meeting would be called "unless Los Alamitos makes significant changes to its safety program and the injuries decrease precipitously and quickly." Los Alamitos responded that it would implement every measure outlined in the CHRB letter. HISA's rules apply only to Thoroughbreds in covered races, so the Quarter Horse deaths fall under state regulatory authority rather than HISA's framework.

HISA was created through 2020 Congressional legislation co-sponsored by U.S. Rep. Paul Tonko and began enforcing racetrack safety standards in 2022. Lazarus noted that "no matter how you slice it, year-to-date, 12 months or 24 months, the racing-related fatality rate continues to hover around 1.0 per 1,000 starts," but added the agency is "actively collaborating with veterinarians, racetracks and trainers to understand why fatalities occur and implement best practices to prevent future incidents." The annual 1.04 rate tells a story of sustained progress from where the sport started, but the Q2 spike and the track-level concentrations at Thistledown and Saratoga make clear that the aggregate number obscures meaningful variation the industry still has to confront.