Horse Racing Fatality Rate Hits Record Low, Down 47% Since 2009

Sixteen years of safety reform in Thoroughbred racing crystallized into a single number: 1.07 fatalities per 1,000 starts in 2025, the lowest rate recorded since The Jockey Club's Equine Injury Database began tracking in 2009. Initial analysis from the EID's 17th year of reporting confirmed the figure represents a 3.6% decline from 2024 and a 47% drop from the 2.00 per 1,000 rate when national tracking launched.

The headline statistic translates to 99.89% of flat racing starts at EID-participating racetracks completing without a fatality. It also marks the sixth consecutive year the industry has kept the rate below 1.5 per 1,000 starts, a threshold the sport spent years struggling to breach consistently.

Professor Tim Parkin of the University of Bristol, who has consulted on the EID since its inception, called the trajectory significant. "The Thoroughbred industry should be very proud of the work done to improve the safety of its athletes and to know that the initiatives supported by The Jockey Club and so many other organizations are proving to be effective," Parkin said. "A nearly 50 percent drop in the rate of fatality since 2009 is impressive, and it's especially encouraging to see eight-furlong and shorter races at historic lows." Analysis of the EID data was also provided by Dr. Euan Bennet of the University of Glasgow.

The numbers diverge meaningfully when broken down by regulatory jurisdiction. Tracks operating under the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority posted a 2025 rate of 1.04 fatalities per 1,000 starts across 168,423 starts at 41 tracks in 19 states, with 176 horses dying or being euthanized within 72 hours of racing. Racetracks in the U.S. outside HISA's authority, including those in Louisiana, Texas and West Virginia, recorded a rate of 1.21 per 1,000 starts. The contrast sharpens further against 2024 data, when non-HISA U.S. tracks posted 1.76 per 1,000 starts, nearly double the HISA-regulated rate of 0.90 that year.

HISA's own 2025 Annual Metrics Report noted that its 1.04 rate represented a modest increase from the record-low 0.90 in 2024, though still roughly half the 2.00 baseline from 2009. Across 71,443 unique horses that recorded a published workout or made a start under HISA rules in 2025, the combined racing and training fatality rate for the covered-horse population stood at 0.51%.

Transparency appears to correlate with outcomes at the track level. Racetracks that voluntarily publish their EID statistics on The Jockey Club website, a practice available since March 2012, reported a fatality rate of 0.95 per 1,000 starts in 2025, compared to 1.14 for tracks that do not publish.

HISA flagged two patterns requiring further scrutiny. Racing fatalities involving 2-year-old horses climbed from 15 in 2024 to 21 in 2025, prompting a focused review of risk factors for younger runners. The authority also identified a recurring uptick in fatalities near the end of seasonal meets, a pattern it said remains under evaluation. On a more encouraging note, crop-rule violations dropped approximately 25% year over year, falling from 4.40 to 3.31 per 1,000 starts.

The EID counts only injuries resulting in fatalities within 72 hours of the race date, covers official Thoroughbred races exclusively and excludes steeplechase events. All figures are preliminary and subject to change through the database's multilevel quality-control process. A peer-reviewed verification study published on PubMed cross-referenced 381 fatalities listed by the advocacy group Horseracing Wrongs against official Equibase race charts for 2024, finding that 268 of 275 race-related Thoroughbred deaths, or 97.5%, were confirmed, with verified totals differing from publicly reported EID counts by only six fatalities that fell outside the 72-hour reporting window.

The 2-year-old fatality increase and the end-of-meet pattern give regulators two specific threads to pull as the industry works to sustain a decline that, by any 16-year measure, has fundamentally changed the safety profile of the sport.