Clonmel horse deaths not down to track or going - Turf Club

Turf Club chief executive Denis Egan said on Wednesday that the sport's regulator is satisfied that five fatal injuries sustained by horses running at Clonmel on Friday evening could not be attributed to either the track or the going.

The National Hunt meeting was staged on ground described officially as good-to-firm. Only one of the five horses to suffer fatal injuries did so as the direct result of a fall, while two were injured injured in a bumper, a flat race for jumps-bred horses.

“The facts are fairly straightforward,” Egan said on Wednesday. “We’ve spoken to all the trainers and all the jockeys of the horses that were fatally injured and none of them attribute what happened to the track or the surface. They have said it is just one of those things that happen, unfortunately.

“Obviously when there’s five fatalities at a particular racecourse on a particular day, which doesn’t happen very often thankfully, then you have to look at everything to see if there is a common thread, but there isn’t.

“The five accidents happened at five different parts of the track. The first one happened three strides after the first hurdle. Another horse fell because he was blinded going into a jump. The third just landed and crumpled halfway through the race, and the other two were injured in a bumper.

“Everybody was happy with the ground. I even had an email from a leading trainer who had runners there to say that he had no problem with it, he had five runners on the night and they all returned sound.”

In Britain, the British Horseracing Authority instructs jumps courses to aim to stage racing on ground no faster than good, and watering the track when necessary to achieve this. Egan does not expect Ireland to follow to suit, however.

“I suppose what we are looking at ultimately is whether the ground should be artificially altered for summer racing to make sure that it’s always on the slow side of good,” Egan said.

“There is some support for that but it is limited. Some trainers have horses that want fast ground. We’ve had this debate time and time again about whether the ground should be altered and the view of a lot of trainers is that if that is what the weather is, then provided the ground is safe, they are happy to run.

“It doesn’t need to be on the slow side of good to be safe. “If the track is level with a good covering of grass and if the jar is taken out of it, the ground is safe.”

(Guardian Service)