Horse safety concerns resurface after 4-year-old colt dies at Laurel Park
BALTIMORE -- Racing at Laurel Park was initially canceled after two horses were injured, and one of them had to be euthanized earlier this month.
Now, the Maryland Jockey Club canceled its racing program at Laurel Park for Thursday due to insufficient entries.
The club said in a statement that it recognized there was some concern about the park's racing surface due to recent media coverage about a 4-year-old colt that suffered a catastrophic injury and had to be euthanized on the track.
But club members say that they have had a renowned industry expert conduct tests on the park's racing surface.
An animal rights advocate spoke to WJZ about the dangers of the horse racing industry. She said she wants to see racing come to an end.
"They scramble and try to say it's the track; it's not. It's built into the system," Jennifer Sully, Maryland organizer for Horse Racing Wrongs, said. "These horses are 18 months old when they're trained. They're two years old when they race, and so . . . they're gonna break bones, are going to snap their necks. They're gonna collapse. They're gonna have pulmonary hemorrhages and things like that. It's inevitable."
The Maryland Jockey Club asked Dr. Jennifer Durenberger, the director of Equine Safety and Welfare with HISA, to review Laurel's fatality data. Durenberger determined the fatality rate at Laurel Park was 1.3/1000 since Jan. 1 in comparison to the 1.98/1000 fatality rate at the same point in 2022.