EVANSTON, Wyo. — Three horses were injured and put down all in one day while racing at Wyoming Downs this past weekend.
This comes one month after 12 horses died at Churchill Downs, home of the Kentucky Derby. Churchill Downs Inc. has since suspended all racing as they investigate the cause of the deaths.
“I had never actually been to a horse race before and I did not expect to see what I saw that day,” said Marina, who was at the race this past weekend.
Marina said she is still losing sleep over what she witnessed at the track in Evanston, Wyoming.
“The second race, the first horse went down and he actually broke his leg,” she described, “And then the next race, the second horse went down, but this horse did not get back up, jockey flew off, also did not get back up.”
She said it was too tragic to watch and she got up to leave.
“Just as I look up, the third horse in a row goes down and also doesn’t get back up," Marina said. "This was not just an accident where three horses collided. These were three separate incidents.”
Veterinarian Dr. Bruce Connally who works for Wyoming Equine hasn’t treated racehorses before but has been healing horses across Colorado and Wyoming for 45 years now.
He said he is curious if there was a common denominator in the horses’ injuries.
“You start looking for something in common and certainly track footing would be one of the first places I would look at,” he said. "This becomes so complex, it becomes medicine, it becomes the training regimen, it becomes the structure of the track.”
He did say he worries about the urgency that exists in the sport to get horses to run, even if they aren’t in the best shape.
“There is such a pressure to run that if we have some sort of an injury or a sore something that, that the pressure is to fix the hole so it can run in the next race,” said Connally.
Then when the horses are injured, he said it’s often hard to heal them, which is why they’re put down.
“If they break their own bones in their leg or foot or wherever, we just don't have the ability to fix them,” he said. “We can't put them into a wheelchair or we can't make them stay in bed.”
Owner of Wyoming Downs Eric Nelson said it’s the first case in his 25 years at the track where three horses have gone down in one day.
He said they are thoroughly investigating the cause of the horses’ injuries, with analysts surveying the track, investigators interviewing jockeys and trainers, and state veterinarians analyzing the horses.
Marina said what bothered her the most is what happened after each of the horses went down.
“It was really disturbing,” she said. “They would just come in, clean up the bodies and then haul them off the horse on the trailer, the jockey in the ambulance and then they would just proceed to the next race.”
As the investigations continue both at Wyoming Downs and on a national scale, she said she would like to see changes to the sport.
“My hope is that they can, you know, figure out what went wrong and do better and really just improve this as a whole,” said Marina, “Like there should not be jockeys getting hurt and horses dying one after another.”
