Some observations about the incident:
The injury seemed to occur as Mongolian Groom was being hit with the whip (right-handed and not for the first time) and encouraged to change leads.
The trainer did not employ trainer-speak when talking to Jay Privman about the horse's last work. He said it was slower than he wanted and that he had been concerned enough to have the horse scoped.
I wonder that the fatality rate is in the Breeders Cup. On one hand one would think that the horses are so valuable that they have the advantage of every precaution, but it may also be that the increased level of competition increases the risk.
Nationally, a horse's chance of being fatally injured in a race is about 0.2%. Even if Santa Anita cut that in half, with around 200 horses were competing on Friday and Saturday, the chance of at least one fatality was still about 18%.
