Churchill Downs Racetrack, home of the Kentucky Derby, announced Friday that it was suspending racing at its facilities following the deaths of a dozen horses.
The Louisville track will stop operating from June 7 through the rest of the Spring Meet, which is scheduled to run through July 3, and the races scheduled there will be moved to a different location.
“Churchill Downs Racetrack has seen an unusual number of horse injuries in the past month resulting in 12 fatalities of horses,” the company said in a statement. racknoting that in multiple studies of the horses’ deaths, “no single factor has been identified as a possible cause and none [discernible] a pattern has been discovered to link the fatalities.”
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Bill Carstanjen, the circuit’s CEO, added that he hopes the circuit’s closure will allow researchers to find answers.
“What has happened at our track is very disturbing and absolutely unacceptable,” he said. “Despite our best efforts to find a root cause for the recent horse injuries, and while no issues have been linked to our racing surfaces or environment at Churchill Downs, we need to take more time to provide a top-to-bottom review of all the details and circumstances so that we can further strengthen our surface, security and integrity protocols.”
The deaths brought a sombre mood to the Kentucky Derby in early May, as the sixth and seventh horses to die were injured in their races. Both horses were three years old and euthanized due to knee and ankle injuries.
“He just made a bad move there,” Jeff Hiles, one of the horses’ trainers, told The Associated Press at the time. “They could do the same in the field as they did on the track. So it’s very unfortunate. We deal with that.”
The scheduled races at Churchill Downs now take place about 80 miles east of Louisville at Lexington’s Ellis Park.