DR. Dionne Benson

Edited Press Release A highly respected team of equine veterinarians is set to serve the 2025-26 racing season at Santa Anita Park starting on Friday, Dec. 26 with opening day of the Classic Meet. Under the leadership of Dr. Dionne Benson, Chief Veterinary Officer of Santa Anita's parent company 1/ST Racing, a total of seven veterinarians will be on hand to oversee every aspect of training and racing at Santa Anita. Santa Anita will host a total of 78 race days from the start of the traditional Classic Meet until...

The Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority (HISA)'s launch of the HISA Equine Recovery Foundation (HERF), an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to providing critical assistance for Thoroughbred racehorses sustaining a career-ending injury during racing, is set to begin operations in early 2026, according to an organization release on Wednesday.   HERF's mission: Support racehorses—with injuries sustained during races that historically have a positive prognosis for recovery—by ensuring immediate access to quality veterinary treatment and rehabilitation in order to facilitate a successful aftercare placement. Enhance access to diagnostic imaging services and tools...

Partnering once again with Equine MediRecord (EMR) and Business Infusions (BI), 1/ST will utilize their services to digitize equine welfare protocols for Preakness 150 and will have EMR representatives on site to ease the learning process, it was revealed in a press release from the group Monday afternoon. The added measure aims to enhance the equine health and safety protocols that will be in place for the contest May 17. The platform allows for the full veterinary history of the horse to be collected digitally and securely stored, and will...

Technological changes on the immediate horizon for the racing industry won't be so much of the gee-whiz or sci-fi variety. Instead, they'll be more like much-needed ease-of-use and cumbersome-task-simplifying tools that are currently being built and driven by massive collections of data. Tuesday's Global Symposium on Racing hosted by the University of Arizona Race Track Industry Program in Tucson kicked off with Lisa Lazarus, the chief executive officer of the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority (HISA), articulating a significant data point--that as of Dec. 10, 2024, the fatality rate of...

As it has in virtually every conversation that involves horse racing over the past year, safety played a central role at the 72nd annual Jockey Club Round Table Conference in Saratoga Springs, New York Thursday.   California: Safety and Collaboration In two presentations focusing on California, Gary Fenton, Chairman of the Thoroughbred Owners of California and a managing partner of Little Red Feather Racing, spoke from a TVG set in the Del Mar paddock about the importance of California racing to the overall racing ecosystem, while Dionne Benson, the Chief...

News out of Churchill Downs last week that two of trainer Saffie Joseph Jr's horses had collapsed and died within days of each other has reignited talk around one of the most confounding--and by extension, frustrating--issues in racing: sudden equine death. More than four years ago in response to the death of GI-placed Bobby Abu Dhabi (Macho Uno)--what was initially suspected a sudden cardiac-related event--the TDN took a lengthy dive into the issue. In a nutshell, sudden cardiac deaths oftentimes leave no discernable physical sign for pathologists to piece together...

It's been some four years since Santa Anita suffered through some of the worst times in its long and otherwise glorious history, a prolonged period where horses were breaking down and dying at an alarming rate. Aidan Butler, the chief executive officer at The Stronach Group 1/ST Racing and Gaming, the corporation that owns Santa Anita, is still haunted by that period, so much so that he says he has nightmares about horses breaking down. "It was horrific," Butler said. "Can you imagine having bloody helicopters from the news stations...

   The TDN's 'Let's Talk'--a podcast series featuring TDN's Christina Bossinakis and TVG's on-air analyst Gabby Gaudet, offers candid discussion on personal and professional issues often faced within the racing community.    The latest edition presents a trio of successful veterinarians--The Stronach Group's Chief Veterinary Officer Dr. Dionne Benson, equine surgeon Dr. Patty Hogan (Hogan Equine Clinic in Cream Ridge, NJ) and longtime racetrack practitioner Dr. Bill Hawk, who counts Hall of Famer Steve Asmussen among his vast clientele. Over the course of the last decade, racing has faced significant...

Sponsored by 1/ST Racing The TDN's 'Let's Talk'--a podcast series featuring TDN's Christina Bossinakis and TVG's on-air analyst Gabby Gaudet, offers candid discussion on personal and professional issues often faced within the racing community. The latest edition presents a trio of successful veterinarians--The Stronach Group's Chief Veterinary Officer Dr. Dionne Benson, equine surgeon Dr. Patty Hogan (Hogan Equine Clinic in Cream Ridge, NJ) and longtime racetrack practitioner Dr. Bill Hawk, who counts Hall of Famer Steve Asmussen among his vast clientele.  

1/ST, owners of the Pegasus World Cup, will partner with Irish technology company Equine MediRecord to digitize veterinary records for this year's event, to be held this Saturday, Jan. 29, at Gulfstream Park. The Equine MediRecord platform that will be used allows for the full veterinary history of the horse to be collected digitally and recorded securely. Use of this platform will be mandatory and will provide all entrants, trainers and veterinarians with a user-friendly system to comply with the strict medication protocols for this year's event. Once the records...

Difficulties with the dirt track base repair and cushion resurfacing project at Laurel Park continue to mount, with the loose-ended timetable for the work now expected to extend at least until the start of July. Executives with The Stronach Group (TSG), which owns both Laurel and Pimlico Race Course, said during a Friday tele-meeting that they now need to pause work on the problematic and expensive project at Laurel until management can relocate of all horses stabled at Laurel to other facilities in Maryland. This news was delivered two weeks...

If pressed to pinpoint a single Achilles heel in the racehorse, it's probably a fair bet to assume many would zero in on the fetlock--the intricate joint mechanism that in a racehorse travelling at top speed proves especially vulnerable to system failure. Indeed, 19 of the 22 horses that suffered catastrophic musculoskeletal injuries at Santa Anita during its benighted winter-spring meet nearly two years ago had sesamoid fractures. In most cases, the prognosis for horses who suffer severe fetlock breakdowns is grim, but a procedure pioneered at the end of...