While deaths climb, Pennsylvania’s oversight is flat or down. Now, many analysts argue that the bigger taxpayer-paid payouts have paradoxically made the sport more deadly, encouraging owners to put weak and injured horses onto the track for what turn out to be fatal runs. That subsidy has amounted to almost $3 billion in the last decade alone, more money than the state has given to any other industry. When Pennsylvania legalized casinos in 2004, politicians struck a trade-off under which millions of dollars in slot revenue would be diverted to subsidize horse-racing purses. “It’s pharmaceutical warfare out there.” Lee Midkiff, former owner of 2011 Kentucky Derby champion Animal Kingdom “You can get away with anything you want.”
Midkiff, who often raced horses at Parx, says he grew so disgusted about the drugs that he left the sport in 2017. “It’s pharmaceutical warfare out there,” said Lee Midkiff, a part owner of Animal Kingdom when the stallion won the 2011 Kentucky Derby.
