“It’s like they didn’t read the congressional testimony,” she said, referring to a congressional hearing before the House Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection last summer. “Trainers, grooms, veterinary assistants and owners all said the same thing: They’re shooting up theses horses with so many drugs leading up to the race that no one knows how the horse feels anymore. … It’s the refusal to acknowledge this and to keep them running that is causing them to break down.”

But Janney, the Jockey Club’s point man on safety issues, said that assumes that because the sport took on other issues first it isn’t serious about addressing legal medications.

“We chose to create an agenda and take on some issues sooner rather than later,” he said. “… But we have not given that (legal medication) a pass.”

That position is echoed by Scott Waterman, a veterinarian and executive director of the Racing and Medication Consortium, who said that it’s time for PETA and other critics to tone down the heated rhetoric.

“It’s a very emotional issue,” he said. “If we really want to make progress you try to remove the emotion. And you do that by conducting good, sound scientific studies.”

For example, he said, the racing industry moved quickly to adopt rules barring administration of anabolic steroids within 30 days of a race after evidence was developed showing that the drugs had legitimate uses, but also could enhance performance.

“The reason was that these could be therapeutic,” he said. “We just wanted to ensure they are not receiving any benefit from the drug when they are running a race.”

That rule has now been adopted by 35 of the 38 racing states, the exceptions being Idaho, Montana and South Dakota, all of which have very small racing industries, he said.

Studies of the effects of the anti-bleeding medication Lasix and corticosteroids, the anti inflammatory medications, also are under way and results of those are likely to lead to new regulations, Waterman said.

Racing also is coming to grips with one of its most sensitive issues: the frequency of serious and fatal injuries.

The industry has launched an effort to build a comprehensive database of equine injuries and fatalities, under the auspices of The Jockey Club, the national thoroughbred registry .

Dr. Mary Scollay, equine medical director for the state of Kentucky and veterinary consultant to Jockey Club, said that 75 racetracks in the U.S. and Canada are currently reporting injuries and fatalities to the Equine Injury Database, which represents approximately 83 percent of racing venues.

She, too, urged patience while the data is assembled and analyzed, explaining that even answering seemingly simple questions, such as whether synthetic racing surfaces are safer than dirt, are much more complicated than they first appear.

“On the face of it, it seems simple,” she said. “You take the number of starts, the number of fatalities and divide and there’s your answer. But it becomes every complicated very quickly because there are a range of circumstances attached to racetracks that are not directly tied to the surface, but can be factors.”

Dr. Mick Peterson tests Keeneland’s artificial Polytrack surface in 2007.

For example, she said, horses that race on the turf in the U.S. sustain a higher frequency of fractures to their right, hind pastern (a bone between the hoof and the ankle) as opposed to dirt racing.

“The easy conclusion would be that turf racing contributes to this injury,” Scollay said. “But if you look a bit more closely, it is more likely the track configuration contributes to this injury because most of our turf courses are inside the main track and have tighter radii (forcing the horses to corner more sharply and increasing the pressure on the pastern).”

Racing interests also are funding an effort to measure the cushion in various racing surfaces and develop best practices for their maintenance.

Dr. Mick Peterson, a professor in mechanical engineering at the University of Maine who is leading the program with Dr. Wayne McIlwraith of Colorado State University, has developed a device to gauge both a racing surface’s ability to absorb force and the amount of slippage that a horse’s hoof causes when it strikes the surface.

“The machine mounts on the back of a truck,” he explained. “I pull out on the track and my protocol is 24 measurements around the track. Each time I lift a 67 pound weight about 6 feet in the air and then drop it. It hits and it slides, just like a horse’s foot. It’s a lot of force. … You get a little bounce in your shoes out it.”

He said that the racing surface program eventually will be compared to the injury database that Scollay is assembling, so that best practices can be established for maintenance of racing surfaces. For instance, that data could help a track superintendent to know exactly how much water to add to a dirt track on a hot, humid and windy day to keep the racing surface at its best and decrease the chance of injury, he said.

“When we can link the information that I’m getting on the racetracks back to the injury database, then we’ll really begin to impact the safety of the horses on the track,” he said.

It is initiatives like this that make the Jockey Club’s Janney optimistic that the sport will ultimately be strengthened by the adverse publicity that erupted from Eight Belles’ accident.

“If the Eight Belles tragedy makes us all more cooperative, less inward-looking, more proactive and more sensitive to how our sport is perceived by others,” he said in August at an industry conference, “then Eight Belles may be viewed in years to come as one of the most important racehorses ever to step on a track.”

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