More Zonkyness

This is a companion blog entry to the one where I merely published the table of fatality statistics. That article was the raw facts; this one is where I can whitter on about anything I please – ideally backed up with some analysis of the raw statistics.

One of the things that became apparent to me as I worked on the table, was that the Grand National of old was not anywhere near as fatal as one would assume. Over the years, all sorts of things have been tried to make the Grand National safer – removing stone fences (!), removing the ploughed fields, reducing the heights of fences, etc. Yet it doesn’t seem to have made that much difference.

Over the last 20 years, there have been just 7 years without fatalities. In the 35 races for which I have details ran before 1900, “just” 10 had fatalities in. So we have gone from a majority of races (in the earliest supposedly most dangerous era of the Grand National) being fatality free, to a state where the majority of races do have fatalities. So much for making things safer.

Looking more closely, we can average out the fatality rate over time. The average fatality rate over the whole period for which I have figures comes to 1.70%. This compares to an average rate of 2.05% over the last 10 years (2001-2011), and 3.2% for the 10 years before that. So I guess the rate is falling, but it is still well above the average over time. If we go back earlier in time, we have a rate of 2.8% for the years 1950-59 (including the infamous 1954), or a rate of 1.4% for the years 1930-1939.

There is a great deal more that could be done with the figures … not least of which is to chase down the figures for the missing years. However what seems to be the case is that what has happened over time is that the race has been made easier and not safer.

So How Can We Make The Grand National Safer ?

I am totally unqualified to make any sensible suggestions, but someone who just criticised without trying to be helpful is nothing but a whinger, so I will try …

Let me repeat that overall statement – the Grand National has been made easier and not safer over the years. That is of course subject to debate, but let us assume it is true. How does making a race easier, make it less safe ? Well, simply if you make a race easier you make it possible for horses to run faster. When horses have accidents they are more likely to have fatal accidents the faster they are going. By making the race easier, we have let the horses run faster and so make it more likely they will have fatal accidents.

So make the race harder – higher fences, plough some of the track, etc.

Make it easier for horses to give up and disqualify themselves – a horse who has had enough should be given the opportunity to say “No, thanks. I’ll pass on this one”.

The following is a rather large table giving the fatality statistics for the Grand National at Aintree over time. There are a considerable number of missing years, but this is as good as I can do given the limited time to work on this. Some explanation can be found at the end :-

First of all, the source columns has the values BBC (for the BBC News website), W (short for WikiPedia) and T (for The Times newspaper). Some of the sources columns have multiple sources (far too few) with an indication of whether the sources agree with each other or not. The “[0]” in the sources column for the 1954 race refers to a quote that is worth duplicating here :-

“Worst day anyone can remember for fatalities.”

Some of the columns have values in that look like “#N/A” … as you might expect, this is the value for “not available”. This is counted as zero when performing calculations on the “fatalities” column. There are three reasons for assuming “n/a” can be assumed to be usually zero :-

1. It is clear when reading the race reports from The Times, that fatalities were unusual and there is every indication that the reporter made a point of mentioning them.
2. It would be unusual to say the least to make a point of indicating that a race had no fatalities – when was the last time that a rugby match report pointed out there were no fatalities ?
3. The report on the 1954 Grand National made it clear that this was the worst Grand National for fatalities “as long as anyone can remember”, which although does not indicate that the previous races had no fatalities, does indicate that 1954 was the worst year for a long time (actually from what I can find, probably the worst ever) and that very few involved in horse racing takes fatalities lightly.

That is not to say that there are not some additional fatalities that I have missed. I am only human and could easily have missed something, and it is certainly possible for reports of fatalities to be missing. However it is noticeable that even the earliest races where you could expect a certain more casual attitude towards the death of horses, that fatalities were very clearly pointed out.