Last October, the most beloved and famous racehorse of the new millennium stood gingerly in a 12-by-12 stall in a veterinary hospital in rural Pennsylvania, recovering from devastating leg injuries that would ultimately spell his death.

At the same time, 600 miles to the south, amid the same Kentucky bluegrass where Barbaro once frolicked as a foal, 49 men and women representing nearly every sector of the horse racing industry converged in Lexington. For two days, the coterie of owners, trainers, breeders, jockeys, veterinarians and track officials talked exhaustively about such arcane topics as toe grabs, phenylbutazone and biomechanical hoof testers.

They talked, above all, about why horses like Barbaro -- who captured the public imagination more for his horrific breakdown in the 2006 Preakness Stakes and subsequent fight for survival than for his runaway victory in the Kentucky Derby -- are dying, why the thoroughbred is generally less durable than it used to be, and what can be done about it.

The Welfare and Safety of the Racehorse Summit, hosted by Keeneland Association, was not the first such gathering of concerned parties. Never, though, had the participants been quite so varied or committed. Never had the message been quite so urgent.

"The problem of catastrophic injury with the need to euthanize racehorses is the biggest problem racing has right now. I think it's huge," said Dr. Wayne McIlwraith, the orthopedic chair of the College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at Colorado State, who spoke at the summit.

More than halfway through its annual summer meeting, the Del Mar Racetrack has shown encouraging progress toward shedding the ugly label -- "a killing field" -- that a veteran horseman pinned on the seaside oval last year. Thanks largely to the newly installed synthetic Polytrack surface, Del Mar has witnessed only four racing fatalities -- all on the turf course -- after there was a distressing total of 19 (26 deaths overall) last season.

The California Horse Racing Board compelled its member tracks to shell out millions of dollars to replace dirt with softer, more forgiving synthetic surfaces following consecutive nightmarish years marred by grisly death counts: 320 for the 2004-05 fiscal year and 317 in 2005-06, an increase of 32 percent from the average number for the previous eight years. Dr. Rick Arthur, the CHRB's equine medical director, said he expects a decline in fatalities for the current fiscal year that ends in November, but that the extent of the drop will depend on the finish of the Del Mar meet and the performance of synthetic tracks scheduled to debut this fall at Santa Anita and Golden Gate Fields.

"It's too close to tell, and my guess is it's not going to be a marked decrease," Arthur said recently.

At Bay Meadows Racecourse in San Mateo, 25 horses died during the 55-day season that ended in April, a spike over the 16 fatalities recorded for all of 2006. The track requested a two-year exemption from the CHRB mandate to convert from dirt to Polytrack or a variation, but was denied when its president refused to commit to future racing dates. Bay Meadows is scheduled to close for good after its fall season that ends in November.

The Illinois Racing Board last year launched an investigation into horse deaths at Arlington Park Racecourse outside of Chicago after 16 horses had to be euthanized during the first half of the summer season. The final death toll was 22, one fewer than the previous two years combined. The board eventually recommended the installation of a synthetic surface, and the $11 million Polytrack helped Arlington Park cut its number of racing fatalities to 10 through the first 57 days of the meet that ends next month.

Because horse racing lacks a national governing body, death and injury data on a broader scale is notoriously scant, although studies estimate that horses suffer lethal breakdowns an average of 1.5 times in every 1,000 starts. That might sound tolerable, but it's too often for horsemen, who are fond of saying that one dead horse is too many.

"I think it's horrible," said Doug O'Neill, the trainer of Lava Man, the 6-year-old thoroughbred that will try to repeat as Pacific Classic champion next weekend. "It's the No. 1 black eye with people who watch the game or people who are in the game heading for the exits. If you could have an environment where you could parade these beautiful horses and have competitive racing and not worry about catastrophic injuries, I think our sport could really get back to where it was in the '60s, '70s and '80s."

Where horse racing was a generation ago was frequently in the headlines and the national consciousness, its popularity peaking with the scintillating sprints of the peerless Secretariat in 1973 and remaining strong through successful Triple Crown bids by Seattle Slew in '77 and Affirmed in '78. Where the sport is today is firmly on the margins of the athletic landscape, the racing of horses hopelessly overshadowed by the racing of stock cars. It doesn't help the cause that perhaps the biggest splash the sport made in the past decade wasn't for a glorious champion but for a tragic downfall.

Yet Barbaro, besides serving as a cruel reminder of the inherent dangers of thousand-pound creatures racing at breakneck speed, also acted as an agent for potential change. Well before the gifted colt died of laminitis on Jan. 29, funds were already being established in Barbaro's name for the research of the dreaded hoof disease. His plight didn't directly precipitate the Keeneland summit, but the horse's spirit was undeniably in the air.

"I have no doubt that Barbaro sharpened people's focus and heightened their resolve," said Ed Bowen, president of the Grayson-Jockey Club Research Foundation, which coordinated and underwrote the conference.

After Barbaro's breakdown in the Preakness, Bowen and others in the industry realized that they were at a loss to answer a simple question -- How frequently are horses injured? -- which only exacerbated the public outcry over the incident. As a result, the summit participants proposed an injury reporting system that would standardize the process by eliminating inconsistencies from track to track. The pilot program was launched in May at 30 tracks across the country, including all of the ones in California.

"That is a big step," Bowen said. "Within a year we will have massively improved ability to measure nationally what types of injuries are most common. Once you have a statistic like that, you can try to see if there are common elements to those injuries that help you avoid them."

Injuries, even when comprehensively logged, are only part of the reason why the average racehorse is less durable than its predecessors. At the summit, a study was presented that examined the average years raced and average lifetime starts for North American thoroughbreds. Horses foaled in 1965 averaged 34.76 starts and raced for 3.37 years, versus respective figures of 16.85 starts and 2.64 years for horses foaled in 2000.

Arthur discussed research involving 238 2- and 3-year-old thoroughbreds in California. Ten months after the study began in March 2002, only 18 remained on the track and in the project. Some sustained injuries while others were laid up because of other factors or simply left the state.

Synthetic surfaces have delivered indisputably positive results, but they're just the most obvious, readily fixable component of a complex problem that extends to breeding, medication and training. Breeding is an especially thorny issue. The lucrative, unregulated business for years has favored speed over durability, which many theorize could cause a weakening of the breed across generations.

"Genetics is involved, although we don't have a lot of proof yet," McIlwraith said. "But we certainly know certain stallions that aren't durable or their progeny aren't durable, and some of them are the highest-priced and most desirable ones."

Horses like Barbaro are dying or otherwise breaking down. Some of the brightest minds in the business are struggling to explain why.

"It's a serious multifactorial problem," Arthur said. "It's very frustrating trying to figure out a way to address this issue because I don't think any of us think it's simple. It's been a little bit bewildering. But it is a concerted effort, and hopefully something will come of it."

Contact staff writer Brian Hiro at b_hiro@hotmail.com.

Horse breakdowns

In the absence of a national governing body for horse racing, there is no reliable record of the number of deaths and injuries across the country. California, though, has tracked such statistics thoroughly since 1990. Here's a look at the data statewide and at the Del Mar Racetrack for the past 10 years, along with some numbers from New York and Illinois, two other big horse racing states.

California

Fiscal year&nbspDeaths&nbspInjuries

2005-06*&nbsp317 (26 at Del Mar)&nbspN/A**

2004-05&nbsp320 (17)&nbsp514 (52)

2003-04&nbsp243 (22)&nbsp533 (37)

2002-03&nbsp229 (13)&nbsp524 (36)

2001-02&nbsp257 (17)&nbsp517 (24)

2000-01&nbsp236 (17)&nbsp517 (26)

1999-00&nbsp259 (16)&nbsp568 (37)

1998-99&nbsp228 (20)&nbsp254 (54)

1997-98&nbsp242 (16)&nbsp584 (30)

1996-97&nbsp239 (20)&nbsp506 (44)

* Fiscal year is from Nov. 7, 2005 to Nov. 9, 2006

** The California Horse Racing Board declined to release injury statistics last year because of questions about the collection methods.

Note: Numbers include deaths and injuries that occurred during and outside of a race, and to horses ranging from thoroughbreds to ponies.

Illinois

Year&nbspRacing days&nbspRacing deaths&nbspTotal deaths

2007&nbsp103&nbsp17&nbsp26

2006&nbsp285&nbsp40&nbsp62

2005&nbsp321&nbsp39&nbsp55

2004&nbsp311&nbsp32&nbsp46

2003&nbsp221&nbsp44&nbsp59

2002&nbsp395&nbsp37&nbsp54

2001&nbsp349&nbsp43&nbsp64

New York

Year&nbspDeaths (Racing and training)

2006&nbsp140

2005&nbsp122

2004&nbsp144

2003&nbsp120

2002&nbsp138