Flying high - training horses at altitude | Trainer Magazine | European Trainer Article Index

Nov 30

Nov 30 Flying high - training horses at altitude

THE consistency of Straight Set, one of Spies’ top two-year-olds, did his theory no harm. She raided the province of Kwazulu-Natal four times over a period of under three months. Two runs at Scottsville in Pietermaritzburg, at an altitude of about 650 metres above sea level, brought a Grade 2 win and a Grade 1 second, both over 1200m, and two runs at Greyville in the coastal city of Durban brought seconds in Grade 1s over 1400m and 1600m. His other good two-year-old, War Horse, raided Greyville twice, three weeks apart, winning a Grade 1 over 1400m and sixth in a 1600m Grade 1. Spies is based at The Vaal training centre, about an hour from Johannesburg, which lies at 1740m above sea level. He said, “Traveling the other way (from the coast to high altitude) is a problem. But going from altitude to sea level is advantageous due to the increased oxygen content of the air. If the horses stay at the coast after their runs they tend to go flat. It would take about six weeks or two months for them to acclimatise and they would then begin to thrive. But taking them in and out is not a problem, so I ship them up and down to keep the positive effect of high altitude training.” A scientific study has never been done, so the impact of altitude on thoroughbred performance remains a grey area. Methods used to take advantage of or adapt to altitude are largely theoretical and have been discovered by trial and error over decades of practice. While a lot of common ground is found, there is also a degree of argument on virtually all aspects. Athletic performance in horses is, as in humans, interlinked with oxygen supply. Haemoglobin, an iron-containing protein within the red blood cell, carries oxygen to the body. The more haemoglobin present, the more oxygen can be carried. However, when the number of red blood cells is too large there is a traffic jam effect and blood flow is restricted. This is termed haemo- concentrating, and it’s chiefly associated with intact males. Gelding can help solve haemo- concentration, and long, slow work is apparently another relieving influence. Additives can provide raw material to create haemoglobin but the only thing that causes it to rise is exercise. Training stresses the system, so bone marrow makes more haemoglobin. Scientific studies conducted on the impact of altitude in human athletes are unlikely to be of much use in horses due to their different makeups. For one, the spleen of a thoroughbred holds approximately one-third of its total red blood cells, held in reserve until mobilised through exercise, stress, and excitement, so horses are physically more capable of adapting to high altitude than humans. There is a debate in literature as to which component of splenic blood is more important in the development of VO2 max (the volume of oxygen that can be consumed at maximum capacity of an athlete’s body during incremental exercise), reflecting physical fitness. Some evidence suggests that the overall increase in circulating blood volume is important in determining the elevation of aerobic performance, while other evidence suggests that the increase in circulating red cells and haematocrit (the volume percentage of red blood cells in blood), independent of volume, is mo important. Horses have two types of red blood cells: rigid, and balloon-like. Horses with more balloon-like cells move blood into the muscles and the lungs more easily. On average, horses have 40% rigid and 60% fluid cells, so one with only 5% rigid cells would have a tremendous advantage. Geoff Woodruff, a five-time champion South African trainer, is well qualified to speak about the impact of altitude, having trained out of the coastal city of Cape Town as well as Johannesburg, having also campaigned extensively in Kwazulu-Natal. Looking at the production of haemoglobin from a practical point of view, Woodruff said, “You tend to have to work them harder at altitude, in order to get a horse fitter it has to reach a stage where it is in oxygen debt. Incrementally, you will work the horse to reach this stage until it is fit enough to race, and at altitude horses need to be fitter to race because the oxygen content of the air is less.” It stands to reason that a horse trained at high altitude that will start going into oxygen debt at the two-furlong mark in Johannesburg might still be debt free by the furlong mark at sea level. Woodruff recalled that a champion he trained, Argentinian import El Picha, had a naturally low “blood count” (haemoglobin measurement). He had won seven races in Cape Town, including a Grade 3, by the time Woodruff moved to Johannesburg. Woodruff reckoned that in El Picha’s first three months in Johannesburg, his blood count improved “out of sight.” El Picha subsequently campaigned in Durban and finished a close third in the Grade 2 Greyville 1900 before winning South Africa’s most prestigious race, the Durban July, over 2200m. Unlike Spies’ method, Woodruff kept him in Durban, with a five-week gap between races. El Picha won Johannesburg’s most prestigious race, the Summer Cup, and ran second in the J&B Met at Cape Town before becoming the second horse in history to retain his Durban July crown. South African trainers have no doubt that horses raiding the coast from the Highveld (the portion of South Africa’s inland plateau that is above 1500m but below 2000m) are at an advantage. Rhys van Wyk, a former top jockey, recalled a period when he was riding for Johannesburg trainer Dianne Stenger. “We raided Durban 21 times and won 19 times,” he said. It is generally accepted that horses campaigning at altitude need more long, slow work and less sharp, fast work. However, Dennis Drier, a many-times Kwazulu-Natal champion trainer, campaigned in Johannesburg with great success in the 2006/2007 season and hardly changed his training methods. “I never sprinted them further than 500 metres,” he said. “The only thing I did change was I cantered them further.” Drier had twelve winners during this two- month campaign. Another point of agreement is that coastal horses campaigning on the Highveld hit a flat spot roundabout three weeks after arriving. Drier said, “For the first three weeks of my campaign all of them ran to the form I expected. But they hit a slight dip at the three- week mark. Some of them weren’t finishing their work and were a bit off their feed. But two weeks later they were back to normal again.” Gavin Van Zyl, a ex-jockey who has had tremendous success in his first few years as a trainer, is based at Summerveld in Kwazulu- Natal – 35km from Durban – and runs a satellite yard out of Turffontein in Johannesburg. He said, “I was told by a top trainer that the flat spot starts at the 19-day mark. Personally I have found that the horses will be flat between the nineteenth and twenty-first day.” Woodruff is adamant that it takes three to six months for a horse to acclimatise in Johannesburg, unless the horse is a sprinter or sprint-miler. He cited a horse called Parade Prince, who had run eight times in Cape Town as a three-year-old in the 2008/2009 season without a win before arriving at his Johannesburg yard. He promptly won a 1450m maiden by four lengths, then took six months to find his feet before winning five races, all over a mile, in the next seven months. Sean Tarry, second on the South African National trainer’s log last season behind Mike de Kock, is based in Johannesburg with a satellite yard in Durban. He said, “When going up to the Highveld I’ve had some disappointments after 14 days up to three weeks, so I try and run them in the first week.” Tarry doesn’t alter his training methods between centres. He said, “I train them according to what they need and try and work to the horse’s weight.” Tarry said regarding horses going from altitude to sea level, “I’ve found the horse will have an advantage up until at least five days of the travel, provided it traveled well.” Van Zyl also has his theories of going from the Highveld to the coast. This year he raided Durban with his former SA Derby winner, Seal, and won the Grade 2 Gold Vase over 3000m at Greyville. Seal went back to the Highveld immediately after the race, returning three weeks later and running third in the country’s most prestigious staying race, the 3200m Ladbrokes Gold Cup. Summerveld-based Alistair Gordon, one of the longest standing trainers in South Africa, said, “Sprinters are better off and up to a mile you’ve got a chance. But there are no rules. Some horses handle altitude and others don’t. I had a horse called Saintly Lady that won a Grade 1 in Johannesburg, but couldn’t win a B division race in Durban. I’ve also won races up to two miles on the Highveld. I remember the November Handicap (a Grade 1 over a mile) once being postponed for a week due to rain. The Durban horses had to stay up there and should have had no chance according to the theories, but still filled five of the first six places.” Woodruff pointed out that Summerveld, the biggest training centre in South Africa, is at an altitude of over 700m. “It is already more than a third of the altitude of Johannesburg and from there a horse can get away with a run over any distance,” he said. “I remember David Payne finishing first, second, and third in the IGN Gold Bowl over 3200m at Turffontein in the 1980s. “He took his most fancied couple, White Tie Affair and Sweet Secret, up for a preparation run over 1800m and left them up there. He raided with the outsider of the party, Golden Peak, from Summerveld. Golden Peak won (at odds of 25-1) beating White Tie Affair (evens) and Sweet Secret (20-1) into second and third.” That result might also have proved Woodruff ’s theories on acclimatisation in Johannesburg, which, as mentioned earlier, he figured took three to six months. Woodruff reckoned horses could need five to six weeks to recover merely from raiding the Scottsville course in Pietermaritzburg from Durban, even though the altitude in Pietermaritzburg is only 650m. “Horses take quite a chemical shunt at altitude when raiding from the coast and need time to normalise.” This, coupled with the arduous journey of close to 1500km and the time horses need to acclimatise, is one of the reasons that Cape Town horses seldom campaign in Johannesburg. Hypoxic training, developed by Don Carmody and Dina Alborano, uses simulated high altitude conditions. An athletic trainer for 20 years with a background in mechanical engineering, Carmody built a gym for human athletes, with a chamber that replicated the oxygen level of Mount Everest’s base camp. Alborano – his wife and a 5km Masters runner – subsequently improved from 23rd to second in the world, cutting a minute off her time in six months. The couple reckoned it should bring similar results for racehorses, considering the easy 1971 Kentucky Derby win of Canonero II, an outsider who had prepared for the race at relatively high altitude in Venezuela. They built climate-controlled horse stalls, with floor-to-ceiling kickboard, rubberised walls, a pure-air monitor, a power-failure ventilation system, and generator limiters that simulate high-altitude training. Australian Noel Daley, one of the top trainers in North American harness racing, bought the first one and began using hypoxic training for Broad Bahn’s preparation six weeks before the $1.7 million trotting classic, the Hambletonian, in 2011. The horse duly won the race.

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THIS ARTICLE FIRST APPEARED IN - EUROPEAN TRAINER - ISSUE 40

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