Tokyo Calling – Documenting Iresine’s journey from rural France to the Japan Cup

Article by Katherine Ford

This is the fairytale of a Japanese adventure for a team of family and friends who could never have anticipated being treated like emperors in Tokyo as privileged guests of the JRA. 

Iresine, a six-year-old gelding who cost just €6000 as a yearling before climbing the ranks to a pair of Group 1 successes in France, brought the dream to life for hands-on trainer Jean-Pierre Gauvin, France’s leading lady jockey Marie Velon and a group of low-key owners and supporters eager for the experience of a lifetime.

Rags to riches stories are nothing new to Jean-Pierre Gauvin, famed in France as the handler of Saonois, the “Cheval du Boulanger”, who was bought for a song and won the 2012 Prix du Jockey-Club for local baker Pascal Treyve, and renowned for his success with the unfashionably-bred mare Siljan’s Saga, multiple Group 1 placed and 4th at 100/1 in the 2016 Arc. 
Winner of the Prix Royal-Oak in 2022 and Prix Ganay in 2023, his latest star, Iresine, has been high on the wish list of the Japan Racing Association for the Japan Cup for many months and this autumn, Gauvin decided the time was right. 

“Ever since last year, the JRA French representative Soichiro Matsumae, has been encouraging us to run in the Japan Cup! He has done a good job! As a six-year-old gelding he has the right profile to travel to Asia and the date of the Japan Cup is ideal before he goes on his winter break.”

Family Connections

“Above all the aim is to enjoy the adventure. My son and daughter are co-owners of the horse and they are both coming, as well as my grandson who is just 18 months old, my wife, my brother who is a co-owner too, plus another brother who lives in the USA. If it hadn’t been for Iresine, we would never have undertaken such a trip as a family.”

60 year-old Gauvin is a horseman through and through. Born and raised in the Centre-East region of France by parents who “like many farmers in the region, had a couple of trotting broodmares. At age 15 I went to the apprentice school to learn the trotting trade but at only 33kg, I was advised to try the flat!” Except for a brief stint in Marseille, he has spent his entire career, from apprentice to trainer, at the stable he still occupies in the rural hamlet of Saint-Cyr les Vignes.

With limited facilities but plenty of turnout paddocks and a hands-on approach, Jean-Pierre Gauvin is not afraid to test alternative routes, and was not deterred by conditions in Tokyo. 

“The ground will be fast and the competition will be very tough, but if we only raced when everything was in our favour and we were sure to win we’d never go anywhere. The JRA agreed to all our requests, including the possibility of taking a companion horse, so there was no reason not to go!”

JRA Generosity

“For Iresine’s participation, the JRA offer the same bonus as for the winner of the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe and other bonus races, of which the Ganay is not one. He will receive $200,000 just for participating, plus there is prize money down to tenth place. So from a financial perspective, it represents a considerable sum even if we finish tenth. It’s an adventure but the organisation has been perfect. Now the final concern is the travel, which after a change of plan from Air France, will be from Frankfurt to Tokyo. I’m looking forward to Eric calling me to tell me that all has gone well.”

Eric Vandra, Gauvin’s travelling head lad, is about to undertake his second far-flung journey with a horse as he was present when Saonois ran (10th) in Hong Kong 11 years earlier. A former jockey who left racing twice only to return each time, he is determined to ensure that all goes smoothly with Iresine. 

“We’re going on an adventure. But there are already details which reassure me. On the plane Iresine will be accompanied by Edouard Lyon who is a trainer but does some work for the STH transport company. I used to be an apprentice for his father and looked after Edouard when he was a kid. All these years later, we meet again on a plane to Japan, and it’s him who will be looking after me! 

Iresine will come off the horsebox and be stabled for a few hours in Frankfurt airport, then the flight to Tokyo takes about 14 hours. He’s a horse who can be nervous when he travels, and it seems he inherits his stressed nature from his dam. I didn’t know her in training but we have got to know Iresine’s breeders and they have told us about her character.”

Vandra has prepared 250kg of equipment to travel with Iresine and stablemate Marcan, “I’ve tried to think of every eventuality. Having been to Hong Kong, I know more or less what we’ll need, and of course the most important thing is the passport!”

All the foodstuff has already been taken care of, as Jean-Pierre Gauvin explains, “The JRA requested a full inventory of all our feed, plus any complementary products, because nothing can come off the plane with Iresine. The JRA supply everything, and this will be either the equivalent product from Japan, or imported items if necessary.”

Vandra continues, “The JRA have explained what it will be like over there. We have to leave our riding clothes in the quarantine area, there are showers on site and we have to wash and change before leaving the stable complex. The protocol is very strict. I’ve seen some photos, it all looks very new.” 

Indeed, the equine import procedure for the Japan Cup has been simplified with the opening in 2022 of a new quarantine stable in the infield of Tokyo racecourse, eliminating the need for horses to respect a quarantine period at a separate site upon arrival in Japan before moving on to Tokyo days later. 

Nerves fraying early in the week

Iresine travelled “perfectly” to Japan but after clearing quarantine gave trainer Jean-Pierre Gauvin a major scare. At a press conference for “international visiting horses” three days before the race, the eyes of around 100 media and other onlookers were all focused upon connections of sole visitor, Iresine. 

“On Monday, Iresine suffered from tying up syndrome after his work.”, the trainer explained with refreshing transparency. “He got nervous when going through the tunnel to access the track, but then he cantered fine. Back at the stable, all seemed to be OK initially but then he started to tie up as we took him to wash down. I was very worried but the vet took a blood test and we treated him, essentially to rehydrate him. On Tuesday he had to undergo his stalls test so we had no choice but to take him through the tunnel again, but we led him through in hand and mounted him on the other side, and he reassured us with his exercise. All went smoothly again on Wednesday and today (Thursday) he was completely back to himself, asking to go faster. His coat is shiny again and he looks happy to be here.”

The same can be said for his trainer, who was out on the track each day aboard lead horse Marcan. “I would have come here just for the opportunity to ride out at this amazing racecourse!” he joked to an interested reporter. 

In addition to the assembled media, Team Iresine had taken time out from sightseeing to attend the training session and press conference. “I’ve never seen so many media in all my life. Wow!” exclaimed wide-eyed co-owner Bertrand Millière. “For small owners like us, we weren’t programmed to have a horse like this. At the sales, he didn’t have the profile to end up where he is today. But as is often the case with the Gauvin method, he has climbed the ladder step by step. Each time we just said “wow”, but he has never stopped progressing and now here we are in Japan, the centre of attention of a crowd of journalists. We are living in a dream and are making the most of it.” 

Another co-owner is Jean-Pierre’s brother, trotting trainer Jean-Paul Gauvin, “I’m on a different planet, even further than the moon! I wanted to have horses in training with Jean-Pierre to share experiences, but I was thinking of small provincial race tracks at home, we never imagined ending up here. The two disciplines, trotting and flat, are so different, but we do take ideas from each other and I think that Jean-Pierre has gained a lot of inspiration from the trotting world. We exchange a lot, notably about shoeing… It’s an opportunity for us to talk, because we both have all-consuming jobs. Training is more than a passion, it’s a way of life, and having horses with Jean-Pierre gives us an opportunity to see each other and share emotions. We’re making the most of it at 200%, visiting Tokyo, enjoying good food and discovering a whole new world.”

“Iresine is a champion. He has a huge heart and a great attitude. It wasn’t written on him at the sales.. or else we wouldn’t have been able to buy him so cheaply. But Jean-Pierre has a real horseman’s intuition. Don’t forget he also picked out Saonois and Siljan’s Saga. Saonois cost €8000, “Siljan” just €2500 and she finished fourth in the Arc. That’s proof that you can always dream with horses, and here we are!”

Bargain buy from novice breeders

Jean-Pierre Gauvin goes on to explain the purchase of Iresine, for €6000 at Arqana’s October yearling sale. “He caught my eye in the collecting area before entering the ring. He had four white stockings which is often considered to be a negative but Bertrand Millière’s children fell in love with his markings and we were able to buy him cheaply.” 

Breeders Marie-Louise Van Dedem and her husband Pierre Joyaux are also part of the support team in Tokyo and Dutch-born Marie-Louise remembers, “Iresine was the first generation to be born at our Haras de Grandouet in Normandy and he always had a lot of personality. The Haras de Montaigu presented him at the sale and Jean-Pierre Gauvin was the only one to show any interest in the horse. I didn’t know him at the time, but Aliette Forien (of Haras de Montaigu) said to me after the sale, “you did the right thing to let him go at that price, as he is a very good trainer.”” 

Like the rest of the team, Marie-Louise Van Dedem was far from imagining that one day she would be invited by the JRA as a connection of a Japan Cup runner. “I became a breeder by chance, and we bought the property on (resale website) Le Bon Coin and built it from scratch. My husband Pierre bought Iresine’s dam and he chooses the matings. I remember early on he explained to me about the Group race system and I didn’t understand a thing! But I’ve learnt quickly and do everything now. It’s all about observation and attention to detail.”

More drama as dream almost turns to nightmare

Attention to detail is a maître-mot for the JRA who cannot receive enough praise from Jean-Pierre Gauvin and his team, especially after a second unwelcome setback. “On Friday evening, as Iresine was being led out, he wasn’t sound. We couldn’t believe it, another problem after him tying up on Monday,” recounts Vandra. 

Jean-Pierre Gauvin received the bad news just moments before attending the Japan Cup gala event, “it was a difficult moment at the formal dinner as I would have preferred to be at the stable close to the horse, but I had a lot of confidence in the JRA veterinary team. The vet proposed solutions but also listened to our suggestions. We always agreed about the best treatment to adopt.” 

After fears of an infection were discounted, confidence grew that Iresine would make the starting line after all. “He had leather pads on all four feet. These can have a tendency to harden and one of them had become distorted, making a lump which was putting pressure on the sole. In agreement with the veterinarian, we applied a linseed poultice, and on Saturday morning, even without his shoe he trotted out sound. The blacksmith was superb, he is the son of the best farrier in Japan, and I even heard that he shoes Equinox. He reshod Iresine, taking care to avoid pressure on the sensitive part, and things soon worked out. But it was a worry as we were less than two days from the race.”

“For me, the victory is that we were able to run,” says Vandra, “it didn’t look good during the week. The JRA teams did everything they could to help us.”

A memorable occasion for a united team

Come raceday, in a state of relief, excitement and wonder, the team of co-owners, breeders and trainer were welcomed into a private box overlooking Tokyo’s gigantic track and stands filled with 85,000 fans. Jockey Marie Velon’s parents, who live close to the Gauvin stable, were also part of the supporting group throughout the week. “Marie turned up one morning at the stable after finishing her apprenticeship with Alain de Royer Dupré, and until recently worked for me whenever racing allowed. She has grown with Iresine and this is her adventure too,” says Gauvin before adding with emotion, “I am her racing dad. I was touched the day she came out with that…”

As is the way in Japan, horses enter the parade ring 35 minutes before the race, giving fans time to digest all the information available on the giant screens and admire their champions before placing a bet and taking position in the stands. Focus is on favourite Equinox, the Longines World’s Best Racehorse, but there is respect and admiration for the foreign visitor. 

“In the parade ring, the only noise I could hear was of cameras clicking all the way around for 15 minutes,” recalls Vandra. “The public are real fans; they must have taken hundreds of photos, and I’ve received some of them. They love their racing and are pleased to have an international horse in the race.”

In what will be remembered as an iconic edition of the Japan Cup, won in superlative style by the world champion Equinox, Iresine ran credibly to finish ninth. 

“He ran honourably. It’s difficult to say whether the complications affected his performance, but Marie was happy with how he ran and he recorded his best time over the distance of 2400m.”

For his efforts, connections take home to France the $200,000 participation bonus plus €107,000 for ninth place. But far more important than the prize money, Iresine’s Japan Cup was an unforgettable team adventure.

“We would have liked to stay longer… We all had an incredible experience, both professionally and personally… We were the only international horse so maybe they made an extra effort for us, but the support from the JRA was second to none. Day by day, within our group, we reassured each other about the likelihood of being able to race, which wasn’t guaranteed at times, and despite the worries we were able to relax and enjoy the week together.”

After Iresine landed back in France safe and sound several days after the Japan Cup and began his annual winter break in the Puy de Dome, the final word goes to his trainer, “Merci Iresine!”, or should that be Arigatou Iresine? 

What does it take to become a trainer?

Article by Lissa Oliver

While each year we seem to lose many established trainers, often due to financial reasons, the training ranks continue to welcome fresh new faces—many of them particularly young. Those already struggling to make a living might question why, yet a certain amount of optimism is a prerequisite for embarking on any career within the thoroughbred industry.

Are the licencing bodies doing enough to equip new trainers for the reality of the career ahead? Is that even a question we should be asking, given that in most other industries an entrepreneur is free to start up a business as they please? What do our governing bodies consider to be the basic requirements necessary to apply for a trainer’s licence?

Deutscher Galopp manages to encapsulate exactly what is needed to consider applying for a trainer’s licence, pointing out the need for an excellent knowledge of racehorses and the world of horseracing; a capacity for management and personnel management; a mastery of professional relations, particularly with owners; a capacity for analysis in order to develop the performance of his or her horses; a technical and strategic sense; and a great geographical mobility. 

Indeed, few Germany-based trainers would argue with the latter—smaller yards frequently needing to chase prize money in France due to the dominance at home of the larger stables. Interestingly, the traits of coolness and self-confidence are also listed—food for thought, perhaps.

In Germany, the licensing process doesn’t appear to be as bureaucratic as in Britain, for example, with no minimum age or experience criteria or detail of finances required. Deutscher Galopp has bundled its diverse training offerings and further education programme in its own academy—The Deutscher Galopp Academy—which aims to offer and conduct seminars and further education and training in horse racing for all interested groups, even racegoers.

The prerequisite for working as a professional trainer in Germany is completion of the Horse Management Masters examination in the horse racing training section at the Academy. The aim of the course is to acquire the necessary knowledge to run a training company independently, to masterfully carry out the work that occurs there, and to properly educate and equip the trainees for the profession of racehorse trainer. “That course can last a year or more, and not everybody is automatically qualified; the government decides who will be able to take part,” explains Rüdiger Schmanns, director of racing.

France also places emphasis on a robust pre-training course, and candidates must have at least two years’ experience in a racing yard. The Ecole des Courses Hippiques (AFASEC) is the benchmark training organisation for all horse racing professions, with five campuses throughout France as close as possible to the largest training centres. New France Galop Rules in relation to applying for the French trainer’s licence are due to come into effect later this year and are therefore included here. 

The Trainer’s Course serves for both trotting and racing candidates, but the modules are specific to each specialty. The acquired knowledge is considered essential for starting out as a professional trainer in France. Of the maximum of 14 places, seven are reserved for racing applicants. The France Galop licensing department ultimately decides who qualifies for access to the 175-hour training, which takes place over a five-week period in May and June annually. The course fee is €2,275, and candidates must successfully complete a two-hour pre-selection examination on their horse racing knowledge at least six weeks prior to the course.

The bulk of the course is online, with 10 days (70 hours) of in-person classes, including two days of written and oral examinations. The six modules cover accounting and management; hygiene, horse health and equine welfare; social legislation; professional regulation; communication and business development; and human resources, management, awareness of labour law and preventive measures against moral and sexual harassment in the workplace. The candidate must obtain a mark of at least 10 out of 20 in each of these subjects.

Training Licence Requirements

The British Horseracing Authority (BHA) relies on a very stringent criteria for those who may apply for a training licence, which reflects the similar training provided by AFASEC. Applicants are required to demonstrate competence and capability to train; access to appropriate training facilities; security of tenure for the premises from which they wish to train; a minimum of three horses in training; compliance with relevant health and safety responsibilities; ability to provide full details of their employment status; compliance with all relevant employment responsibilities; ability to appropriate Public Liability Insurance and, where appropriate, Employers' Liability Insurance; necessary financial resources available; and that they are otherwise in all the circumstances suitable to hold a licence and are deemed ‘fit and proper’.

This means applicants must have a minimum of five years’ experience in a training establishment, including at least two years in a responsible and senior position—preferably as an assistant trainer in a successful racing yard. Alternatively, a track record as a permit holder with at least three wins with a reasonable spread of horses, or having run a Point-to-Point yard for at least two years and having trained a minimum of 10 Point-to-Point/Hunter Chase wins with a reasonable spread of horses.

Applicants must have attained the Level 3 Diploma in Work Based Racecourse Care and Management (WBD) and successfully completed Modules 1, 2 and 3 of the training programme held at the British Racing School or the Northern Racing College. They must also attend a one-day training seminar for potential trainers at Weatherbys’ offices.

Furthermore, the yard and facilities must pass inspection. If the applicant is to train horses for the Flat, he or she will be expected to have access to gallops of six furlongs, including four furlongs straight, within hacking distance of the stables and facilities for schooling horses through starting stalls. National Hunt trainers must have access to gallops of six furlongs within hacking distance of the stables, at least one plain fence and one open ditch with wings, over which two horses are able to school alongside one another, and at least two flights of hurdles with wings, over which two horses can school alongside, as well as access to ‘nursery facilities’, such as poles.

The BHA takes into account the financial track record of the applicant and assesses the likely financial soundness of the proposed training business. A recognised financial reference must show the applicant to have available working capital or overdraft facilities of at least £40,000. A projected profit and loss account and a cash flow projection of the training business for the first 12 months must be provided.

To become a trainer in Ireland, applicants must be at least 21 years of age with a minimum of two years’ experience working in a racing yard. Alternatively, the holder of a rider’s licence with an acceptable number of rides for the same period, or a registered Point-to-Point handler with an acceptable number of runners, may also be eligible to apply. 

Applicants to the Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board (IHRB) Head of Licensing are required to successfully complete an assessment to establish prior knowledge of the industry in order to qualify for the Pre-Trainer’s Course. The assessment consists of practical, oral, and written elements. The Pre-Trainer’s Course is held twice a year, in spring and autumn, over a three-week period and delivered via a blended approach of sessions online and in-person. 

Following successful completion, a stable inspection is then carried out by the IHRB on the proposed training establishment. The stable inspection report and application, together with all relevant documentation, is assessed by the Licensing Committee, who then arranges an interview with the candidate. The Licensing Committee ultimately decides  whether a licence is granted. The successful completion of the assessments and Pre-Trainers’ Course does not guarantee the issuing of a licence.

If we look at the smaller racing nations, the reliance on courses for trainers remains much the same. In the Czech Republic, for example, an applicant has to successfully graduate from the specialised course for trainers organised by the Czech Jockey Club. He or she must also have graduated at an apprentice training centre for horse breeding, horse racing or equestrian sport; have a school-leaving certificate from secondary school and at least 10 years’ experience in a racing yard; graduated from agricultural university or veterinary university and have at least two years’ experience in a racing yard; or graduated from another type of university and have at least five years’ experience. The Trainer’s Course is organised by the Czech Jockey Club every few years when enough requests from interested people warrant it. Karin Luftmanová tells us that it is also quite common to attend a course in Slovakia, and vice versa.

Interestingly, in Portugal, where the LPTG Professional License Commission is the only entity for issuing a trainer’s licence, applicants must be over 25 years of age and express a wish to try to make the training of racehorses “a permanent and paid activity”. They begin with an obligatory internship, to be completed successfully, with a minimum duration of six months with a foreign trainer, or 12 months with a national trainer. The League's Professional License Commission is made up of four members of the Board, designated by the racing director of the Technical Commission (CT), who has the ultimate say in granting the licence.

The work and knowledge involved in gaining a trainer’s licence is worth noting. In the general sphere of horse racing, the skills and qualifications of a trainer are not widely known or publicised. The public still tends to think in terms of retiring trainers simply handing over the reins to someone with experience, without considering exactly what that experience entails. 

In contrast, media coverage of jockey schools and stable staff apprenticeships are a staple, with those same opportunities commonly going out to schools to encourage school-leavers to embark on a racing career. In the wider world, we think nothing of having to go through various levels of higher education, and the Trainers’ Courses available throughout Europe could be viewed as akin to postgraduate degrees. Should our governing bodies be presenting the professional trainer’s pathway to schools and universities?

Certainly, as the racing world focuses on social licence and presenting itself in a fit way to a growing urban public, no longer in touch with agricultural roots and working animals, more should be made of the strict requirements to train. More to the point, trainers deserve fitting credit for their accomplishment in receiving and retaining their trainer’s licence. It is, indeed, a postgraduate degree to be proud of.

How racing is making strides into ‘Big Data’

Article by Alysen Miller

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you may have noticed many male footballers wearing what appears to be a sports bra during training and matches. This is not a political statement, a show of solidarity with their female counterparts, perhaps; nor is it the latest fashion craze. Rather the bras are, in reality, GPS tracker vests. Containing a small Global Positioning System gadget, they allow team managers and trainers to collect and analyse players’ individualised GPS data in order to make informed decisions about tactics and training.

Like all big-money sports, the top football clubs now employ legions of data nerds to crunch the numbers on all aspects of their players’ performances. Premier League football club, Arsenal, uses the STATSports system to gather physical data on all their players, from the under-12s to the men’s and women’s first teams. Marketed as “the most advanced wearable tech on the market” (that’s the famous bra), it records some 250 separate metrics, including accelerations and decelerations, average heart rate, calories burned, distance per minute, high-speed running, high-intensity distance, max speed, sprints and strain. The statistics are available live during training sessions so coaches can make real-time adjustments where necessary. 

And it goes beyond wearable tech. Players at last year’s World Cup in Qatar were able to get insights into their on-field performance through FIFA’s own player app. Physical performance metrics were collected through a highly accurate in-stadium tracking system, including multiple cameras located around the pitch. These included distance covered at various speed thresholds, number of actions above 25 miles per hour (about 40 kilometres per hour), and maximum speed – all displayed on positional heat maps. Thanks to this data, we know that Kylian Mbappé hit a top speed of 35.3 kilometres per hour (about 22 miles per hour) against Poland in the round of 16. Impressive for a two-legged athlete, even if he won’t be giving the likes of Flightline or Baaeed a run for their money.

Football is following in the footsteps of baseball and American football by embracing “Big Data”. Not only does this enhance teams’ abilities to play and train, it adds another dimension to the spectator experience. Who doesn’t want to know how far their favourite player ran? Horse racing, by contrast, still relies on a mathematical speed model, Timeform, developed in the 1950s.

“When you look at other professional sports, racing’s a fair way behind in terms of how we measure the athlete,” says David Hawke. “Basically, we don’t measure the athlete in a biometric sense at all, whereas most other professional sports measure their athletes in competition, when the athletes are at their highest output and highest exertion. And this is the crucial point.” Hawke is hoping to change all that. He is the managing director of StrideMaster, a system that combines GPS and motion capture technologies to produce detailed insights into the horse’s performance. 

“When we developed the technology, back in 2010, it was essentially technology for race day: tracking horses, getting all their times—all the normal race track performance information that punters might want to see,” he explains. In the course of gathering this information, Hawke accumulated a treasure trove of biometric data. In 2018, he joined up with Dr David Lambert. Kentucky-based Dr Lambert is an expert on equine physiology and the founder of a company called Equine Analysis Systems, which leverages this understanding of how the horse moves to select elite, high-performance thoroughbreds. 

He is looking for the top one percent, the cream of the crop. Hawke’s idea was to take this hypothesis and turn it on its head; in other words, to find the one percent “who were in trouble.” In this way, by identifying the horses that are trying to cope with a problem, vets and trainers would have a crucial data point which could be used to help prevent injuries before they happen.

So how does it work? Here comes the science part. Essentially, every horse has a unique stride “fingerprint.” Thanks to Hawke’s data, we not only know what that fingerprint looks like, but also when the horse deviates substantially from that fingerprint.

 The first step is to collect high-resolution data of the horse at the gallop. This is because, as prey animals, horses are disinclined to show lameness at the walk or trot (the traditional way of assessing a horse’s soundness). “The forces that are at play when a horse is going at 40 miles per hour compared to when it’s being trotted up at five miles per hour are completely different,” says Hawke. “The price that the horse pays for going fast is that it gives up autonomy over a number of things,” he continues. “It gives up autonomy over its breathing, for example. It becomes a mechanical breather. It also gives up autonomy over its footfall. If it’s got a raging foot abscess at the walk or the trot, it will decide not to put its foot down. But at the gallop, it can’t do that. It has no choice over when it puts each foot down. So the only option it’s got left to manage an issue that’s impacting it is postural change: it’s going to hold itself differently; it’s going to use different muscles to try and take the pressure off.” 

To capture these changes, samples are taken from three axes: the vertical, the longitudinal and the medial. This data is captured by a device about the size of an iPhone that’s slipped into the saddle cloth. These samples are then broken down further: “We split the stride up into three parts,” Hawke explains. “We have the hind leg stance phase, which is the primary propulsion and power source for the horse. Hind leg spring function is absolutely critical to a good stride, so if anything’s wrong at the back end, that immediately gets transferred to the front end on the corresponding diagonal. Then we have the forelimb stance phase. And then we have the flight phase, or the collection phase, when the horse is off the ground. The flight phase is where the horse is making most of its postural adjustments in the air. So if it’s got a problem it’s managing, it’s trying desperately to accommodate that problem during the stride. And then when it goes into the air, it’s trying desperately to get itself ready for the next stride to do it all over again.”

The system is capable of detecting minute variations in the horse’s stride that are effectively invisible to the human eye. “From an observational point of view, humans can’t detect these sorts of changes that we’re picking up. It’s simply happening too fast,” he says. The sample rate in StrideMaster’s sensors is 800 hertz, or 800 frames per second. The human eye, by contrast, cannot directly perceive more than about 60 frames per second. “That enables us to look at the stride in a very high level of detail,” he says. 

Hawke has accumulated so much data that it’s no longer necessary to have historic data on an individual horse in order to make a judgement about its soundness. Rather, there exists an “ideal” fingerprint for different categories of horse: “We have a Gp.1 fingerprint, we have a Gp.2 fingerprint, right down to a $10,000 claimer fingerprint, to use the American parlance,” he explains. In other words, soundness can be assessed against an ideal archetype. If a horse is more than two standard deviations outside of this ideal, that is considered an adverse change that the system then flags for the attention of the trainer.

So how is this “deviation” measured? “We’re tracking two or three things that are important: we’re tracking the amount of power they produce, and we’re tracking the amount of vibration they produce,” Hawke explains. Vibration is, essentially, any rapid change in acceleration. That is what is most likely to cause injury. Think of the horse as a four-cylinder engine, with the legs as the pistons. Each piston—or leg—moves in a set rhythm. As long as this rhythm is maintained, vibration will be kept to a minimum. But changes in rhythm (for example, because the horse is managing a problem) generate vibration which, in turn, generates damage. The sounder the horse, in other words, the less vibration. But with great power comes the potential to generate huge amounts of vibration. This explains why most of the horses that get flagged are competitive horses in whatever cohort they’re in. “They’re not horses that are running 20 lengths down the track,” says Hawke. “Generally, those horses are not producing enough power or vibration to get themselves into trouble. [The good horses] will always find a way to go fast,” he says.

While Hawke sees the technology primarily as an injury prevention tool, he acknowledges that its potential is broader than that: “From a social licence point of view, that’s where the pressure is: to manage these injury rates and welfare outcomes better than we have been. So that’s the primary focus,” he says. But the same technology could, in theory, be used to identify future elite performers: 

“When you compare, say, a Gp.1 horse to a low-rating handicapper, what we see is increased deviation from optimum,” he explains. “To take a metric at random: gravity. The acceleration of an object toward the ground caused by gravity alone, near the surface of Earth, is called ‘normal gravity,’ or 1g. This acceleration is equal to 32.2 ft/sec2 (9.8 m/sec2). If you drop an apple on Earth, it falls at 1g”. 

“The Gp.1 horse will be much closer to that 1g than the lower rating handicapper,” he explains. “[The lower-rated horse] is not as efficient. They’re losing power in all directions. They’re going up and down more, they’re going side to side more. Whereas the elite horse actually generates surprisingly less power, but it’s all pointing down the road in the right direction.”

Hawke is keen to emphasise that he is not marketing a diagnostic tool. Rather, trainers should see this technology as another tool in their toolkit: “When the trainer gets the information, either they come and seek more information or talk to their vets about what’s going on. The vet can review the stride on a stride-by-stride basis. And when we get down to that level of detail, we can actually, on most occasions, give some indication of what quadrant the problem is emanating from.”
But what if you could identify such problems without even galloping the horse? 

Stephen O’Dwyer thinks he has a solution. O’Dwyer is the founder of Irish start-up TrojanTrack, which uses video cameras to record the horse at the walk and, from there, identify any variations in its movement. “We take video data of 52 different parts of the horse at 120 frames per second,” he explains. “We then convert those parts into biomechanical data: joint velocities, accelerations, angles. And then we can compare that to the horse’s healthy baseline movement to track any deteriorations or imbalances that might be creeping in.” But wait. Horses are prey animals. Won’t they naturally try to mask any injuries at the walk? “Horses are herd animals, so rather than show any sign of injury, they try to hide it as much as possible, and that means compensating on a different limb or something like that,” O’Dwyer acknowledges. “But because we’re tracking 52 points, we’re able to pick up any tiny deviations, tiny nuances that won’t be picked up by the human eye. 

“In talking to a few of the vets, they say that when the horse is in its walk, it’s at its most comfortable,” he continues. “And because they’re in their most comfortable state, they won’t be trying to hide their injury as much.” O’Dwyer plans to incorporate trot movements in the future.

Like Hawke, O’Dwyer sees his technology primarily as another arrow in the trainer’s quiver, rather than a diagnostic tool. “It’s hard for the trainer to pick up on the whole horse at once,” he explains. “They might be staring at one limb while the hip isn’t moving, and they’d have to walk by again and check the hip, and then they’re not looking at another limb. We look at all four limbs landing, the hip movement as one of the limbs is landing. So it’s the whole package of the horse in one to really show the trainer exactly what is going on.”

O’Dwyer acknowledges that the technology is still in its nascency. He is currently running customer trials a couple of yards in Ireland while he tries to drum up the next round of investment. StrideMaster, meanwhile, has been adopted by racing authorities in the United States and in Hawke’s native Australia. But any technologies that can help spot potentially catastrophic injuries before a horse hits the track must be taken extremely seriously by an industry that can, at times, feel like it is operating on the razor’s edge of public acceptability. As Hawke says, “The first priority is welfare because we have to look after the animal. If we’re not seen to be looking after the animal, the whole game’s in trouble.”

It seems like it is only a matter of time before racing joins the ranks of other sports in embracing Big Data. Says Hawke: “If I walked into a major football club and said, ‘Who here’s got expertise in biometric sensor analysis,' half the football department would put their hand up because they’ve been doing it for 20 years. But the information can be used in so many different ways in terms of performance, breeding and training techniques. We’re just scratching the surface.”

Prep school - the role of the pre-trainer in the flat racing world

Article by Daragh Ó Conchúir

WC Equine’s Ellie Whitaker & Tegan Clark

Having had a little poke around the inner workings of pre-training in jumps racing for the last edition, it is now time to do the same in the Flat world.

In both National Hunt and Flat, owners and trainers send horses to be broken and prepped specifically to race, enabling trainers to get on with the job of attending to those in their yard that are ready to run.

Then there is the trading side. In jumps racing, that revolves around the point-to-point scene, where proving a level of ability in competition increases value. In the Flat division, the breeze-up sales are not competitive, but they illustrate athleticism, temperament, physical prowess and of course, raw speed.

While very successful, pre-trainers aren’t universally popular. As mentioned in the pre-training jumpers article, retired trainer and former CEO of the Irish Racehorse Trainers’ Association Michael Grassick argued that they were making an already difficult staffing situation for trainers even worse.

Last February, recently retired trainer Chris Wall asserted in a Racing Post feature that the proliferation of pre-trainers was accelerating the growth of the so-called super trainer, enabling them to stockpile horses.

But then, in the same article, Ben de Haan described the demand for pre-training as a very welcome opportunity to improve revenue streams.

Obviously, Flat racing is a more global field than jumps, so we had to be a little less parochial in sourcing our contributors; we touched base with successful operators in England, France and Ireland, namely Nicolas Martineau, Ellie Whitaker, Tegan Clark, Willie Browne and Ian McCarthy. 

Willie Browne

Browne is featured elsewhere in this publication for his training prowess, but it is his nonpareil acumen in sourcing future champions as young stock and then producing them through the breeze-ups that he can hang his hat on. It’s also a lot better way to pay the ever-escalating bills. 

Now approaching his 77th birthday, he has more than 40 years’ experience in this sector, having consigned a draft at the very first breeze-up sale in 1978. And though he has moved from the original Mocklershill location outside Fethard, Co Tipperary, to build Grangebarry Stables just over the road, he has retained the home label as a brand for excellence.
It was Browne who sold the first breeze-up graduate to win a Classic, when Speciosa galloped to victory in the 1000 Guineas in 2006, little over a year after breezing at Doncaster. Walk In The Park and Trip To Paris are others to go through his hands while Mill Reef Stakes victor Sakheer has the 2000 Guineas in his sights in the coming months.

Zoffany colt Sakheer

He has broken the million-pound barrier twice at the sales and was one of the first to explore the American market for value when buying horses to breeze—Sakheer, a most recent example having been acquired as a yearling at Keeneland for $65,000 in September 2021 and then making €550,000 at Arqana, eight months later. A year and two days after he was picked up in his native land, the Zoffany colt was a three-and-a-half-length winner of the Mill Reef.

Browne also has a lengthy list of clients who send horses his way to break and pre-train, including Coolmore, the Niarchos family and Canadian owner Chuck Fipke. He trained Spirit Gal to bag a listed prize for Fipke last season before she was moved on to continue her career with André Fabre.

“When we are at it as long as we are, and we know our gallops, it’s fairly smooth,” says Browne. “Basically, we train horses here to run fast for two and a half furlongs, maybe three furlongs. That is what they are gauging you on.

“If you are training and you get to your three-furlong pole, and when you go to the next furlong, then you know if you have a racehorse or not. Because if horses are going very fast for two and a half or three, they’ll invariably slow down. But Spirit Gal wouldn’t slow down. That’s our yardstick, if we think we have something good.

“In pre-training, you wouldn’t have to put in the miles that you’d put in with the horses that are breezing—less time on their backs, you know? I have two horses going away tomorrow—one to John Gosden and one to Ralph Beckett—and we would never have put a gun to their head. I wouldn’t want anybody to think we gun the daylights out of these breeze-up horses, but you have a better idea.

“The horses for trainers, the half-speed is as far as they’d have ever gone, unless they gave them to you until July or August. They’d usually go between March and May. The pre-training is great … it keeps the whole business ticking along.”

Le Mans is noted for horsepower of a different kind, but Nicolas Martineau and his wife Pauline Bottin have a premises just 20 minutes from the venue for the world-famous 24-hour rally that in five years, has established a reputation for producing speed on four legs, rather than wheels. 

Among their clients are the Devin family, Louisa Carberry, Tim Donworth and Alessandro Botti. Last year’s Gp. 1 Prix Royal-Oak winner Iresine was one of the earliest graduates from the Martineau school while of the younger crop, Good Guess was placed in a listed race as a two-year-old last term. Starlet du Mesnil and Enfant Roi are some of the graded jumpers he has prepped, while British and Irish followers will know the high-class Fil Dor well.

“At the stable I work with a lot of trainers,” Martineau . And with each horse, we work like the trainer works. We don’t work a horse for Francois Nicolle like we do for Gabriel Leenders. We do specific work, horse by horse.

“The big problem in France is staff, personnel for racing stables. So the trainer, when they call me, they want me to prep the horse to be ready to go racing in four or five weeks, six weeks maximum, just after they leave me. You are doing all the pre-training but up to the stage too where they are ready to go racing.”

That is clearly a dissimilar approach to what is required by most British and Irish trainers, but one aspect of it that is very similar is the staffing shortage, which Browne attributes to his numbers being down to around 50 this year. 

Back in France, Martineau even has different feed for the breeze-up two-year-olds and those in pre-training because they are not being trained for the same jobs; and his time learning about both sides of the equation has informed his methods.

“I have my experience from Ireland. I worked for Mick Murphy at Longways Stables. For me, he is the best for the breeze-ups, and I learned so much. He’s exceptional, and I took a lot from working with him.

“I worked for a long time for Jean-Claude Rouget. I worked for a year as well with my wife Pauline for Willie Mullins, and she worked as well for Joseph O’Brien. That was very good experience for pre-training.”

Indeed, the woodchip gallop is a mid-way point between what Mullins and O’Brien have at Closutton and Carriganóg respectively, so that they can cater for all types of horses.

McCarthy is a former NH jockey who had already built his breaking, pre-training and breeze-up operation, Grangecoor Farm on a greenfield site in Kildangan, Co Kildare by the time he had retired in July 2021.

The 34-year-old, who expects to have between six and eight juveniles bound for the Craven, Guineas and Goresbridge Breeze-Ups (while also breaking and pre training Flat and NH youngsters for the racetrack directly and producing jumps horses through the point-to-point sector), places a heavy emphasis on detail and that means not taking any shortcuts, even with spiralling costs.

“I spent ten years with Dessie Hughes and he was a horseman in himself,” McCarthy explains. “I was always interested in the breaking side of it with the stores during the summer, so it was always something that was in my mind from then that I might do.

“I went from there to Ted Walsh, where I learned an awful lot that stood to me when I started breaking and pre-training.

“I put it out there that I was doing it and was lucky enough to have ridden for some good owners that supported me when I was starting out and good trainers when I was freelancing that supported me as well.

“We have about 50–55 horses here, which is a number that works very well. I am so lucky, given how difficult it is for everyone to get staff in that I have five excellent full-time people here. Niall Kelly is head man, and Alan Davison, Johnny Wixted, Sean Donovan, Christine Worrell and Orla McKenna are with me as well. They are vital. We also have eight part-time workers.”

In his experience, there are varying techniques for getting to the same end game of a horse being prepared to give its best on race day. What is sure is that you cannot bring the same approach to every model. 

“You try and get to know the horse the best you can. You’ve different types of horses—horses coming from the sale and homebred horses coming from the farm. The sales horses will have a sales prep done and will have that under their belt. Horses coming in off the farm just won’t be as advanced, so they’ll take a little more TLC.

“Here, the yearlings are started off in the lunge ring and are driven for a couple of weeks. They then go on the furlong sand-and-fibre gallop. Then, just before Christmas, they’re put on the three-furlong round sand-and-fibre gallop.

“From day one they’re driven through the stalls so that they adapt to it really well. 

“I do like to get the two-year-olds away at the end of January, start of February. We use The Curragh on a regular basis for a day away. It’s an important part of it.”

Two of the best illustrations of Grangecoor’s work arrived in 2021, starting when he had Hierarchy for the Tattersalls’ Guineas Sale. The son of Mehmas breezed the second-fastest time and was sold to David Redvers for 105,000 guineas, going on in the following months to win twice and be placed twice at group level, before only being beaten a length and a quarter in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf Sprint.

Hierarchy – Tattersalls Guineas Breeze Up Sale 2021

The same year, he was sent a Profitable filly that had been purchased privately by Liam Donovan on behalf of the Dunphy family. The pocket rocket turned out to be Quick Suzy, who would shed her maiden status at Curragh Racecourse before blitzing the opposition in the Gp. 2 Queen Mary Stakes at Royal Ascot.

“You get a great thrill and satisfaction from something like that. I’d say it’s more satisfying than when riding a winner because you’re putting an awful lot more time into them, and you actually get attached to them and love to see them do well.”

Ellie Whitaker (26) and Tegan Clark (33)

Ellie Whitaker (26) and Tegan Clark (33) set up WC Equine in September 2020, as the world was in Covid lockdown. It wasn’t ideal, but with Robert Cowell looking to let out a yard at Bottisham Heath Stud in Six Mile Bottom, just outside Newmarket, they took the plunge.

What has been so vital for them, given the difficulties in finding enough good staff, is that they are both hands-on, able to muck out and ride, with 35 boxes full. Between the two of them, they broke 64 horses in a five-month period.

Having Newmarket facilities was a considerable help in getting established quickly but so was the initial support of trainers Kevin Philippart de Foy and Roger Varian. They sent yearlings to break and pre-train, while Brendan Morrin of Pier House Stud utilised their services to prep some more for the breeze-ups.

Tegan Clark

Whitaker was working for Cowell at the time, having started out with Mark Dwyer, the former Gold Cup-winning pilot who is a wizard of the breeze-up realm and indeed, has enjoyed extensive success in tandem with Browne. She also worked for Charlie Appleby and among the horses she broke in was triple Gp. 1 winner and champion two-year-old, Pinatubo.

Meanwhile, Clark had worked for Varian. That early support allowed them to showcase their talents, with James Fanshaw and Sean Woods among new clients this year.

“Last year was the first year we managed to get a good client specifically for the breeze-ups,” Clark explains further. “We also bought a few ourselves and have shares here and there, but this is the first year people have rung us and put horses with us to specifically breeze; and we want to try and build on that this year to take those relationships and partnerships into the future.”

This was on the back of two notable successes at the Guineas Sale. In 2021, Royal Aclaim won a maiden within a month of being consigned by WC Equine for Pier House. She won twice more at three and though losing her unbeaten status in the Gp.1 Nunthorpe when favourite, she ran creditably in sixth and was placed subsequently at group level.

Having Newmarket facilities was a considerable help in getting WC Equine established quickly.

Twelve months later, Village Voice was sold. Not the same type of model, she holds an entry in the Irish Oaks for Jessica Harrington, after having just two runs in October, winning her maiden and finishing third in a Gp.3.

“You’ve got to be honest and educate the horses as well as you can so that they do have a lasting career within the sport. It’s brilliant to have a mature two-year-old that’s breezed, but then that’s going to go on and probably have a lovely three-year-old, if not four-year-old career with Jessie Harrington. She already has her black type. So as long as you keep producing that sort of quality, people take notice.”

Initially, all the yearlings go through the same routine, though never together.

“The breezers go through the same process as the pre-trainers from breaking until Christmas time. We give them all a break then; but when the breezers come back in, they have to start knuckling down. You can’t expect a pre-trainer to lay up with them because we are putting the breezers under pressure a lot earlier.”

“There’s a fine line,” notes Whitaker in relation to horses being pre-trained for owners and trainers. “We’re not here to physically break horses or to see how good they are. Our job is to get them through the breaking process and get them up to a path in the training process where they can go up to town (Newmarket) and go up Warren Hill with ease—get them to a business level. 

“Every trainer is different, their standards are different and it’s about meeting their standards and what they require. At the end of the day, it’s a product we’re selling and that product needs to appeal to each individual. We’re equipping these young horses with the right tools; and if they can go into a training facility with the right sort of attitude—be calm and confident, we know we’ve done our job well then.”

In terms of the breeze-ups, with Browne owning most of those horses himself or in partnership with others, sourcing is key. He dabbles in buying foals with long-time ally Dwyer, but the majority are yearlings.

“The trouble with nice horses is they might not be racehorses. When we are looking now, we are looking for a completely different type of animal than that we used to look at 10 to 15 years ago. You’d buy a nice-looking horse, with a nice pedigree and if he breezes up with a nice action but maybe not going that quick, he’s compared against nothing else; and if they like what they see and if they like the movement and the horse’s page, and he’s good looking, you are going to get him well done.

McCarthy learned from the likes of Dessie Hughes and Ted Walsh that stood him in good stead when he started breaking and pre-training

“Now I’ve a horse out there that I gave three hundred grand for, and he’s going to the sale in France. He’s by a sexy American sire Into Mischief, he’s training very well and we hope we’ve struck gold; but If he doesn’t breeze well, no matter how well he’s bred or how nice he is, you’ll get badly hurt.”

Nice horses are pricier than ever before, so Browne will prioritise the page and walk if he must. McCarthy suggests that at his price range, “you have to be lenient towards the page... I’ll focus on the individual.”

And while the breezers are pressed far more than pre-trainers because of the more immediate job they must do, McCarthy argues that you can’t make them faster than they are.

“You’re just trying to get the nice individual with the suitable and affordable pedigree, and then to keep them sound and watch their minds, as they are only two-year-olds and still developing.” 

“We would be riding horses ten days after they came in,” Browne details his system for the breezers. “When you’ve big numbers, it is a matter of getting them done, but I wouldn’t say a word to somebody who is five or six weeks breaking a horse. There is nothing wrong with that; it’s good practice.”

Everyone agrees that good communication is crucial, be that in terms of honesty about the calibre of animal you are selling or being able to pass on as much information as possible to whoever is taking on a horse you have pre-trained.

In France, once again, it goes a little further.

“Sometimes clients will say, ‘I would like to go to this trainer with this horse’; but I might say, ‘I’m not sure, for this horse, it might be better to go to this one,’” Martineau reveals. “When you know the horses, you know what trainers might be suitable, and that gives the client confidence.”

Apart from staffing, increased costs is a huge challenge. Browne changes the wood chip on his gallop twice a year, and says it is 50 percent more expensive than before.

Martineau points out that the expenses are like those of a licenced trainer but that pre-trainers in France charge around €30–32 a day, while full trainers will get in the region of €70. Still though, he likes having a little more time and a little less pressure. The trade-off is worth it, particularly as the business has been built up now and is making money.

McCarthy offers a pragmatic tone abouts the price of everything rising. It eats into the bottom line, but it cannot lead to a reduction in the calibre of his service, given how appreciative he is of the loyalty shown to him by his various clients.
“The big thing for me is attention to detail,” McCarthy emphasises. “That is of the utmost importance through the entire process, and that starts with feed and every step of the way after that.

“Everything is more expensive now, but I look at it that you put in the best of what you need. You can’t cut corners. What you’re doing is educating young horses, and that’s how we see ourselves—as educators of young horses before they join the big boys and go into the next stage of their lives. You need to do everything right, no matter what it costs.”

It is interesting, given Wall’s criticism in particular, that McCarthy will have horses all year around, but that is imperative according to the Galway native, as you have to tailor your approach to the systems horses will be entering.

“For the different trainers we work for, we know their regimes and try to have the horse prepared for them to fit into their regime when they think they’re up to it. The ideal is for them to go in February, but it doesn’t always work like that as all horses are different.

“All the big trainers are going up in numbers. Early into the year and early into the Flat season, we’d be dealing with a lot of the backward two-year-olds and trying to organise them for trainers, giving an opinion of what’s early and of what wants a little more time. And the ones that want a little more time, we’ll be holding onto them and letting them progress and grow into themselves.

“Plenty of trainers would have a couple with me that are not going to be early two-year-olds. They’ll be built up and they’ll be rode in bungees to try [to] strengthen them up and put a top line on them. It’s basically strength and conditioning we’re doing with them.”

Browne states that even the horses he has pre-trained that are being sent to England will most likely go to another pre-trainer, due partly to offset fears of any bug being transmitted, but also because they are full. 

“Chris Wall wouldn’t be mad about what we do, but I would go along with what he said about it helping the big trainers stock up,” Browne remarks. “You are taking away half a year’s livelihood from him by doing what you are doing.”

“Unfortunately, trainers don’t have the staff,” observes Clark. “We’ve got the room, we’ve got the availability, we’ve got the staff.

“We’ve got trainers in the hustle and bustle of Newmarket who send horses to us 10 minutes down the road. They might only use us for 10 or 14 days in the summer on grass, keep them ticking over; and then they go back in and are running straight off of that and are happy with the results. The horses are running well.”

And that’s the point. Be it breaking, pre-training, a little R&R, prepping for breeze-ups—the results speak for themselves. 

“It’s about being calm and straight,” concludes Martineau. “The voice is always calm. I want my horses very calm and straight on the gallop. If that happens, they can go to the races anywhere and whenever you want.

“They are ready.”

Artificial Intelligence tools - and their growing use in racing

Book 1 of the Tattersalls October Yearling Sale is traditionally where some of the finest horseflesh in the world is bought and sold. The 2022 record-busting auction saw 424 lots pass through its hallowed rotunda for a total of 126,671,000 guineas. One of the jewels in the crown was undoubtedly lot 379, a Frankel colt out of Blue Waltz, who was knocked down to Coolmore's M.V. Magnier, joined by Peter Brant, for 1,900,000 guineas.

 It is easy to see why lot 379 made Coolmore open its purse strings. He has a stallion’s pedigree, being out of a Pivotal mare. His sire has enjoyed a banner year on the track, with eight individual Gp/Gr1 winners in 2022. He is a full brother to the winning Blue Boat, himself a 450,000 guineas purchase for Juddmonte Farms at Book 1 in 2020. Lot 379 is undeniably impressive on the page. 

But it is not his impeccable pedigree that makes Tom Wilson believe lot 379 has the makings of a future champion. “The machine doesn’t have any biases. It doesn’t know whether it’s a Galileo or a Dubawi or a Havana Grey,” he says. “The machine just looks at the movement of the horse and scores it as it sees it. It has no preconceptions about who the elite sires in the market are. It’s completely neutral.”

The “machine” to which Wilson is referring is, in reality, a complex computational model that he claims can predict with 73 percent accuracy whether a horse will be elite (which he defines as an official rating of 90 or above, or the equivalent in its own jurisdiction) or non-elite (horses rated 60 or below) based on its walk alone. It’s a bold claim. So how does he do it?

First, Wilson taught an open source artificial intelligence tool, DeepLabCut, to track the movements of the horse at the walk. To do this, he fed it thousands of hours of footage. He then extracted around 100 frames from each video and manually labelled the body parts. “You teach it what a hock is, what a fetlock is, what a hip is,” he explains. “Eventually, when you feed new videos through, it automatically recognises them and plots the points. Then you can map the trajectories and the angles.”

He then feeds this information into a separate video classification algorithm that analyses the video and compares it to historic data in order to generate a predicted rating for the horse. “Since 2018, I’ve taken about 5,000 videos of yearlings from sales all around the world with the same kind of biometric markers placed on them and then gone through the results and mapped what performance rating each yearling got,” he says. “So we’re marrying together the video input from the sale to the actual results achieved on track.”

Lot 379 has a projected official rating of 107 based on his biomechanics alone, the highest of all the Frankel’s on offer in Book 1 (yes, even higher than the 2,800,000 gns colt purchased by Godolphin). Wilson’s findings have been greeted with scepticism in some quarters. “There’s so many other factors that you can’t measure,” points out trainer Daniel Kübler. “There’s no way an external video can understand the internal organs of a horse, which you can find through vetting. If it’s had an issue with its lungs, for example, it doesn’t matter how good it looks. If it’s inefficient at getting oxygen into its system, it’s not going to be a good racehorse.”

“It’s not a silver bullet,” concedes Wilson. “There are multiple ways to find good horses. It’s just another metric, or set of metrics, that helps.” But is it really “just another metric,” or the opening salvo in a data revolution that has the potential to transform the way racehorses are bought and sold?

Big data. Analytics. Moneyball. It goes by many names, but the use of data in sports is, of course, nothing new. It was brought to popular attention by Michael Lewis in his 2003 book Moneyball and by the 2011 film of the same name starring Brad Pitt. 

It charted the fortunes of the Oakland Athletics baseball team. You know the story: Because of their smaller budget compared to rivals such as the New York Yankees, Oakland had to find players who were undervalued by the market. To do this, they applied an analytical, evidence-based approach called sabermetrics. The term ‘sabermetrics’ was coined by legendary baseball statistician Bill James. It refers to the statistical analysis of baseball records to evaluate and compare the performance of individual players. Sabermetrics has subsequently been adopted by a slew of other Major League Baseball teams (in fact, you would be hard pressed to find an MLB team that doesn’t employ a full-time sabermetrics analyst), and ‘moneyball’ has well and truly entered the sporting lexicon on both sides of the Atlantic.

Take Brentford FC. As recently as 2014, the West London club was languishing in the third tier of English football. Today, Brentford is enjoying its second consecutive season in the top flight (Premier League), bucking the trend of teams that gain promotion only to slingshot back down to the lower leagues after one season. 

What is their secret? Moneyball. Brentford’s backroom staff has access to vast streams of data that detail how their players rank across a number of key metrics. This information helps them make day-to-day training ground decisions. But crucially, it also shapes their activity in the transfer market by helping them to identify undervalued players to sell on for a profit. Players such as Ezri Konsa, purchased from Charlton for a rumoured £2.5 million in 2018 before being sold, one year later, to Aston Villa for a £10 million profit. Think of it as the footballing equivalent of pinhooking. 

The bottom line is that data analysis has already transformed the way athletes are recruited and trained across a range of sports. It stands to reason, therefore, that statistical modelling could help buyers who are spending, on average, 298,752 guineas for a yearling at Book 1 make informed purchasing decisions.

“I’ve always been interested in applying data and technology to an industry that doesn’t exactly embrace technology.” That’s according to star bloodstock agent Bryon Rogers. Rogers is widely regarded as the godfather of the biometrics movement in racing. “The thoroughbred industry is one that moves slowly, rather than quickly,” he adds, with a dash of irony. 

Having cut his teeth at Arrowfield Stud in his native Australia and Taylor Made Farm in Kentucky, in 2011 he started his own company, Performance Genetics. As its name implies, the company initially focused on DNA sequencing, attempting to identify markers that differentiated elite and non-elite horses.

From there, it branched out into cardiovascular and biomechanical research. Rogers quickly discovered that it was the biomechanical factors that were the most influential in terms of identifying future elite horses. “When you put all the variables in, the ones that surface to the top as the most important are actually the biomechanical features: the way the horse moves and the way the horse is constructed. They outweigh DNA markers and cardiovascular measurements,” he explains. 

According to Rogers, roughly a fifth (19.5 percent, to be exact) of what makes a horse a horse is explained by the way it moves. “That’s not to say that [those other factors] are not important. It’s just that if you’re ranking them by importance, the biomechanical features are more important than the cardiovascular ones.” 

His flag bearer is Malavath. Purchased at the 2020 Goffs Premier Yearling Sale for £29,000, she was first sold for €139,200 at the Arqana Breeze Up Sale the following year. “I know when I’ve found one,” recounts Rogers. “I walked up to her [at the sale], and there was nobody else there. At that time, [her sire] Mehmas wasn’t who he was. But her scores, for us, were an A plus. She shared a lot of the common things with the good sprinter-milers that we’ve got in the database. A lot of the dimensions were very similar, so she fit into that profile.” She has since proven herself as a Gp2 winner and most recently finished second behind Kinross in the Prix de La Forêt on Arc day.

In December 2022, Malavath sold again, but this time for €3.2m to Moyglare Stud and is set to continue her racing career in North America under the tutelage of Christophe Clement.

A find like Malavath has only been made possible through the rapid development of deep learning and artificial intelligence in recent years. Rogers’s own models build on technology originally developed for driverless cars—essentially, how a car uses complex visual sensors and deep learning to figure out what’s happening around it in order to make a decision about what to do next.

But wait. What is deep learning? Here comes the science bit! Machine learning and deep learning are both types of artificial intelligence. “Classical” machine learning is A.I. that can automatically adapt with minimal human interference. Deep learning is a form of machine learning that uses artificial neural networks to mimic the learning process of the human brain by recognising patterns the same way that the human nervous system does, including structures like the retina. 

“My dad’s an eye surgeon in Australia and he was always of the opinion that what will be solved first in artificial intelligence will be anything to do with vision,” says Rogers knowingly. Deep learning is much more computationally complex than traditional machine learning. It is capable of modelling patterns in data as sophisticated, multi-layered networks and, as such, can produce more accurate models than other methods.

Chances are you’ve already encountered a deep neural network. In 2016, Google Translate transitioned from its old, phrase-based statistical machine translation algorithm to a deep neural network. The result was that its output improved dramatically from churning out often comical non-sequiturs to producing sentences that are closely indistinguishable from a professional human translator.

So does this mean that the received wisdom around how yearlings are selected is outdated, subjective and flawed? Not exactly. “There are so many different ways of being a good horse;  I don’t think [selecting horses] will ever completely lose its appeal as an art form,” says Rogers. “But when we get all this data together and we start to look at all these data points, it does push you towards a most predictable horse.” In other words, following the data will not lead you to a diamond in the rough; rather, it’s about playing the percentages. And that’s before all before the horse goes into training.

After that point, the data only gets you so far. “I would say [the use of biomechanical modelling] probably explains somewhere between 30 to 40 percent of outcome,” says Rogers. “It’s very hard to disentangle. The good racehorse trainer has got all the other things working with him: he’s got the good jockeys, the good vet, the good work riders. He’s got all of those things, and their effect on racetrack outcomes is very hard to model and very hard to disaggregate from what we do.”

Nevertheless, it does not look like big data is going away any time soon. “It might be a couple of years away,” says Rogers. “As bloodstock gets more and more expensive and as the cost of raising a horse gets more and more expensive, the use of science is going to rise.” He believes there’s already an analytics arms race happening behind the scenes.

“For me, it isn’t a case of if it’s valuable; it’s a case of when it will be recognised as being valuable.” That’s Wilson again. “What you see in every sport is a big drive towards using statistical analysis and machine learning to qualify and understand performance. Every other sporting sector tells us that these methods will be adopted, and the ones that adopt them first will gain a performance edge over the rest of the field.”

Comparisons to Deep Blue’s defeat of Garry Kasparov might be premature, but it is clear that the racing industry is fast approaching a tipping point. “I don’t think the machine on its own beats the human judge,” says Wilson. “But I think where you get the real benefit is when you use the information you've been given by machine learning and you combine that with deep human expertise. That’s where the application of these types of things are the most successful in any sport. It’s the combination of human and machine that is power. Humans and machines don’t have to compete with each other.”

So will more trainers be adopting the technology? “There’s lots of different data points that you can use to predict a horse’s potential, and it’s understanding all of the pieces together,” says Kübler. “I’d want a bit more proof of concept. Show me that your system is going to save me loads of time and add loads of value. We’ll see in three or four years’ time how good it was.”

In the meantime, all eyes will be on Lot 379.

Pre-trainers and their influence on Irish NH racing

Article by Daragh Ó Conchúir

Pre-trainers have always existed but there is far more prevalence in recent times, be that to lighten the loads of trainers themselves or, ever increasingly, within a business model of providing licensed conditioners with ready-to-run horses, or as near as dammit.

It was interesting to see former Irish Racehorse Trainers’ Association chief executive, Michael Grassick opine in The Irish Field on December 17 that pre-trainers were actually impacting negatively on the men and women he used to represent – and indeed was one of, before handing over the reins to his son, Michael Jnr – as it made it more difficult for them to retain staff.

Surely, though, the only reason a yard uses such services is because it doesn’t have the time, manpower or expertise to do the job. It makes no sense for trainers to add to an already hefty catalogue of expenses if they and their staff are twiddling their thumbs for “three, four and five months,” as Grassick seemed to suggest.

Trainer Tom Mullins isn’t a fan of the point-to-point production line in Ireland, believing that more potential owners are choosing to invest in stores with a view to a quick return at the boutique NH Sales, rather than going in on a young horse to race. But that route is available to everyone within the industry. If you want to work full-time with horses, you have to find a niche, or create one.

We all know Barry Geraghty as the former champion jockey who won the Grand National, and counted two Gold Cups, five Champion Chases, four Champion Hurdles and two Stayers’ Hurdles among his 43 Cheltenham winners. 

Long before he called time on his career in 2020, Geraghty was pre-training young horses at home in Hallstown, just outside Dunshaughlin, and moving them on, most of the time through the point field via Warren Ewing and Aidan Fitzgerald. His second Gold Cup triumph came in 2013 on Bobs Worth, a horse he had sold to Nicky Henderson as an unbroken store.

There have been plenty others that have had good careers but Supreme Novices’ Hurdle winner, Champion Hurdle favourite Constitution Hill and Tipperary 4yo maiden runner-up, does have the potential to be the best of his many graduates.

“It’s getting harder at all levels,” as Geraghty explained. “With the price of foals, the price of stores, it’s harder to get what you’re looking for. Bobs Worth, he was bought as a yearling and sold as a four-year-old unbroken store. As I got older, I would have got involved with Warren Ewing buying stores and going straight to the point-to-point field with them. But then we’ve been buying foals as well since then.

“For example, Constitution Hill was bought as a foal. I would have kept him for three years, broken him as a two-year-old, pre-trained him as a two-year-old, pre-trained him as a three-year-old until the autumn and then he went up to Warren’s to be trained for a point-to-point.”

John Nallen, famous for the Minella soubriquet in honour of his Clonmel hotel and who produced Minella Indo and Minella Time to win a Gold Cup and Grand National within a few weeks of one another in 2021, is another who focuses on foals. So too Walter Connors, the man who found Gold Cup winner Don Cossack as a foal in Germany, as well as ill-fated Champion Hurdle hero Espoir D’Allen and multiple Grade 1 victors Envoi Allen and Bacardys.

More can go wrong in that length of time but the outlay is lower and there is less intensity required with the work. And to be able to break them younger is a considerable advantage. 

In days of yore, National Hunt horses might not have come out of the field until they were five or six. But all athletic pursuit has advanced and science tells us that once the loading is appropriate, earlier development and conditioning work pays off in the long run.

“It’s like the underage structure with county teams, the strength and conditioning that’s being done with 15- and 16-year-olds. They’re your two-year-olds and three-year-olds. So then you’ve a young lad coming out of minors and he’s as big as (GAA footballer of the year) David Clifford.

“And it’s only teaching them graft. It’s not hardship. You’re not galloping them. You’re conditioning them. If you’re to keep a horse right through from a foal to running in a point-to-point or a bumper, it’s an awful lot easier physically to break them at two than it is at three, but there’s great development in it for them too, both physically and mentally. I think you can connect with them well. Because you’re not having the struggle that you might have with a bigger horse, it makes them more amenable, which is a positive thing for when they go into training. They’ve learned rather than been taught.”

As the Meath native acknowledged, acquiring the raw material is the key starting point.

“You’re looking for the best individual you can get, in every sense and obviously a certain level of page to back it as well – sire, damsire. Your budget won’t allow you to buy perfection (so) you just have to pare back as to where you are with your budget and what are the acceptable faults.”

Judging from the laugh that greets the query about what flaws you might be willing to accept, it isn’t always straightforward.

“It’s very hard to sell one by an unfashionable sire. It doesn’t help. There’s lots of different things. A horse is probably judged at his harshest at the store sale. Whereas he goes and wins a point-to-point, his faults might be more acceptable.”

WALTER & DAVID CONNORS

Walter Connors is renowned as the pioneer of sourcing foals in France – Envoi Allen and Espoir D’Allen were in the same field at Bruno Vagne’s Elevage Allen when the Waterford man picked them out – and he chooses what route he takes to disperse his stock in accordance with those faults Geraghty refers to.

“It’s pretty random with us, the selection of what goes to the sales and what doesn’t,” Connors told me. “A horse could be backward and not fit for the sales so we might point-to-point him but it’s a blank canvas on the first of January and while we aim for the sales, there’s always one reason or another why a horse doesn’t make it and we’ll point-to-point instead.”

After the best part of three years growing up at Sluggara Farm in Dungarvan, Envoi Allen was prepped by Colin Bowe a for a facile triumph in a Ballinaboola maiden because Muhtathir was not a sire that got the market’s pulse racing. But Connors would not like to have his entire investment, or anything like it, relying on form, albeit that the decision to focus on foals is budget-driven.

“Buying foals has worked out okay for us but it’s full of risk,” the vet stated. “All you can see at that stage, is whether they’re big or small. We try and have a look at them as they’re coming along and see how they’re developing. But when did I know Envoi Allen was a good horse? When he jumped the second-last in Ballinaboola. That’s the reality of it. All we can do is try and improve the way we rear them, to make sure they get the best chance they can.

“Buying foals and selling as three-year-olds means you have a lot of capital tied up. You have three years of stock on hand before you have something to sell. Then when those horses are sold, hopefully it takes the pressure off the horses in training. I am full of admiration for the lads depending on form for everything.”

Nallen and Pat Doyle are in that latter category, though Nallen acquires foals mostly and Doyle focuses primarily on the more expensive but more immediate turnaround of stores.

Doyle, who broke Champion Hurdle legend Monksfield and subsequently educated and sold Grand National and Grade 1 winner Minnehoma as well as other top-flight victors Bob Olinger, Shattered Love, First Lieutenant and Brindisi Breeze, bought Appreciate It and Asterion Forlonge as stores the same day for €60,000 each before selling the future Grade 1 winners. 

“Nowadays horses are pretty well done from the time they’re foals,” Doyle detailed.” It’s not like it was 20 years ago. Three-year-olds weren’t touched until six weeks before sales. It’s totally different now. Most of the three-year-old stores have been to a sale as stores and they’re very professional men, the men that buy them.

“We’ve a few fellas around here and they would bring their yearlings in for the winter and probably put breaking tack on them and drive them on long reins, and probably do that for the months of December, January and February, and probably do it again their two-year-old days. They’re so well-handled, horses are a lot more forward than they were.
“We don’t like to do things too quick. It actually takes me probably between four and five months to get a horse to where I want to get him. You will get the odd horse that will get there in four months. We break them, let them out for a month and bring them back in the middle of August. We do an awful lot of conditioning work before we’d do anything else. You’re talking five good months.“

There is an important theme here. Sometimes, the charge is levelled at the point-to-point producers that they don’t leave much in the tank. But that wouldn’t make sense from a business perspective because you want clients to return. You don’t get the best of the horse by finding out about them before you need to.

Minella Indo is another fine example of the benefit of patience. Nallen bought him as a foal from breeder Dick Lalor, of Carrigeen fame, and kept him until he was five.

“He could have made it at four but we always want to do right by the horse and played it cautiously with him,” Nallen revealed. “He is a Beat Hollow, it’s a good family, but his dam was 22 and people thought we were a bit mad buying out of a 22-year-old mare. He came through the system well and we just didn’t rush him to get him out at four. 

“When we saddled him up at Dromahane, the day after St Patrick’s Day in 2018, he was ready and he won easily. And the rest is history… It’s about getting them over the line. Find out as much as you can about their ability without wrecking them.”

That said, when you have them for years rather than months, there are various landmarks along the way that you know should be hit.

“You’re going through all the stages from a foal and a two-year-old to three-year-old,” Geraghty noted. “Some will grow, some won’t grow. There are different stages and some will grow into a horse you’d hope them to be and Constitution Hill would have been that horse as an individual, but desperately laid back. But he always found everything really easy and it was then a case of doing everything right for what you would expect a horse to do at every stage. But it’s only when you look under the hood that you see what’s there. It’s only when you give them a squeeze and with him (when he went in training with Ewing), it was instant.”

Unfortunately for Doyle, he chose the same point-to-point for future multiple Grade 1 winner Appreciate It as Envoi Allen ran in and his charge tired to finish third having gone toe-to-toe with his good friend Connors’ star. The vital win was recorded next time out and Willie Mullins bought him privately.

Mullins sends a lot of his horses to Sonny Carey for the other side of pre-training – readying horses for a full-time training regime. While Carey also buys a few stores himself and has a permit to train a few horses on the track for family and friends, it is breaking horses for trainers or readying them for their routines that is the core of his operation, which is based in Arthur Moore’s yard outside Naas. 

Appreciate It, Laurina and Captain Guinness are just some of high-calibre talent he and his team have been entrusted with.

“The way I work it is we break them, educate them and get them ready to go into a string so that from the day they arrive into the yard, they can just go into the string,” said Carey.

“It all depends on what the trainer will want. Some trainers will want them to just fit into the string. Some trainers will want to know how good they are, what you think of them. Owners sometimes want to find out if a horse is worth putting into training. It just all depends on the client. And the horse.

“We more or less start them off steady, get them hacking away, step them up to cantering away then and if the trainer wants them worked, they can start working and be schooled along as well. 

“It’s all in collaboration with the trainer but it’s down to the individual horse. Some horses will take plenty and be ready for rocking and some horses fall away or get little injuries or the normal young horse kind of things. They’ll all get their ringworm and they’ll get sick at some stage, just the things that young horses get. It’s better for those things to happen in my yard than the trainer’s yard”.

Carey explained how he goes about breaking young horses.

“Everyone has their own way of doing it. It’s what works for you, isn’t it? I was lucky, my father did it for I’d say the guts of 50 years and I learned it off him.

“You’re handling, starting them lunging, getting them used to a bit in their mouth, start with a roller, which simulates a girth. Once they take that, you’ve no problem and we’ll stick a second rope on them then and start turning them on a long reign, which simulates a rider steering them. Some horses would do no better for three weeks driving than they would three days. They just have it. Some horses need more driving.

“After that, in the stable, you just start lying over them, patting them away. And slowly get in on them and then you’ll start riding them around the box, putting your leg on them, teaching them. We’ll go from the box then to the lunge ring, ride them in the lunge ring and then introduce another horse into the lunge ring with them after a day or two. 

“Then we might have four or five in the ring together then so that when they head out to the gallop, they’re fairly straightforward.”

Captain Guinness is an example of the advantage of having more time with horses and breaking them younger. He won quickly for Henry de Bromhead but proof that the lemon hadn’t been squeezed to the pips was that he was a Grade 2 victor just last November, three years later. 

“For a National Hunt horse now you’d be better off breaking them at two and get a little pop into them. That’s in a perfect world. Store horses are so well handled now coming from the sales that there’s not much work in them in that way. There’s a massive difference between a sales horse and a homebred.

“We broke Captain Guinness at two, he came back in at three and came back in again at four. When he came back it was just hacking away steady, getting miles under the built and schooling him away. He’d go on another little break then and come back in. We had him cantering away and when he went down to Henry as a four-year-old he’d a good bit done, over a good period of time. He won as a four-year-old for Henry.”

Carey never had any interest in going into training full-time, more enthused by teaching youngsters. 

“You’ll never be rich but you’ll always have a wage. We bring along a few horses ourselves and we’ve been lucky trading the last few years and that slots into it as well. We’d always have a store or two and we’d always have a yearling or two as well for the Flat. We might run a couple over in France and have had a bit of luck there.”
Carey was almost apologetic as he continually reverted to the importance of the raw material. But it’s the key tenet of the pre-training process. It can’t be a one-size-fits-all routine.

“Treat them as individuals. We’d a filly gone away there that you couldn’t get a second rope on her. She kept kicking herself. So we had to skip that step. We had to ride her rather than drive her. But you’ll get that. We’d a horse last year, we had to ride him on the walker because he kept bolting. So that was what we did to get him to accept the rider. There’s lots of different things that can come up and it’s all about the individual.”

Clearly, while the process is vital, it will never make a bad horse a world beater. But it can turn a potentially good one into a plug if it isn’t done properly. We’ll give the last word to Geraghty.

“The most important thing is that you’ve a nice horse in the first place. It’s a bit like the silk purse. You need the horse. A good pre-training system will make the best of a horse, but there’s no magic.”

The effect of whip use on stride parameters and the racehorse

Article by Rhi Lee-Jones

Katie Walker, a recent graduate of the Thoroughbred and Horseracing Industries MBA, presented her research project findings regarding the effect of the whip at the 2022 Horseracing Industry Conference. The project explored how sectional time/stride data could be used to analyse the impact of the whip in the closing stages of races. The project, supported by the HBLB, made use of the data provided by Total Performance Data to determine what insights could be gained regarding both the performance and health of equine athletes. The use of the whip is a prevalent topic in British horse racing, with the British Horseracing Authority’s Whip Consultation Report released in July 2022 recommending research into “the effects of the whip, using any relevant scientific advances to inform policy.”

For this study, data was collected from two match sets: hands and heels races and whip permitted races. Both sets were drawn from races post-2017, when stride data became available; and a limiting factor must be noted regarding the small quantity of hands and heels races, and therefore, data available.

Stride length and stride frequency in the final three furlongs of each race were extracted, controlling for trip, ground, number of runners, quality of horse and racecourse as far as possible. No significant difference in stride frequency was found; however, a small but significant difference in stride length was found, with horses in whip permitted races having marginally longer strides. This was recorded as follows. 3f – 2f = 0.09m, 2f – 1f = 0.12m and 1f to finish = 0.05m. However, the reasons that trainers run horses in hands and heels races may lead to selection bias, which makes further analysis necessary.

This analysis was performed with both sets of data. In the final three furlongs, it was found that the stride length of whip permitted horses decreased by 0.4m (5.7%), whereas hands and heels horses’ stride length decreased by 0.36m (5.2%). 

Horses placed 1st, 2nd and 3rd in all races were then subtracted to find the stride length declines in the final three furlongs, hence disregarding the horses out of contention. Data showed a similar pattern of a reduced decrease in stride length for horses in hands and heels races. Hence as the table below shows, horses in races with the whip permitted show a larger decrease than hands and heels-ridden horses—a surprising finding.

No firm conclusions can be made here due to the limitations of the data, but it raises the question of the impact of the whip. The use of stride parameters per second, as opposed to averages over a furlong, and adding whip counts, could produce studies where hands and heels races are not required for analysis. This would allow for a larger data set and more detailed analysis. 

Sensors on the whip could count both the strikes and the force to give an enhanced picture of how the horse is responding and performing, bringing into focus how jockey training would also be influential on these factors. Cardiac monitoring is advised for this deeper analysis to monitor for signs of distress in the horse. Interference between participants is a major safety concern during the running of a race and could be monitored with use of this data and guide future rule reviews. In short, funding for this analysis could be revolutionary in a range of welfare and integrity concerns.

The X Factor - Growth spurts in young horses: What can we learn from 'human' research into growth and maturation in sport and exercise?

By Alysen Miller

Ask anyone to list five famous Belgians, and odds are that Kevin De Bruyne’s name will make an appearance. The Manchester City midfielder is widely regarded as one of the best footballers of his generation. Yet you might not have heard of him at all were it not for an innovative talent development scheme in his home country that could influence the way we select, train and manage racehorses.

Traditionally young footballers, like racehorses, are grouped age. By contrast, bio banding is the process of grouping athletes on the basis of attributes associated with growth and maturation, rather than chronological age. “Whether you mature earlier or later has quite a lot of bearing in sport, where greater speed, strength or power can be important,” explains Professor Sean Cumming, an affable Orkney Islander based at the University of Bath who studies growth and maturation. “When you look at children in sport, we group them by age for competition and for training. And while age groups are great in so far as it allows you to match kids of similar cognitive development, motor skills and experience, the challenge is that kids can vary hugely in terms of their biological maturity.” Although the effect of this ‘maturity bias’ doesn’t kick in until pubertal onset at around 11 or 12 years of age, the variance in biological maturity can already be anything up to five or six years by that point.

The concept that relative age can play a determinative role in future sporting success is not new. It explains why broodmares are covered in spring to produce foals in February and March. A winter-born colt running in the Derby in early June of its three-year-old year may be up to 10% of its life older than a spring-born animal—an unquestionable advantage. Or is it?

Indeed, it’s not only in horse racing where the orthodoxy around the so-called ‘relative age effect’ holds sway. In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell notes that a disproportionate number of elite Canadian hockey players are born in the earlier months of the calendar year. 

The reason, he posits, is that since youth hockey leagues determine eligibility by calendar year, children born in January are pitted against those born in December. Because the earlier-born children are likely to be larger than those born later (at least until somatic factors kick in), they are often identified as better athletes. 

This, in turn, gives them more exposure to better coaching, and the gap between the two groups widens. Sociologist Robert K. Merton has dubbed this the ‘Matthew Effect’ after a verse in the Gospel of Matthew: "For unto everyone that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance. But from him, that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.”

But, cautions Professor Cumming, this only tells part of the story: “What even a lot of the academics get wrong is that relative age and maturity are not one and the same. In fact, our data shows that only about 8% of the relative age effect in academy football can be explained by physical maturity. It’s quite possible to be the oldest kid in the age group but also the least mature, or the youngest kid in the age group but also the most mature.” 

The focus on relative size and strength alone, in other words, can create a bandwagon effect. “If you’re looking to identify and develop the most talented young athletes, then it’s going to cloud your vision. It’s going to make some kids look fantastic and some kids look quite poor.” Perhaps tellingly, the last January-born Derby winner, Pour Moi, came in 2008. The youngest winner of the last 10 years, Anthony Van Dyck, was born in mid-May.

Machester City and Belgium superstar midfielder Kevin De Bruyne is the Royal Belgian Football Association’s Programme of the Futures’ most famous graduate

Enter De Bruyne. The Royal Belgian Football Association’s Programme of the Futures, as it is known, allows late-developing players to hone their skills by playing mostly friendly matches against teams of the same physical maturity level, irrespective of age. De Bruyne is the scheme’s most famous graduate. Other members of the late-developer club include Dries Mertens, Thomas Meunier and Yannick Carrasco. By deliberately creating a climate in which late-maturing players get a second bite at the cherry, a country with a population of just 11 million has become a global footballing superpower. Unsurprisingly, other nations are starting to catch on, and several similar programmes have sprung up across the UK and Europe.

Every professional football club has a story about the one who got away—the player that was cut from their programme for being too physically small, from Jamie Vardy (released by Sheffield Wednesday at 15) to Harry Kane (the now 6’2” striker was released by Arsenal at the age of nine). But the consequences are more far-reaching than just missing out on the next footballer superstar. There is compelling evidence to suggest that tailoring the training load to the stage of the athlete’s biological maturity can reduce injuries. The amount of time spent off through injury during an athlete’s formative years is thought to be one of the single biggest factors that determines future professional success. 

Since overuse injuries and stress fractures all peak when the athlete is going through their pubertal growth spurt, it is important to identify when an athlete is entering this phase and adjust the load accordingly. As Professor Cumming explains, “Because we know the growth spurt typically takes off at around 85-86% [of the athlete’s predicted adult height] and peaks at around 90-91%, as soon as they move into that phase we can change the training prescription to more developmentally focused stuff—coordination, balance, core strength—all things that are going to help the child transition to a phase when their body is changing rapidly, when they’re more at risk of certain types of injuries.” Early evidence from clubs using the method has pointed to a 72% reduction in injuries.

Daniel & Claire Kubler have been bio-banding their horses using knee x-rays, among other metrics, to determine when to increase a horse’s workload

And it’s not just football clubs that are starting to understand the benefits of bio-banding. Daniel and Claire Kübler have been bio-banding their horses using knee x-rays, among other metrics, to determine when to increase a horse’s workload. “We back most of our own horses and train them away to where they can canter relatively comfortably at a normal speed,” says Daniel. “Once a horse can canter away, that’s when we go in and do that first set of x-rays.” The horses are given a grade based on the degree of fusion in the growth plates in the knee, with A being an open growth plate, B being partially closed and C being a closed growth plate. “Those really open ‘A’ horses, you might say, ‘OK, there’s no point—give it a break,’” says Daniel. The C’s, likewise, tend to be easy cases. “It’s really the B horses that are the interesting ones, where you have to make a bit more of a decision,” says Daniel. “What we don’t want to be doing is increasing the workload on a horse that’s relatively immature.”

Although the growth rate in horses varies somewhat by breed, most horses do not reach full physical maturity until around six years of age, with larger breeds like draft horses still growing until eight years of age. A two-year-old horse is an adolescent; it has reached approximately 97% of its mature height by 22 months but critically, its bones will not fully fuse for another four years. 

@Equine partnership - equinepartnership.ie

Like humans, horses grow distal to proximal—that is, from the feet up—with the pasterns developing first, fusing at around six months, followed by the cannons at around the one-year mark. The pelvis and spine fuse last. It is during the horse’s two-year-old year that the major leg bones—the radius, ulna and tibia—will fuse. It is therefore important to understand when a horse is entering its growth spurt and tailor its regime accordingly. “It’s about injury reduction,” argues Daniel. “Young athletes are highly susceptible to injury, and by recognising and identifying the growth spurt, you’re massively reducing the injury rate by adapting the training load.”

“The knees are the most delicate bit,” he goes on. “That’s where most of your injuries occur that can cause problems down the line. When you’ve got one with poor grading on its knees, it’s being pre-emptive in your training,” he continues. “You would train that horse a bit more conservatively and not push it quite as hard. You might spend more time on an incline gallop, or you might introduce swimming into the horse’s routine so that you’re putting a bit less concussion through those joints. And hopefully you’re getting the benefit down the line, because they haven’t been pushed too hard, too young.”

Joint licence-holders Daniel and Claire have long advocated for the role of science in training racehorses. “We’re not scared of it,” says Claire, who holds a degree in physiology from Cambridge University. “Having the additional awareness of it gives you a greater understanding,” she asserts. Coming from a non-racing background, meanwhile, has allowed Daniel to approach training with something of a fresh perspective: “It’s the critical questioning. A lot of things in racing are done because that’s the way they’ve always been done, and you can work backwards and find that the reason they work is because, scientifically, it stacks up. But there’s other things where you actually go and look at the science, and it doesn’t make any sense to do that.”

“I love reading about human sports science and listening to podcasts to get ideas,” he explains. “Essentially we’re all mammals, and although there are some differences, there are also a lot of similarities.”

Following the science has not only allowed the Küblers to produce happy, healthy horses—“I’d like to say our horses are very sound and durable,” notes Claire—it has helped them manage owners’ expectations. “Owners enjoy the insights and better understanding themselves as to how the horses progress and develop,” she says.

Feedback from work riders is just as important as the science and can provide and can provide as much insight into the horse’s state of growth as an x-ray

“As a trainer, sometimes you can look at a horse and you can see it’s backwards and it needs time,” says Daniel. “What’s helpful about having the knee x-rays is that it’s a very visible thing to show to someone who doesn’t necessarily understand horses particularly well or isn’t used to them. It’s a simple way to say, ‘Your horse is immature.’ That’s a helpful tool as a trainer in terms of being able to communicate very clearly with your owners.” Posting regularly on social media, meanwhile, has attracted interest from outside the sport—including from Professor Cumming himself, who reached out to Daniel through Twitter. 

The science is certainly compelling. But, emphasises Daniel, you cannot rely on data alone. “You can’t solve the challenge of training racehorses purely with numbers in the same way that I don’t think you can solve it purely just by looking anymore, because you’re not looking at bits of information. It’s an example of using a scientific, data-driven, analytical approach to enhance the welfare and time the horse’s development in the right way for that individual,” he says.

“The numbers don’t lie, but still you need the horsemanship,” agrees Claire. Feedback from the work riders, she says, can provide as much insight into a horse’s state of growth as an x-ray. “They can pick up on the horse, whether it’s still maturing and doesn’t quite mentally understand what it’s doing. Then you can come up with ideas together as a team,” she says.

In a climate where racing, and equestrian sport in general, is the subject of increasing scrutiny—both from outside the sport and from within—t is submitted that any sports science techniques that can deliver tangible welfare benefits to the horse should be embraced.

“At the end of the day, they have to go out and race, and they all have to be sound enough to do that,” says Daniel. 

“You’re always trying to find ways to help get an edge on the track—to get more winners,” agrees Claire. “But you also just want to do the best for the horse so you’re getting a sound horse to achieve its optimum best.”

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Water treadmills – what can they offer our racehorses?

By Carolyne Tranquille, Dr Kathryn Nankervis & Dr Rachel Murray

Issue 71 of European Trainer (January - March 2021) included an article titled “Understanding hydrotherapy and the benefits of water-based conditioning.” In this issue, we examine the best practices for using water treadmills as part of a training programme.

Water treadmill (WT) exercise is increasingly being used as a routine part of the training of sport horses and now racehorses. However, the research detailing their effects on our equine athletes has only emerged in the last 5-10 years. A WT allows the trainer to provide a pre-determined, very precisely controlled piece of work for the horse. With the addition of water, we can then overlay this most basic piece of work with additional tools due to the properties of water itself: drag and buoyancy. The combined effect of these two forces can yield movement patterns for our horses that are beneficial in supporting training programmes. The million-dollar question then is, how exactly do you select depth and speed of belt to achieve what you want within a training programme?

Contrary to popular belief, heart rates of horses walking in water are not necessarily increased as water levels rise, with horses merely adapting their gait pattern to accommodate for increased drag. Indeed, WT exercise never elicits heart rates of over 120-140 beats/min nor does it elevate blood lactate levels, even when carrying out what might be considered to be the ‘hardest’ type of exercise which is trotting in high water. So, the benefits of this modality clearly aren’t in its ability to act as a substitute for fast work; its benefits are in the responses it can bring about in the horses’ movement pattern and the consequent muscle adaptation that can be provided when horses use it on a regular basis.

In 2019, an international equine hydrotherapy working group produced a WT user guideline document. The following sections highlight the recommendations from the group to obtain the best out of a WT exercise session for our racehorses.

General best practice in water treadmill exercise

• Follow manufacturer guidelines for correct machine operation, water care and cleaning of the machine; and seek help from an experienced user to supplement the initial training received by the manufacturer.

• Handlers should wear personal protective equipment (e.g., hard hat and gloves) during a WT session, and two handlers should be present.

• Horse loading and unloading procedures should be specific to the make and model of the machine, and the environment in which the treadmill is located, with procedures devised to avoid the handlers being directly in front or behind the horse. Loading and unloading of naïve horses seems to present the greatest risk to the handlers.

• To help keep the water clean, the horse should be brushed and/or hosed off to remove superficial dirt, the feet are picked out and the tail wrapped.

• WT exercise should be avoided for horses with any skin lesions, cuts or abrasions that might be below the water level or for a horse that had received a distal limb joint injection within four days.

• If the horse is shod, the shoes should be secure. Shoes with road nails could damage the belt, and large extensions which may affect the flight of the foot in water should be avoided.

• Horses can be worked on a WT in a headcollar, chifney or bridle, provided the natural movement of the head and neck are not restricted.

• Leg protections should be avoided.

• Once the session is complete, the horse should be hosed and dried off, especially the feet, to avoid foot problems.

Introducing horses to the exercise

• Horses habituate to WT exercise more readily if they are given several short sessions (up to 15 minutes) on consecutive days.

• Sufficient time should be allocated to avoid rushing the horse and ensuring he has a positive experience. The horse can be prepared for the belt moving by asking him to step back and forth a few times; then start the belt as the horse takes a step forward.

• The water depth should be increased with each session, provided the horse remains relaxed. Water should be kept at fetlock depth during the first session.

• If a light amount of sedation is going to be used for the first session, this should only be done under the direction of a veterinary surgeon.

• Horses are considered habituated once a relaxed and rhythmical gait is reached.

Correct posture and movement patterns during water treadmill exercise

What is the correct posture, and how should a horse move during WT exercise?

• The horse should be in line with the treadmill and not leaning or rolling from side-to-side.

• The horse should be able to move its head, neck and forelimbs without being obstructed by the front of the treadmill.

• The horse should be able to maintain position in the middle of the belt without falling to the back.

• The horse’s face should be just in front of the vertical.

• The head and neck should be largely still.

• The horse should have a rounded lumbar spine.

• The horse should be ‘pushing’ from the hindquarters.

• A regular rhythm to the footfalls should be heard.

What should a horse not look like and not move during WT exercise?

• The horse’s face should not approach the horizontal.

• There should not be excessive movement of the head and neck (the chicken walk).

• There should not be extension of the thoracic and lumbar spine.

• The horse should not ‘pull’ from the forehand. 

• An irregular rhythm to the footfalls should not be heard during a WT session.

Factors influencing selection of speed, water depth and duration of exercise

• Speed should decrease as water depth increases.

• Walking more slowly than overland is recommended.

• Belt speed should be horse-specific, and a suitable speed for the horse should be found before water is introduced into the chamber.

• The horse should work in a correct posture (as discussed above).

• The benefits of WT exercise can be achieved without trotting. To ensure safety of horse and handler, horses should only trot in the WT once they are confidently walking at various water heights.

• Water depth should be training or rehabilitation goal-specific.

• The best combination of speed and water depth will vary between horses and should be judged according to the individual horse’s response.

• Individual horse fitness, stride length, joint range of movement and capability may change during an individual session or over multiple sessions.

• It is important to monitor movement patterns closely and to observe the horse throughout the session and how movement alters in response to changes in speed or water depth and whether these changes are indicative of fatigue. This is relevant at any given water depth.

Benefits of water treadmill exercise for racehorses

• Reduction of impact shock 

• Increased muscle development of the hindquarters

• Increased joint range of motion of the limbs and the back

• Increased hindlimb range of motion 

• Controlled straight line exercise without the added weight of the rider

• Improved aerobic capacity  

Conclusions

This article summaries the best practice for WT use based on the recommendations of the Equine Hydrotherapy Working Group and the Water Treadmill User Guidelines. WT exercise has many potential benefits if the correct protocols are used, and if the horse is in a correct posture and moving optimally when on the WT. Monitoring horse posture and movement patterns throughout the session are essential to assess whether or not the horse is working optimally. The final published guidelines can be found here: tinyurl.com/water-treadmills

Horse Bedding: Beware the Marketing Hype

By Jo Warrilow

The performance of any racehorse is dependent on a number of factors, but a high standard of stable management and an overriding commitment to the delivery of an exemplary care regimen are paramount if a horse is to remain healthy and in peak condition, enabling it to hopefully enjoy a successful racing career.  

Due to the intense fitness and exercise routine that racehorses are exposed to, a comfortable stable is essential to ensure they are able to rest adequately. 

The choice of bedding is an important consideration for those responsible for running a yard. Not only is bedding used in the stable, but it is also often used when travelling, which of course, is a regular requirement for any competing racehorse. Traditionally, the original choice of bedding was straw, but like so many aspects of stable management, this has evolved dramatically. Now there are a plethora of choices in terms of the different types available. The million-dollar question is, which bedding to choose?  While a deep, luxurious bed may look aesthetically pleasing, does the bedding type represent the best-in-class when addressing factors influencing the horse’s health?

A recent in-depth study by equine scientist Dr David Marlin explored the most popular bedding types (sawdust, flax straw, cardboard, barley straw, straw pellets, miscanthus, hemp, wood fibre, rape straw, wheat straw, wood pellets and shavings) and the findings revealed that when the products are put under scientific scrutiny, the claims made on pack rarely match up to reality.

Dust-free or Dust-y?

An earlier survey in January 2021 indicated that shavings and wood pellets were deemed to be the most popular choice of bedding, with wood shavings clearly leading the way. The appeal of this bedding type is largely attributed to the dust-free claims that many brands make, and Dr Marlin’s lab testing proved that the majority of brands in this sector scored highly in terms of the dust criteria (although technically a dust-free bedding is impossible to achieve)—but not all. Two popular shavings brands earned the top score, but at the same time, another well-known shavings brand and a wood pulp fibre bedding product performed badly in this area. Equally, a natural hemp brand, regularly marketed as a dust-free bedding was found to earn the dubious title of being the dustiest. Three brands of bedding, which carried the marketing claim of being dust-free, were in fact found to be low-dust, moderately dusty and in the case of the hemp-based product included in the study, very dusty.

Hygienic quality

The hygienic quality of various bedding types was also put to the test. On a positive note, all were found to be free of Aspergillus, the major mould species guilty of causing respiratory disease in horses. However, other moulds and bacteria (which are a source of endotoxin and implicated in equine asthma, causing or worsening respiratory health) were identified. These were used as an indicator of how ‘clean’ the bedding was. The worst offender against this marker was once again a hemp-based bedding, followed by a shavings brand which boasts the claim of being ‘ultra-hygienic’ and a fine woodchip bedding brand. 

Absorbency

Absorbency is of course a natural requirement to ensure the comfort of the horse and can also be a key factor influencing foot health. Absorbency may be especially important where only a limited amount of bedding is being used for example, if bedding is laid on top of rubber matting or in situations where a horse may be drinking excessively. The findings here were fairly predictable with the top three performers for absorbency being represented by popular pellet-type beddings. One of these was proved to actually absorb over five times its own weight of water. However, the hemp-based bedding option, which boasts the claim that it is ‘probably the most absorbent bedding money can buy’ once again highlighted the importance of not always believing the marketing hype, lagging behind in eighth place, out of the 12 beddings tested. Equally, one of the shavings brands marketed as ‘super absorbent’ came in third from the bottom (in 10th place), while the worst performing bedding in terms of absorbency—a fine woodchip—carries the promise of being ‘highly absorbent’.

Bedding coverage

A coverage measurement was reviewed, which provides guidance on how much bedding would be needed to make up a bed. The most generous coverage was delivered by two of the pellet brands, closely followed by a fine woodchip bedding. However, this result came at a price, with the top performing pellet brand also representing the most expensive. This should be viewed alongside the fact that while there would be an initial high outlay, the ongoing maintenance with this product was extremely cost effective. Four shavings brands offered the best value options to lay a brand-new bed.

And the winners were …

The research provides a detailed breakdown of the performance of all 12 popular brands. Taking into consideration the requirements for cleanliness, low dust and absorbency, the study pointed to the winners tied between a straw pellet and a pine shavings brand, with further shavings products also offering a good option at an improved value for money price point. 

Commenting on the findings, Dr David Marlin said, “This research proves that once again, many horse owners or those involved in making buying decisions in relation to the management and care of horses are being duped by spurious marketing claims which are not substantiated by scientific data. Some brands are a little shy of the truth, while others are frankly bordering on dishonesty. Not only is this practice unethical and unacceptable, but it can also have a potential detrimental impact on a horse’s health. I’d urge any horse owner or care provider, reviewing the many bedding options available to them, to invest time in reading our comprehensive study prior to committing their hard-earned cash to prevent making any costly mistakes.” 

How the survey was conducted

New, unopened bales of bedding were purchased either directly from manufacturers or approved stockists. Bales were opened, and 1kg samples were removed. Bales were chosen to represent a range of types, prices and popularity based on an online survey of 1885 owners who rated 2,776 beddings which DrDavidMarlin.com carried out in 2021. 

The following techniques were used to analyse the bedding:

Dust

100g samples of bedding were placed in a plastic box 43 x 38 x 28cm -  total volume 45.8 litres. An airtight lid was fitted, and the box was rotated mechanically at 1 revolution per second for 60 seconds. The peak total particles (count per litre) and peak PM2.5 (ug/m3) and PM10 (ug/m3) were recorded at a height of 20cm inside the box (internal height 26cm) with the bedding at the bottom of the box (M2000 2nd generation, Temtop, San Jose, CA 95131, USA). The lab background PM2.5, PM10 and particle count were measured before and after each sample test and subtracted from the value measured for the bedding. The box was then cleaned, vacuumed and wiped before the next sample. Samples were measured in triplicate and the mean reported. 

Hygienic quality

Samples were submitted to an accredited laboratory for measurement of total viable count (TVC) at 30°C, which measures all living organisms in the bedding (i.e., bacteria, moulds, yeasts, protozoa, etc.) as an indicator of hygienic quality. Samples were also analysed for Aspergillus species – a mould commonly associated with equine asthma. 

Absorbency

50g samples of bedding were placed in 25 x 35cm sealable plastic bags. 500ml of water at 15-18°C was then added to the bedding, and the bag hung vertically for 30 minutes. At this time holes were made in the bottom of the bags and the samples allowed to drain to remove excess water for 3 minutes after which the bag was weighed. The final weight minus the initial weight (50g) was expressed as a fold increase over the initial weight (i.e., if no water had been absorbed, the value would be 0; and if all the water had been absorbed the maximum value would be 500/50 = 10-fold increase). Samples were tested in triplicate and the mean reported. 

Spread volume/coverage

The density of each bedding was measured by weighing a fixed volume of bedding. If the bedding was compressed, then it was broken up to represent the form in which it would be used to form a bed. The amount of bedding in kg that would be required to cover one square metre to a depth of 10cm (~4in) was then calculated. 

Training - 'horses with attitude'

By Ken Synder

“One refuses to run. One can’t run. One gets hurt. One’s a nice horse you have a little bit of fun with.  And one’s a really nice horse that helps you forget the first four,” said trainer Kenny McPeek with a laugh, as he categorized new Thoroughbreds coming into his barn annually.

In some cases, that first one—the horse that refuses to run—really is forgotten, falling through the proverbial cracks of large stables with plenty of “really nice horses.”

 “There’s very few of them we can’t figure out,” he said, “but sometimes we can’t.”

That’s where people like 71-year-old horseman Frank Barnett of Fieldstone Farm in Williston, Florida, (near Ocala) get involved. “I wish you could get to it by skirting the ‘issues,’ but you can’t,” he said.  “That’s how they got to me.” Those issues are not loading into a trailer or starting gate, balking at workouts, throwing riders and—bottom line—acting as if they don’t want to become racehorses.

The principal issue underlying all the others, according to Barnett and Dr. Stephen Peters, co-author with Martin Black of the book Evidence-Based Horsemanship, is forgetting that horses are prey and not predatory animals. “Your horse is constantly asking, ‘Am I safe?’” said Peters.

The question supersedes everything else in a horse’s brain and, unfortunately, isn’t part of most Thoroughbred trainers’ knowledge of how psychologically a horse functions, according to Peters—a neuroscientist and horse-brain researcher. “One of our big problems is the only brain that we have to compare to the horse’s brain is our own, so we develop ideas like respect and disrespect.

“Horses don’t have a big frontal lobe. They can’t abstract things.

“Would you beat a child who couldn’t figure out a math problem? Of course, you wouldn’t. Punishment in a horse’s environment is a predatory threat,” Peters added.

The collaboration between Peters and Black, an Idaho-based horseman who teaches horsemanship,  began when the former observed Black allowing a horse to rest after a training task, waiting and watching for the horse to drop its head, and then waiting for it to lick its lips. Then he would repeat the task or move to a new one. Peters, a neuroscientist and horse brain researcher, immediately knew Black was giving the horse “dwell-time.” In the simplest terms, that is the time between adrenaline subsiding in the horse’s brain from the stress of something like a training task before a “dopamine hit”—relief and, most critically, a feeling of safety. Stress to any degree causes a horse’s mouth to dry. Licking the lips after the stress signals a dopamine hit. The stress is over. I’m safe. Black instinctively knew he needed to wait on the horse.

“It’s almost an art in creating a neurochemical cocktail for your horse,” said Peters. 

Black added, “Instead of drilling for 30 minutes, I would do an exercise taking maybe not even a minute.

“I will stress the horse--get the adrenaline going and then let it get the cocktail. They lick their lips and then they think about it, then they lick their lips again and the next time I ask them for it, it’s like we have been practicing it for a month.”

In their book, Peters and Black posit that dwell-time enables the horse to replay what it has just been through. Scans have shown brain areas used during something like a learning activity are still active while resting. Testing has also shown that subjects given dwell-time between a task learn faster than subjects not given space between learning exercises.

Black, who grew up working cattle on horseback and who also has a deep background with Thoroughbreds, recognized that “Peters had the science but didn’t have the experience. I had the experience but not the science.”

Peters explained, in part, the science: “What we do is introduce something to the horse, and we have to pause. We have to allow the horse a chance to assimilate the information. If not, the horse will get sympathetically aroused [experience increased heart rate, blood pressure, adrenaline activation and increased sweating] or tune you out. They disassociate. They put themselves somewhere else and they go through the motions. But that doesn’t mean they’ve learned what you have tried to teach them.

“Sometimes you’ll create a trauma, and now you have to take 100 good things to overcome that one bad thing because, as prey animals, they’re going to remember, ‘I was not safe.’”  

In practical terms, a horse who was whipped to enter a trailer, for example, will always be difficult when asked to load. McPeek believes horses not only remember abuse but remember who it came from.  “They do it on smell,” he said.

Peters’ and Martin’s book bridges the brain chemistry of horses and horse behavior and “language.”  

Barnett is a Peters-Martin disciple whose training of horses spans experience watching horses and neural explanations for horse behavior provided by people like Peters. He provides another huge key in understanding why horses do what they do from his work: Horses will get a neurochemical release or dopamine hit from bad behavior as well as good. Punishing a horse, like in the example of whipping a horse for balking at trailer loading, will reinforce undesired behavior. Barnett, who works with dressage and eventing horses, said, “A horse stopping at a hurdle gets a dopamine release—stopping is a good thing in the horse’s mind. A good horse who hurdles gets the same kind of neurochemical release in its brain: dopamine endorphins.”  

Barnett provides another example closer to Thoroughbred racing: A horse who fights or dumps an exercise rider in training is, in all likelihood, hurting. “If he’s hurting bad enough, he dumps somebody and then just stands there and stops. That’s going to tell you he’s not a bad horse. He’s just hurting.” 

The problem is not the rider but what the rider is doing, according to Black. For a horse who stops going forward or tries to throw a rider, he would push the horse from behind with the rider still mounted but with the bridle removed. The typical response from an exercise rider will be, “’I need to hang on,’” said Black. “That’s the problem: you’re hanging on to him.

“Riders ride real tight, and horses get sore in their mouths. They might have abscesses. People don’t listen to the horse.” 

Loading into a horse trailer is typically a difficult task for Thoroughbred trainers, particularly for young horses. In their brain, the horse is asking, “Am I safe?” Practically every horse, at least the first time, will balk. It’s a strange new environment. In the horse’s mind, according to Black, he or she might think they’re getting a big shove “off a cliff or into a black hole.” They don’t know if it is safe. 

The remedy is calculated minor stress followed by quiet. “You bring the horse up to the trailer and give him a nudge. He backs out of there. ‘Nope. I’m not going.’ So he leaves. You go with him, and as soon as he turns around to leave the trailer, I get him bothered. I’ll walk him in circles. I’ll cause him some confusion and discomfort. His mind is racing, and he can’t figure out where comfort is.  

“I’m not talking about twitching his ear or inflicting pain but making it so he can’t find relief or peace any place since leaving the trailer.  

“Then I guide him back to the trailer. The closer he gets to it, the quieter I get. It’s like he’s escaping from all the chaos by going to the trailer. He’ll get on.”

The obvious question is how long might this take with a horse. “Might be one minute...might be 15 minutes,” said Black.

“Why does a horse do anything?” asked Peters, “because they’ve created a brain pattern or pathway.  How are those pathways made? They’re dopamine reinforced. If I take my horse onto the trailer and he backs off and gets away and runs to a field, I’ve got to rewire its brain. If the horse gets punished for this, I’m creating a problem on top of a problem.

“Our job is to get dopamine hits set up.”

Black started (the term he uses rather than “broke”) Thoroughbreds for Calumet Farm for 10 years from 1995 to 2005 and believes much of bad Thoroughbred behavior is taught. “They get so many traumatic experiences on the racetrack.” 

He is also doubtful training methods will ever change in the Thoroughbred industry. “They’re not going to change because they can get one in a hundred to win something. So why change?

“I heard this all the time: ‘You don’t understand; these are Thoroughbreds.’ Ok, so your horse won a million dollars. With your program, you have one horse that won a million dollars. You’ve got a hundred of them that dropped out of kindergarten. Every one of mine graduated, so whose program is better?” 

Among the thousand-plus horses that Black estimates he started for Calumet, was Pleasantly Perfect, winner of $7.7 million and the Breeders’ Cup Classic in 2003.    

Akin to the example of a horse refusing to work out, there is the story of Seabiscuit, who ran 17 times before breaking his maiden. He didn’t want to run for legendary trainer “Sunny Jim” Fitzsimmons. He got moved to trainer Tom Smith’s barn. Tom was a Western cowboy with experience working with wild Mustangs. Seabiscuit’s behavior continued...for the first four workouts. Smith was known to sit in the stall for hours with a new horse he had gotten to somehow commune with and get an instinctual feel for that horse. He told an exercise rider with his hands full on the fifth day to drop the reins and let the horse do what he wanted to do. With that, the horse took off—apparently discovering the joy of running and then earned a carrot on the return to the barn, which became a standard reward. The rest is history.

Are methods like that espoused by Peters, Black and Barnett fool-proof? Peters simply said, “Horses are just like humans. Not every human being can play every sport.”

Sometimes, too, the “rehab trainer” like Barnett can only do so much. He recalled a promising horse sent to him by the old Waldemar Farm who wouldn’t load in the starting gate. Barnett got the horse past this fear. “The horse was doing scorching works, and everybody flew in to watch the first start at Gulfstream.

“I got a message on the answering machine after the race asking if, for the same money, I could teach the sonofabitch how to run. Ran last and never won a race.”

That would be McPeek’s category number two.

Building a stronger racehorse with DYNAMIC MOBILISATION EXERCISES

Author - Kimberley Marrss

Yoga, Pilates, cross training, pre-habilitation—whatever you prefer to call it—are strength- training exercises also known as dynamic mobilisation exercises, which can greatly benefit your racehorses. You can perform these exercises on your horses to help with correcting posture, gaining  strength, flexibility and core stability. All of these positive gains will help a racehorse be more  balanced in his movements. Incorporating these exercises daily will of course help alleviate tensions in the body that could potentially turn into problems or pathologies down the road, while reducing the risk  of repetitive use injuries. 

The concept is the same as cross training in human athletic training. A horse also needs several types of exercises to help keep the body balanced and able to handle the intensity of competition, reduce performance issues and aid in the body's recovery after competition. As human athletes have known this, one size—one exercise—does not fit all. The body's systems all need to be challenged to produce an all-around balanced athlete. This logic needs to be addressed with training racehorses as well. Regular sessions of these types of exercises will result in the improvement of the horse's posture and ability to carry a rider in a balanced way. A horse with good posture will allow for optimal performance for a longer period with less exhaustion and muscle fatigue. 

Muscles at work 

A dynamic mobilisation stretch is mostly done using a bait and are referred to sometimes as  carrot stretches. While performing a stretch, certain muscles are activated so that they move, and stabilise the intervertebral joints. 

Then the activated abdominal muscles help to bend and round the back. This is especially important for a racehorse unlike horses who are trained to carry a long low frame, which will help them engage their body’s core. Racehorses will tend to train with their head high and with a hollowed back.  Over time, this can predispose a horse to back pain, kissing spines, lumbosacral issues—all  which can then lead to compensatory issues. 

If you take a series of two-year-old thoroughbred  racehorses, a high proportion of them will have radiological evidence of kissing spines, and  quite a lot will have associated back pain.

So joint stabilization is particularly important to help with improving performance and the  prevention of injuries. Research has also shown that with regular performance of these exercises, the equine back becomes enlarged. Subsequently, this will strengthen the back muscles and enable the horse to carry the rider more efficiently with a lessening of back stress. To demonstrate this, I have a person put a 11 to 22 kg sack of feed over their shoulder. Next, I have them walk between 7 to 9 metres as they would normally walk. Then I have the person stand up straight, hold in their core (abdominals) with correct posture and walk back 7 to 9 metres. The difference is usually substantial, and the person can feel less stress on the limbs with a straighter and more balanced way of moving. Now they get why the horse's core strength is so important!

Get started on a routine

I have been doing these for some time and have seen amazing results in my horses' overall posture, toplines, reduction of back pain and suppleness in their musculature. To get started with your dynamic mobilisation routine, keep in mind that performing these exercises are safe. Do take care though: If your horse has a musculoskeletal or neurological issue, clear it with the vet first before starting dynamic mobilisation exercises. Also keep in mind that many of these exercises are also utilised in rehabilitation from injuries. 

When implementing these exercises, ensure the horse follows the bait in a nice smooth manner, and get the horse to hold the stretch. This can sometimes be easier said than done. Some horses will try to snatch and then snap their head back forward. So be patient; there is a learning curve with each individual horse. The more you perform these moves, the better you’ll get, and the smoother the stretches will become.

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How breastplates and breast girths can inhibit performance

By Dr Russell Mackechnie-Guire

Using pressure mapping and gait analysis technology, scientists have now measured how breastplates and breast-girths can compromise the horse’s jump and stride at gallop.

Breast girths and breastplates are routinely used to prevent the saddle moving backwards at home on the gallops, and on the track. Post-race bruising to the pectoral muscles, sternal abrasions, soreness and even lacerations caused by a breastplate are often accepted consequences of keeping the saddle in place. But evidence is mounting that, in addition to the physical factors, a poorly designed breastplate or badly fitted breast-girth could also be restricting the horse’s gallop and compromising its jump during a race, therefore impacting the horse’s locomotor efficiency, performance and athletic potential. 

Recent research in the sports horse has demonstrated that breastplates have a significant negative effect on the horse’s action over a fence. A further pilot study looking at how breast girths and breastplates affect the racehorse indicates that they influence the movement of the shoulder and forelimbs whilst galloping, potentially comprising gallop efficiency. 

Jumping short

PIC 1– Pliance pressure mapping revealed the point of peak pressure common to all breastplates in the test occurred at the point of take-off.

In the sports horse jumping study, scientists used Pliance pressure mapping (pic 1) to identify areas of peak pressure beneath traditionally fitted breastplates. A sensor mat placed between the breastplate and the horse’s skin recorded levels of pressure throughout the jump cycle. Regardless of breastplate design, the highest pressures were consistently seen in the centre of the chest (located on the midline over the sternal region), at the moment of take-off as the horse’s shoulder, elbow and knee were flexed and the shoulder was in its most forward position (point P, pic 2).

PIC 2 - Without a breastplate (top), the horse’s jump forms a smooth parabolic trajectory over the fence from take-off to landing (A).

Alongside pressure mapping, two-dimensional gait analysis was utilised to determine how pressures created by breastplates affected jumping technique. Markers were placed on the horse’s joints, and the horse’s jump was analysed at a rate of 300 frames a second—approximately 25 times faster than the human eye. The data quantified any changes in joint and limb angles. The findings demonstrated that the whole jump is adversely affected by the breastplate design and resultant pressures from the point of take-off to, and including, the stride immediately after landing.

Without a breastplate, the horse’s natural jump is a parabolic (symmetrical) curve, with the highest point an equal distance between take-off and landing. In the study, a breastplate was shown to shorten the horse’s landing position by 0.5m compared to landing with no breastplate. 

With a breastplate (bottom), the horse’s lead foot makes contact with the ground much closer to the fence (B), and the landing phase of the jump is steeper.]

This pattern of an altered trajectory was scientifically recorded under experimental conditions over one single oxer fence (1.2m) on a level surface. Applying the same principles to the racehorse, the negative impact that this would have when galloping would be magnified. If the horse’s trajectory over a brush fence is shortened by the same distance as it is over a 1.2m jump, this is likely to have a significant effect on gallop efficiency—in particular stride rate, length and frequency. Over a course of 12 National Hunt fences, if half a metre of ground is lost (as a function of the altered landing trajectory) at every jump, this would require six metres to be made up over ground—potentially the length of a winning stride.

Crash landing….

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Stables vices - are they behaviours or a product of their environment?

By Georgie White

We often see the word vice used in the equestrian world to describe an undesirable behavior completed by a horse; these are often repetitive behaviors completed either at certain times of the day, prior to or following a particular event or activity which causes the horse stress for whatever reason. When we look to the dictionary definition of a vice, the words “immoral,” “corrupt” and “wicked” are synonymous; but these are all words used to describe premeditated or deliberate acts of wrongdoing.

When we consider that these are horses we are talking about, they simply do not have the cognitive ability to do this. As humans, we tend to over complicate and anthropomorphize animal behavior, likening it to our own and thus presuming horses complete these behaviors for far more complex reasons. Recently the term vice has been replaced with a more correct term: “stereotypical behaviors” or “stereotypies,” which encompasses any behavior deemed to deviate from normal behavior and has resulted from the horse coping with a challenge or stress.

On the surface, the behaviors appear apparently functionless, but when understood as a coping mechanism rather than a premeditated misdeed, we can begin to understand what that behavior serves the horse, if only temporarily.

• What is stress?

Stress is the body’s response to a potentially threatening situation and is experienced by humans and animals alike and even serves as a function to keep the animal alive. Presence of a short-term stressor such as a predator serves to kick-start the fight or flight response, which is part of the acute stress response.

Stress can be divided into two subtypes: acute and chronic, which are dealt with by the body very differently. They also result in several different physiological adaptations that are notable when discussing stereotypical behaviour. Acute stress refers to a short event or episode that causes a temporary increase in heart rate, respiratory rate, salivary cortisol levels, increased blood pressure and muscle tension. In relatively healthy animals, once the stressful event has passed, these body parameters will return to a base-line normal. These short episodes are not always necessarily bad and can help a horse learn and adapt to their environment. As horse handlers, we also know we can help a horse habituate to a common stressor by regularly introducing them to it and giving them a positive experience. Over time, their stress response will become less severe, and thus they will learn to cope with it reoccurring. Chronic stress refers to emotional pressure suffered for a prolonged period of time, which an individual perceives to have little to no control of—the latter part being key in horses.

Oral stereotypies include crib biting, wind sucking and wood chewing; there is varied opinion suggesting these behaviours may provide temporary alleviation of stomach discomfort.

Stereotypical behaviours will often occur during times where horses cannot control their environment. Stabled horses are most likely to display stereotypical behaviours because they are often in a situation when they cannot immediately change their environment or remove themselves from a particular stressor.

Symptoms of chronic stress include weight loss, decreased appetite, negative demeanor or aggressive tendencies. Horses suffering from chronic stress sometimes go unnoticed because the signs are more subtle; there is no pounding heart rate, sweating, increased breathing rate or more obvious cues that handlers may associate with a typically stressed horse. The other problem is that stereotypical behaviours can go ignored or become ‘just something they do.’ There is a common link between horses who display stereotypical behaviours and those diagnosed with gastric ulcers as both are closely related to chronic stress. There is debate over cause and effect, whether the horse performs these behaviours in an attempt to ease the discomfort of gastric ulcers or if those performing stereotypies are chronically stressed and at higher risk of developing gastric ulcers.

• Stereotypical behaviours

There are several common stereotypical behaviours seen in domesticated horses, and they can be divided into two simple categories: oral and locomotor. Oral stereotypies include crib biting, wind sucking and wood chewing; there is varied opinion suggesting these behaviours may provide temporary alleviation of stomach discomfort, but this is a question for cause and effect. Locomotor stereotypies include weaving, box/fence walking and door kicking. These behaviours expend a lot of energy, especially if the horse devotes a significant amount of time to this behaviour and as a result, the horse can be prone to losing or maintaining condition.

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Reducing the pressure - Scientists discover performance benefits of relieving five key pressure points under tack

By Dr Russell Mackechnie-Guire

Scientists discover performance benefits of relieving five key pressure points under tack

Recent scientific studies reveal how using new designs of saddle, pad, girth and bridle can significantly benefit the locomotion of the galloping racehorse

Researchers detected peak pressures under commonly used tack that were of a magnitude high enough to cause pain and tissue damage. When horses have to manage this type of discomfort on a daily basis, they develop a locomotor compensatory strategy. Over time, this can lead to tension and restriction that inevitably affects performance. Physio interventions will usually ease the symptoms of tightness and soreness and, after a period of rest, performance may be restored and improved. However, this costly course of action only addresses the secondary problem. If the primary cause is still apparent—in this case pressure from badly designed or ill-fitting tack—the compensatory gait strategy will be adopted again, the tension will return, and the cycle will repeat.

Reducing the pressure that forces a horse to adopt a compensatory gait will not only improve performance, but it will also help prevent further issues which could have veterinary implications and reduce susceptibility to injury in the long term.

Saddle up

When scientists tested the three most commonly used exercise saddles, they discovered every saddle in the test impinged on the area around the 10th-13th thoracic vertebrae (T10-T13)—a region at the base of the wither where there is concentrated muscle activity related to locomotion and posture. The longissimus dorsi muscle is directly involved in the control and stabilisation of dynamic spinal movement and it is most active at T12 (see fig 1).

Dynamic stability is the combination of strength and suppleness—not to be confused with stiffness—and is essential for the galloping thoroughbred. The horse’s back moves in three planes: flexion-extension, lateral bending and axial rotation—all of which can be compromised by high pressures under the saddle (see fig 7).

Studies in sport horses have shown that saddles which restrict this zone around T13 restrict muscle development and negatively influence gait. This effect is amplified in a racehorse because they train at higher speeds, and faster speeds are associated with higher forces and pressures. In addition, gallop requires significant flexion and extension of the horse’s spine; and if this is compromised by saddle design, it seems logical there will be an effect on the locomotor apparatus.

Tree length

In addition, half-tree and full-tree saddles were shown to cause pressure where the end of the tree makes contact with the horse’s back during spinal extension at gallop. In the three-quarter-tree, high pressure peaks were seen every stride and either side of the spine, correlating with the horse’s gallop lead; this indicated that the saddle was unstable at speed (see fig 1).

Using a modified saddle design to achieve a more symmetrical pressure distribution, researchers saw a positive impact on spinal stability and back muscle activation. The hindlimb was shown to come under the galloping horse’s centre of mass, leading to increased hip flexion, stride length and power. A longer stride length means fewer strides are necessary to cover any given distance; and better stride efficiency brings benefits in terms of the horse’s training potential and susceptibility to injury (see compensatory strategy panel).

Pressure pad

The saddle pad acts as a dampening layer between the horse and the saddle, reducing pressures and absorbing forces. In a pilot study of thoroughbreds galloping at half speed over ground, a medical-grade foam saddle pad was shown to be superior at reducing pressure, significantly outperforming gel and polyfill pads. Preliminary findings show the forces were 75% lower, and peak pressures were 65% lower under the foam pad than those recorded under the gel pad. The polyfill pad reduced the forces and peak pressures by 25% and 44%, respectively, compared to the viscose gel pad.

A pad with a midline ‘seam’ designed to follow the contour of the horse’s back and withers performed best, maintaining position and providing spinal clearance even at speed. Flat pads without any shaping or a central seam were observed to slip down against the spine as the horse moved, even when the pads were pulled up into the saddle channel before setting off. The pressure associated with a pad drawing down on the spine under the saddle will lead to increased muscle tension, reduce elasticity of the back and could potentially alter gait. Relieving pressure at this location improves posture, movement and propulsion.

It might be assumed that using multiple pads under an exercise saddle would improve spinal clearance or comfort. However, based on studies, this is not the case. …

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Saddle + Half Pads - The effect on race saddle pressures and gallop kinematics

By Dr. Russell Mackechnie-Guire

Scientific research quantifies the impact different pads have on the horse’s performance

The use of pads under the saddle has been common for years, but now scientists are using dynamic testing technology to discover how well they really work

In everyday yard situations where multiple horses use the same saddle, putting one or more pads under has been seen as a way of providing cushioning and comfort for the horse, or even relieving pain. However, there has never been any research in racehorses to demonstrate whether this reduces saddle pressures or provides comfort. Furthermore, there is limited scientific evidence to suggest which type of pad is most effective.

A recent study suggests that, depending on the material and design, using a pad beneath the saddle might not always achieve the desired pressure-relieving effect. And using multiple ineffective pads under the saddle might not only be a waste of time and money, but it could potentially cause areas of high pressures, compromising the horse’s locomotor apparatus and affecting race performance.

Peak pressure of more than 35kPa were recorded in two of the three pads.

Peak pressure of >35 kPa can cause compression of the capillaries, leading to soft tissue and follicle damage (ischemia) which, in extreme or prolonged cases, results in white hairs, muscle atrophy, skin ulcerations and discomfort.

A recent published study evaluated saddle pressure distribution in sports horses using pads made from sheepskin, viscose gel and a medical-grade closed-cell foam. When using a gel pad, the peak and mean pressures increased in the front region of the saddle in trot and canter. This is possibly due to the gel’s lack of ability to dissipate shear forces compared to wool or foam.

Similar findings were seen in a pilot study of thoroughbreds galloping at half speed over ground. The same dynamic testing was used (see Technology & Anatomy panel) to compare the forces and peak pressures under polyfill pads, as well as viscose gel and medical-grade closed-cell foam. From the initial trials, the overall forces recorded were significantly higher than those seen in the sports horse study. This seems reasonable, given the difference in locomotion and speed (see Speed & Force panel).

Preliminary findings show the forces were 75% lower, and peak pressures were 65% lower under the medical-grade closed-cell foam pad than those recorded under the gel pad. Interestingly the polyfill pad, which deforms to the touch, reduced the forces and peak pressures by 25% and 44% respectively compared to the viscose gel pad.

The role of the pad is to act as a dampening layer between the horse and the saddle, reducing pressures and absorbing the dynamic forces which occur during locomotion.

Based on findings from the sports horse study, and initial findings from the racehorse study, it appears that the medical-grade closed-cell foam pad is superior in its effectiveness at acting as a pressure-reducing layer between the saddle and the horse.

Pressure to perform

A shaped saddle pad with a midline seam is less likely to draw down on the spine

Reducing saddle pressures improves gallop locomotion. Horses will still perform when asked, despite areas of high pressures induced by the saddle and pad; but they develop a compensatory locomotor strategy in an attempt to alleviate any discomfort.

To increase speed, a galloping horse will either increase stride frequency or increase stride length. Both mechanisms can be used, but the horse will have a natural preference. Published pressure studies have shown that stride length is increased when saddle pressures are reduced. Now, new research is underway quantifying whether a stride frequency approach, which has higher peak forces, could be a compensatory strategy in response to discomfort caused by pressure.

Forces are influenced by speed and weight and are produced when the hoof comes in contact with the ground. At racing speeds of 38 mph, the hoof hits the ground approximately 150 times a minute. Stride frequency is an important consideration because a study has suggested that horses have around 100,000 gallop strides before the soft tissues fail. Therefore, any reduction in loading cycles (number of strides) could potentially help reduce injury risk.

Harder, faster, longer

Every stride impacts the horse’s joints, causing wear and tear (see Speed & Force panel), so fewer longer strides is the preference for optimum training efficiency. Although horses have a naturally imprinted option, the pressure studies demonstrate that they switch between the two in response to certain extrinsic factors, such as high saddle pressure.

Our task as trainers is to optimise the horse’s locomotor efficiency by removing any impediment that might force it to adopt the shorter-stride compensatory gait. We speculate that equipment which increases pressure (such as an unsuitable design of saddle, bridle, girth or saddle pad) will be counterproductive because it may encourage an increase in stride frequency and compromise natural locomotor efficiency.

Contouring is key

In both studies, the saddle pads that were designed to follow the contour of the horse’s back and withers performed better than those that were flat with no shaping. Furthermore, pads with a midline seam connecting the two sides were able to maintain traction and position, providing spinal clearance even at speed.

In contrast, pads that were flat without any contouring or with no central webbing seam were observed to slip in response to the horse’s movement, drawing down against the spine under the saddle. This was seen even when the pads were pulled up into the saddle channel before setting off.

Quality vs quantity

In an attempt to improve comfort, it’s standard practice to use multiple pads under an exercise saddle. However, adding more shapeless padding can lead to instability and potentially saddle slip.

This feeling of instability can encourage the jockey to overtighten the girth in an attempt to keep the saddle still. One study demonstrated a relationship between increased girth tension and a reduced run-to-fatigue time on a treadmill, indicating that girth tension can affect the breathing of the galloping horse.

In addition, bulk under the saddle puts a feeling of distance between the horse and rider. This compromises the close contact feel and balance all jockeys strive to achieve and hinders the lowering of the jockey’s centre of mass relative to the horse.

Age concern

It’s worth noting that the ability of a material to absorb pressure can be significantly compromised with use and washing, as well as changes in climate. As some materials age, they degrade and loose any initial shock-absorbing qualities. For example, wool loses its ‘crimp’ over time and becomes less effective, so a well-used wool pad may not absorb as much pressure as a new one. …

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Hydrotherapy for performance - the benefits of water based conditioning - hydrotherapy as a mechanism for enhancing performance in the racehorse

What is hydrotherapy?

The historic use of water for therapeutic benefit in the equine industry has taken a leap in development in recent decades, from the humble use of cold hosing a swollen limb through to the development of water treadmills and water walkers for injury rehabilitation and performance development. Cold hosing and other forms of cooling localised areas of the body is more correctly termed cryotherapy—meaning, it aims to harness the benefits of reduction in temperature to treat mainly acute and oedemic injuries. By reducing temperature of the local area, for example, a distal portion of a limb, several key functional changes occur. First, local blood flow is reduced. This is especially useful if an open wound is involved; the precapillary sphincters constrict and direct blood away from the area. Secondly, there is evidence that nociceptors, involved in the perception of pain and sensory receptors located at the end of peripheral nerve endings can be temporarily suppressed with local application of cryotherapy. Following a brief summary of cryotherapy, this article is going to focus on hydrotherapy as a mechanism for enhancing performance in the racehorse, focusing on the specific parameters of fitness that can be targeted and thus improved.

• Fundamental properties of water

There are several fundamental principles of water that can be used as a recovery tool to facilitate optimum rehabilitation and ongoing performance improvement. When immersed in water, or made to move through water, the horse’s body, like the human, encounters a medium for which it is not designed, and locomotion is of limited efficiency. It is in fact the imposed limited efficiency that is useful in different training contexts—it forces the body to work harder than on dry ground, thus improving fitness and better preparing the horse’s body for future athletic tests. Similarly, the method of human altitude, or hypoxic training, is where the body will learn to produce the same amount of energy with a significantly lower available amount of oxygen and thus benefit at a later date in a competitive environment.

The effect of hydrostatic pressure increases as water depth increases.

First, and most important in an equine fitness protocol, is the viscosity of the water creating resistance; the resistance offered by water is greater than that experienced in locomotion on dry ground, therefore requiring greater overall effort to move through it. Exercising in water has shown to provide up to 15 times the resistance of exercising on land. This factor alone means that the trainer can achieve a far more challenging training environment without the horse experiencing the concussive forces on the limbs associated with high-end aerobic or anaerobic land based exercise, such as works on a gallops. Resistance also works indirectly at lower water levels whereby horses will choose to step over the water in a bid to avoid resistance. Therapists then utilise this to gain increased flexion at limb joints (further discussion of this throughout the article). Hydrostatic pressure is the pressure exerted on an object when immersed in water. Depth of immersion is an influential factor with greater depth correlating with greater pressure. Depending on the type of hydrotherapy system used, the benefits of hydrostatic pressure will vary. For example, greater hydrostatic pressure will be exerted when using a swimming lane with depths of up to two metres, as opposed to depths of 30-60cm of water on a treadmill. Application of hydrostatic pressure greatly benefits the recovery processes, acting in a similar way as compression bandages. The pressure reduces the formation of oedema, or swelling, and improves the elimination of muscular by-products such as lactic acid and carbon dioxide. Buoyancy is not utilised in the same way as it is in humans and small animal hydrotherapy, except in the use of swimming lanes; this is partly due to the obvious size difference and limitations associated with submerging a horse almost completely in water. Buoyancy is achieved when the weight of the fluid displaced by the body is equal, also accounting for the force of gravity on the body. To remain buoyant, the two forces must counterbalance one another. Once this balance occurs, the body is essentially weightless, allowing exercise without the impact of joint load experienced in land-based exercise. These properties act together during water-based exercise to produce the increased benefits to the horse’s fitness discussed in this article.

• What happens during a hydrotherapy session?

Horses are typically introduced to the hydrotherapy equipment to acclimate them and ensure they will be relaxed while exercising. It is important for the horse to establish a relaxed frame when working on the treadmill or in the hydrotherapy pool to prevent any stress-related or compensatory posture during the workout. As we know from land-based exercise, if a horse is stressed, they are likely to tire more quickly; so in order to utilise this workout, acclimation is beneficial. When using a treadmill, it is typical that the horse warms up on a dry treadmill prior to adding water. As with land-based exercise, a thorough warmup ensures adequate preparation of the horse’s muscles to be ready for harder work during the session.

• The bodily systems during exercise

During a hydrotherapy session, the horse’s different bodily systems will be affected in several ways. But essentially, the efficiency and smooth-running of these systems all contribute to overall performance quality, and any deficiencies will act as an overall limitation. The cardiovascular system is often considered to be the horse’s engine during locomotion, working with the respiratory system in concert to provide the horse with the oxygen needed for exercise as well as dispelling by-products. Working as a muscular pump, the heart delivers oxygen and nutrient-rich blood across the body via a network of blood vessels that develops further with long-term consistent exercise. Supplying this oxygen are the nasal structures; as obligate nasal breathers, horses must breathe through their noses. Flaring of nostrils and dilation of the horse’s larynx work to provide a greater cross-sectional area of space for oxygen uptake. When exercise begins, the previously oxygenated muscles begin to work and enter temporary oxygen debt. The cardiovascular and respiratory systems combat this by working harder to produce a continual supply of oxygenated blood by increasing the number of breaths taken per minute, thus increasing oxygen intake. During hydrotherapy exercise, the respiratory system will be required to deliver elevated levels of oxygen and removal of increased quantities of carbon dioxide. This is because the horse begins to work towards the higher levels of aerobic exercise. At rest, the horse will be taking in approximately 60 litres of air per minute; when moving towards moderately strenuous exercise, this can increase to as much as 2,250 litres of air per minute. From here the heart increases in beats per minute to keep up with this demand. When still working with oxygen the exercise is considered aerobic; when the horse reaches a speed or exercise intensity where they require greater oxygen than is available, the horse will begin working anaerobically. In a hydrotherapy setting, the treadmill can be considered more the equivalent of strength and conditioning training where heart rate does not rise significantly. On the contrary, swimming increases heart rate significantly without the concussive forces of traditional gallop work. This is when the horse is unable to utilise oxidative processes quickly enough—also known as maximum oxygen consumption (VO2max). Any further energy must be generated by anaerobic glycolysis. The horse cannot sustain long periods of anaerobic exercise, but instead the horse’s aerobic capacity becomes greater and thus delays onset of the anaerobic exercise.

Incidentally, horses also experience respiratory locomotor coupling in higher intensity canter and gallop work—a phenomenon that epitomises the efficiency of the horse as a performance animal. The stride and breath are in sync at a harmonious 1:1 ratio; they must lengthen their stride to increase their speed. From a fitness point of view, the respiratory system is often considered the horse’s limiting factor where minimal conditioning takes place of the related structures. Additionally, the horse’s respiratory system is highly specialised for exercise. This means that any damage to or deficiency of the respiratory system can have significant influence on overall performance. Unlike in the human, the horse’s resting heart rate does not lower with increased fitness; therefore, opportunities to measure fitness are reduced to monitoring during exercise and in the recovery phase.

Fitness testing methods may include blood-lactate tests, monitoring of respiratory and exercising heart rate, recovery rate from exercise—with the fitter the horse, the quicker the recovery rate. Like on dry treadmills, the controlled indoor nature of the hydrotherapy environment lends itself well to applying various fitness testing equipment as opposed to some of the environmental constraints often found in in-field exercise environments such as out on a gallops. In contrast, to the respiratory system, the horse’s muscular system has great potential for improvement, and targeted use of hydrotherapy can be hugely beneficial. …

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FMBs Water Treadmills - a unique and innovative product that can be used for both rehabilitation after injury

EQUINE HYDROTHERAPY - SPONSORED CONTENT from FMBS

Equine Aqua Power -Hampshire.

The Water Treadmill from FMBs Therapy Systems is a unique and innovative product that can be used for both rehabilitation after injury and as an important part of a training regime to improve all over suppleness, stride length, muscle tone and core strength. Our Water Treadmills can help maximise performance and reduce the risk of injury offering combined operation with horses being able to be use it dry as well as with water but also with chilled saltwater spa options.

We have nearly 18 years experience in manufacturing and installing water treadmills worldwide, meaning you can rely on our extensive knowledge and experience in the field, plus all our water treadmills are sold with full UK training, backup, support and servicing. We have the benefit of having Dr Matthias Baumann (veterinarian, rehabilitation centre owner and Olympic Gold medal event rider winner) as part of our team for full onsite training post installation. Matthias’ knowledge and experience is immense - he had a water treadmill in his practise for over 20 years and has been involved with numerous studies on working horses in water treadmills. He has extensive practical and scientific experience to achieve the best results for all types of horses both during rehabilitation and as part of specific training programmes.

MP Jump - France.

Our water treadmills are manufactured in Germany using stainless steel construction throughout. They can be run with either fresh water or salt water, depending on your requirements. Additional options available that can be incorporated into the treadmill are spa jets, a water chilling system, an incline function, trot (as well as walk) and a filtration system with options to suit your budget and needs whether operating privately or commercially.

All our water treadmills are supplied with transparent side and doors, so that you can see the horses working from all angles, plus looking down from the user platform which is one of the more important views of how the horses are working through their backs and muscle asymmetries. The treadmills come with an efficient and easy to use full filtration system with pre-filtration (removal of solids), micro filtration (cleaning of the water), water recycling and chemical-free sterilisation. At the press of a button, the filtration will continuously run automatically cleaning, sterilising and recycling your water.

The design and dimensions of the treadmills are important to allow the bigger horses room to work comfortably within their stride length through their backs. There are numerous safety features on our machines which all help to allow horses to work correctly and safely with their head and neck lower. This is really important for the horse’s safety and comfort as well as the training benefit and your results. Speed and water depth is really important to get right for the best results. Our customers find having the experience of Dr Matthias Baumann available to draw on when required invaluable.

Dr Matthias Baumann says, “At the beginning we thought the treadmills were only good on therapy – for ligaments and tendons. Now we have good experience on the training and see the effects are not just for rehabilitation of the legs but also on the back muscles, core strength and flexibility through the spine when you train in the right way, on the right machines.”

With regards to placement of the treadmill, they can either be placed in small pits so horses can walk on and off level to the ground, or placed on concrete with on/off ramps. We will meet with you for an initial site visit, discussing options for placement and ideas of set up based on our vast experience and knowledge, providing you with an efficient solution bespoke to your property, set up and business requirements.

Serena Hickson, managing director of FMBs Therapy Systems, says "On- going research and training is of utmost importance to us. We and our clients are always very happy to get involved with any new research projects to improve overall learning for the equine hydrotherapy industry as a whole. We were pleased to hear of the new organisation, the IEH (Institute of Equine Hydrotherapists), which has been set up to standardise, improve knowledge and support of this growing sector. We are looking forward to sharing knowledge, learning and extensive experience, especially with the water treadmills, to improve the industry as a whole.”

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The dominant limb - can we train a completely symmetrical horse?

By Georgie White

The dominant limb - can we train a completely symmetrical horse?

Limb dominance, handedness and laterality are all terms closely associated with the functions of the left and right hemispheres of the brain and how these may influence preferred use of one side of the body; a direct example in humans would be the preferred hand he/she learns to write with or foot to kick a ball with. The racehorse is often commemorated on their speed or ability to clear a fence, but you would be surprised how relevant limb dominance is to the performance and longevity of a racehorse’s career. This preference is often evident in an individual horse’s preferred canter lead, preferred leading limb in gallop, leading and landing limb over a fence. It can be argued that the former activities can be influenced by training, but to what degree and at what point should we utilize this preference? And when should we pay attention to the risk of injury? This article is going to discuss this relevance and explain the potential implications of limb dominance.

As with many corners of equine research, the observed phenomenon first began from studying the human and has since been studied extensively in performance and leisure horses, respectively. The goal of many a ridden horse is symmetry of movement, the discipline in which they train will dictate the degree of importance of this; the dressage horse can lose palpable marks when they are not symmetrical in their movement, whilst a racehorse may not be as well versed nor will it be a direct measure of performance quality. 

Anatomical structure of a horse’s brain

The primary motor cortex is the central hub of dynamic movement, generating nerve impulses that control the execution of all movements and crossing the body’s midline to activate skeletal muscles. Every part of the body is represented and arranged somatotopically, meaning the area controlling the hoof is close to the area controlling the limb. The amount of brain matter or cortical space devoted to a body part represents the degree of control the horse has over that body part. For example, the human will have far greater cortical space devoted to intricate movements of the hands and fingers compared to the horse. In contrast the horse will have far greater cortical space reserved for movement of the ears, lips and nose to represent the vast number of social cues, foraging behaviors and body language exhibited. Although not yet proven in horses, human athletes have been shown to have increased cortical thickness in areas correlating with athletic ability or skill; this is likely to be the case in equines; for example, racehorses would likely see increases in areas devoted to limb control. 

From a lateralization perspective, the brain is divided into two hemispheres or lobes which are referred to the left and right hemispheres and divided by the corpus callosum. The corpus callosum is an essential structure composed of a thick band of nerve fibers providing communication between the two spheres. Lateralization refers to these hemispheres having distinct functional differences, each offering specialized neural functions or cognitive processes. Lateralization occurs contralaterally, meaning that a horse who is left hemisphere dominant will experience a right-sided motor preference and vice versa. 

What research is there on limb dominance? 

In horses, grazing patterns are often studied, specifically noting which limb is placed forward most often; however, research is varied with some conclusions stating that innate skeletal asymmetry is highly prevalent in the foal and can be exacerbated by environmental factors. It is recommended that a farrier and vet work closely to correct visual asymmetry in goals as early as possible. A valuable longitudinal study completed by Van Heel et al., (2010) found a relationship with uneven forefeet in foals and subsequent unevenness as a yearling and then as a three-year-old; this was then found to correlate with sidedness in trot and canter transitions. This study highlights several points of interest, firstly the distinct need to correct limb asymmetries and abnormalities from an early age and secondly the potential future inclusion of quantitative laterality data at the time of studbook admission to assist breeders and owners in selection criteria. 

Later research by Austin and Rogers (2012) stated there was no significant differences in limb dominance in a group of feral and wild Przewalski’s horses, which suggested that differences can be attributed to domestication at least to some degree. This varying body of evidence opens the discussion on the effect of domestication and relevance of cultural husbandry practices; in the western world it is common practice to complete many routine tasks from the left side of the horse, e.g., leading, tacking up and mounting. Future studies that attempt to measure this cultural influence may choose to select a large group of equines of generally the same breed and discipline to act as a control and prevent skewed results. 

Many studies have attempted to decipher the causes of variation in motor bias. This is yet to have solid evidence behind it, with several studies showing links in gender and breed initially with training likely to play a part as they embark on their ridden career. As with all equine research, it is important to take note of cause and effect; for example, it may not be the fact that the horse is of Thoroughbred breeding, but the likely type of work or environment that a Thoroughbred is placed in that has supplied the correlation. 

The gallop

A balanced change of leading limb can be the difference between winning a race and coming a close second.

As many a rider and trainer will describe, a horse will naturally have a leading limb preference and over a fence, they are generally left to continue with their preference; on the flat, generally left to the jockey’s discretion but the consensus seems to be less interference the better. Then comes the bends. In the transverse gallop, the horse will have a four-beat gait—a pattern of right hind, left hind, right fore, left fore—with the left fore essentially leading the movement and acting as the leading limb round a left hand bend. In the words of Dr. Ray Baran, the correct lead is “the easiest method to get the shortest distance between two points the quickest way”; as a result the horse is in balance. 

Clockwise or counterclockwise? 

Laterality research in the racing Thoroughbred has paid special attention to racetrack direction. …

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The benefit of using ‘yearling rollers - Dr. Russell Mackechnie-Guire asks if a roller is a harmless piece of equipment? -scientists discover performance inhibiting spinal pressure under rollers

Dr. Russell Mackechnie-Guire

Reducing pressure under the saddle, bridle and girth has been found to significantly improve performance, and now the roller has been scientifically tested.

Lost training days, treatment and medication for back problems are time consuming and costly, so optimising equine spinal health from early on is an essential consideration in improving equine health and welfare. When a young horse is started, one of its first experiences is to have tack on its back, initially a lungeing roller. The roller, a seemingly harmless piece of equipment and its effect on the horse, has previously been overlooked. However, it has now come under scientific scrutiny by the same research team that investigated the impact of pressure distribution under the saddle, bridle and girth on equine health and performance.

Their recent study used high-tech pressure mapping to examine the pressures exerted on the horse’s back during lungeing (see technology panel). Localised areas of high pressures were consistently recorded under the roller on the midline of the horse’s back directly over the spinous processes in the region of the 10th and 12th thoracic vertebrae (T10-T12, see anatomy panel).  

High pressure directly in this region, as seen under a conventional roller, is likely to cause the horse to seek a compensatory locomotor strategy and adopt a posture where the back is stiffened and hollowed, resulting in an extended spine. Previous research has shown that back function and gallop kinematics are compromised by a stiffened spine.

Studies have demonstrated that pressure-relieving modifications in a saddle result in increased stride length and hip flexion, along with a greater femur-to-vertical angle (indicating that the hindleg is being brought forward more as the horse gallops). Reducing saddle pressures leads to a marked improvement in the horse’s locomotion, allowing it to gallop more efficiently. 

A modified roller that removes pressure will allow the back to function without restriction.

The roller is positioned over the part of the back where the front half of the saddle sits; by applying these principles, modifying the roller to remove pressure would allow unhindered back function. 

The equine back is an essential component of the locomotor apparatus, transferring biomechanical forces from the hindlimb. So, a modified roller will not only result in improved locomotion and performance but will also have long-term spinal health benefits.

Strong start

In racing, where lungeing is primarily used prior to backing, what we do to and the equipment we use on the young horses in the preparatory stages are likely to have a significant impact on the development of the horse’s posture, back health and locomotion. 

If a young horse begins the training process of being lunged with a roller that exerts pressure directly on the spine at T10-T12, it will develop a strategy to compensate for the discomfort. Then, as the horse progresses to a saddle—which similarly exerts high pressure in the same area—it is inevitable that this will have an effect on the locomotor system. The horse’s athletic performance will be significantly compromised before it even gets on the track. 

Innovative pressure-relieving modifications in tack design have demonstrated improved locomotion when pressure is reduced. Identifying and replacing any equipment that has limiting effects on locomotion or development could have long-term benefits for the longevity and performance of the horse. This applies particularly to the lungeing roller as it is the first piece of tack a youngster has on its back. It is essential that the horse does not develop a locomotor strategy to compensate at this stage.

Under pressure

Pressure mapping during lungeing

Conventional roller - 35kPa pressure directly on the spine at T10

Conventional roller & side reins - pressure consistent at T10 but increases at T11 and T12 to 45kPa

New roller design, even with side reins - all pressure is removed from the spine]

In a recent study, horses were lunged on a 20-metre circle on both reins in trot and canter wearing a roller fitted with pads. In canter, peak pressures were seen each time the inside forelimb was in stance (on the ground). In trot, pressure peaks occurred each time a forelimb was in stance phase. 

Given that the horse is experiencing high pressures under the roller directly on the spine in the region of T10-T12 in every repeated motion cycle (stride), it is inevitable that a compensation strategy will develop.

When trotting and cantering with no attachments, such as side reins or training aids, peak pressures under the centre of the roller were found to be similar to those seen under the saddle with a rider on board. Studies have shown pressures over 30kPa can cause back discomfort. In this study, researchers measured pressures up to 35kPa directly on the midline of the horse’s spine, in every stride, with just a roller and pad.

With side reins attached, the location of the peak pressure was brought further towards the front edge of the roller. Essentially, the pull of the side reins caused a ridge of pressure under the front half of the roller, and the readings increased to 45kPa.

Compensation costs

Compensatory gait strategies lead to asymmetric forces which have a negative effect on limb kinematics (movement). The consideration here is that the horse is experiencing these locomotor compromises before the back has been conditioned to manage the increased forces, and before a jockey has even sat on its back. 

It remains to be shown whether the compensatory gait and asymmetric forces caused by early roller pressure manifest as lameness or loss of performance later on. There is a coexisting relationship between back problems and limb lameness, but evidence is still being gathered as to which one comes first. Researchers are investigating to what extent loss of performance and lameness issues might be traced back to these ‘training and backing’ experiences. It is therefore essential that young horses are started with correctly fitting equipment to limit any long-term effect.

Lungeing for rehab

In addition to the backing process, lungeing also occurs during other influential periods of a horse’s life, including rehabilitation after surgery. Post-operative recommendations for kissing spines can often include lunge work with training aids to induce spinal flexion and opening up of dorsal spinous processes. …

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