How to adapt the race distance to win

In association with Arioneo

How often have you heard that a horse is bred to race a certain distance? That may be accurate, but sometimes stride length and frequency data say otherwise. Some research shows the interest in modelling a horse’s race distance using locomotion data. Thus, we could theoretically use the measurement of a horse’s stride frequency to determine his ideal distance.

Although it may not appear to be a big deal, extending 100 or 200m to the regular race distance might help a horse’s season in specific circumstances.

Madame Arionea’s story – Concrete example

·        4yo filly that we will call Madame Arionea

·        During her 2yo season, she raced over 1100m (5.5f) and ran well

·        During her 3yo season, she didn’t show any progress even though she showed good fitness abilities during training

Why did this promising mare fail to advance in her three-year-old season over 1100m (5.5f) while demonstrating strong physical ability in training?

1.      Assessing her fitness

To begin analysing Madame Arionea’s underperformance, we will review her cardiac data from her three-year season.

We can evaluate Madame Arionea’s recovery and thus quantify her fitness level by studying the evolution of heart rate and speed at the same time. If it is insufficient, this may explain her poor performances.

Heart rate and speed curves from the Equimetre platform

Madame Arionea recovers rather effectively after her effort, as seen by a fall in the heart rate curve at the same time as the decrease in the speed curve.

Analytics - Equimetre platform

The data in this table shows the various exercises performed at speeds greater than 60km/h. This enables us to assess recovery capability and its progression following a high-intensity activity.

The data provided above allow us to confirm that Madame Arionea is in excellent physical condition.

Indeed, her recovery ability is classified as normal both immediately after the activity and 15 minutes afterwards.

About Equimetre – Racehorse Monitoring system

2.     A better understanding of the stride profile

Following this discovery, another type of data should be investigated: locomotion. Stride length and stride frequency analysis has been suggested as a technique for modelling a racehorse’s preferred distance. Thus, by quantifying a horse’s stride frequency, one may possibly determine the race distance over which he performs best.

Good to know

·        According to the theory, a large stride length paired with a less remarkable stride frequency correlates to a miler or stayer stride profile. A profile that combines a very high stride frequency with a less spectacular stride length, on the other hand, belongs to a sprinter.

·        It is important to remember that horses are living beings and high-level athletes, and that these principles on the pair stride length/frequency pair do not represent a precise science but provide valuable references.

To assess Madame Arionea’s stride abilities, we shall examine her stride frequency and length at a speed of 60 km/h rather than at top speed. This enables us to make appropriate comparisons between training sessions and investigate this parameter under the same settings.

From the above data, we can define Madame Arionea’s stride profile.

Because her stride frequency does not enable her to compete with horses with the profile of a Sprinter, this mare would be better comfortable at a distance slightly longer than 1100m (5.5f).

3.      Madame Arionea’s acceleration strategy

Let’s have a look at Madame Arionea’s acceleration strategy to round up this examination. This involves measuring her change in stride length and stride frequency during the training’s acceleration phase. This technique enables us to objectively assess Madame Arionea’s acceleration.

Madame Arionea reaches her maximum speed by increasing of her stride length (green curve) first. What does this tell us? Her acceleration time will be longer, but this will allow her to save her energy since the heart rate is based on the horse's stride rhythm. In a longer stride, she breathes longer, and inhales a greater volume of air.  Thus, the race distance chosen should allow Madame Arionea to take the time necessary to reach her maximum speed during the final sprint.

WHAT DECISION DID THE TRAINERS MAKE REGARDING THIS ANALYSIS?

Given Madame Arionea’s positive 2-year-old season over 1100m and her locomotion data, the trainers decided to progressively increase her racing distance and attempt her over 1300 / 1400m (6.5f / 7f).

Madame Arionea was not monitored throughout her two-year-old season, but we can make the following assumptions. The mare’s locomotion changed once she gained strength and endurance. Her stride length grew while her stride frequency decreased. As a result, for her to perform successfully, her racing distance needed to be increased to provide her time to accelerate.

Madame Arionea won her first race over 1300m (6.5 f), and never race again under 1300m. 

The gait of a horse can change as he ages. For example, even if a horse had a good sprint season as a two-year-old, his locomotion evolution must be quantified. You may check that the distance chosen for future races is adequate for his locomotor profile this manner.

Inexplicable underperformance: investigate it with the ECG analysis

In association with Arioneo

Providing veterinarians with a real diagnostic challenge, underperformance in the racehorse can be difficult to investigate if the horse’s environment does not benefit from reliable technologies to collect historical data. Indeed, it is difficult to determine the cause of underperformance without almost daily monitoring. The symptoms to be identified are most often subclinical, i.e. they are difficult to detect at rest and during effort.  The detection of under-performing horses within the racing industry is a real challenge. Carrying out prevention and detection work could in fact make it possible to avoid serious accidents in training or on the racecourse.

In order to detect the elements influencing the performance of the athletic horse, it is interesting to analyse  evolution during an exercise because things that do not occur at rest can appear.

In a series of two articles, we will analyse two cases of underperformance encountered by the leading vet,  Dr Emmanuelle van Erck.

In the first case we investigate the loss of performance of a 3-year-old filly. The latter had promising performances during her 2-year-old season and then injured her tendon. The trainer decided to stop her until next season. Once prepared for the return to training, the mare showed good abilities and her return was very satisfying. However, a nosebleed was detected after a small canter. The tracks were not particularly deep and there were no circumstances that could explain this bleeding.

In order to investigate the causes of this bleed, the first step was to analyse the data from the mare when she presented her nose bleed. 

Screenshots of the EQUIMETRE Platform

It can be seen that the speed data are low: the effort does not go beyond 47km/h. The effort was of low intensity, but the heart rate is still very high, up to 217 bpm.

It was necessary to analyse the data from a more sustained training session in order to observe what is happening.

The data is normal: the heart rate changes at the same time as the speed. 

The veterinarian decided to compare the horse’s data with those of the other horses, who have done similar work. The data does not show any recovery anomalies, the two curves that are superimposed do not show any significant difference. Her heart rate is a little high after the effort, but nothing catastrophic is observed.

1st conclusion: There is no explanation for the nosebleed in the data.

The veterinarian then decides to look at the ECG of this mare. The latter is pathological and shows 8 superventricular extrasystoles in 1 minute. This is far too frequent, especially in the warm-up and recovery phase.

ECG collected by the EQUIMETRE. Arrows show the arrhythmias.

2nd conclusion: The mare has relatively correct parameters. However, arrhythmias during effort are detected. They lead to the bleeding because the mare is in hyper-tension at the pulmonary level each time, she has an arrhythmia. During an arrhythmia, the heart skips a beat: whereas it should have beaten and expelled blood, the heart continues to fill up until the next beat, where it expels a large amount of blood, which puts too much pressure on the delicate blood vessels in the lungs and causes them to burst, resulting in bleeding.

It is therefore necessary to investigate bleeding during the effort. To do this, the veterinarian has performed a bronco-alveolar lavage. That is to say, he took cells from the lungs to analyse them under a microscope. The examination revealed regular bleeding in the lungs. Although she only had a nosebleed once, there was a bleeding in the lungs at each training session. The veterinarian must then understand the reason for this bleeding.

As the mare has no underlying heart problem (no heart murmur, no heart abnormalities and a normal heart morphology), the vet decides to examine the tendon. It is noticed that the tendon is abnormally scarred. This induces stress on the tendon which triggers pain manifested by extrasystoles visible on the ECG. When the mare is working under anti-inflammatory medication, she has less extrasystole, but this is not possible during the race. The pain explains the arrythmias that cause the bleeding. 

It is necessary to follow the mare over time in order to evaluate her pain tolerance by means of ECGs. Without reducing the arrhythmias, it is not recommended to put her back into intense training. If she is engaged in racing, she risks having irreversible lesions in her tendon as well as more severe bleedings.

Technology at the service of the performance and well-being of the equine athlete

The role of new technologies today is to make the link between veterinarians and trainers. It is impossible for the veterinarian to be present every day at training. Thus, thanks to monitoring, the vet can carry out preventive work at a distance by following indicators from the computer. If the trainer detects an alarming sign, they can talk to their veterinarian about it and show the vet the data history. These connected systems improve the monitoring of horses and the connection between the different members of their entourage.

Human athletes all benefit from these technologies to protect them on a daily basis while maximising their chances of performing. The racing world in turn, has the opportunity to protect its athletes!

CLICK HERE to return to issue contents.

Tech advances - opportunities for trainers

By Alysen Miller

From heart rate monitors to GPS trackers, smart treadmills to light masks and even Artificial Intelligence, a plethora of new technologies has breezed onto the market in recent years, all claiming to offer trainers an edge in a sport where every pixel in a photo finish counts. And it’s not just on the gallops where their impact is being felt; everywhere from the barn to the breeding shed, a raft of new gadgets is quietly powering a technological revolution that has the power to reshape the racing industry. So in this brave new world, how do trainers ensure that they are exploiting every possible technological advantage at their disposal in their quest to leave no margin left ungained?

The reality is that, in an increasingly data-driven world, racing has been ironically slow to catch on to technologies that have already become mainstream in sports ranging from running to cycling. Every MAMIL (middle-aged man in lycra) worth his electrolyte gel has his own GPS tracker fitted to his carbon fibre bike. Now, companies such as Arioneo and Gmax are helping the racing industry catch up to the peloton by providing real-time exercise data, allowing trainers to track horses’ speed, cadence, sectional times and stride length, as well as heart rate and other biometrics using a device fitted to the horse’s girth. These data are then fed back to an app, allowing every aspect of the horse’s work and recovery to be assessed. 

Lambourn-based husband and wife team Claire and Daniel Kübler were easily adaptable to the cause. “We did a lot of research when we started training, going, “OK, what’s out there to actually put a bit more science behind what people do”? There’s so much data, so the more you can have, the better decisions you’re going to make”, explains Claire. “I started graphing out the data that we gathered, looking at frequency of stride to see where horses [and trip] correlate. It has actually helped to pinpoint when a horse does want a distance or it when it wants dropping back to a more speed trip. So it was really useful to help decide which way to go”. 

Horse wearing a heart rate monitor and GPS tracker.

Armed with a degree in Natural Sciences from Cambridge University, Kübler realised that the concept of marginal gains (European Trainer - December 2015 - issue 52) was as relevant to the racing industry as it was to other sports. Popularised by Sir David Brailsford—the erstwhile head of British Cycling and latterly doyen of professional cycling behemoth Team Ineos (formerly Team Sky)—the theory of marginal gains states that if you break down every element you can think of that goes into the performance of an athlete, and then improve each element by 1%, you will achieve a significant aggregated increase in performance. 

“The optimum is getting 100% out of a horse. But for us, every little bit of marginal gain can hopefully get the most out of each individual”,

Artificial Intelligence (AI) may conjure images of a dystopian future, but it is already being used in technologies available to trainers in the United States and Canada. Billed as the world’s first ‘smart halter’, or headcollar, Nightwatch was developed by Texas-based Protequus to monitor horses while they are in their stables overnight. “Unlike a lot of other wearables, this technology is based on an AI platform, which means that it learns every animal’s unique physiology and looks for deviations in that physiology that correlate with pain or distress and will send a text, phone and email to you so you can intervene at the earliest signs of a possible problem”, says the company’s Founder and CEO, Jeffrey Schab. The company is aiming to make Nightwatch available to European consumers by 2020.

If the worst does happen, a host of companies are harvesting the latest tech to aid in pain management and rehabilitation. Among these is the ArcEquine, a wearable brace that delivers a microcurrent to aid in the repair of soft tissue injuries by increasing levels of Adenosine Triphosphate (ATP) within affected cells. While the benefits of water therapy and treadmills have long been recognised by trainers, the latest gadget from ECB is a smart water treadmill that essentially functions as a Fitbit for horses. Not only does it incorporate salt- and cold-water functions as well as an incline feature, the treadmill comes with a built-in computer that allows the user to set programmes for particular horses, while feeding this data back to a phone or tablet for analysis. “By playing around with speed, water depth and incline, you can target specific muscles, control the heart rate, dictate the horse’s stride length and work on the horse’s straightness,” says Richard Norden, sales and marketing manager.

Elsewhere, scientists are working on ways to help increase athletic performance even when a horse is resting. Dr Barbara Murphy, Head of Equine Science at University College Dublin, has pioneered the use of light therapy on racehorses. Her smart lighting system mimics the effects of natural daylight by exposing horses to the correct spectral intensity of light to synchronise their internal clock. This has been shown to have performance-enhancing benefits, as well as increasing reproductive efficiency in broodmares. Essentially, natural daylight has a high amount of blue, short wavelength light. This blue light targets special photoreceptors in the eye that stimulate the circadian control centre in the brain, boosting activity, metabolism and alertness. 

“When we consider that horses have evolved outdoors under natural photoperiods, they received high intensity blue-enriched light by day, then the sun goes down and they experienced un-interrupted darkness at night. These continuous fluctuating light-dark cycles maintained their strong body rhythms. In contrast, when we stable horses in a box for up to 22 hours a day, it’s really important that we give them the light stimulus that allows their body to work as best as it can,”explains Murphy. Her company, Equilume, offers stable lighting systems and futuristic-looking light masks that shine low-level blue light directly into the horse’s eye. While the importance of correct lighting is only just beginning to be understood, it should not be underestimated, according to Murphy. “We spend so much money on nutrition, training surfaces and veterinary care, [but] the single environmental cue that makes everything work in synchrony in the horse’s body is the light that they receive through their eyes. Temperature and food plays a role, but it doesn’t play as important a role as light. So by improving lighting we can ensure that horses get better value out of their feed, out of their training, out of all other aspects of their management.”

It is not only in the area of performance that technology is playing a role. Programmes such as Stable IT and Equine Medirecord help trainers achieve gains at the margins through maximising efficiency. “The last thing you want to be dealing with is paperwork”, says Pierce Dargan, founder of Equine Medirecord. “Especially paperwork that, if you get it wrong, you can get fined and end up in the papers, or even get criminally prosecuted”…

TO READ MORE —

BUY THIS ISSUE IN PRINT OR DOWNLOAD

July - September 2019, issue 66 (PRINT)

£8.95

Quantity:

Add to Cart

July - September, issue 66 (DIGITAL)

£4.95

Add to Cart

WHY NOT SUBSCRIBE?

DON'T MISS OUT AND SUBSCRIBE TO RECEIVE THE NEXT FOUR ISSUES!