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.
Are the elite sales horses being prepared for their big day in the ring or a career on the track?
By Lissa Oliver
A question that continues to divide commercial breeders and racehorse trainers is the definition of The Big Day. Many trainers believe too much pressure is put on horses during sales preparation, because for breeders the big day is a major price at a major sale. I therefore examined the high-end sales market, looking at the Top Ten sales toppers at major sales over a 10-year period, from 2005 to 2014, and their subsequent racing careers.
As we saw in the previous issue, the assumption that the highest-priced (and thereby possibly the recorders of the fastest times) breeze-up horses would be ready to run wasn't necessarily the case, with 40% of the graduates not seeing a racecourse until three-year-olds or older. Of those that raced as two-year-olds, the highest number of debuts were made in July, with August close behind. More started in September and October than in May and June, and only 11% managed to win first time out at two. Sixty percent ran at two, 26% won as two-year-olds, and 14% failed to reach the racecourse, with an overall figure of 56% winners from the Top Ten of the selected sales over the decade.
Similarly, the supposed advantage of choosing from mature horses at the National Hunt store sales wasn't obvious in the results. There were significantly fewer unraced purchases compared to the Flat sales, with 8% at the Derby Sale and only 4% at the Land Rover, but 59% of graduates went on to win, which was on a par with the breeze-up graduates and, as we shall now see, the yearlings. In fact, given the higher proportion of runners, the National Hunt store graduates could even be argued to have produced a poorer proportion of winners.
In this issue, therefore, I will examine the yearling sales and the subsequent racecourse performance of the elite Top Ten purchases at the selected sales from 2005 to 2014. Career earnings have been included, but only as a guide to the general ability of the horse. The trading of horses in training means that earnings themselves have little relevance on whether a horse turned a profit on its original purchase price, and the residual paddock value of fillies also renders their career earnings irrelevant.
What the career earnings did reveal was that some British-trained winners have amassed only €4,000 or less in earnings. This covers just eight weeks of training fees and is a derisible reward for a winning owner, particularly when in Ireland, for example, minimum prize money has risen from €6,000 to €10,000 and a single win could pay the bills for four or five months.
Despite the prevailing idea that sales toppers don’t live up to expectations, the last 10 years of data of graduates of racing age (400 horses in total) paints a far rosier picture. Though 14% remained unraced, there is still a reasonably high strike rate of 59% winners graduating from the Top Ten of the four major European yearling sales, 11% of graduates winning at blacktype level.
Goffs Orby....
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Lissa Oliver's Spring Sales Analysis
By Lissa Oliver
A question that has divided commercial breeders and racehorse trainers since Tattersalls first decided to auction thoroughbreds is the definition of The Big Day.
For trainers, it is a major race at a major festival. Although every commercial breeder dreams of a high-profile winner, their big day is a major price at a major sale. Why else do we differentiate between commercial breeders and those who breed to race, lamenting the loss of the traditional owner-breeder at every dispersal sale?
If the outcome of the matings and sales preparation resulted in The Big Day for both parties, there would be no complaints, but as some have learned to their cost, the sales topper doesn’t always reach such dizzy heights again. The excitement and anticipation generated by the final knock-down figure builds to hype if and when the sales topper makes its racecourse debut, but can sometimes be followed by immediate disappointment and obscurity.
But is this always the case, and for all of the elite sales horses? And how does a big day in the sales ring affect the elite two-year-olds, prepared for the breeze-up sales that are often referred to as ready-to-run sales? Are the juveniles ready to run or, as some trainers suspect, over-boiled?
To see if any emerging pattern can shed light on these questions, I looked at the racecourse performances of the best-selling breeze-up juveniles and three-year-old National Hunt store horses from certain sales. I chose the period of 2005 to 2014 to obtain 10 years of data and to allow for the most recent of the graduates to reach their potential on the track, and I followed the careers of the 10 highest-priced lots sold (not unsold or bought in) at each selected sale. Because the Goresbridge Breeze-Up sale only began in 2006, a total of 490 horses were included from the five selected sales.
As most trainers earn a living by trading horses, career earnings often have little relevance on whether or not a purchase turned a profit. Many of the graduates here have gone on to long careers in Japan, Hong Kong, Dubai, Australia, or the USA, so their second-hand value is likely to have exceeded their original purchase price. In the case of the fillies, a residual paddock value also renders their career earnings redundant. However, the earnings on track do provide a measure of the ability of the individual and the longevity of career. A non-blacktype winner amassing more than €30,000 has undoubtedly been a top-class handicapper or a tough and consistent performer throughout a lengthy career.
What is quite shocking to see is that some British-trained horses who have both won and placed second during their career have amassed only €4,000 or less in earnings. This covers just eight weeks of training fees and is surely scant reward for a winning horse, particularly when in Ireland, for example, minimum prize money has risen from €6,000 to €10,000 and a single win could pay the bills for five months.
Regardless of whether a Flat breezer or National Hunt store horse can recover its purchase price, we can be sure that the store horse will at least recover its physical and mental well-being by the time its career begins. Many trainers of two-year-olds argue differently when it comes to the breeze-up graduates and so we must also examine the results to see if the preparation for these sales has any negative effect. Though times are not officially taken at European breeze-up sales, it can be assumed that the 10 highest-priced two-year-olds put in the most impressive gallop, so it will be of interest to see how this impacts, if at all, their immediate career.
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Diagnostic imaging in yearlings - Predicting future soundness
The quest to own or train the perfect racehorse can have many starting points. For many people the search for the Holy Grail begins at the yearling sales, where horsemen from around the globe inspect and agonize over young horseflesh, dreaming and hoping of attaining that future champion.
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THIS ARTICLE FIRST APPEARED IN - (North American Trainer - issue 31 - February 2014) (European Trainer - issue 45 - Spring 2014)
Is conformation in racehorses relevant?
The 2008 yearling sales have begun! Thousands of blue-blooded Thoroughbreds will have their conformation analyzed by trainers, owners and those conformation experts – bloodstock agents. Each catalogue is promoted with photographs of the current superstars sold at last year’s sale. However, does examining a horse’s conformation really give you a better idea as to whether you are looking at next year’s superstar?
James Tate BVMS MRCVS (European Trainer - issue 23 - Autumn 2008)
Should sales catalogues include information on medication?
Geir Stabell (01 October 2007 - Issue Number: 5)
By Geir Stabell
Not too long ago, I saw a TV interview with Terje Haakonssen, three times World Champion snowboard rider. When talking about his lifestyle, and that of the general public, he made an interesting point; “Look carefully at what you eat, take it seriously”, he said, “People don’t. You know, a man is ever so careful about what quality of petrol and oil he gets for his new car. But when he has filled it up with the best he can find, the most expensive, he buys a full fat cheese burger and a large coke for himself.” Perhaps many of us value our cars more than we value our bodies. Look around you. It certainly appears to be the case, doesn’t it.
Haakonsen is a man obsessed with quality and image. In 1998, he boycotted the Nagano Games because he felt the Olympic image was not good enough for his sport. Can you imagine a leading owner boycotting a high profile race meeting, or a top thoroughbred breeder boycotting a leading sale, for similar reasons? Probably not. Haakonsen’s world is different to the horseracing world. He is a bit of a loner, but has many admirers way outside the circles of his minority sport, simply because he talks a lot of sense. The racing industry could do with someone like him.
Labelling of food products have become more of an issue lately, and when going to the supermarket I actually notice some reading these labels. On the other hand, I have also been stared at when taking a minute to compare the amounts of energy, fat, salt and sugar in, say, various breakfast cereals.
“Looks almost like he is studying a pedigree page”, I once heard a man say to the other as they passed behind me while I performed such a study. Living in Newmarket has its charms. I found the remark amusing too, until I began thinking about it on my way home. Actually, a pack of breakfast cereals costing less than three pounds is better labelled, by stricter regulations, than any million-dollar yearling passing through the ring at any public auction.
When studying sales catalogue pages, it strikes me more and more how much of the crucial information has been left out. It will never happen but I can assure you that if I did consider purchasing an expensive yearling, I would not base my decision on what has been printed in the catalogue. Of course, one has to do proper, independent research, but what exactly is the point of these sales catalogues, if they are not even able to give you half the story, half the truth, about this fragile four-legged product on offer? Using the sales catalogue as your source of information, you do not get the official ratings of horses that have run, nor of their relatives. You very seldom get any information about the races these horses have won or been placed in, such as distance, surface, were they handicaps or weight for age races, if in England were they ‘banded races’ and so on. There is no information on whether horses have raced with blinkers or cheek-pieces, or whether they have been bandaged when running. And, more importantly, there is absolutely no information on any use of any medication. Believe you me, that is the one piece of information that, according to common sense and law, absolutely should be included. Having run in blinkers has never made a horse less valuable to a future owner. A history of medication, and a pedigree elevated to black type status with the help of medication, certainly has. In particular in Europe, where one does not allow racing of horses on medication.
A friend of mine bought a horse at a public auction in Europe. The horse had performed well in Listed events, and he was going to Scandinavia, where his level of form would make him one of the top performers. Since the horse also had a nice pedigree, a good conformation and was consigned by one of the bigger operations in Europe, my friend was quite excited when getting the final bid. So was his trainer. Until he raced him. One run revealed why local bidders had not gone higher when he went through the ring; the horse was a bleeder. Could not win a race even in Norway, and how he had been able to perform so well for his previous owner on a few occasions remains a mystery. My friend wrote to the vendor, explaining the situation and suggesting that they should take him back. That never happened of course. So, my friend decided to send the horse to USA where, surprise, surprise, he won quite a few times, even in nice allowance races at principal tracks, when racing on Lasix.
At most major international sales, they have established a repository facility for x-rays, allowing vendors to lodge x-rays applicable to the sale of their horses. This is one step in the right direction. When you buy an expensive horse, or any horse for that matter, is it so much to ask, if one also demands accurate information on its medical history? I don’t think so. Nor do I think it is too much to ask, if someone wants the simple information on the horse’s closest relatives; did any of them, at any point in their careers, run on medication? Let’s get briefly back to the man with the car and the hamburger. Would he buy this expensive car, if he was informed that “this is a real classic, a beautiful car, with elegant interior, sexy seats and a powerful engine, but, mind, you, the engine tends to switch itself off from time to time… it seems to be genetic and we can’t do much about it.” When you buy a horse at public auction, part of the “engine” may already be a bit dodgy. If you buy a young horse with an American pedigree, the chances are very high that you also buy a horse from a family that has, for generations, been racing on medication. If you plan to race the animal in a jurisdiction where such medication is allowed, that may be just fine. If you plan to stand the horse at stud, in a jurisdiction where medication is allowed, that is also fine. If not, you could soon be in trouble with this horse. Thus far only Germany has taken a strong stand on medication in their breeding stock. No stallion is approved if he has raced on medication. That is some difference, compared to the situation in North America. Change may be coming there also though.
There is a will in USA to do something about medication. As explained in Trainer, Spring Issue 2007, the Jackson’s Horse Owner’s Protective Association is lobbying hard for a marketplace which would allow buyers of horses to return the horse and demand a full refund, if veterinary records are falsified or information is omitted. Any administration of drugs would have to be disclosed. The association’s lawyer Kevin McGee says: ”The actual buyers and sellers of horses would like to see this in Kentucky because it would strengthen the integrity of the business. This would be an excellent way to encourage new owners to come into the business because it reduces the mystery of buying a horse.”
Exactly. Three key words; “reduces the mystery”. These words can hardly be used too often, in too many contexts, in this industry. Where better to start, than with the sales catalogues?
Achieving a better image, that of a clean, honest, open and transparent bloodstock market place, will not be quick process. There can be little doubt, however, that addressing the problem with medication in a serious way, and make some progress in this field, will help speeding up such a process. If you believe fallers and fatal injuries at Aintree and Cheltenham creates about the worst possible publicity horseracing can get, think again. In the wake of any death on the track in North America, one often sees a flood of letters, articles and opinions posted and published on the internet, almost exclusively pointing the finger sharply at the use of medication.
Too many bad write ups will make it even harder to recruit new investors to the game, but bringing the issue of medication into the sales rings, might help a lot. What does a bloodstock agent reply, to the wealthy ‘newcomer’ at the sales, if he expresses a wish to bid as a yearling enters the ring and says, “I like this one, let’s go to 200,000 or so, but, by the way, does this family have a history of use of medication?”
Print it in the catalogue and, provided the man has a copy of it and that he can read, he will know the answer. Regardless of where the lot was bred or has been raced. This is not at all a problem exclusive to the US market. American bred horses, and horses with American pedigrees, fill many a page also in many a European sales catalogue. When I was asked to do this article, posing the question, “should information on medication be included in sales catalogues”, it is was so tempting to give a reply like; “Yes, do it” or perhaps one like; “Should health warnings remain on the tobacco packaging?”
Common sense does not always win through in this world, especially not when up against commercial interests. Horseracing and breeding is a global industry, and herein lies the problem. Not that it is global, but that it is an industry. More than it is a sport. It may have set out as a sport, but commercial factors are at the forefront and more and more dominant these days. Therefore, some breeders, consigners, sales companies, perhaps even bloodstock agents, may be opposed to the idea of publishing information on medication in catalogues.
In one corner of Europe, there is no need for any catalogue information on any use of medication for any of the country’s stallions. Germany is the nation where you cannot stand a stallion at stud if he has been raced on medication. That’s a good policy, and it should help improve the breed. Provided, of course, that none of these stallions have been trained on medication. And provided that all the mares bred to these stallions have also been trained and raced without the aid of medication. Not trying to complicate matters even further here, only trying to point out what a jungle this actually is.
Racehorses are bred from sires who raced almost exclusively with the aid of medication. Horses are being bred out of mares who also raced on medication, but a vast number of horses are out of mares that never raced. Disclosing the reason why these mares failed to make it to the racecourse, is probably quite impossible. One thing can be said for certain though, that any man or woman who spends a considerable amount of money on a yearling, is hoping that the animal will one day be physically capable of taking part in a race.
Everyone who buys a yearling should know that about one in five yearlings actually never become racehorses. Therefore, deciding how good the chances are for one particular individual is important. Disclosing all information about any use of raceday medication in the family, gives the purchaser a better chance of assessing a yearling’s chances of making it to the racecourse, than information on, for example, how many races a couple of grandsons of the third dam managed to win.
I would suggest that information about any use of medication, going back three generations, should be included in all sales catalogues, even if it means pushing some information low on the page off the page. With catalogues published online, even that should not be a problem – an extra few lines, or even an extra page, means nothing in this way of publishing. “Still not possible”, I hear some say.
I see. How about this line of thought then; that such steps would actually help the thoroughbred industry in its so-called strive at “enhancing the breed”.
The way things are going now, that is not exactly the case is it.
Should sales catalogues include information on medication - it's a case of black and white!
Not too long ago, I saw a TV interview with Terje Haakonssen, three times World Champion snowboard rider. When talking about his lifestyle, and that of the general public, he made an interesting point; “Look carefully at what you eat, take it seriously,” he said, “People don’t. You know, a man is ever so careful about what quality of petrol and oil he gets for his new car. But when he has filled it up with the best he can find, the most expensive, he buys a full-fat cheeseburger and a large coke for himself.” Perhaps many of us value our cars more than we value our bodies.
Geir Stabell (European Trainer - issue 19 - Autumn 2007)
Not too long ago, I saw a TV interview with Terje Haakonssen, three times World Champion snowboard rider. When talking about his lifestyle, and that of the general public, he made an interesting point; “Look carefully at what you eat, take it seriously,” he said, “People don’t. You know, a man is ever so careful about what quality of petrol and oil he gets for his new car. But when he has filled it up with the best he can find, the most expensive, he buys a full-fat cheeseburger and a large coke for himself.”
Perhaps many of us value our cars more than we value our bodies. Look around you. It certainly appears to be the case, doesn’t it?
Haakonsen is a man obsessed with quality and image. In 1998, he boycotted the Nagano Games because he felt the Olympic image was not good enough for his sport. Can you imagine a leading owner boycotting a high profile race meeting, or a top thoroughbred breeder boycotting a leading sale, for similar reasons? Probably not. Haakonsen’s world is different to the horseracing world. He is a bit of a loner, but has many admirers way outside the circles of his minority sport, simply because he talks a lot of sense. The racing industry could do with someone like him.
Labelling of food products have become more of an issue lately, and when going to the supermarket I actually notice some reading these labels. On the other hand, I have also been stared at when taking a minute to compare the amounts of energy, fat, salt and sugar in, say, various breakfast cereals.
“Looks almost like he is studying a pedigree page,” I once heard a man say to the other as they passed behind me while I performed such a study. Living in Newmarket has its charms. I found the remark amusing too, until I began thinking about it on my way home. Actually, a pack of breakfast cereals costing less than three pounds is better labelled, by stricter regulations, than any million-dollar yearling passing through the ring at any public auction.
When studying sales catalogue pages, it strikes me more and more how much of the crucial information has been left out. It will never happen but I can assure you that if I did consider purchasing an expensive yearling, I would not base my decision on what has been printed in the catalogue. Of course, one has to do proper, independent research, but what exactly is the point of these sales catalogues, if they are not even able to give you half the story, half the truth, about this fragile four-legged product on offer?
Using the sales catalogue as your source of information, you do not get the official ratings of horses that have run, nor of their relatives. You very seldom get any information about the races these horses have won or been placed in, such as distance, surface, were they handicaps or weight for age races, if in England were they ‘banded races’ and so on. There is no information on whether horses have raced with blinkers or cheek-pieces, or whether they have been bandaged when running.
And, more importantly, there is absolutely no information on any use of any medication. Believe you me, that is the one piece of information that, according to common sense and law, absolutely should be included. Having run in blinkers has never made a horse less valuable to a future owner. A history of medication, and a pedigree elevated to black type status with the help of medication, certainly has. In particular in Europe, where one does not allow racing of horses on medication.
A friend of mine bought a horse at a public auction in Europe. The horse had performed well in Listed events, and he was going to Scandinavia, where his level of form would make him one of the top performers. Since the horse also had a nice pedigree, a good conformation and was consigned by one of the bigger operations in Europe, my friend was quite excited when getting the final bid. So was his trainer. Until he raced him. One run revealed why local bidders had not gone higher when he went through the ring; the horse was a bleeder. He could not win a race even in Norway, and how he had been able to perform so well for his previous owner on a few occasions remains a mystery. My friend wrote to the vendor, explaining the situation and suggesting that they should take him back. That never happened of course. So, my friend decided to send the horse to USA where, surprise, surprise, he won quite a few times, even in nice allowance races at principal tracks, when racing on Lasix.
At most major international sales, they have established a repository facility for x-rays, allowing vendors to lodge x-rays applicable to the sale of their horses. This is one step in the right direction.
When you buy an expensive horse, or any horse for that matter, is it so much to ask to also demand accurate information on its medical history? I don’t think so. Nor do I think it is too much to ask, if someone wants the simple information on the horse’s closest relatives: did any of them, at any point in their careers, run on medication? Let’s get briefly back to the man with the car and the hamburger. Would he buy this expensive car, if he was informed that “this is a real classic, a beautiful car, with elegant interior, sexy seats and a powerful engine, but, mind, you, the engine tends to switch itself off from time to time… it seems to be genetic and we can’t do much about it.”
When you buy a horse at public auction, part of the “engine” may already be a bit dodgy. If you buy a young horse with an American pedigree, the chances are very high that you also buy a horse from a family that has, for generations, been racing on medication. If you plan to race the animal in a jurisdiction where such medication is allowed, that may be just fine. If you plan to stand the horse at stud in a jurisdiction where medication is allowed, that is also fine. If not, you could soon be in trouble with this horse. Thus far only Germany has taken a strong stand on medication in their breeding stock. No stallion is approved if he has raced on medication. That is some difference, compared to the situation in North America. Change may be coming there also though.
There is a will in the USA to do something about medication. As explained in North American Trainer, Spring Issue 2007, the Jackson’s Horse Owner’s Protective Association is lobbying hard for a marketplace which would allow buyers of horses to return the horse and demand a full refund, if veterinary records are falsified or information is omitted. Any administration of drugs would have to be disclosed. The association’s lawyer Kevin McGee says:
”The actual buyers and sellers of horses would like to see this in Kentucky because it would strengthen the integrity of the business. This would be an excellent way to encourage new owners to come into the business because it reduces the mystery of buying a horse.”
Exactly. Three key words; “reduces the mystery.” These words can hardly be used too often, in too many contexts, in this industry. Where better to start, than with the sales catalogues?
Achieving a better image, that of a clean, honest, open and transparent bloodstock marketplace, will not be quick process. There can be little doubt, however, that addressing the problem with medication in a serious way, and make some progress in this field, will help speeding up such a process. If you believe fallers and fatal injuries at Aintree and Cheltenham creates about the worst possible publicity horseracing can get, think again.
In the wake of any death on the track in North America, one often sees a flood of letters, articles and opinions posted and published on the internet, almost exclusively pointing the finger sharply at the use of medication.
Too many bad write-ups will make it even harder to recruit new investors to the game, but bringing the issue of medication into the sales rings might help a lot. What does a bloodstock agent reply, to the wealthy ‘newcomer’ at the sales, if he expresses a wish to bid as a yearling enters the ring and says, “I like this one, let’s go to 200,000 or so, but, by the way, does this family have a history of use of medication?”
Print it in the catalogue and, provided the man has a copy of it and that he can read, he will know the answer, regardless of where the lot was bred or has been raced. This is not at all a problem exclusive to the US market.
American bred horses, and horses with American pedigrees, fill many a page also in many a European sales catalogue. When I was asked to do this article, posing the question, “should information on medication be included in sales catalogues?” it is was so tempting to give a reply like: “Yes, do it” or perhaps: “Should health warnings remain on the tobacco packaging?”
Common sense does not always win through in this world, especially not when up against commercial interests. Horseracing and breeding is a global industry, and herein lies the problem. Not that it is global, but that it is an industry more than it is a sport. It may have set out as a sport, but commercial factors are at the forefront and more and more dominant these days. Therefore, some breeders, consignors, sales companies, and perhaps even bloodstock agents may be opposed to the idea of publishing information on medication in catalogues.
In one corner of Europe, there is no need for any catalogue information on any use of medication for any of the country’s stallions. Germany is the only nation where you cannot stand a stallion at stud if he has been raced on medication. That’s a good policy, and it should help improve the breed. Provided, of course, that none of these stallions have been trained on medication. And provided that all the mares bred to these stallions have also been trained and raced without the aid of medication. Not trying to complicate matters even further here, only trying to point out what a jungle this actually is.
Racehorses are bred from sires who raced almost exclusively with the aid of medication. Horses are being bred out of mares who also raced on medication, but a vast number of horses are out of mares that never raced. Disclosing the reason why these mares failed to make it to the racecourse is probably quite impossible. One thing can be said for certain though, is that any man or woman who spends a considerable amount of money on a yearling is hoping that the animal will one day be physically capable of taking part in a race.
Everyone who buys a yearling should know that about one in five yearlings actually never become racehorses. Therefore, deciding how good the chances are for one particular individual is important. Disclosing all information about any use of raceday medication in the family gives the purchaser a better chance of assessing a yearling’s chances of making it to the racecourse than information on, for example, how many races a couple of grandsons of the third dam managed to win.
I would suggest that information about any use of medication, going back three generations, should be included in all sales catalogues, even if it means pushing some information low on the page off the page. With catalogues published online, even that should not be a problem – an extra few lines, or even an extra page, means nothing in this way of publishing. “Still not possible,” I hear some say.
I see. How about this line of thought then, that such steps would actually help the Thoroughbred industry in its so-called strive at “enhancing the breed.”
The way things are going now, that is not exactly the case, is it?