Ed Halpern's observations on being a horse trainer

Training thoroughbred horses is a wonderful occupation. Many who quit training miss it for the remainder of their life. Why then is it that the community of thoroughbred horse trainers seems so unhappy? Even the most successful of trainers walks around in the morning head down. During training hours, if you engage in conversation with a trainer, it will most likely be a serious conversation. In trackside conversations, trainers can be smiling and engaging, but there is usually a sense that their minds are on other things. I also observe in many an anger that lies just below the surface waiting to reveal itself at the slightest provocation. Sure there is humorous repartee, but it is covered by the shadow of failure. This is a subject I have wanted to look at for a long time, but I have hesitated because it always sounds like whining.

Certainly, we have nothing to whine about. We work in some of the most beautiful settings to be found anywhere: Del Mar, Santa Anita, Keeneland, and Saratoga. We work outdoors. We work with animals. Unlike doctors or judges, our decisions are not life and death. Unlike our young soldiers in Iraq, we don't have to deal with snipers or bombs hidden along our paths. Unlike stockbrokers, our decisions are not likely to bring financial ruin or even great harm to our clients. Unlike criminal lawyers, our mistakes are not likely to end in a jail sentence for a client. The investments made in racing by most of our clients are made with disposable income. If a life is changed because of what we do, most likely it is because someone hits the jackpot or spent unforgettable moments in the winners circle. So, why the long faces?

Training horses successfully is a very difficult pursuit. I once told a friend I was going to become a thoroughbred horse trainer and he observed, "Why would you want to go into a profession that is programmed for failure?" (Some would say I have lived up to his expectations.) He was right. Very few trainers are financially successful. He was right, even that small fraternity of trainers who make a decent living face some kind of failure every day. And he was dead on right because even the superstars lose 5 or 6 times for each time they win. Even Hall of Fame trainers can lose 9 out of 10 times and do it year after year after year.

Training horses is a very demanding pursuit. Once in a great while, a trainer gets to give an owner good news, but most of the time, it is a trainer's fate to convey bad news. It is very hard to get used to doing that. One is required to get up early, work long hours, work seven days a week, forgo vacations, and give up time with one's family. The job requires attention to every detail. Because of the trainer-insurer rule, a trainer without any culpability can find himself on the wrong end of a medication violation and be subject to fines, disqualifications, public ridicule, and humiliation. In addition thereto, a trainer has to depend on the skills and loyalty of grooms, hotwalkers, exercise riders, and jockeys.  In many cases, the program that the trainer has outlined is in the hands of others and totally outside the control of the trainer. The best laid plans for a workout can go totally awry; a well-planned slow workout can go fast, and a well-planned fast workout can go slow. After months of preparation, a race can be a fiasco caused by other horses, other jockeys, or one's own jockey, and all in the course of a few minutes.

Finally, training horses is a heartbreaking pursuit. Some mornings, a shed row will resemble a hospital emergency room. Each morning brings new injuries, new illnesses, and a plethora of other problems. Even if racing or training injuries are avoided, horses have nothing to do all day but find ways to hurt themselves. Sooner or later, they usually do. It matters not if a horse is a superstar or a cheap claimer, a career can end in the blink of an eye. Therefore, it is a trainer's lot to live while always holding his or her breath, at least a little bit.

It is no wonder that, on the surface, so many trainers seem so unhappy or overwhelmed with worry. But few would give it up. Many are octogenarians before they retire. Some breathe their last breath in the barn area. There is no occupation that offers higher highs or lower lows. Ultimately, the moments of joy outweigh the hours of disappointment. There is enough happiness in those moments to make it all worthwhile. For those who dedicate their lives to the training of horses, satisfaction is found in the entire process. Catch a trainer away from the stress of the workplace for a few minutes and you are likely to find that he or she is one of the happiest people you know.


Ed Halpern
 (26 June 2008 - Issue Number: 6)

TRM Trainer of the Quarter - Ian Williams

The TRM Trainer of the Quarter goes to Ian Williams who has been training for over ten years and, having served lengthy apprenticeships with Jenny Pitman, Francois Doumen and Martin Pipe, it comes as no surprise that the Alvechurch handler has landed one of England's most sought-after races.

James Crispe (European Trainer - Issue 22 / Summer 2008) 

Tom Amoss - the secret behind his amazing success rate

THIS IS A SCANNED IN ARTICLE - FROM OUR PRE DIGITAL DAYS!

This article first appeared in North American Trainer - Spring 2008 - issue 7

Pelvic asymmetry in racehorses - increased risk of injury?

By Nicole Rossa

Steeplechase racing in particular is a high risk sport for the horse. There is currently some fairly extensive research into racehorse injuries and fatalities on the racecourse, with previously published scientific reports on the subject being widely available. The racing industry is aware of the need for such reports, as the industry itself is very much in the public eye with regard to injury rates on the racecourse. 

Lameness is one of the main reasons for wastage in the racehorse industry, and was the reported cause of 68% of total horse days lost to training in a study of racehorses in England (Rossdale et al. 1985). This study also suggested that 10% of all diagnosed lameness cases were caused by tendon injury.  Overstrain injuries to the superficial digital flexor tendon (SDFT) are amongst the most common injuries observed in the athletic horse (Goodship, 1993).  It is therefore important to determine all possible causative factors of SDFT injury so that methods for preventing injury can be implemented as part of a training programme.

Hindquarter Asymmetry


The hindquarters of the horse provide the propulsion, and the forelimbs support 60% of the horse's weight.  Problems affecting the pelvic structure in the horse can lead not only to poor performance, but also to an unlevel gait and to lameness of the hindlimb.  There are to date very few scientific reports on the frequency of hindquarter asymmetries in the horse, although Bathe (2002) found that most hard working horses were likely to have some degree of pelvic asymmetry.   This factor may not always affect performance, as many successful horses have been found to have asymmetry of the pelvis.

Dalin et al. (1985) investigated the hindquarter asymmetry in Standardbred Trotters for any correlation with poor performance. He measured differences in height between the left and right tuber sacrale when the horse was standing square.  Of the 500 horses measured 39 of them showed marked hindquarter asymmetry.  In 30 horses the tuber sacrale was lower on the left, and in 9 horses it was lower on the right.  The asymmetric horses had significantly inferior performance (measured by total earnings) compared to the symmetrical horses.  All the horses were trained and raced in Sweden on a left handed track. The asymmetrical horses were also of significantly larger body size than the symmetrical horses.

In a recent study undertaken by Stubbs et al. (2006) in conjunction with the Hong Kong Jockey Club, a number of racehorses were presented for euthanasia (for injury and/or lameness).  Racing and training details were examined in detail, and a clinical examination was carried out before the horses were euthanased. Following post mortem the thoracolumbar spine and pelvis were dissected out and examined.  Although not part of the study it was noted that asymmetry of the pelvis was prevalent in many of the horses that had been dissected, the reason probably being due to a natural torsion of the pelvis as a result of training and racing on right handed tracks only.

It is suggested that asymmetrical loads on the pelvic structure caused by external factors (such as racetrack), and by internal factors (such as locomotor apparatus pain) may lead to a higher stress being placed on one hindlimb, and as a result lead to the development of pelvic asymmetry which may be apparent as pelvic rotation.  Improper movement patterns of the hindquarters, due to pain caused by overuse or from fatigue, may also result in abnormal alignment of the pelvic structure.  This in turn may then cause overloading on the forelimbs (by off loading the hindquarters) and therefore predisposing the forelimbs to injury.  If this can be proved then surely this would emphasise the importance of correcting pelvic misalignments using manipulation techniques such as chiropractic, osteopathic and myofascial release approaches.  There is some unpublished material available to support the use of McTimoney manipulation methods and other soft tissue manipulation in the correction of pelvic rotation.

Hindquarter asymmetry is often associated with sacroiliac joint lesions or with chronic hindlimb lameness.  The tuber sacrale can appear asymmetrical in clinically normal horses as well as in horses with misalignment of the sacroiliac joint (Dyson, 2004). Horses with longstanding poor performance attributed to chronic sacroiliac damage were investigated by Jeffcott et al. (1985).  The majority of these horses showed some asymmetry of the hindquarters with the tuber coxae and tuber sacrale lower on the same side that the animal was lame on. Hindquarter asymmetry may be due to some tilting or rotation of the pelvis in addition to muscle wastage of one quarter, usually the side the horse is lame on.

Abnormal Alignment 
of the Pelvis


Pelvic rotation or abnormal alignment of the pelvis to the thoracolumbar spine can be measured by the level of the tuber coxae to the ground.  If the horse is unable to produce the propulsion from its hindquarters due to discomfort in the pelvic region, then the forelimbs may be required to provide more horizontal propulsion.  The horse will in effect be pulling himself forward with his forelimbs, rather than pushing from his hindquarters.  This may result in over development of the shoulder muscles, thereby reducing the efficiency of the forelimb movement by adding unnecessary weight.

Unpublished data has suggested a positive relationship between injury to the forelimb stay apparatus and pelvic asymmetry, particularly where the presence of functional asymmetry in the hindquarters was found to be due to pelvic rotation, and not as a result of differences in individual bone lengths of the hindlimb.

Lameness and Compensatory Movement Patterns


The compensatory mechanisms of horses with lameness have been extensively researched and reported.  The potential for secondary injuries resulting from a horse's attempt to compensate for lameness by altering its gait pattern are still unclear.  Clayton (2001) found that when a lame limb is supporting body weight, the horse minimises pain by decreasing the load on that limb, resulting in a compensatory increase in the vertical forces in other limbs.  The compensating limbs are therefore subjected to abnormally high forces, and these may lead to lameness in the compensating limbs.

Uhlir et al. (1997) found that in all cases of diagnosed hindlimb lameness that true lameness of the left hind caused a compensatory lameness of the left fore, and that true stance phase lameness of the left fore caused a compensatory lameness in the right hind.

Tendon Injury
The SDFT is the most frequently injured tendon in horses. 

 In a recent study of steeplechase horses diagnosed with tendon and ligament injuries sustained during training, 89% occurred in the SDFT (Ely et al. 2005).  It has been suggested that an optimum level of exercise is required at an early age for tendon adaptation to training, but with increasing age accumulation of microdamage and localised fatigue, failure to the tendon will occur with increasing exercise (Smith et al. 1999).

The induction of injury to the SDFT occurs when loading overcomes the resistive strength of the tendon. Factors which increase the peak loading of the SDFT, such as weight of rider, ground surface, shoeing, conformation, incoordination, jumping, and speed will act not only to increase the rate of degeneration, but will also increase the risk of the onset of SDFT strain (Smith, 2006).  Therefore the prevention of tendon strain-induced injuries by reducing some of the risk factors that increase loading on the tendon may provide the most satisfactory answer.
Animal Manipulation Techniques
McTimoney Animal Manipulation aims to improve asymmetries through manipulation.  There has been much anecdotal evidence for the benefits of McTimoney Manipulation Techniques on animals (Andrews and Courtney, 1999).  There is anecdotal evidence to suggest that McTimoney and other manipulative therapies can make a difference where veterinary medication has failed (Green, 2006), although the application of manipulation techniques in veterinary medicine may be dependent of further research into the clinical effects of manipulation.

Manipulation techniques are thought to cause muscle relaxation and to correct abnormal motor patterns which may be the result of muscular imbalances and restricted joint motion or altered joint mobility (Haussler, 1999).  There is some unpublished material to support that there are significant changes in the symmetry of the pelvis after the application of McTimoney manipulation techniques, and that there is continued improvement one month after initial treatment.

Current Research into Pelvic Alignment


In a recent unpublished study a group of 40 steeplechase horses in training, all using the same gallop, were measured for pelvic asymmetry. The measurement technique used was a somewhat simple (but reliable) method.  Each horse was measured on flat, level concrete while standing completely square and weight bearing on all four limbs.  Measurements were taken vertically using a horse measuring stick with a spirit level, from the most dorsal aspect of the lateral wing on the ilium (the tuber coxae) to the ground, on the left and right sides.
Various data was collected on each horse, regarding race history, how many races run, whether "bumper" (flat races for steeplechase bred horses), hurdle or steeplechase, prize money earnings, handicap rating, and also brief veterinary history.

The aim of the study was to compare pelvic rotation in 20 sound horses to the incidence and degree of pelvic rotation in a group of 20 horses with SDFT strain in either one or both forelimbs. Both the sound horses and the injured horses were in training with the same trainer, and therefore had used the same gallops, and underwent the same training regime.

Although no significant difference was found in the number of horses with pelvic rotation in sound horses compared with the number of horses with tendon strain, there was a high incidence of pelvic rotation in the group as a whole, with a predominance towards pelvic rotation on the right. This could have been due to training methods or gallops used, and certainly warrants further research.

There was no significant association between side of pelvic rotation and side of forelimb tendon strain, but again warrants further investigation using a larger number of horses.  Due to the prevalence of right side pelvic rotation it would not have been possible to show any significant associations anyway between left and right forelimb injury.

The study did present some trends for age of horse, sex, and race history; showing that the number of horses with pelvic rotation and tendon injury increased with age.  Geldings tended towards a higher incidence of tendon injury, and mares tended towards a higher incidence of pelvic rotation. There were equal numbers of sound and injured horses for each race type, but the degree of pelvic rotation in horses that had fallen was notably larger than in the horses that had not fallen.

Future Studies into Pelvic Asymmetry


The preliminary investigation as described above has formed the basis for further research into abnormal pelvic alignment in racehorses, and whether or not there is any association between side of misalignment and side of forelimb injury.  Further research is due to be carried out with a larger sample of horses, and from different yards, to investigate whether there is any prevalence as to the side of misalignment, or if pelvic alignment is affected by training methods and the use of different gallops and that there is continued improvement one month after initial treatment.

Current Research into Pelvic Alignment


In a recent unpublished study a group of 40 steeplechase horses in training, all using the same gallop, were measured for pelvic asymmetry. The measurement technique used was a somewhat simple (but reliable) method.  Each horse was measured on flat, level concrete while standing completely square and weight bearing on all four limbs.  Measurements were taken vertically using a horse measuring stick with a spirit level, from the most dorsal aspect of the lateral wing on the ilium (the tuber coxae) to the ground, on the left and right sides. Various data was collected on each horse, regarding race history, how many races run, whether "bumper" (flat races for steeplechase bred horses), hurdle or steeplechase, prize money earnings, handicap rating, and also brief veterinary history. The aim of the study was to compare pelvic rotation in 20 sound horses to the incidence and degree of pelvic rotation in a group of 20 horses with SDFT strain in either one or both forelimbs. Both the sound horses and the injured horses were in training with the same trainer, and therefore had used the same gallops, and underwent the same training regime.
Although no significant difference was found in the number of horses with pelvic rotation in sound horses compared with the number of horses with tendon strain, there was a high incidence of pelvic rotation in the group as a whole, with a predominance towards pelvic rotation on the right. This could have been due to training methods or gallops used, and certainly warrants further research.

There was no significant association between side of pelvic rotation and side of forelimb tendon strain, but again warrants further investigation using a larger number of horses.  Due to the prevalence of right side pelvic rotation it would not have been possible to show any significant associations anyway between left and right forelimb injury.

The study did present some trends for age of horse, sex, and race history; showing that the number of horses with pelvic rotation and tendon injury increased with age.  Geldings tended towards a higher incidence of tendon injury, and mares tended towards a higher incidence of pelvic rotation. There were equal numbers of sound and injured horses for each race type, but the degree of pelvic rotation in horses that had fallen was notably larger than in the horses that had not fallen.

Oiling the Wheels - using oil as a supplement in the diet of racehorses

Historically, oil has not featured highly in the diets of horses in training, or indeed those of other horses. 
The natural oil content of pasture and other forages is quite low at between 2-3% on a dry matter basis, yet despite this, horses digest oil extremely well. Oil added to the racehorses’ diet is tolerated well, with no major palatability problems having been reported.

There are many advantages to feeding an oil supplemented diet to horses in training. For feed manufacturers, the addition of increasing amounts of oil in a feed formulation allows the addition of energy or ‘calories,’ without any contribution towards the starch and protein content of the feed. This means that lower starch feeds can be produced, whilst maintaining the total energy content of the feed. This type of diet can help prevent the digestive system from being overwhelmed by the presence of starch in the diet. Additionally, beneficial effects of this type of diet on behaviour have also been reported and horses that are prone to tying up may also gain.

Oil supplementation can also potentially bring other beneficial effects e.g. on coat condition and on respiratory health or mobility and performance. However these additional desirable effects are likely to depend not only on the quantity of oil within the daily ration, but also on the nature of the oil included.



OIL - MORE ENERGY THAN MOST INGREDIENTS IN FEED


The energy or calorie content of oil is higher than any other ingredient commonly used in the manufacture of racing feeds.

In a direct comparison with oats, vegetable oil such as corn oil provides about 70% more energy for a given weight. From a trainer’s perspective, top dressing oil onto an existing ration allows an increase in the energy density of the feed i.e. more calories for the same volume of feed. This is particularly useful for fussy feeders helping to keep their meal sizes relatively small.
Ingredient Energy (MJ/kg)
Corn Oil 38 
Oats 12.5 
Racing Mix 13
 Hay 7.5


Oil is usually added into the diet in oz or ml rather than in kilograms. So for a more practical comparison, a coffee mug of oil, which is equivalent to about 250ml (225g), would provide about 9 MJ of energy, which is equivalent to about ¾ of a flat scoop of oats (750g).

There are many types of oil besides corn and soya that have been fed to horses over the years. Vegetable oils derived from rapeseed or canola, sunflower, safflower, coconut and even peanut have been previously fed. Fish oils such as tuna oil, salmon oil and cod liver oil have also been used. Cod liver oil should, however, be used sparingly due to the high fat soluble vitamin content.

Other high oil containing ingredients that are commonly used in racing feeds, or in some cases to top-dress racing diets, include rice bran, linseed meal, full fat soya and naked oats.

Whilst the oil content of all of these ingredients is relatively high, the starch content varies quite significantly. In terms of oil delivery and starch content, linseed meal would clearly be a good choice for oil supplementation where a low starch containing diet was desired.
 
Ingredient % Oil Content % Starch Content
Ricebran 16-20 15-27 
Linseed Meal 37 5.5 
Full Fat Soya 20 4.5 
Naked Oats 10 53

EFFECTS ON BEHAVIOUR


There has been some suggestion in the scientific literature in recent years that feeding a ration that is high in oil and fibre and low in starch can have a beneficial effect on behaviour, in terms of reducing excitability.  Studies on Thoroughbreds with recurrent exertional rhabdomyolysis (RER) reported decreased excitability and nervousness, as well as lower resting heart rates, when they were fed a low starch high oil containing diet, compared with an isocaloric diet that was low in oil and high in starch. This effect, however, is likely to have been mostly due to the reduction in starch intake from cereal, rather than the oil content per se. The use of increased amounts of oil in the diet does, however, facilitate the reduction in starch content without leaving an ‘energy gap.’   
 


BENEFICIAL PROPERTIES FOR TYING UP


More recently, stress has been implicated as a trigger for RER in susceptible horses and so the potentially beneficial effects of oil supplemented diets that are also low in starch and high in fibre have been extolled. Accordingly, lower plasma concentrations of creatine kinase (CK) following a standard exercise test have been reported in response to such diets, in comparison to traditional racing type diets that are high in starch and low in fibre and oil. Specialists on RER have successfully advocated the use of such diets for horses in training that are at risk from RER. In addition, there is a strong argument for the use of such diets during pre-training and the early part of actual training. Significant oil supplementation during full training, if the starch content of the diet is also drastically reduced, is more controversial due to the metabolic effects that can be induced and so the potential effect on subsequent exercise performance.

METABOLIC EFFECTS OF OIL SUPPLEMENTATION


Putting this section into context, the metabolic adaptations to oil supplementation have been reported to occur when relatively large quantities of oil are fed, typically where near to 20% of the total dietary energy intake is provided by oil. For a cube or a mix fed at, for example 6kg per day, this would require a 10% declaration of oil for that feed. For comparison most racing feeds would contain oil at the level of inclusion of 5 - 8.5%.

A high level of oil supplementation has been reported latterly to decrease resting muscle glycogen concentration and improve the use of fat as a fuel source during low and moderate intensity exercise (trotting through to slow cantering) through metabolic adaptation at the muscle level. This offers the possibility of sparing muscle glycogen stores during low intensity exercise training, but equally may impede muscle glycogen replenishment following hard work or racing, which may disadvantage (see European Trainer Issue 19 Racing Power - Supporting Muscular Effort through Nutrition).


The effect of oil supplementation on high intensity exercise performance such as racing is very controversial. Some studies show little or no effect, whilst others have shown a beneficial effect. As a result the scientific community are divided and so the jury is still very much out in this respect.

OTHER HEALTH BENEFITS OF OIL SUPPLEMENTATION


Dietary oil also provides a source of what are termed essential fatty acids, namely linoleic acid, which belongs to the omega 6 family of fatty acids and α-linolenic acid, which belongs to the rival family the omega 3’s. Most ingredients found in a racehorses’ diet are rich in the omega 6 type of fatty acid with much less omega 3 fatty acid present.

The role for dietary omega-3 fatty acids which has been proposed in maintaining joint and skin health, and in supporting immune function, fertility and respiratory health, makes them an attractive nutraceutical ingredient for racehorses. The use of linseed meal has recently increased in proprietary horse feed and supplements. However, although α-linolenic acid is a precursor of the longer chain more bioactive omega 3’s, eicosapentanoic acid (EPA) and docosahexanoic acid (DHA), the efficiency of conversion is quite low.

Therefore nutraceutical ingredients that provide a more concentrated source of either or both EPA and DHA are becoming more widely used. Ingredients such as micro-encapsulated and deodorised fish oils e.g. tuna oil, as well as green lipped mussel, and more recently plant sources of DHA in the form of algae are now more commonly seen in equine products, primarily supplements.

Few studies into the efficacy of omega-3 fatty acids have, however, been published in horses. In a preliminary study using ponies with sweet itch, a beneficial effect of linseed on inflammatory skin conditions was proposed. Encouraging results have also been reported for the effect of supplementation with a combination of EPA and DHA on arthritic horses.

In humans there is some evidence to support a protective role for omega-3 fatty acids in human asthma, a condition that is not unlike recurrent airway obstruction (RAO) in horses, but the results are not indisputable.  A recent supplementation study with omega 3 fatty acids in horses, however, did not significantly alter clinical indicators of pulmonary function, although the leukocyte counts in epithelial lung lining fluid were reduced in the omega-3 supplemented horses. This may suggest an effect of supplementation on pulmonary inflammation.

HOW MUCH IS ENOUGH AND CAN THERE BE TOO MUCH?


The answer to this question is not straightforward as if you are intending to top dress oil onto feeds, the quantity required will largely depend on how much is present in the basal diet already.  Certainly, where the oil is being used to increase the energy density of the diet and reduce the inclusion of starch rich ingredients, a level of 250-300ml per day to replace a kilo of oats or other racing feed would not be inappropriate, where the basal diet contained a low level of oil. For horses that struggle to maintain condition, addition of 100-150mls of oil daily into the existing ration is likely to help.

One should always remember, however, that oil does not provide any protein or vitamins and minerals and so must be fed in conjunction with a balanced diet, particularly with respect to antioxidant vitamins such as vitamin E. Oil should always be introduced to the diet slowly and the daily amount spread over several meals. In addition, any adverse affect on dropping consistency may be a warning that the level of oil in the total diet is too high and the level should be reduced.

As far as the neutraceutical omega 3 fatty acids are concerned, we know much less about the quantities required, but hopefully research will continue in this area to investigate their potentially beneficial effects.

Derby Starters - where do they go from there?

By Bill Heller

Led by Kentucky Derby winner Street Sense, the three-year-old crop of 2007 rearranged a lot of people’s thinking on what it takes to succeed on the first Saturday of May and beyond.

Street Sense not only became the first colt to win the Breeders' Cup Juvenile and the Run for the Roses the following spring, but along with the Derby's second and third place finishers, Hard Spun and Curlin, thrived later in the year. So did Tiago and Any Given Saturday, who finished seventh and eighth in the Derby and joined the top three in the starting gate for the Breeders' Cup Classic.

"Maybe they did wind up in the Classic because they weren't burned out," said Hall of Fame trainer Nick Zito, whose undefeated 2007 Two-Year-Old Champion Colt War Pass will attempt to give him his third Kentucky Derby victory. "Last year was an exceptional crop."

The leader of the crop was Curlin, who didn't make his career debut until last February 3rd, showing that not racing at two doesn't preclude greatness at three. After winning the Preakness, Jockey Club Gold Cup and Breeders' Cup Classic, he was 2007 Three-Year-Old Champion and Horse of the Year.
So how do trainers of this year's top Kentucky Derby contenders plan their horses' schedules? Specifically, how much time off do they give their colts between their last start at two and first start at three? Has everything changed because of last year?

The 20 horses that entered the starting gate for last year's Kentucky Derby had layoffs ranging from 20 to 133 days before beginning their three-year-old campaign. Hard Spun's was just 26. Street Sense was 133.

Todd Pletcher, who led North American trainers in earnings for the fourth consecutive year, saddled four other starters in last year's Derby besides Any Given Saturday. "There's an obvious trend toward more time between races," Pletcher said last December. "The spacing of races is obviously critical. You want to peak on the first Saturday in May, but there are big stakes that you also want to do well with. There's a fine line between having a horse ready and fit to run in his first start at three and still be able to build on that. It's a delicate balance."

Pletcher's 2007 Derby quintet had layoffs ranging from 70 to 98 days. "If anything, I would lean toward making my first start even later, and maybe having only two or three starts before the Derby," he said. "If I had a horse with a real good foundation leading into winter, I'd consider going into the Derby with just two starts, one in March and one in April.

That's what Carl Nafzger did with Street Sense, the 2006 Two-Year-Old Champion Colt. Nafzger's work getting Street Sense to last year's Derby was nothing short of brilliant. "I think Carl Nafzger did a masterful job with only the two preps," Zito said.

As a two-year-old, Street Sense had five starts, culminating with his breathtaking 10-length romp in the Breeders' Cup Juvenile at Churchill Downs after finishing third by 1 ¾ lengths to Great Hunter in the Grade 1 Breeders' Futurity over Keeneland's Polytrack surface.

"I had five starts as a two-year-old, but it's not how many times he ran, it's how many times he played the New England Patriots vs. how many he played against a weaker team," Nafzger said. "We played against the best two starts in a row. My horse wasn't mature. He needed some time. He was still growing and developing."

Nafzger decided Street Sense would enter the Derby off two races at three. Then he delayed Street Sense's three-year-old debut an additional 2 ½ weeks until a showdown with Any Given Saturday in the Grade 3 Tampa Bay Derby last March 17th. "We had a three-week window," Nafzger said. "The horse got light on his feet. He was a little crabby traveling. We needed a couple more weeks. Actually, going into that race, I was scared Any Given Saturday would pull away and he (Street Sense) wasn't going to get enough out of it. I might not be as tight as I needed to be. I didn't want to win it as much as I needed a race I had to work hard in. He won anyway (by a nose)."

Street Sense then was nosed by Dominican in the Grade 1 Blue Grass Stakes at Keeneland before winning the Derby by 2 ¼ lengths, Nafzger's second Run for the Roses, following Unbridled's victory in 1990. "If he only had two races as a two-year-old, I wouldn't have given him only two preps," Nafzger said. "I would have run him maybe four times before the Derby. The horse had what he needed."

So did Hard Spun, who had three starts as a two-year-old neatly spaced out. In fact, entering the Derby, Hard Spun had made one start in October, November, December, January, February and, in his final Derby prep, the Grade 2 Breeders' Futurity, on March 24th. His first start at three was just 26 days after his final start at two, and he won both of them. Hard Spun's gutsy second in the Derby affirmed trainer Larry Jones' wisdom in spacing his races.

"We felt like it was the right schedule for him," Jones said. "He got his career started a little late (last October 22nd). We never felt we had the time to put him into the racing wars, then give him time off. We figured how many races it would take to peak without training him hard. We tried to pick spots where he could move forward and not overmatch him. We felt once a month would take him into the Derby and have him educated enough and be able to increase his distance to keep moving forward to the mile and a quarter (of the Derby). We could probably do that 20 more times, and it wouldn't work for 20 other horses."

What will work this year?

The man with the horse to beat is Zito, seeking his third Kentucky Derby following the triumphs of Strike the Gold in 1991 and Go for Gin in '94. Both had four preps at three.

Strike the Gold, who won one of three starts as a two-year-old, had two allowance races at three before finishing second by a length in the Grade 1 Florida Derby and winning the Blue Grass by three lengths leading up to his 1 ¾-length victory in the Kentucky Derby. "He was a throwback in many ways," Zito said.

Go for Gin, who won three of five starts at two, prepped for the Kentucky Derby by winning the un-graded Preview Stakes, finishing second by three-quarters of a length in the Grade 2 Fountain of Youth, finishing fourth in the Florida Derby and running second in the Grade 1 Wood Memorial preceding his two-length victory in the Kentucky Derby, his 10th career start. Last year, the Kentucky Derby was Street Sense's eighth lifetime start.

"At one time, you had to have four races before the Derby," Zito said. "But you're looking at 1991 and 1994," Zito said. "I don't think you can do that now. War Pass can't do that. Anak Nakal (who won the Grade 2 Kentucky Jockey Club Juvenile at Churchill Downs last November 24th), I don't know. He's not a big horse. Unfortunately, they don't make the horses like they used to anymore."

They also don't follow the same schedule. The inception of the Breeders' Cup in 1984 gave trainers of precocious two-year-olds a tangible reason to have their juveniles peak in late October or early November. "The Breeders' Cup had a lot to do with it," Zito said.

In last year's Breeders' Cup Juvenile, War Pass completed his perfect two-year-old season at four-for-four with a 4 ¾-length romp that left no doubt as to who the winter-book favorite for the Derby would be. Interestingly, Zito didn't follow War Pass's debut victory at Saratoga with a step up to stakes, but rather in an allowance race. War Pass then won the Grade 1 Champagne and Breeders' Cup. "He's a tremendous horse, an exceptional two-year-old," Zito said. "I don't know what he'll be at three, but boy what a heck of a two-year-old."

Zito's initial intention is to give both War Pass and Anak Nakal two or three separate Derby preps. "The thing you love to do is keep them separated until the big show," he said.

Whether War Pass will be the star of that show won't be revealed for months. "It's exciting, but I'm worried," Zito said. "Let's face it. It brings a lot of pressure. I wouldn't say bad pressure, but we'll see. I know one thing. He's talented, that's for sure."

Resistance Training - can it be applied to racehorses?

By Caton Bredar

The termalone, "resistance training," invites at the very least skepticism, and in some cases, even a trace of joviality. As Hall of Fame conditioner Dick Mandella remarked when asked about it, "I'm very familiar with resistance training. For many years, I've had owners who resisted my training. I've had a few horses who resisted, too."

As he is known to do, Mandella was joking.  But as he, and most in the Thoroughbred industry would attest, finding safer ways to train and develop racehorses is no joking matter.

While lacking in research and data, at a basic level resistance training is a tool some equine conditioners - including Mandella - are incorporating at least on a small scale into their training systems.  At a very sophisticated level, a few horsemen are taking the idea of resistance training very seriously. 
It's a type of exercise not without misunderstandings.  Even in the training of human athletes, where resistance training arguably originated, there's some confusion.

Wikipedia defines resistance training as having "two different, sometimes confused meanings." 
The broadest definition, according to the on-line encyclopedia, is any technique that "uses a resistance to the force of muscular contraction (better termed strength training)".  In this sense, weight lifting is a basic form of resistance training with the weights offering resistance in direct opposition to the contraction of the muscle or muscles.

The second, more specific, definition refers to elastic or hydraulic resistance, or any type of training in which external devices -- such as resistance bands or exercise machines, are used to create the opposing force.  In the case of horses, think underwater treadmill.

The American Sports Medicine Institute elaborates on the goal of resistance training, again in human terms, as:  "gradually and progressively overload(ing) the muscular-skeletal system so it gets stronger."
A stronger muscle and skeletal system may well be the goal for any type of athlete.  But when the athlete is four-legged, and already loading hundreds of pounds of pressure on a relatively smaller and decidedly more fragile bone structure, the problem gets increasingly complex.  Take sports injuries in human athletes and multiply them four-fold.

That type of paradox - developing bigger, stronger, more durable racehorses while not breaking them down in the process - has already led some of the biggest names in harness racing to resistance training.
 
Joe Geiser, CEO of a company called Racehorse Conditioning Systems, is a proponent of resistance training and specifically, resistance carts.  According to Geiser, resistance carts have been used for decades in Europe, with "thousands" of the carts in use there today.  Perhaps even more noteworthy, in the United States, more than a third of the winners over the past 20 years of the Hambletonian and Hambletonian Oaks - harness racing's version of the Kentucky Derby and Oaks - have been trained using a particular type of resistance cart that Geiser markets and sells.
 
The theory is admittedly complex.  On his website, Geiser points to several types of muscle fibers, including slow twitch, or aerobic muscle fibers, and fast twitch, or anaerobic fibers.  The aerobic fibers are fueled by oxygen, the anaerobic fibers by glycogen.  Anything needing a short burst of explosive energy, Geiser writes, requires fast twitch, or anaerobic muscle fiber.  Resistance training works to target the anaerobic muscle fiber, but when combined with variations in speed and resistance, can also serve to impact the aerobic muscle fiber.  When done properly, so that the glycogen supplies are depleted and then built back up again, the muscle learns how to produce and store more, which ultimately builds endurance.

Essentially, using a resistance cart is "basically like training a horse on a hill," says Geiser, "and you determine the length and steepness of the hill."

Geiser describes the resistance carts as slightly heavier jog carts equipped with two hydraulic pumps, one on each wheel of the cart, that in theory allow a trainer to increase the horse's workload and/or heart rate, while decreasing the amount of speed involved.  When the trainer depresses a pedal, pressure on the wheel is released, so the horse has to pull - or work - more, even if he's actually slowing down or traveling at a walk.
"The horse doesn't feel the heavier cart, because it's balanced," Geiser says.  "You control the amount of resistance and for how long you apply the resistance.  The resistance itself is against the wheels," rather than directly against a horse's joints.  Muscle groups, in essence, get a workout, without any unnecessary or added wear and tear on the skeletal system.

The majority if not all of the work on resistance carts is done at a walk, also reducing the potential for injury, according to Geiser.  It's done in conjunction with a heart monitor, a key component of the entire program. "The key to the warehouse is the heart monitor."

A Pennsylvania resident, Geiser has trained andowned Standardbred horses on and off for the past six years.  He advocates a system of training that also includes a very specific feeding program, ample recovery time between workouts, meticulous record-keeping, and a knowledge of the horse's maximum heart rate.  He also stresses the importance of a positive attitude, and claims for the horses he has worked directly with, resistance training has almost always led to a healthier horse with a more willing spirit during workouts.

That positive attitude extends to Allentown, a 6-year-old gelded pacer Geiser has been working with, primarily using a resistance cart. 
 
"Allentown has bad knees.  Conventional wisdom told me to get rid of the horse," he offers.  "I laid him up for five months, did a lot of walking with him.  He went out every four days."
With ample recovery time in between resistance cart sessions and a minimum of traditional training - never at an all-out or extreme speed, Allentown returned to the races to record a fifth, a third, two seconds and two wins in six starts, including a win in January of this year.
 
"Fundamentally, the system is pretty easy to use," he adds.  "But it's also easy to over-use and a trainer has to have a lot of patience."

Besides developing a better racehorse over-all, Geiser believes "this is about taking the cheaper horse and getting him to be productive," a principle he thinks could well be adapted to the Thoroughbred racing world.
"I know it's sacrilegious to consider a Thoroughbred pulling a cart," he says.  "But there is some value holistically to teaching a horse to pull a cart."

The famed Thoroughbred conditioner Preston Burch might agree.  First published in 1953, his "Training Thoroughbred Horses" is still considered among horsemen a reliable overview of the fundamentals of training.  Burch writes, "Some trainers have their yearlings broken to harness before they are broken to ride.  This is an excellent idea because it accustoms the yearling to bridle and teaches him to handle himself before weight is put on his back."

In principle, Leonie Seesing, owner and founder of the company Equi-Gym, also agrees.  Now based in Kentucky, Seesing may be one of the first licensed Thoroughbred trainers in America, by Geiser's estimate, to purchase a resistance cart.  A member of the Association of Equine Sports Medicine, Seesing started in Wyoming working as a jockey, owner and trainer before devoting herself to developing an alternative method of training.

"I saw these wonderful, beautiful horses going by the wayside," she claims.  "I believed there had to be a better way."
With very little research to turn to, Seesing looked to human conditioning for inspiration, and says she also was influenced by progressive training "guru" Tom Ivers.

"Thinking out of the box, I tried to stop thinking about what we know about racehorses," and turned to what she could learn about humans, who, according to Seesing, adapt and respond to exercise in much the same way equines do.

"When I started looking at humans," she says, "I started becoming much more innovative, and I found it worked.  The end result was that they race a whole lot better."

Since 1983, Seesing has been a practitioner of progressive training, a form of training she describes as a combination of interval and resistance training, with the goal of increasing heart-rate while lowering impact.
"By going into the anaerobic system and progressively loading your exercise program," she says, "you build the body stronger."

"There's a benefit" to resistance training alone, she says, "but it's not as great.  And for the amount of effort involved, it's kind of foolish…you're missing the most powerful part of training.  With interval training, [the horses] become tough."

Similar to Geiser, Seesing believes in the need to "get inside a horse's head," along with thorough record-keeping, heart-rate monitoring, and a greater understanding of equine physiology.

"Resistance training can be a pretty good-sized tool, used throughout and done with high intensity at the end of a training program.  It teaches the anaerobic system to become more fuel efficient."
 
Seesing finds uphill treadmills and resistance carts to be the most effective means of anaerobic, or resistance, conditioning, and, also similarly to Geiser, believes the greatest benefit may be for the lesser horses.
"Junk horses," she says in describing the majority of the horses she has owned or trained, but points as well to her success rate at getting horses to the races over a five year period - 94 percent, according to her calculations, well above the national average and an indicator that her program is working.

"The majority of trainers have horses like mine," she concludes.  "When you use unconventional methods, you make more money, and you do better."
"Learning good physiology skills…how to manipulate the body.  It takes work to learn," she adds.  "There is so much more to it.  It is overwhelming.  But there are a lot of people who are tired of trashing their horses."
Noted Veterinary Surgeon and Director of Orthopedic Research at Colorado State University, Dr. Wayne McIlwraith stops short of endorsing interval training or putting a cart behind a Thoroughbred, but he does see some potential in resistance training.

"How a horse lands in his stride is innate.  It can't be changed much.  But a lot could be mitigated potentially, with resistance training."

McIlwraith agrees about the importance of muscle fiber.  "Muscle tone is certainly critical," he continues.  "The more fit they are, the more stable the joint, the less disease.  It does come back to muscle."
"There's a lot of logic to it," he concludes, while admitting the research is limited.   "If you can stimulate muscle without wear and tear…if you could train slowly and without impact on the joints…it would absolutely be safer. There's always potential, but I haven't seen any data."

McIlwraith is credited on the website of a relatively new equine resistance training concept called "Cyclone Theory."  Patterned after a new human training concept called "parachute technique" - in which wind resistance is created by a parachute attached to an athlete's waist as he or she sprints - the theory as described on their website  is that wind resistance is transferred to the legs and applied to all the muscles directly involved in moving the body forward, so higher power at high speeds is ultimately achieved.  In the case of Thoroughbreds, the resistance is created by a band stretched consistently and horizontally from the horse, and controlled by the pace with which the horse travels.

"The two things that hurt horses," says McIlwraith, "are weight and speed."  Anything that reduces those two factors, he says, is worth exploring.

Which brings us back to Mandella.  Known, in particular, for his success with older horses like top turf performer Sandpit or, more recently, The Tin Man, Mandella says over the years he's used an underwater treadmill for horses returning from injuries and/or long lay-offs, as an intermediate step prior to returning to the racetrack.
That time period, the time between walking and jogging or galloping, according to McIlwraith, is critical.
"Resuming training is a big transition," he says.  "It's always a difficult transition going from walking to galloping, when rehabbing from an injury.  Anything that can make it not as big a shock is beneficial."
  
About a year ago, with the advice of his veterinarians, Mandella added a device called the Astride to his program, as a way of transitioning some horses between minor injuries and their return to the racetrack.

"We've been kind of experimenting," he says of the device, which allows varying amounts of weight to be deposited in saddlebags on either side of the horse.  The weights are secured to a surcingle or belt girthed around the horse's barrel, then attached via reins to a headstall and bit.

"We use it for horses you can't really train - maybe they've grabbed a quarter," Mandella elaborates.  "You vary or increase the weight.  It keeps you from going backwards."

Mandella uses the device on horses standing in the stall or walking around the barn and cautions that it's not a replacement for regular training, but rather an effective stop-gap measure. "We're finding it just works better with weight," he concludes, something other trainers, by McIlwraith's estimation, are discovering as well.
"Anything that's putting on increased muscle…without increasing risk.  Bottom line, there are a number of ways to try and accomplish that. It's a tradition-laden sport," McIlwraith admits, "and there's going to be a certain amount of skepticism about many things.  But things are changing.  We surely have to find a better way than we do it now."

"People are looking at different ways," McIlwraith proclaims.  "Of course that doesn't mean there are better ways.  But people are trying to find a better way."

And as to whether resistance training is that better way, "there are many subjective feelings…now we have to work on proving them."

Global Superbet -can it take horseracing to a bigger stage?

By Geir Stabell

Twenty-five years ago John R. Gaines in Kentucky came up with an idea: the Breeders' Cup series. Gaines felt that Thoroughbred racing needed a high profile day, which would make it possible for the sport to compete with NFL, NHL and NBA in the media picture. Everyone involved in racing agreed, just as much as they agreed that Thoroughbred breeding and racing needed new innovations, offering opportunities for more international competition with chances of winning bigger purses. Has it worked? Partly, and the Breeders' Cup has most certainly been more a star actor than just another face to the stage.

Last year, the International Federation of Horseracing has been working on another new idea, of a totally different nature. Again, the reason for exploring new products for the sport is that we are badly in need of legs to stand on in the increasingly competitive betting market. While turnover on horseracing, according to figures released by the bookmaking industry, has levelled out, it has increased markedly in other sports. In Europe, football is the sport attracting the biggest betting figures. One big difference between the two sports, as far as betting is concerned, is how international football has become. The Champions League, the UEFA Cup, World Cup Finals, European Cup Finals and their qualifying rounds, and the Copa America, combine for a huge, huge betting market – just in Europe. Add in markets like Hong Kong and Australia and the total figures are truly staggering

With football fans from all over the world logging on to bet on and tuning in to watch these big international matches on a weekly basis, it is almost unbelievable that no betting firm has come up with a weekly "Football Superbet." For instance, a multi-leg wager where you need to predict home win, draw or away win in, say, ten or twelve high profile games. With a global, massive pool, it would become a lottery for the thinking fan. Strange as it may seem, quite a few in this world still prefer to use their brain, their own knowledge, when betting. They do not want to bet on numbers games where the odds are stacked heavily against them. Without products to stimulate them, these brains will soon no longer be potential players, not when it comes to horseracing betting, that's for sure. They will either turn their backs on betting altogether or they will look for other challenges. There is no longer a shortage of alternatives. Poker and bridge, to name but two card games, are tailor made for internet wagering involving thinking players. And these products are considerably cheaper to produce, and run, than horseracing. There is no comparison. 

Let's get back to the idea of a superbet. While other sports do not seem to have grasped such an idea, horseracing is, for a change, a couple of lengths ahead. Last year, the International Federation of Horseracing began developing and testing a new bet, called the  "Global Trifecta." This wager is very much in its infancy, and it has been a complicated baby to conceive, but it is an excellent idea that ought to be given all the backing it can get. It has already been tested with international pools on a small number of flat races this season, but with a "soft launch approach," according to Totesport's PR manager Damian Walker.  If it can be refined, and marketed, in the right way, it has every chance of becoming a big success. Not just as a betting product, but also as a tool to promote the sport of horseracing worldwide. 

"Mauritz Burggink, at the IFH in Paris, is the man behind the idea of a superbet," Damian Walker explains, "it is all quite simple. With bigger liquidity in the pool, there will be bigger dividends, and a bet like this can compete with all the lotteries. A lot of work has been done already, and the ultimate aim is to have a Global Superbet every week. We have tested it, but I must stress that the betting on a few races in 2007 has been nothing more than ‘dipping a toe in the water' as there are various complications to overcome. Not least the fact that different countries have different IT-systems, and local laws also affect what we can and cannot do."

Walker explains how punters in big markets like Australia, Hong Hong, USA, South Africa, Singapore and Europe were last year given the opportunity of betting into a global trifecta pool on some Group One events. 

"The product cannot be properly tested without real bets, though testing such a product must begin on a relatively small scale," he says, "and that is why we have given this a quiet launch. I am convinced that this will be a big success, and it can change the world of betting on horseracing dramatically. The progress of this project will be high on the agenda when representatives meet in Tucson, Arizona." 

The global trifecta – where one has to select the first three home in the exact order – was opened for betting on the Prix de Diane at Chantilly in June, 2007. This is not a high profile race internationally, my guess is that a large proportion of racing fans in Australia, Hong Kong and USA have never heard of the race. Walker agrees, but a guinea pig is a guinea pig, and he has some interesting figures from this race. "The turnover was 60,000 euros," he tells us, "and the dividend was 1,767-1. If the bet had been settled on the UK pool alone, the dividend would have been just 929-1. This shows what a difference a bigger pool can make."

That may be, but the pool was nowhere near what it will, hopefully, be one day, and it was too small to provide the operators any sort of hard conclusions. To the customers, however – the punters – a 60,000-euro pool is big enough to enable them to assess the value of the product. Did this trifecta pay over the odds, under the odds, or just about normal? Well, UK punters probably would not have a clue, as they are absolute beginners when it comes to trifecta betting, most of them not even that. Most gamblers in the USA, on the other hand, would have been able to take a quick glance at the result, the odds for the first three home, the number of runners, and say whether a 1,768-1 return was good or bad value. 

The Diane had 14 runners and was won by West Wind, who returned 9-2. She beat Mrs Lindsay (14-1), with Diyakalanie (40-1) third. Almost as a rule of thumb, a North American exacta, on a race like this, will return at least the product of multiplying the tote win odds on the two horses involved. Plus some if the shortest priced horse is second, minus some if the shortest priced horse in the winner. In this case that would be 5.50 (9-2) multiplied by 15 (14-1), which is 82.50. So, with a 40-1 shot finishing third, was 1,767-1 good value?  Finding a race to compare this to in the USA is not at all difficult. The Breeders' Cup Mile has a habit of returning trifectas that include both a winner at a fair price and a real longshot, and also excludes the favorite. And it is a race with a pool made up of punters from all kinds of corners of the world. The 2003 edition of the BC Mile produced an almost identical trifecta to the one seen in the 2007 Diane. Six Perfections (5-1) beat Touch of The Blues (12-1) and Century City (39-1). The race had 13 runners. The trifecta returned 2,627-1. 

 Which is a whopping 48% higher than the global trifecta on the Diane. Although interesting enough, this is not at all a fair comparison, as the trifectas on the Breeders' Cup races nearly always pay well over the odds, simply because the majority of the pool is made up of punters with little or no knowledge of racing. The pool on the Diane was almost certainly made up of punters who knew racing well, and also knew enough about the sport to know that the bet existed. 1,767-1 was therefore a very good return, indicating that it could easily have paid 2,600-1 with a bigger pool. For the record; the trifecta pool on the 2003 BC Mile was $2.3 million. A whole different ballgame, and also where one is aiming to take the global superbet.

 "The global superbet does not necessarily have to be a trifecta," Walker continues. "There is a good chance that it will be a carbon copy of the Triple Trio, a highly successful bet in Hong Kong." 

The Triple Trio is a multi leg bet where one has to select the first three finishers, in any order, in three consecutive races. At last year's Hong Kong International day, when the bet was made up of two handicaps and the Hong Kong Sprint, the dividend was 301,707-1. No space here to take an analytical look at the combined odds of all the nine horses involved, but it makes sense to mention that the three winners paid 14-1, 5-1 and 3-1. A win treble at these odds would return 359-1. It may be a pure coincidence but it is interesting to note that the Triple Trio returned 840 times the win treble, which is not at all 840 times easier to predict. We can understand why a bet like this is a real alternative to playing the lotteries. On the other hand, offering a global triple trio may have its disadvantages, as one is then asking punters to analyse three races, possibly staged in three different countries. Nobody, nowhere, will be confidently familiar with the form of all the horses. Thus, perhaps a trifecta on one race is a better way to go. 
 
"Another issue we need to address is the cases when the bet is not won, and creates a rollover, or jackpot if you will," Walker comments. "Punters in one country may not be too happy about their money moving on to a different jurisdiction, where they will be at a disadvantage when getting involved."  
 
When betting on horseracing, local knowledge does count for a lot, but these are changing times, and he or she who can find the right angles on and the right understanding of international racing will stand the best chance of collecting on a global superbet. Nevertheless, without the local customers - the two-pound, two-euro or two-dollar punters joining in - the pool will never be massive enough to compete with the lotteries. 
 
Perhaps there is a simple solution to this problem. The weekly races will probably have to be scheduled in advance, but "reserve races" could be assigned the following week in the country where the race or races take place, meaning that, when there is a rollover, the global bet stays in one place until it is won. Of course, this could take weeks, especially if the bet is a triple trio, though perhaps not if it isa one-race trifecta. Has an American style superfecta been discussed at all?

"Yes, it has," Walker replies. "The global trifectas we have had have mainly been like lab testing, and various models will be discussed and analysed before we land on one model. We are testing technical solutions just as much as we are testing the nature of the bet."

I love the idea of a global superbet, but wonder, will it really happen?  Will it be a success? This is early days, but, please, make sure that those two words are not too easily swallowed too often within horseracing, in particular when it comes to creating and promoting new products. We have heard them so many times before. Sometimes those ‘early days' become ‘all time.' Horseracing authorities and regulators, in Europe in particular, so often come across as so incredibly conservative and as such a stubborn bunch, that the one word that springs to mind is ‘immature.' Racing still seems to be run from offices that are, if not totally then at least seriously partly, lagging behind the rest of the world.
 
I would be delighted to be convinced that I am wrong about this, as I also fear that this state of affairs will be one of the biggest stumbling blocks for a new global superbet. Things are simply moving way, way too slowly.
 
Take the lack of European racing rules, a topic that came to the fore after the 2007 Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe. Of course, this has been discussed before, but nothing seems to happen. Why not make a couple of quick moves, why not just do it? Make those changes. Toss a couple of coins if need be to settle a couple of disagreements between the English and the French, and get on with it. 
 
Bookmakers taking more and more and more bets on football, and fewer and fewer on racing, do not care about the lack of a sensible set of international racing rules. They are busy making money, and giving the gambling market new, lucrative products, which is precisely why the development of a new global bet must be speeded up. 
 
Why? I'll tell you why. Because as soon as this concept becomes more high profile, through proper marketing and media coverage, bookmakers will grab the idea, adapt it to some other sport, maybe even other sports, and create a new product within a matter of weeks. All of a sudden, racing will be behind, again. The International Federation of Horseracing may be a couple of lengths ahead with their development of a global pool bet at the moment. A couple of lengths, however, is not exactly a comfortable and commanding lead on a playing ground which is changing so fast, and is so volatile, as the betting market.  

Not when you are involved in the race for the betting dollar, euro, or pound.  Unless you are by far the biggest, financially strongest player, it can actually be a disadvantage to lead the way. It is only an advantage if you are smarter, considerably smarter. Let's hope we are.

Hong Kong - Far Eastern racing run by an American

The view in one direction frames an expanse of the endless Hong Kong skyline, in another the emerald Happy Valley Racecourse, but this is unmistakably the working domain of an American. Portraits of Man o' War, Spectacular Bid and presentation photos made after races at Belmont Park, Aqueduct and Saratoga decorate the walls, the occupant standing beside Orientate, Sulamani and Funny Cide.

 In the early years of the Breeders' Cup, which remains a young event when considered within racing's historical context, Bill Nader would leave his various duties at Rockingham Park in New Hampshire, where he took his first racetrack job as a press box aide while still a student, for an assignment on the event's notes team, which gathers information concerning the participants for dissemination in the media. The world looks much different from the corner office on the top floor of the Hong Kong Jockey Club headquarters.

The executive director of racing in Hong Kong - the first American ever appointed to a position of such influence in what is a unique racing and gambling enterprise that has for more than a century impacted on the life of almost every citizen of the former British colony (returned to Chinese control in 1999) – is less than a year removed from New York, where at times it appeared that Nader was single-handedly guiding the daily business of a listing ship that has for years been imperiled.

Nader was the face of the New York Racing Association and its most reliable voice at a time when every day, it seemed, brought new crisis. Five years of tumult began with the turn of the century and a scandal spawned among betting clerks that progressed upward through what most consider the most important of American racing organizations. The guilty clerks were imprisoned on various tax fraud and money laundering changes as were two mid-level executives. Key people left the association, retired or resigned voluntarily, some on the day they qualified for a pension. Highly placed executives were forced to resign. Barry Schwartz, the outspoken and sometimes controversial chairman of the board, stepped down in frustration. The state's politicians and media turned the association's troubles and the question of franchise renewal into a public circus. Nader was left, usually alone, in the storm's eye.

The Association faced an array of threatened federal indictments avoided only by a long period of operation under the thumb of a court-appointed monitor and eventually filed the papers necessary for reorganization within the framework of bankruptcy law. Nader, originally hired to head the simulcasting network, watched the New York Racing Association's workforce shrivel and took up the slack left by manpower and expertise that once departed was not replaced. As the morass thickened, Nader rose to the position of senior vice president and chief operating officer calling on experience and skills honed in the heat of political, legal and financial battle for survival learned in New Hampshire.

Thoroughbreds no longer have a home at Rockingham Park, which now conducts only harness racing.

 It was always a bootstrap operation, a fine place for the education of a young person with designs on a career in racing, and Nader steeped himself in a curriculum impossible to duplicate in the traditional halls of academia. He worked in the publicity department, developing relationships with the media; sharpened handicapping skills when charged with assigning morning-line odds; developed relationships with horsemen while working in the racing office, gained an understanding of their concerns and needs; couriered videotape to the local television station for the evening replay programs; negotiated simulcast contracts; learned to call races when the principal announcer was absent. It is also the place in which the direction of his life first took shape and form.

"I lived a bicycle ride away from Rockingham and worked in the press box as a summer job while attending the University of New Hampshire," Nader said. "When I was 21, I became the track oddsmaker. In that role, I further developed my handicapping skills and also my strong interest in the sport.

"I first became interested in racing through one of my best friends, my father, and we would go racing once a week. Racing helped our father-and-son bond and we spent a lot of time together discussing and enjoying the sport, especially in his later years of life and that is something I will always treasure. I had always turned him down when he asked me to go to the racetrack because I was active playing sports and being a horse racing spectator had no appeal to me. It took Secretariat to open my eyes in the 1973 Belmont Stakes. I watched on network television and that was the turning point.

"Rockingham provided a foundation because out of necessity you got an idea of how every department at the racetrack should work.  And we had some good races there – the New Hampshire Sweepstakes and the Spicy Living Handicap, races that New York trainers and others would send horses to, so I was exposed to what was at the time a higher level of racing. Still, the move to New York was an awfully big step.
"When I was first offered the job in New York, I turned it down. I didn't feel as though I could leave Rockingham in the middle of a meeting. But when the meeting was over, the job was still open and I moved to New York at the beginning of the fall meeting at Belmont in 1994. Luck. If they'd found someone else during that time, I may never have had the opportunity in New York. The people at Rockingham didn't believe I was going to a place that big, but if you love racing and the New York Racing Association calls, that was it."

New York, however, besieged by posturing politicians and those who sought to take over the racing franchise upon expiration at the end of 2007 quickly became Kafkaesque, far from the utopian professional environment Nader envisioned.

"The problems and politics surrounding NYRA and its franchise were personally challenging and incredibly frustrating at times," Nader said, "but, in all honesty, I could fight the fight with the best of them. I came from a humble racing background and the privilege of being intimately involved with the high quality of racing in New York was a great equalizer. I could take the punishment as long as I knew there was a Grade 1 on Saturday and that Saratoga was only a few months away. With all of the personnel changes over my 14 years at NYRA, I knew there were many people in that organization that looked to me for leadership and for someone they could identify with. There was no chance of my leaving NYRA or so I thought, until the Hong Kong Jockey Club called. I had long admired the HKJC from a distance and I knew I would not get a second chance at the opportunity of a lifetime."

The move from New York to Hong Kong was for Nader like walking through a looking glass. He left pathos, which continues in his absence, for an organization unlike any in the world. In a city of seven million people among whom gambling is central to the culture, racing is not the sport of kings but the king of sports and membership in the Jockey Club, a requirement for those who aspire to ownership of racehorses, is a symbol of status considered almost priceless.

With the possible exception of the Japan Racing Association, the Hong Kong Jockey Club is easily the world's most prosperous racing enterprise, made more so by a gambling monopoly that includes the lottery and wagering on international soccer matches. Originally established as the Royal Hong Kong Jockey Club after the introduction of racing in the region by the British, who constructed a racecourse in 1845 on the only suitably flat land on the island –f a drained malarial swamp with the whimsical name, Happy Valley – the Jockey Club, after the Chinese government, is the region's most important organization and in real terms perhaps the most important based on its impact upon the lives of Hong Kong's citizens.

Though the British first brought racing to the island, the native Chinese have taken the sport to heart in a way that has no frame of reference outside Asia, participating with a fiscal enthusiasm unprecedented elsewhere. In 2006, Hong Kong bettors wagered $63.86 billion – $8.2 billion in U.S. funds – though the Jockey Club holds just two days of racing, or 16 races, per week, from September through June. This is more than half the $15.6 billion wagered on 58,851 races run in the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico – population 338.5 million – during the same year

The people of Hong Kong, only an hour by ferry from the explosion of opulent casinos in Macau, wagered another $30.2 billion -- $3.9 billion U.S. – on soccer matches and $6.6 billion – more than $848 million U.S. – on the lottery. The Club, conduit for all money wagered legally in Hong Kong, is the region's largest taxpayer and supports the majority of charitable institutions, research organizations, medical facilities and recreational programs. It is impossible to travel far in Hong Kong without seeing the Jockey Club logo on everything from hospitals and schools to parks and animal shelters.

The two Hong Kong racetracks are pristine and in almost perpetual renovation. The management, a multinational team of highly experienced executives imported by the Jockey Club, is progressive, deeply interested in maintaining an atmosphere in which the integrity of racing is beyond question. It meets challenge with action, as it did last year when in response to the migration of high-level bettors to offshore bookmakers offering rebates, the Club responded with its own rebate program, which effectively reversed the trend.

The Club takes virtually every facet of racing into its own hands and employs everyone required for the conduct of racing except trainers, who under the circumstances suffer no burden of payroll or slow-paying owners. The Club maintains testing laboratories and veterinary hospital, pays for feed and medication and though only eight percent of bets are placed on-course, when the gates open at Happy Valley or Sha Tin, the tracks are animated by huge crowds of people with a collective focus – betting, which is in turned shared in the most remote corner of Hong Kong, where the speculators and the tote are joined by wireless device.

In the 16 hours of flight time between New York and Hong Kong, Nader went from holding a finger in a crumbling dike to occupying one of the highest positions of authority in a racing organization that is boundlessly successful, astoundingly affluent and held in a position of almost reverent esteem by the members of the community it serves.

"The thing that impressed me immediately was the attention to detail and the commitment of the people," Nader said. "There is a refusal to settle for second best. Everything is first-class. Then came an appreciation for Asian racing and its structure, which I found fascinating, much more so than I ever expected."

Eight months after arriving in Hong Kong, Nader celebrated his 50th birthday on the day of the Cathay Pacific-sponsored International Races, four Group I events run at the end of a week of lavish parties at the expansive and electric Sha Tin. "Before I moved here, the man I replaced (Winfried Engelbrecht-Bresges, who was promoted to chief executive officer) told me that it would take two years before I really had a handle on job. I don't think it will take two years, but this has been an eye-opening experience. For instance, the betting on the international races will be less than you would expect because the bettors don't know the foreign horses. But we're running two races after the Hong Kong Cup and the last race of the day has the potential to generate more betting handle than the total for the day at Aqueduct and Hollywood Park combined."

The superficies run deep in Hong Kong.

"This is a place of great wealth. The economy is strong, the stock market is strong and many people are able to afford horse ownership," Nader said. The equine population of horses in training is just 1,200 and no owner is permitted interest in more than four. There is currently a 16-month waiting list of those who have applied for membership in the Jockey Club on a level that permits horse ownership. Those eventually admitted to what may be Hong Kong's most exclusive circle will have survived an exhaustive background check and examination of financial resources and paid a $250,000 (HK) initial fee.

The inevitable and enviable denouement is a model for the world that is impossible to duplicate. "The resources here allow you to do things you'd never consider anywhere else," Nader said, "but other things done here are possible to reproduce anywhere. If you can knock down the barriers and wipe the slate clean, these are things that can be done anywhere."

Foremost, Nader said, is attention to the concerns of every segment involved – from owners, trainers and non-owner members to bettors. "We maintain a customer-friendly racing environment and the state-of-the art drug testing is one thing, but the way the racing is governed is a key element. The jockeys and trainers may complain that fines are too stiff, but safety is a key element in the decision making process and the club demands respect for the rules. What separates racing here from virtually everywhere else is the transparency."

At the end of the day, the unfolding international races, with sprinter Sacred Kingdom and miler Good Ba Ba impressive in victory, only strengthened the upwardly mobile position of Hong Kong-trained horses on the global stage upon which the membership of the Jockey Club aspires to excel in the mold of their British mentors.
If Hong Kong will not be duplicated, it can at least be emulated.

"We have great expertise in specific areas that we are willing to share," Nader said. "The Club has brought great talent here from a number of countries.  There is also great expertise here in the construction, drainage and maintenance of turf courses, which is important to all the stakeholders, including the public. European horsemen come here knowing that the ground will always be good to firm, no matter what the weather. There are things that can be learned here and people come here from other parts of the world to observe. We're very interested in doing whatever we can to assist those in the industry from other countries."

There is much to be learned in Hong Kong, but it is first necessary to make the trip.

Increasing Oxygen Concentration in the Blood of the Racehorse

Oxygen is the fuel of life and its efficient use is the key to athletic fitness. The respiratory system of the racehorse must work hard to harvest the 20 percent of oxygen present in the air we all breathe. Observing a horse after his work on a cold morning provides a visual reminder of this, as the breath surges from his nostrils.

The respiratory process
Glucose and oxygen interact via a process called aerobic respiration, resulting in the production of energy. This cellular process powers all of our bodily functions, from breathing and digesting food to sprinting for the winning line. Carbon dioxide and water are by-products of this reaction.

Cells can also produce energy in the absence of oxygen (anaerobic respiration). In this case, glucose is also broken down to release energy. However, the lactic acid formed by this reaction is a more noxious compound than the carbon dioxide and water created by aerobic respiration. Its presence in cells results in muscle cramps and fatigue.  This lactic acid must be broken down into carbon dioxide and water, but this reaction again requires oxygen. Essentially, anaerobic respiration allows muscles and other cells to function for a short time in the absence of oxygen, building up an ‘oxygen debt.' This must be repaid later to allow the lactic acid to be broken down.
A good measure of a horse's fitness is how quickly breathing and pulse return to normal after exercise. This is because aerobic respiration is more efficient in fit horses, so they build up less of an oxygen debt while exercising. Less oxygen is required to breakdown lactic acid once the work has been completed.
Oxygen is delivered to the body tissues via the respiratory and cardiovascular systems. The respiratory system of the horse includes everything from the nostrils to the lungs. Air is delivered to the lungs, where oxygen diffuses into the bloodstream and is taken up by red blood cells. These cells are the body's carriers for molecules of oxygen and they are pumped around the body by the heart through arteries, capillaries and veins.
Physical causes of inefficient oxygen delivery
Trainers and veterinary surgeons must make sure that all of the components of the respiratory and cardiovascular systems are working to their full potential. This ensures that the body delivers oxygen as efficiently as possible to the muscles, in order that they have the energy necessary to win races!
The following may all be considered surgical conditions of the upper respiratory tract, in that a surgical procedure is often necessary to effect a cure:
Some of the main clinical problems that affect the upper respiratory tract (nostrils, larynx and pharynx) are related to physical obstruction of these ‘tubes.' Anything which reduces the diameter of these tubes will reduce the amount of air, and thus oxygen, which is delivered to the lungs. Physical obstructions of the upper respiratory tract are generally diagnosed by endoscopic examination carried out by a vet. Some conditions, e.g. profound cases of laryngeal hemiplegia, can be seen and thus diagnosed when the horses are at rest. Other conditions only occur when the horse is exercising. In these cases dynamic endoscopy, i.e. endoscopy whilst the horse is actually exercising on a treadmill, may be needed to fully elucidate the problem (Figure 1).
Horses are obliged to breathe through their noses, and cannot breathe through their mouths as many other species can. Sometimes the alar folds (skin folds above the nostrils) are incriminated as the cause of abnormal respiratory noise. Nasal strips are marketed as a means of stopping the soft outer nasal passages collapsing during exercise, thus increasing airflow into the lungs. Relatively common causes of reduced airflow through the nasal passages are space-occupying lesions such as cysts within the sinuses, or vascular growths (ethmoid hematomas). Surgical removal is often necessary.
The pharynx and larynx are other areas which may be affected by conditions which physically restrict the amount of air pulled into the lungs. Probably the best known of these is laryngeal hemiplegia. The larynx is a dynamic structure, which closes to prevent food entering the windpipe and opens to allow air to enter the lungs. Provided that the muscles controlling the larynx are functioning properly, the larynx can be opened to form a diamond-shaped structure. However, it is relatively common for the left side of the larynx to become paralyzed (Figure 2).  This results in only half of the larynx opening, reducing airflow into the lungs. Horses that suffer from this condition often make a characteristic ‘roaring' sound. Surgery is usually indicated to correct this. A laryngeal tieback, whereby a suture is placed through the left side of the larynx to permanently hold it open is often the treatment of choice for roarers. Normal procedure combines this with a ‘hobday' operation, which removes the vocal folds from the larynx and further opens the airway. Treatment for dorsal displacement of the soft palate, another relatively common condition affecting the upper respiratory tract, is more controversial. Some horses respond to conservative management, including the use of drop-over nosebands or tongue ties. Others need more invasive treatment. This may involve producing scar tissue on the soft palate so that it is ‘less floppy,' and thus less likely to displace. Thermocautery of the soft palate under general anaesthetic is an option, but perhaps a more elegant means of achieving this is the use of a laser. This may be performed in the standing, sedated horse. More recently, an operation which mobilizes the larynx to prevent dorsal displacement of the soft palate (‘Tie Forward') has been developed. Other physical conditions that may impede airflow through the pharynx include entrapment of the epiglottis by the folds of soft tissue (aryepiglottic folds) which lie alongside it, and chondritis or inflammation of the cartilages which form the larynx.
Medical causes of inefficient oxygen delivery
A number of medical conditions may also affect the amount of oxygen available to the horse.
Exercise-induced pulmonary hemorrhage (EIPH, or ‘bleeder') is a relatively common condition in which a blood vessel within the lungs bursts, and bleeds into the airways. The severity and amount of blood associated with such an incident can vary markedly. Sometimes relatively large volumes of blood are seen escaping from the horse's nostrils. In other cases, the volume of blood is relatively small and remains confined to the distal airways. This can only be detected after the event by endoscopy and examination of the cell types within the horse's respiratory secretions. Either way, blood takes the place of air within the airways and less oxygen is available to diffuse into the bloodstream. In addition, blood within the airways is a good medium to support bacterial growth and this may predispose horses to bacterial respiratory infections.
The exact cause of EIPH has yet to be elucidated. It may be due to increased blood pressure within the lungs during exercise, concussive damage to the blood vessels as the horse gallops, or a combination of both. Some horses appear to be more prone to this condition than others, and it appears that concurrent respiratory tract infections may also predispose horses to a pulmonary bleed. A variety of treatments have been tried. Furosemide is a diuretic drug, which essentially makes horses urinate more and this in turn dehydrates the horses slightly. It is postulated that this results in less fluid within their circulation and reduced blood pressure within the lung's small capillaries. Its use is permitted on race days by state racing authorities, but this may not be the case forever. However, as a prohibited substance likely to influence performance, it is banned in European racing. In spite of this it retains its place as a drug for training, as when given on work mornings, the chances of a bleed are said to be reduced. Some studies have also suggested that the use of nasal strips may reduce the chance of a bleed occurring, without any untoward side effects. These too are currently banned in European racing but can be used for training purposes. In England, known bleeders often have their water intake restricted before a race in an attempt to reduce blood pressure and thus the chances of a bleed. Clearly, to strike the correct balance between giving the horse sufficient hydration to perform well on the track and lessening the chances of a bleed, the eye of an experienced horseman is required.
Respiratory tract infections may also interfere with optimal oxygenation of the blood. Firstly, infections are associated with an increase in the amount of mucus within the respiratory tract, which may form a physical barrier to airflow and diffusion of oxygen. It is possible to vaccinate against the well-known respiratory viruses, such as influenza and herpes, and some racing authorities require proof of vaccination before a horse can race. However, every horseman will be aware of the non-specific ‘virus,' which results in coughing horses performing at levels below their potential. Viruses may also sensitize the airways, leaving horses more prone to secondary bacterial infections, or post-viral coughs. In addition, it is not uncommon for horses to become anemic following a viral infection. The reduced numbers of circulating red blood cells will lead to sub-optimal oxygen delivery. A number of supplements are available which aim to enable the horses to manufacture more red blood cells.
The importance of good stable hygiene and maintenance of a dust-free environment should not be understated in hastening recovery from airway infections. Even a healthy racehorse should only be exposed to quality roughage feed (good hay or haylage, etc.) and dust-free bedding material.
The cardiovascular system
The heart, which pumps oxygenated blood around the horse's body, must also be in excellent condition to ensure effective oxygen delivery. It should come as no surprise that research has shown that horses which have bigger hearts, as measured by ultrasound, are more likely to perform at the top level. An excellent example of this is the 1973 American Triple Crown winner, Secretariat, whose heart was recorded as weighing 21 lbs. at post mortem. It is clear that horses which have problems with their heart function are likely to perform poorly. The heart must beat in a rhythmic manner to allow coordinated filling of its chambers, followed by a coordinated contraction so that blood is pushed around the body in an efficient manner. Arrhythmias, such as atrial fibrillation, prevent this synchronization and are reflected in disappointing efforts on the racecourse. Diseases of the heart muscle itself (cardiomyopathy), alongside problems with the heart valves and abnormal openings in the walls of the heart are further causes of poor performance. Diagnosis of cardiac conditions may require echocardiography (ultrasonic examination of the heart) to assess the structure of the heart and blood flow within it. Electrocardiographic (ECG) evaluation will identify problems with the heart's rhythm and the electrical activity responsible for setting it.
The act of breathing is fundamental to animal life and so optimal uptake and use of oxygen is the foundation upon which equine training regimes are based. The horse's respiratory system must be fine-tuned to perform to its full potential and the skilled trainer must make himself aware of any problem which may be impeding this.

Barry Sangster 
(14 February 2008 - Issue 7)

Strengthening Young Thoroughbreds' Limbs

One of the major challenges in training racehorses is keeping them sound. Not unlike a human athlete, a racehorse's ligaments, tendons, bones and joints are susceptible to injury throughout its career and, at times, it seems impossible to avoid some sort of musculoskeletal mishap.

A vast number of components can comprise any musculoskeletal injury but many believe the economics of the Thoroughbred industry - namely the preparation of young horses for 2-year-old sales and racing 2-year-olds - are the main culprits for these sorts of injuries.
Training for most race horses commences when they are 18 to 20 months old. The skeleton of a horse often does not reach full maturity until they are four years old so training at a young age might predispose horses to a multitude of career-limiting or -ending injuries.
Shin soreness or bucked shins is an extremely common condition in young racing Thoroughbreds and Quarter Horses (and occasionally Standardbreds.) It involves the front portion of the cannon or metacarpal bone and is the result of rapid bone modeling.
Before a horse begins training, its cannon bones have the same thickness all the way around. When horses start galloping, there is a considerable increase in stress on the front of the cannon bone.  To contend with the stress, the equine body responds by adding new bone to the area in duress. Ultimately, this creates stronger bones but early on this new bone is prone to microfractures similar to the stress fractures that human athletes endure during training.
The severity of bucked shins can vary greatly, but most horses will exhibit pain when the cannon bone area is massaged, will be lame while trotting, and have a short, choppy stride. Another symptom is swelling in this area of the leg.
The condition is usually diagnosed by recognizing the clinical indicators in a horse when it begins its first training and/or racing campaign. Horses suffering from shin soreness must be rested until all signs of lameness have disappeared, which can take several days or many months.
For example, New York-based trainer Barclay Tagg's then 2-year-old colt, Tale of Ekati, had sore shins and returned after a month of light training to triumph in the Grade 2, $250,000 Belmont Futurity on September 15th of last year.
"One shin was very sore, but he got over it very quickly," Tagg said. "I got two real good works into him."
While Maimonides, a 2-year-old, owned by Ahmed Zayat, exited the Grade 1 Hopeful Stakes held at Saratoga Race Course on September 3 with the same affliction, his recovery was expected to take a bit longer. Sonny Sonbol, Zayat's racing manager, said he needed "three to four weeks to get over his shins and start back training and get ready for the winter."
Estimates vary, but it is believed between 65 and 90 percent of all Thoroughbreds in the United States and more than 40 percent of all Thoroughbreds in Australia buck their shins early in training.
About only 12 percent of young English racehorses buck their shins. Unlike the United States and Australia, much less emphasis is placed on 2-year-old racing in England and English horses are trained on straight tracks, so less strain would be placed on the cannon bone.
However, the English are not immune to their young horses being injured. In a study of 314 young Thoroughbreds in Newmarket more than 50 percent experienced some period of lameness, and in roughly 20 percent of those horses, the lameness prevented them from racing.
Also, bucked shins are not exclusively relegated to 2-year-olds but to all horses which are just beginning intense training. Some horses can suffer recurrences of shin soreness after a period of stall of paddock rest. Therefore, bucked shins do not discriminate based on the age of a horse, but depend on how intense the training is and if the horse is undertaking the action for the first time.
Dr. David Nunamaker, VMD, PhD, is an orthopedic surgeon and chair of the research department at the University of Pennsylvania's New Bolton Center who had conducted extensive research on bone development from 1982 to the present. Dr. Nunamaker, Dr. William Moyer, DVM, chair of the Large Animal and Surgery Department at Texas A&M University and Dr. John Fisher, DVM, an equine veterinarian and Maryland horse trainer, analyzed their research results and established a training system created to reduce the severity of bucked shins or erase them.
"We found that a horse's bone shape alters in response to its training," Dr. Nunamaker said. "The way most conventional training is conducted, a bone changes in a way it should not and that is why you get into trouble with bucked shins. Also saucer fractures seem to occur only in horses that have previously bucked their shins. This could lead to catastrophic fracture."
Dr. Nunamaker concluded a problem will become evident after 50,000 cycles of trotting and galloping. A cycle is equal to one swift stride.
"The Standardbred doesn't have issues with bucked shins because you never see a pacer do anything but pace while Thoroughbreds train with a variety of gaits, such as walking, trotting and galloping," Dr. Nunamaker said. "Thoroughbreds do not run while they are training and when they do run it's only every 10 to 14 days. The bone remodels to what it experiences - which is not racing."
Speed work is very important because when a horse runs at speed, the angle of strain is much greater. So horses that breeze more often remodel their bones for racing.
Utilizing the research results, Dr. John Fisher adheres to a training program that stresses and stimulates the cannon gradually.
"When a horse is breezed, the bone sees it as an emergency and immediately begins laying down new bone," Dr. Fisher said. "This new bone is weak and needs to be strengthened through later remodeling, which would be triggered by further breezes spaced closer together. If remodeling is not allowed to take place and the horse is asked to do too much before he is ready, the new bone will be weak and prone to injury. The bone-strengthening is entirely based on stress and recovery to gradually increase bone density and strength."
In Dr. Fisher's program, horses transition from a one furlong work at 15 seconds to a half-mile or more in 13 seconds over a 16-week period.
If there are more than four days between short distance works, Drs. Nunamaker and Fisher have discovered the new bone will stop rebuilding and actually weaken, with no additional stress after five days.
Once the program has been finished, a horse is prepared to begin conventional training because he should have accumulated enough bone strength that he will not buck shins. However, if a horse is subjected to different track conditions or circumferences, such as a European horse racing on American dirt, the threat of shin soreness resurfaces.
Even though Dr. Fisher has modified the program throughout the years, he is still quite pleased with its performance.
"We just don't have many injuries at all," Dr Fisher said. "No more tendons, no more suspensories, no more fractures."
How much high-speed work and distance are required to signal the bone to remodel itself correctly and not form weaker bone? Research is still being conducted but Dr. Nunamaker claims the goal is to correctly change the bone at the slowest possible speed over the shortest possible distance.
 
"Maybe two furlongs, maybe one furlong," Dr. Nunamaker said. "Maybe it won't even have to be that far. We just don't know but there is a fine line during a crucial time period as to what is too much and what is not enough."
Once the bone has attained maximum strength by becoming thicker at its stress points, it should stay that way.
"When we looked at the timing of the injuries that occurred in horses that have shin injuries, we found that when the horse reached four years old, it no longer had shin injuries," Dr. Nunamaker said. "It may develop injuries to other parts of its body, but not to the shins. It is in the first two years of its training program, if it starts at two years of age, that it is going to have shin injury problems. After that no more shin injuries."
It is important to note the bones are the slowest part of the body to train. In most cases, the cardiovascular system and soft tissues are prepared for the stress of racing before the bones.
Study results presented at the 2005 Australian Veterinary Association depict shin soreness or bucked shins can be avoided. Certain training techniques place horses at risk for this condition.
The most significant factor was how far the horse trained and how quickly he went. If a horse trained at a speed greater than 33 mph during its first ten weeks of training, he tended to have some shin pain.
"A gradual increase in the weekly distances at these speeds is the key to reducing the number of cases," Dr. David Evans, BVSc, PhD and associate professor of veterinary science at the University of Sydney and one of the researchers on the project, said.
The study also revealed that using short gallops of 200-300 meters at 33 mph or greater can decrease shin soreness; training horses to induce shin soreness will not reduce the risk of contracting the condition during subsequent training; and shin pain occurred much less often in horses that began training at an average age of 30 months.
Dr. Evans acknowledged that much more research was necessary before any authoritative program could be implemented.
K.L.P. Verheyen, DVM, MSc, PhD, MRCVS, of the Royal Veterinary College (RVC) in London, agrees with Drs. Nunamaker and Evans that training methods are associated with injury risk.
"Stress injuries are repetitive loading injuries," Dr. Verheyen said. "Compare it to a paper clip and if you keep bending it, it will break. Interval training (alternate periods of hard exertion and rest) is a better option because high-speed exercise is as not bad as previously thought. It actually stimulates bone to respond, because bone is a living tissue and is constantly remodeling. If the same exercise is repeated again and again, the bone will stop responding, which is what we think is happening with the low-speed exercise and stress fractures."
While more research must be conducted to provide greater insight into how equine bones adapt and grow, even less is known about how tendons and ligaments respond to training. In a series of recent studies, Allan Goodrich, a professor at the Royal Veterinary College and the University College of London, discovered that the tendons of young horses (less than two years) strengthen in response to training. These results raise the possibility that early training enhances the development of the limb's support structures and could diminish injuries during training and racing.
After reviewing training methods and treatments, it is obvious much more research must be completed before any sound strength management program can be introduced.
"We just don't have all the answers yet," Dr. Nunamaker said.

Kimberly French 
(14 February 2008 - Issue 7)

TRM Trainer of the Quarter - Bill Mott

TheTRM trainer of the quarter award has been won by Bill Mott. Bill and his team will receive a TRM product portfolio worth in excess of $1,500. The portfolio will consist of TRM tack bags and saddle pads as well as a large selection of the world famous TRM product range.

On a single afternoon in January, Hall of Fame trainer Bill Mott squashed any chance of a letdown following his outstanding 2007 season by winning three races in the Sunshine Millions January 26th. Their combined purses were $2 million.

He was lucky for the opportunity. So was every other trainer with horses in the half of the Sunshine Millions at Santa Anita, which somehow dodged rain long enough to have a day of racing. Races were cancelled at Santa Anita for two days before and after that single afternoon.
Mott won both the $1 million Sunshine Millions Classic with Go Between and the $500,000 Filly and Mare Turf with Quite a Bride at Santa Anita. At Gulfstream Park, site of the other Sunshine Million races, Mott's War Monger captured the $500,000 Turf. That allowed Mott to be ranked second in the country in earnings through the first four weeks of 2008.
‘You imagine days like this,' Mott said.
War Monger had not started since taking the Rutgers Handicap at Monmouth Park, Oct. 24th. The victory was War Monger's third in his last four starts and made him four-for-seven in his career. Mott said, ‘When he switches leads, he's got a nice punch.'
So does Quite a Bride, who upset the 3-5 favorite, Nashoaba's Key, to improve her lifetime record to 10-for-18.

Go Betweem, a five-year-old son of Point Given, improved his lifetime record to seven-for-27 by taking the Classic under Garrett Gomez, the 2007 Eclipse Award winning jockey who also rode Quite a Bride.
Success is hardly new to Mott. When the 54-year-old native of Mobridge, South Dakota, was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1998, he displaced Allen Jerkens as the youngest trainer ever inducted. That was 30 years after Mott bought and trained his first horse, a mare named My Assets he purchased for $320. Mott worked for Hall of Fame trainer Jack Van Berg for three years before opening his own stable in 1978.

He has prospered ever since. Mott's horses are invariably well-prepared when they go into the starting gate, reflecting Mott's dedication to giving his horses the proper foundation before they race. Mott's ability to win with horses off long layoffs is second to none, evidenced by War Monger's winning return.
 
While Mott will be remembered forever for his brilliant management of two-time Horse of the Year Cigar, who won 16 consecutivce races, he has never been celebrated for his work with two-year-olds.

He changed that perception dramatically at Saratoga in 2007, when he ended Todd Pletcher's five-year leading trainer reign by winning 27 races, giving Mott his first Saratoga title since 2001.. Eleven of those 27 victories were with two-year-olds. ‘We might have been a little more aggressive with our twoyear-olds,' Mott said. It worked, as Mott took a huge lead early in the trainer standings then maintained it through Saratoga's 36-day meet. ‘It was gratifying, but the best part has been the last five years not being on top, because you learn a lot more that way,' Mott said. ‘I'm very serious about that. It's been very humbling.'

Others marvel at Mott's horsemanship. Hall of Fame jockey Kent Desormeaux, who rode War Monger to victory in the Sunshine Millions Turf, said, ‘Bill's done a great job of training this horse. When I first rode him, I couldn't get within two lengths of another horse.'

By: Bill Heller
 (14 February 2008 - Issue Number: 7)

Taking Time to Review your Hiring Procedures

The Federal Government has stepped up enforcement and prosecution of EMPLOYERS who hire undocumented workers. Felony criminal prosecution and fines are being imposed for employers who cannot show they have taken the steps required in the hiring process.

If as an employer you have a perspective employee fill out the Form I-9 (U.S. Department of Homeland Security Employment Eligibility Verification form), and you examine the required documents, you will not be fined or prosecuted, even if it turns out that the documents were falsified and the employee turns out to be an undocumented alien. Of course, if you knew the worker was undocumented, you can still be fined or jailed.

Therefore, it is strongly recommended that you follow the procedures that are outlined below.

1. Have the employee complete Section One of the I-9 Form. He/she must sign the form. If the form is completed by someone other than the employee, that person must also sign;

2. You must complete and sign Section Two of the I-9 Form.  To do so, you must examine one document from List A, OR one from List B AND one from List C;

3. You must accept any document(s) from the List of Acceptable Documents presented by the individual which reasonably appear on their face to be genuine and to relate to the person presenting them. You may not specify which document(s) an employee must present;

4. You must retain the I-9 Form for three years after the date the person begins work or  one year after the person's employment is terminated, whichever is later; and

5. Upon request, provide Forms I-9 to authorized officers of the Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Department of Labor, or the Office of Special Counsel for Immigration Related Unfair Employment Practices for inspection.
Another area of concern is "document abuse." This is the term used to describe unlawful practices by the employer related to verifying the employment eligibility of employees and discriminatory use of the I-9 form. An employer with four or more employees may be charged with unlawful discrimination for any of the following reasons - these practices should be avoided:

1. Improperly requesting that employees produce more documents than are required by the Form I-9.

2. Improperly requesting that employees produce a particular document such as a "green card," to establish identity or work eligibility.

3. Improperly rejecting documents that reasonably appear to be genuine and belong to the employee presenting them.

4. Improperly treating groups of applicants differently when completing Form I-9, such as requiring certain groups of employees that look or sound "foreign" to produce particular documents that the employer does not require other employees to produce.
Here are a few more tips that may be helpful

• Be certain you have complete I-9 forms 
 for all new hires, including U.S. Citizens.


• Make sure that all staff that process new 
 hires are trained to properly complete  
 the I-9 process and are trained to properly 
complete the I-9 form. Periodically interview staff to make sure they are properly processing new hires.   
Incomplete or improperly completed I-9   
forms will result in exposure to liability!


• Complete the forms at the same point in 
 the employment process for all employees 
 - after you have made the decision to hire 
 the person.


• The law does not require you to 
 photocopy documents. However, if you 
 wish to make photocopies, you must do 
 so for all employees, and you should 
 retain each photocopy with the Form I-9.


• Periodically review your I-9 procedures, especially prior to the employment of seasonal workers. Conduct occasional "spot checks" to ensure the procedures are being followed and the forms are being filled out correctly.


• Make sure your system is programmed to "flag" I-9's 90 days before the expiration date of any work authorization document!


• Periodically review your record retention practices. Be certain you keep I-9 forms on file for three years after the date of hire or for one year after termination of employment, whichever date is later.

Although following these suggestions does not guarantee that you will be protected against criminal or civil charges, it does minimize the possibility and will help to give you one less thing to worry about. If you would like more information on this subject, please contact me at the California Thoroughbred Trainers office.

Edward I. Halpern
  (14 February 2008 - Issue Number: 7)

Dale Romans - his career and his views on welfare issues

THIS IS A SCANNED IN ARTICLE - FROM OUR PRE DIGITAL DAYS!

This article first appeared in North American Trainer - Winter 2007 - issue 6

​ Spooky Mulder - winning the hard way

By Bill Heller

Came again on rail
            Dug in gamely on rail
            Dug in gamely inside
            Came again inside
            Set pace, resolute
            Resolute, prevailed
            Determined outside
            Dug in between rivals
            Between, came again
 
            Those aren’t your typical, mundane DRF comments. Then again, there is nothing typical or mundane about Spooky Mulder, who has won 31 of those 78 starts. He also has 16 seconds, four thirds and earnings topping $850,000 despite a 1-for-18 stakes record. Spooky Mulder has made his money the hard way: on the lead or pressing the pace in claiming sprint races at 17 different racetracks throughout the East and Midwest under 24 different riders. He is the ultimate claiming warrior.  From June 26th, 2002, when he won his sixth lifetime start in a $12,500 claimer at Churchill Downs, Spooky Mulder made at least one start a month for 35 consecutive months, one month short of three years.While he was most effective at six (17-for-49) and  6 ½ furlongs (6-for-11), he had four wins and three seconds in seven starts at seven furlongs and won both of his starts at one mile.

On wet tracks, he had eight wins in 14. He didn’t let chronic foot problems or a near-fatal infection compromise his career. Courage, durability, versatility and a 40 percent career winning percentage. What else is there for a Thoroughbred to accomplish?

On September 2nd, just two weeks shy of the sixth anniversary of his winning career debut at Turfway Park in 2001, Spooky Mulder shook off a 6 ½ month layoff to take an optional $50,000 claimer at Delaware Park by 3 ¾ lengths wire-to-wire in 1:08 4/5, earning a Beyer Speed Figure of 103. That’s fast, especially for a nine-year-old, but nowhere near his career best of 116 “The one word that would describe him is amazing,” his current trainer Scott Lake said. “It’s the only word you can use to describe him.”

 Lake, once again battling Steve Asmussen for the national lead in training victories, knows Spooky Mulder better than anyone, having claimed him three times, for $25,000, $50,000 and $75,000, and having had him claimed away for $65,000 and $100,000. “When you lose him, you hate it,” Lake said. “You feel sick, but we were running him in spots where he could win, running him where he belongs.” Spooky Mulder belongs in the winner’s circle, and he seems to realize that. “He’s the man and he knows it,” Lake said. “If you ever see him in the morning, he struts.”

 Lake was anything but enamored with Spooky Mulder when he first saw him in the paddock at Canterbury Park in Minnesota on July 19th, 2003. Lake was running Pelican Beach against Spooky Mulder in the $48,000 Claiming Crown Express. “We were standing in the paddock in July,” Lake said. “He was sweating and washed out and I said, ‘Who is this rat?’” Then Lake looked at the Form and saw that this rat had already won nine races. “I said, ‘I have to wait for him to be put back in a claimer,’” Lake said. “Anybody who wins that many races and looks like that has to be a winner.” That afternoon at Canterbury, Pelican Beach finished second to Landler by a head, 3 ½ lengths ahead of Spooky Mulder, who rallied from seventh to finish third after breaking unusually slow.

 Most of his career, he’s been freaky fast. And while he has not acquitted himself well in stakes company, he did knock off 2005 Breeders’ Cup Sprint winner Silver Train in a three-horse race at Aqueduct on April 20th, 2006, when he was claimed from Lake by trainer Pat Reynolds for $100,000. Spooky Mulder won two more starts at that lofty claiming level for Reynolds before Lake claimed him back for $75,000 on Nov. 19th, 2006, at Aqueduct, another race Spooky Mulder won. He finished the year with six wins, three seconds and one third from 13 starts, earning $236,705. Not bad for an eight-year-old claimer. Asked why he claimed him yet again, Lake said, “Because he’s awesome.”

Nearly a year later, Lake believes Spooky Mulder has more victories left in him. “Knock on wood, he has a club foot and a little bit of an ankle, but other than that, he’s remained pretty sound for us,” Lake said.
A son of Brunswick out of Suana, by Jade Hunter, Spooky Mulder was bred by Jeff Allen in Kentucky. Fittingly, Spooky Mulder debuted in a $30,000 maiden claimer at Turfway Park, winning the 6 ½-furlong race by a length and a half. He made just one other start as a three-year-old, finishing a tiring fifth in an allowance race. He returned to the races the following February and began carving out one of the most successful careers a claimer has ever had.  Lake crossed paths with Spooky Mulder in the 2003 Claiming Crown, and, true to his word, did claim him later that year. But Lake waited to do so.

After the third at Canterbury, Spooky Mulder captured a starter allowance at Ellis Park, then finished a badly tiring sixth in a $45,000 claimer at Turfway Park. Trainer Don Habeeb dropped Spooky Mulder to $25,000, and on October 10th, 2003, Lake claimed him. Spooky Mulder finished second by 1 ¾ lengths in that final start for Habeeb and wasted little time verifying Lake’s wisdom in adding him to his stable. Following a game second in a $35,000 claimer at Aqueduct - his lone start without Lasix - Spooky Mulder won a $30,000 claimer wire-to-wire by 13 ¾ lengths in 1:08 2/5 at Aqueduct, November 23rd, earning a Beyer Speed Figure of 116. Spooky Mulder twice won an optional $75,000 claimer, one of them at one mile. That induced Lake to try stretching Spooky Mulder out to a mile and an eighth to contest the 2004 Claiming Crown Jewel at Canterbury. Sent off at 4-1, Spooky Mulder finished 11th by 40 lengths. He’d been sixth by 33 ¼ lengths in a previous attempt at nine furlongs.

Showing no ill effect, Spooky Mulder won his next start, a $65,000 claimer at seven furlongs at Saratoga when he was claimed by Mark Shuman. In his first start for his new connections in a $100,000 claimer at Saratoga, attempting to go wire-to-wire at six furlongs, Spooky Mulder was passed at the top of the stretch, only to surge again on the rail and defeat Secret Run by a neck in a snappy 1:09.  It was a gutsy, signature performance, one which resonated with fans, bettors and horsemen. But by the following April, Spooky Mulder was dropped back to $50,000, and one of Lake’s owners, Ben Mondello, a 34-year-old accountant in New York City, wanted to own the gritty gelding. “I had just started a business relationship with Scott, and he was on his honeymoon,” Mondello said. “I called him up and told him to take the horse for $50,000. He’s a racehorse. He wants to win. This horse doesn’t like to win unless he’s in a fight.”

Mondello and Lake couldn’t have known Spooky Mulder would immediately be involved in a fight for his life.“He had an infection is his upper hoof and it spread all the way up to his tendon sheath,” Lake said. “We sent him to the New Jersey clinic and (Dr.) Patty Hogan.” Hogan called Lake and told him she was concerned about Spooky Mulder’s life, and that any treatment might be costly. “I said, ‘Do whatever you have to do to save his life,’” Lake said. “She said, ‘That’s all I needed to hear.’ She called me at Gulfstream Park eight days later. She said, ‘I think it’s good news.’ She did a phenomenal job saving his life. Mondello agreed: “Patty saved his life.”
           

Spooky Mulder was back to the races exactly three months after the April 10th claim in a $75,000 claimer at Belmont Park. “I said to Scott, ‘What do you think?’” Mondello said. “He said, ‘I haven’t trained him that hard.’”Hard enough. Spooky Mulder won by a length and a half in 1:09. Lake tried to win a stakes race with him, but the best Spooky Mulder could do was finish second in three of them, the Icecapade at Monmouth and the Brutally Frank and Paumonok at Aqueduct. After the last one, January 28th, 2006, Lake freshened his horse and he returned two months later to win a $75,000 claimer. On April 20th, 2006, Spooky was entered in an optional $100,000 claimer. He faced two opponents: multiple graded stakes winner Silver Train and Primary Suspect.
           

 Silver Train had won the Grade 2 Jerome Handicap and the Grade 1 Breeders’ Cup Sprint in his final two starts in 2005, and would win the Grade 1 Metropolitan Handicap and the Grade 2 Tom Fool Handicap after taking on Spooky Mulder, who spotted Silver Train two pounds and went off at 9-5. Silver Train was 1-2. On the lead, Spooky Mulder was under constant pressure from Primary Suspect. Silver Train shadowed the top pair then tried pouncing on them in the stretch. Spooky Mulder refused to give in, holding Silver Train safe by three-quarters of a length with Primary Suspect a nose back in third after six furlongs in 1:09 2/5.

 “That was the day we lost him,” Mondello said. Spooky Mulder had been claimed for $100,000 by trainer Pat Reynolds for owner Paul Pompa, Jr. “After the race, an owner called me up and said, ‘You might be one of the luckiest owners ever; you just had an eight-year-old gelding claimed for $100,000,’” Mondello said. “I told him, ‘I’d rather give the $100,000 back and keep him.’ It was like losing a family member.” Pompa had discussed claiming Spooky Mulder with Reynolds. “I said, ‘I don’t know where to go if we claim him,’” Reynolds said. “He called me from the sales at Keeneland. He said, ‘There are people bidding $800,000, $900,000 on yearlings here who might never get broken. This is a ready-made horse running for $100,000. Buy him.’”

            Reynolds claimed Spooky Mulder and is happy that he did. “It turned out to be a real gratifying experience,” he said. “He was like a pet. He knew his name. If you said, ‘Spooky,’ he turned his head.”His head was fine; his wheels were not. “He had terrible feet,” Reynolds said. “One was curved and one was clubbed. And he had a history of shoeing problems. But that’s taken care of by a blacksmith. He did not throw a single shoe while I had him.” Reynolds had him for seven starts, three of them wins and one a painfully close second by a head to Around the Cape in the $75,000 Lure Stakes at Belmont. It would have given Spooky Mulder that elusive first stakes victory. “He almost accomplished something,” Reynolds said. “He got beat by a head. The horse knows how to read. If he doesn’t see dollar signs next to it (for a claiming race), he doesn’t think it’s a race.”

            Spooky Mulder’s final race for Reynolds was in a $75,000 claimer at Aqueduct, November 19th at Aqueduct. Under Eibar Coa, Spooky Mulder found himself in a speed duel for six furlongs. Stonewood, a hard-hitter in his own right, was on the rail with Spooky Mulder right next to him. Stonewood held Spooky Mulder off by a half a length through a first quarter in :22 2/5, then spurted clear by a length and a half after a half in :46. But Spooky Mulder came back for more. Then the two were joined on the outside by Morine’s Victory. Spooky Mulder was passed again on the outside by Morine’s Victory, yet came right back in between horses, winning a three-horse photo by a neck over Morine’s Victory with Stonewood just another head back in third. “He was beaten,” Reynolds said. “Anybody who saw that race, even the people who were second and third, couldn’t stop talking about it. They said, ‘If we have to lose, we don’t mind losing to a horse like that.’ Only a horse who knows what winning is would run a race like that. He was an unbelievable animal to be around.”

            He wouldn’t be around Reynolds any more. Lake had claimed him back for $75,000. Reynolds still misses Spooky Mulder. “I treated him every day like the class animal he is, and he reciprocated,” Reynolds said. “I wish I had a couple two-year-olds like him in the barn.” Re-united with Lake, Spooky Mulder won one of four starts before getting a deserved rest from mid-February to September 2nd when he resurfaced at Delaware Park in an optional $50,000 claimer. “His ankle was flaring up on him,” Lake said.

            By the time Spooky Mulder returned to the races, Mondello had claimed Spooky Mulder’s four-year-old, less accomplished half-sister, Samantha Mulder. Mondello claimed the four-year-old filly for $15,000 last June 17th, when she finished sixth in a maiden claimer at Churchill Downs. Lake gave the filly a seven-week layoff and she won her first start for Mondello, a maiden claimer at the same level, by 6 ¼ lengths at Delaware Park. She subsequently finished second and fifth in a starter allowance and $12,500 claimer, respectively.  How would Spooky Mulder fare off a 6 ½-month layoff? He was sent off at 5-1 and wired five rivals off sizzling fractions of :22 1/5 and :44 4/5. He crossed the wire 3 ¾ lengths clear after six furlongs in 1:08 4/5, his 30th career victory. “It’s unbelievable,” Mondello said. “He’s a racehorse. He wants to win. Somebody told me after the race, ‘You might be lucky enough to get to the Kentucky Derby, but you’ll never have another horse like this again.’ He’s probably right. The heart that this horse has, forget about it.”
           

In his next start, the Hockessin Stakes at Delaware Park October 6th, Spooky Mulder uncharacteristically settled in third, then gamely rallied to win by a head in 1:10, finally securing his first stakes victory. Spooky Mulder subsequently finished a tiring fifth by a length and three-quarters in the Vincent A. Moscarelli Memorial Stakes and third in an optional claimer at Laurel Park on Wednesday. November 21st, the day before Thanksgiving.
    Lake is thankful he’s gotten to train this incredible claimer. He thinks he understands the secret of Spooky Mulder’s success: “He enjoys what he’s doing. He’s happy. That’s what keeps him going.”

Racing Power- supporting muscular effort through nutrition

By Dr Catherine Dunnett

The powerhouse for a horse in training is found in its large muscle mass. Whilst genetic makeup within the Thoroughbred breed has a large impact on a horse’s innate racing ability, dietary factors will also influence subsequent performance.

 There are many elements found in a racehorse’s diet that will help to support muscle function. Hydrolysable carbohydrate (sugar and starch), assisted by fermentable fibre, will help to maintain important muscle stores of glycogen (a carbohydrate fuel).  Dietary electrolytes, which are integrally involved in muscle contraction, are essential to offset electrolyte loss in sweat. Key dietary antioxidants such as vitamins E and C and also antioxidant co-factors, such as copper, manganese, zinc and selenium, are also important as part of the body’s antioxidant team which strives to reduce the formation of free radicals or reactive oxygen species, and to limit their damaging effects on the body.  Free radical damage has previously been implicated in the process of exercise induced muscle damage.

GLYCOGEN STORES MUST BE REPLENISHED FOLLOWING EXERCISE


One of the most important functions of the diet is to replenish the horse’s energy stores in muscle on an ongoing basis.    A racing ration needs to support the synthesis of glycogen to maintain the store of this important fuel, which is used in increasing amounts during exercise.  Glycogen, which consists of a large branched chain of glucose units, is stored in both skeletal muscle and the liver and it represents one of the largest potential energy stores in the body. Horses being natural athletes, have a relatively large muscle glycogen store when compared to other species.  As the glycogen content of horse muscle is influenced by the proportion of different muscle fibre types present, this means that there is a genetic influence on the overall glycogen content.   
Fast twitch fibres (Type IIb), which are found in increased numbers in talented sprinting horses, store relatively more glycogen than the slower type I and type IIa fibres.  However, both diet and training can influence the level of glycogen stored in muscle.  Exercise training for example has been reported to increase muscle glycogen content by 30-60% in horses.

Logically, diet should have a significant effect on the storage of muscle glycogen as it provides the building blocks for glycogen synthesis.  Glycogen can be synthesised efficiently from dietary starch, which is another polymer of glucose found in cereals.  Glycogen can also be produced from certain glycogenic amino acids, released from the protein content of feed. In addition, propionic acid, which is a significant volatile fatty acid produced in the horse’s hindgut during the fermentation process, can also ultimately be converted to muscle glycogen.   In terms of the day to day diet, starch is by far the most direct and most efficient precursor for glycogen and so it is therefore not surprising that cereals, which are high in starch, have been the mainstay of racing diets for many years.

In recent years we have seen the introduction of racing feeds that are lower in starch and sugar than traditional racing rations, with a greater emphasis being placed on digestible fibre and oil as energy sources. Whilst there are many health benefits attributable to this type of diet, the effect of changing the level of starch in the diet on muscle glycogen should always be considered.

MUSCLE GLYCOGEN - 
AN IMPORTANT FUEL BUT NOT THE KEY FACTOR IN FATIGUE


Muscle glycogen is a major source of energy (ATP) to working muscle during intense exercise, which is characteristic of racing.  The amount of muscle glycogen used during training or racing will depend on its rate of utilisation, which in turn is affected by the speed and duration of the exercise undertaken.  In general terms, the higher the speed, the faster muscle glycogen is broken down and used. The duration of fast exercise is normally curtailed, which limits the overall amount of glycogen used.  During slower work, although the rate of glycogen utilisation is much lower, exercise can usually be continued for a much longer time allowing more glycogen to be utilised overall (see figure 1).

Total muscle glycogen content can be reduced by about 30% during a single bout of maximal exercise in horses.  However, as muscle is a mix of different fibre types, the depletion of glycogen in individual fibres may be greater than this depending on the pattern of fibre recruitment during the exercise.  Studies, however, have shown that even the IIB muscle fibres, which use glycogen at the fastest rate, are not totally depleted of glycogen following racing.  This supports the notion that although glycogen is an important fuel source for racehorses, glycogen depletion is not the most important factor in fatigue.  However, exercise studies do suggest that power output and exercise performance can be decreased in horses where muscle glycogen has failed to be adequately replaced following a previous race or piece of hard work.  This was the conclusion drawn by Lacombe and co-workers (2001) who reported that horses with replete muscle glycogen stores were able to run for longer periods during a maximal exercise test compared to horses whose muscle glycogen level remained low following a previous exercise bout.  
Whilst there are always horses that will buck the trend, this research emphasises the need to allow a suitable period of time between races, but also between bouts of fast work and subsequent racing to allow muscle glycogen stores to be replenished.

From a practical viewpoint, I would say that the ability of a racing diet to support muscle glycogen synthesis remains important.  In contrast to human athletes, muscle glycogen replenishment in horses is relatively slow.  Following racing or a hard work, research suggests that muscle glycogen can take up to 72 hours to return to pre-exercise levels when a traditional high cereal racing ration is fed.

Certainly research carried out in the past 3 years would suggest that a high glycemic racing ration would be better placed to support glycogen replenishment more quickly following racing or hard work.  There are many factors that affect the glycemic response to feed, which in simple terms describes the relative rise in blood glucose following feeding. The starch and sugar content of a feed, however, is one of the most significant factors affecting glycemic response.  Feeds that are high in starch and sugar e.g. a high cereal-containing mix produce a greater glycemic response compared with feeds that are very low in starch and sugar e.g. a forage only ration. 
Rate of glycogen synthesis following a glycogen depleting exercise bout was significantly higher in horses fed a high glycemic diet compared to those fed a very low glycemic control diet (Lacombe et al 2004, Lacombe et al 2006).  In addition, absolute glycogen concentration in muscle was significantly higher both 48 and 72 hours following exercise in the high glycemic group compared to the control horses and muscle glycogen concentration had returned to pre-exercise levels following 72 hours.   
 
The benefit of a high glycemic diet for glycogen repletion does, however, appear to be time dependent.  Jose-Cunelleras (et al 2006) reported a minimal difference in glycogen repletion in the first 24 hours following a glycogen depleting exercise bout between horses that were fed a high glycemic feed compared with a group where feed was withheld for 8 hours and another group of horses where only hay was fed.   A recent study also concluded that the route of administration of carbohydrate given post-exercise significantly affects the rate of glycogen replenishment.  Horses that were given an intravenous infusion of glucose following exercise exhibited significantly greater glycogen storage rates and glycogen concentration in the first 6 hours following exercise compared to horses fed a similar quantity of glucose orally.  In fact, the repletion of glycogen in response to oral glucose was minimal over this time period compared to the unsupplemented control horses (Geor et al 2007).
Whilst it is difficult to draw direct comparisons with feeding practices used in racing, it is worth appreciating the possible differences in the rate of glycogen repletion when very high glycemic feeds are fed compared to very low glycemic feeds.  The reality in many training yards I would suspect lies somewhere between these two extremes.

LOW GLYCEMIC 
DIETS CAN OFFER RACEHORSES MANY BENEFITS


There are many health-related benefits to feeding a ration that is lower in starch and sugar.  However, one should be mindful of muscle glycogen when considering horses that are consistently fed a low glycemic diet.  Specifically horses may be fed this type of ration because they are behaviourally more manageable, or because a specific condition such as the muscular disease recurrent exertional rhabdomyolysis (tying up) (RER) is present.

A low starch diet is actively encouraged for horses that suffer from RER.  McKenzie (et al 2003) reported that plasma creatine kinase activity (CK), elevations of which can indicate muscle damage, was significantly reduced following exercise in RER horses fed a low starch high fat diet versus a high starch low fat diet.   In addition, lower resting heart rates have also been reported in horses fed a low starch high fat diet compared to the reverse.  A lower resting heart rate may be beneficial especially in RER horses where it reflects a calmer horse as stress has been implicated as a trigger factor for the condition. 

The current thinking on feed for horses with RER continues to be a low starch and sugar diet supplemented with oil.  It is also important that the diet is well balanced, especially with respect to calcium and phosphorus.  Adequate electrolyte provision is equally important, as is the intake of antioxidants such as vitamin E and other related trace minerals such as selenium.  Any potential individual limitation in mineral or electrolyte absorption and retention should be investigated further with veterinary assistance in order that individualised adjustments can be made to the diet.

A SUPPORTING ROLE FOR PROTEIN IN MUSCLE RECOVERY


Whilst we are all no doubt aware that the amino acids that make up protein are important for muscle development and repair, protein and its constituent amino acids have received very little attention in horses in terms of their potential to limit exercise induced muscle damage and aid muscle recovery.

In human athletes, co-consumption of a protein and carbohydrate drink during and after exercise appears to limit exercise induced muscle damage, ultimately allowing faster recovery (Baty et al 2007; Saunders et al 2004).  Recent introduction of ingredients containing partially hydrolysed protein may improve absorption of these amino acids and peptides possibly offering further benefit.

Finally, some nutraceutical ingredients including carnitine and creatine have been hailed as being beneficial to muscle function and recovery in human athletes.  Creatine, which has been studied in the horse, has failed to offer any great advantage, largely due to its poor absorption.  Likewise, carnitine has been reported to improve muscle blood flow during exercise in humans, helping to reduce muscle damage.  However, this aspect has not as yet been investigated in horses and previous dietary studies with carnitine were not unequivocal about the ability of oral carnitine to increase muscle carnitine content.

Breaking In - laying the groundwork with the racehorses of the future

By Frances Karon

While the Thoroughbred racehorse has evolved through methods of breeding, raising, feeding, vaccinating and training, one thing that has remained fairly constant is that they must be broken in with great care and patience if they stand any chance of doing what they were born to do."

We can breed for speed or distance, to race or sell commercially, or to zero in on superior ancestors, but whatever the sire’s covering fee is, it’s like that down-to-earth reminder that our shoes, be they Armani or knockoffs – go on the same way. All horses must be taught to carry a rider on their back and to respond to a bit in their mouth. Someone figured out a long time ago that Thoroughbreds do not react positively to the American cowboy way of “breaking” a horse – literally, breaking its spirit – leading the way for a gentler, more personalized breaking in process. There are subtle differences in the approach but the desired ending is to produce a horse who accepts a rider with the confidence that only good early experiences will give it.

 
In Camden, South Carolina, Mickey Preger Jr. has been breaking young racehorses-to-be for 15 years, though his education began long before. The son of the trainer of 1983 Eclipse Award-winning older mare Ambassador of Luck, Preger grew up on the backstretch of Belmont Park, where his father shared a barn with Northern Dancer’s trainer Horatio Luro for 20 years. Preger later spent years working for Ruffian and Forego’s trainer Frank Whiteley Jr. During Preger’s tenure, Whiteley broke Rhythm, Seeking the Gold and Preach.
 
Preger is based at the Camden Training Center, which used to be the place of choice for many trainers to winter their racehorses. Now, it caters more towards young horses learning the ropes but it has what Preger calls a “racetrack atmosphere in the country. There are enough horses here that they’re acclimated to everything when they leave here – the traffic of the track, horses jogging the wrong way.”
 
Preger circles October 1 on his calendar every year as his target date to begin the breaking in his new stock. The process itself is rudimentary and painstaking. He says, “I would say the way we break them is still very old school.” It is a matter of tackling one idea at a time and giving them three or four days to acclimate to it. Slowly, in this way his horses get used to a bit, lunging, lunging with a surcingle, with a saddle and with stirrups, each as an individual step. At this point they are well into their lessons and Preger will line drive them “until we put a good mouth on them, probably around four or five days. We take our time, and if a horse needs a couple more days we just give them a couple more days of whatever they need.”
 
The horses have already been introduced to a rider jumping on and off both sides, first in the stalls before graduating to the shedrow, jogging figure eights in small paddocks and learning directional changes in larger paddocks. Preger drills the same thing into their heads repetitively, stepping it up a level every few days as they become mentally prepared. In this fashion, the horses reach the stage where they begin jogging over a gallop in the woods before cantering on a polo field to try out lead changes.
 
The babies move on to gallop over a half-mile track, where they will generally remain until just after January 1, after which it is on to the more serious business conducted on the mile training track. When the horses ship out to racetracks around the country, most will be advanced enough to where their new trainers can breeze them three-eighths out of the gate at the end of their first week.
 
The majority of Preger’s clientele sends him homebred horses they intend to race, such as Grade 1 winner Mossflower and multiple graded winner Distorted Humor, but he does occasionally prep one that is earmarked for a late two-year-olds in training sale. His attitude toward the end use of both types is the same. “We don’t really do learning stages any differently, though we might have to speed up the process over the open gallops. You just probably have to kick on a little earlier to make the sales.” The season at the training center ends in mid-May, so the average horse in his care receives seven months of pre-track schooling.
 
An expansive ocean away, near Marlborough, England, ex-jockey Malcolm Bastard performs the same basic service as Preger with some slight distinctions. Bastard deals in a greater number of sales horses than his American counterpart, but also has plenty of horses going directly to trainers. Many of his influx have come out of yearling sales and he begins work as each comes into him and sends them out when they are properly broken, meaning he deals in cycles and can handle a greater volume than Preger’s 20.
 
“They’re pretty easy to break these days, especially if they’re sales prepped, then they’re half done.” Half done perhaps, but far from ready for the racecourse. In the case of a homebred, who will not have been handled to the same extent as a sales horse, Bastard commences at square one. “It goes in the horsewalker and we get it used to that for a few days, and then we put a rug on it.” These stages take a few days each, and once the horse is compliant with the rug Bastard introduces it to breaking tack, consisting of a bit, side reins, a bib martingale and a saddle, in one session. “We are looking after two things. The side rein stops them getting their head too far down and makes them carry it in the right place, and the martingale stops them getting their head up too far.” The ultimate goal, he says, is for the horses “to carry themselves in a nice position.”
 
Fully tacked, the yearlings spend 25 minutes on the horsewalker followed by a short spell of four or five minutes being lunged, with an additional 10 to 15 minutes of line driving in the indoor school adjacent to the lunge area. The duration of this phase “depends on the character of the horse.” This is the key to any good horsebreaker’s program, the point which Bastard is continually stressing, that no step is complete until the horse is fully accepting of what he is being asked to do. “As long as you know what you are doing with them, you gain their confidence while being firm but kind. They’ve got to trust you and you’ve got to trust them, and if you get a good relationship then they come a lot quicker.” Two current three-year-olds Bastard broke in for George Strawbridge as yearlings that attest to Bastard’s ability to establish that trust between man and animal are Group 1 winners Lucarno (by Dynaformer) and Mrs Lindsay (Theatrical), each by sires whose progeny are known to be difficult. Yet Bastard modestly brushes off his skills as “just very straightforward, basic common horse sense. I think everybody finds it straightforward, just hard work.”
 
Their “hard work” sees Bastard and his crew go from line-driving to riding their horses in the pen for 10 or so days, with a second person stationed at the horse’s head for its comfort and the safety of everyone involved. Having already proven themselves agreeable to someone jumping on and off them in the stable, once emotionally stable over a matter of days the horses move out to the indoor arena. As with Preger, regardless of where the horses are supposed to go after they leave Bastard’s stables, “they all get treated the same. With the breeze-up horses we don’t do anything different with them but start to sharpen them up a little bit more.”
 
Bastard retired from race riding in 1990, having ridden primarily for his boss of 14 years, Fred Winter, and began to pinhook his own horses, which eventually spiraled into breaking in other people’s horses. As a young boy, Bastard worked for showjumper Ted Williams, who Bastard credits as “an absolute genius of a horseman” from whom he learned to do things what he calls “the uncomplicated way. A lot of people try to make things complicated but that’s not the way we do it.” The main focus for Bastard is to “try to make things very simple, and the horses get into a routine and they enjoy that routine.”
 
One man who has been innovative in dealing with unbroken or even wild animals is Buck Wheeler. He uses his patented Stableizer to facilitate the breaking process. On a beautiful morning in Kentucky, Wheeler demonstrates on an unbroken yearling at Ramsey Farm. Wheeler joins the colt in the round pen with his gear, consisting in part of a long whip with a plastic bag fastened to the tip and a lasso that elicits a raised brow from the observer, not to mention the nervous colt eyeing him apprehensively. Wheeler secures the Stableizer under the colt’s lip and tightens it above his ears, hitting acupressure points that quickly begin to relax the horse. Wheeler inserts a chifney bit in the mouth because with a chifney, as opposed to a more traditional bit, “it all falls into place, all right in line” where the horse turns with his entire body as one instead of turning with his head with the rest to follow. He begins to lunge the yearling.
 
With every step, the colt is allowed to sniff the new equipment, and Wheeler reassures him with a rub on the forehead and by blowing in his nose that everything is okay. The two become fast friends, the colt recognizing Wheeler as the alpha leader, and whenever the colt is turned loose he trails as Wheeler zigzags around the pen with his back to the animal.
 
Wheeler, a member of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation through his mother, was raised on 8,000 acres of Indian territory, with some 80 horses at his disposal. “I learned from the Indians – they weren’t called trainers then, they were just horsemen.” His father put him on a horse and said, “You’re going to learn to ride like the Indians before I buy you a saddle.” Wheeler laughs and fills in his adult interpretation of his father’s philosophy: “I think he was just too tight to buy the saddle. But one thing I realized later on in life was that he was absolutely correct because it learns you to be part of that animal. You are literally part of the horse. You can feel things that happen before they ever happen. You learn to watch their eyes, you learn to watch their ears, because those are their telegraphs.”
 
Perhaps most spectacular is what Wheeler does to close out the training period. To show how relaxed and desensitized the yearling is, Wheeler stands in the middle of the pen with the horse turned loose against the fence, and he twirls the lasso over his head and ropes the colt around his neck. The colt shies backward at first and Wheeler flicks it around his neck a second, third and fourth time. After the second, the colt stops flinching and simply watches with interest as Wheeler reverses the steps and untangles the rope from some 15 feet away.
 
“Because of the euphoria that’s induced by the endorphins he’s remembering this as a pleasurable experience instead of something that he’s being forced into, or having a bad attitude.”
 
The premise is elementary. The endorphins released by the pressure points on which the Stableizer rests enable Wheeler to handle the horse from all sides, getting him comfortable with having a rope tangled around his back legs or the plastic bag on the whip blowing in his face and over his body. When it is time for the saddle, Wheeler encourages the gray colt to satisfy his curiosity before he puts it on his back and cinches the girth by himself and with little effort. The stirrups dangle well below the horses belly; Wheeler threads his lines through them and drives the horse around in a circle. The yearling is frightened by the strange sensations and noises for the first two or three turns around the pen before he puts his head down and trots calmly and with a straight head as Wheeler steers him from behind with his fingertips.
 
The Stableizer is a shortcut to dealing with horses of all ages and in any capacity but is best described as an aid to promote good experiences for the animals. “You don’t have to go out there and jerk and holler and scream and fuss around. It’s the physiological aspect of what it does” with the endorphins. “If you hurt a horse in their training process – and it doesn’t matter if they’re little or big – they remember that, and sometimes it’s ten times tougher to go back in and try to break that fear.”
 
Trainers of the caliber of Clive Brittain and Carl Nafzger have observed Wheeler in action and are proponents of his Stableizer. Street Sense is Wheeler’s current poster boy, though Nafzger’s Unbridled and Lady Joanne and Wayne Lukas’ classic winners Grindstone and Editor’s Note have modeled the Stableizer as well. This is a successful tool that honors Wheeler’s Native American teachers by inventing a new way to emulate their old approach. His method is not necessarily different than the ways in which other people break horses, but assisted by the Stableizer he is able to accomplish the successful introduction of a rider within an hour of working with an unschooled horse. Or mule, zebra, llama – all of which on whom Wheeler has used the Stableizer.
 
Preger sums up his opinion of the breaker’s role in the racehorse’s career: “If a horse is going to perform well he’s got to be happy and healthy, right? I like to give credit to the people that train horses at the track. We work as a team, put it that way. It all has to work together.”
 
Although there are variants among people who break horses on global and even local levels, the certainty on which all will agree is that the horse’s emotional wellbeing during the learning stages is tantamount to its ability to perform to the best of its capacity.

Tooth Trouble - why regular dentist visits are essential for racehorses

By Kimberley French

The mouth of a Thoroughbred is the principle means of communication between the horse and his rider. Other aids are used as well, but for many, the bit is what determines direction, rate of speed and position or frame in which the horse moves.

The design and function of the horse’s mouth is such that it provides a perfect vehicle for use as a “steering device.” The interdental space allows a bit to lie comfortably without interfering with the normal position of the jaws when they close. Horses are the only domestic animals that have their mouths used in this fashion.

 Dr. Jack Easley, DVM, MS, Diplomat ABVP, who specializes in equine dentistry and resides in Shelbyville, Kentucky, insists the domestication of horses is the prime reason they require dental care.

 “Typically, horses keep their heads on the ground and eat grass 16 hours a day,” Dr. Easley said. “But we keep them in a stall with their heads up and feed them hay, oats and sweet feed. Stabled horses tend to have more problems with periodontal disease and abnormal wear because their teeth have not adapted from their natural forage diet.”
 Dr. Easley recommends preventative dental care long before a young horse is introduced to a bit. “An oral examination should be performed the day a foal is born,” Dr. Easley said. “You want to make sure the jaws match and there is no deformity in the head.”

A foal's deciduous premolars are all in use within the first few weeks of life and can soon start to wear abnormally if they do not mesh properly. While there are orthodontic devices and surgical remedies to correct truly severe over- and under-bites, they are expensive, difficult to maintain and have variable rates of success.

A foal should be examined again when it is weaned to make sure no teeth are missing from trauma, such as a kick in the mouth, and that all teeth are still properly aligned.

Unless there is an obvious problem, such as holding the head to the side, loss of feed while eating, nasal discharge or swelling of the face, jaw or mouth, a horse does not need to be examined again until it is ready to be bitted, which for a Thoroughbred is usually when the horse is a yearling or a 2-year-old.

When a horse is nine months old, all 24 baby teeth are in place. At this age, most horses will also erupt two wolf teeth and the first permanent molar set erupts behind the baby premolars. By the time the foal is a yearling, he has erupted 24 to 30 teeth and all of the deciduous teeth have been “in wear” long enough that their edges are likely very sharp. Deciduous teeth are softer than permanent teeth and wear sharp edges much faster. It is not uncommon for yearlings to have ulcers or lacerations on their cheeks and tongues from these razor-sharp points.
The first consideration prior to placing a bit in a horse’s mouth is to be sure there are no abnormalities within the mouth that may cause discomfort.

“Trainers should have their veterinarians do a performance float of their horse’s teeth before he is broken,” Dr. Mary DeLorey, DVM of Kettle Falls, Washington, said. “They will remove all sharp edges and round the front corners of the first cheek teeth, both upper and lower. This allows more room for mouth tissues and reduces discomfort when the reins are tightened and bit pressure is increased.”

A wolf tooth is a pointy little tooth located in the bit seat of a horse’s mouth. Much like a human appendix, the wolf teeth are evolutionary holdover, with no real function. The crown and root of the tooth are usually quite small.
A horse can get up to four wolf teeth, which are almost always removed during a performance float because they can interfere with bit placement. They often become “blind” or unerupted and can be felt as little bumps in the gums.
A horse's mouth undergoes the largest turnover of deciduous to permanent teeth between the ages of 2 and 3 1/2 years. He will lose two sets of deciduous incisors and shed two sets of premolars, all to be replaced by permanent teeth. He will have already erupted his second set of permanent molars, and the third set may be getting ready to erupt by 3 1/2 years of age.

According to Dr. Jon W. Gieche, DVM, the shedding of baby deciduous teeth is a complex process that can be hastened by normal chewing forces and delayed or accelerated by abnormal chewing forces. If chewing forces are reduced, breakdown might be slowed. If the adult tooth is not present, breakdown occurs anyway, but at a reduced rate. In some teeth without adult counterparts, the deciduous tooth might remain functional for years beyond its normal life.

Premature loss of a deciduous tooth results in abnormal development of the adult tooth and should only be removed if the adult tooth is present or a loose deciduous tooth can easily be wiggled.

If chewing forces are abnormal, tooth attrition is abnormal. In such a situation, eruption is uneven, with some teeth erupting faster than others. The faster erupting teeth become longer than others, resulting in hooks, ramps, steps, and waves. Without outside intervention, these conditions become progressively worse. They can result in many other complications such as cavities, periodontal disease, and pulpitis (inflammation of the dental pulp, which is located in the central cavity of a tooth). This can lead to premature loss of teeth.  

Dr. Easley compares this scenario to human babies cutting their teeth and thinks it’s essential that young Thoroughbreds receive oral exams every six months. “Oftentimes, we are asking horses to perform while they are experiencing the pain and headaches that are similar to a baby’s teething,” Dr. Easley said. “Babies are cranky and can’t sleep at night when their teeth come in. A horse is going through the same thing; it just can’t cry to let us know it’s in pain.”

These signs could indicate a young horse in dental distress:

∙ Loss of feed from the mouth while eating, difficulty chewing or excessive salivation.
∙ Weight loss or loss of body condition.
∙ Large or undigested feed particles (long stem or whole grain) in the manure.
∙ Head tossing, bit chewing, tongue lolling, fighting the bit, resisting the bridle. 
∙ Poor performance, such as lugging in, failure to stop or turn, even bucking.
∙ Foul odor from the mouth and nostrils or traces of blood in the mouth.
∙ Nasal discharge or swelling of the face, jaw or mouth.

While cheek teeth fractures are an unusual occurrence, they can be responsible for many dilemmas for a horse, from difficulty chewing to bad breath and can cause behavioral problems when pressure is placed on the sides of a horse’s face from the reins.

In an attempt to gather more knowledge on the treatment, management and frequency of this condition, the University of Edinburgh, in Scotland, sent a questionnaire to veterinarians and equine dental technicians. The survey results concluded that 147 horses suffered 182 total fractures. More than 70 percent of the fractures occurred in the upper mandible or jaw and where discovered in roughly .07 to 5.9 percent of all horses examined.

Weight loss and food impaction in the inner cheek are acute complications linked to cheek teeth fractures. Thirty-three percent of the horses examined during the study were unable to eat properly, 29 percent experienced biting and other various behavioral problems and 12 percent had halitosis. However, 39 percent of horses that had sustained a cheek tooth fracture presented no symptoms and were discovered through routine dental care.

The most common method of treatment was extraction of the small dental fragment. Other methods of treatment included extraction of the entire tooth; eradicating sharp edges on the fractured tooth; reducing the height of the opposing tooth; referring the case for other treatment; or not treating the tooth in any way.

After treatment, 81 percent of the diagnosed cases had no further symptoms, 13 percent had no clear-cut outcome and only 6 percent still had continuing complications.

In order for horses in training and racing to remain happy and healthy, it is critical to ensure they are able to work and perform in comfort. Comprehensive dental care delivered regularly by an experienced veterinary professional may be one of the easiest ways to maximize a horse’s performance and optimize his health for a lifetime.

Tampa Bay Downs - from afterthought to success

By Bill Heller

Slowly, yet surely, Tampa Bay Downs is evolving from that “other track in Florida” into a viable winter/spring option for good and even great horses and horsemen.  “We were an afterthought,” Tampa Bay Downs Vice-President and General Manager Pete Berube said. “But we’ve been able to dispel that stigmatism the last few years.”

            Maybe it was the lush turf course added in 1997. Or the continuing development of a three-year-old stakes program highlighted by the Grade 3 Tampa Bay Derby, which attracted Bluegrass Cat in 2006 and Street Sense and Any Given Saturday in 2007. Adding a 22-acre, state-of-the-art golf practice facility - with wagering available in the pro shop - and the Silks Card Room didn’t hurt.

            The bottom line is that track ownership and management has made a commitment to make the only track on the west coast of Florida an attractive destination for horsemen from December through May. “It’s changed, and it’s a good thing,” said trainer Jane Cibelli, who has been at Tampa Bay Downs since 1994 and was the eighth leading trainer there last year. “There was no money here before. Horses came from small tracks where the competition wasn’t so tough. Now those horses are having a tougher time. You see a better class of horse.”

            You don’t get much classier than Bluegrass Cat, Street Sense and Any Given Saturday. Bluegrass Cat was attempting to give trainer Todd Pletcher his second victory in the Tampa Bay Derby following Limehouse’s win in 2004, but he was upset on the track’s Festival Day by Deputy Glitters. Bluegrass Cat then finished second in the Kentucky Derby, Belmont Stakes and Travers Stakes.

            In the 2007 Tampa Bay Derby, Pletcher’s Any Given Saturday and Street Sense, trained by Carl Nafzger, staged an epic head-to-head battle through the stretch before Street Sense prevailed by a nose. Street Sense went on to win the Kentucky Derby, Jim Dandy Stakes and Travers. Any Given Saturday finished eighth in the Kentucky Derby then won the Grade 2 Dwyer Stakes, the Grade 1 Haskell Invitational and the Grade 2 Brooklyn Handicap in his first start against older horses.

            Pletcher, seeking his fourth consecutive Eclipse Award as the country’s outstanding trainer, cited two reasons he continues to use the Tampa Bay Derby as an early Kentucky Derby prep for his top three-year-olds. “It has the reputation as a very safe track,” Pletcher said. “And, more important for me, is that they offer a mile-and-a-sixteenth opportunity. To me that’s really important. With developing three-year-olds, you want to go that mile-and-a-sixteenth, and the Tampa Bay Derby is a good one to do that. In some ways, it worked out well for Bluegrass Cat and Any Given Saturday, as well as for Limehouse. They didn’t win the Derby, but I think that it had a lot to do with their positive development.”

            Track management, of course, couldn’t be happier to host Pletcher’s three-year-old colts in Tampa. “Todd’s been able to have success over here,” Berube said. “I’m glad were in his rotation. But it didn’t just happen. It’s been a plan we’ve had for a number of years: developing the three-year-old program. It can only help us in the future.”

            In the past, Tampa Bay Downs couldn’t even settle on its own name. The track opened in 1926 as Tampa Downs, then became Sunshine Park in 1947 and was frequently referred to as “the Santa Anita of the South.” In 1965, the track was renamed Florida Downs, which stuck until 1980 when the name was changed back to Tampa Downs. When  evotook over as owner in 1986, the track was rechristened Tampa Bay Downs.

            Thayer, a 66-year-old attorney and native of Tampa, is also the president of the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame in Saratoga Springs, New York and a member of the Board of Trustees of the Tampa General Hospital Foundation and the University of South Florida Foundation. Previously, she served as president of the Thoroughbred Racing Association from 1999-2001 and has owned Thoroughbreds with her brother, Howard Ferguson, since 1986.

            Under Thayer and Berube’s stewardship, Tampa Bay Downs has prospered. Berube, whose retired dad Paul was a long-time president of the Thoroughbred Racing Protective Bureau, joined the Tampa Bay Downs management team in 1995 as comptroller. He was promoted to vice president of finance in 1998, then to assistant general manager in 2000, and finally to his present positions on May, 2001. He defers credit for Tampa Bay Downs’ growth: “I think it was having the ownership that’s willing to re-invest in the facilities.”

             The ownership was also willing to create new facilities, none more vital to Tampa Bay Downs’ growth than the installation of a 7/8-mile turf course with a ¼-mile chute. “Probably the wisest investment we ever made was putting in the turf course in 1997, and it was done by in-house staff,” Berube said. “Within a year, it paid for itself.”

            That’s because turf races attracted larger fields, which quickly led to increased handle, especially through simulcasting. “It really put us on the map,” Berube said.

            So has Tampa Bay Downs’ program for three-year-olds, which continues to benefit from the absence of mile-and-a-sixteenth dirt races at that other Florida track, Gulfstream Park, because of its remodeled configuration.

            To maximize the appeal of its three-year-old races, Tampa Bay Downs increased the purse of the Sam F. Davis Stakes, a prep for the Tampa Bay Derby, from $50,000 to $150,000 in 2007. Next year, it will go for $200,000, which Berube hopes will induce the graded stakes committee to recognize the race as a Grade 3. “It should be a graded stakes,” Berube said. “It hurts us.”

            That’s because graded stakes earnings are the deciding factor in determining which horses get to start in the Kentucky Derby.

            Tampa Bay now has two graded stakes, both Grade 3: the Tampa Bay Derby and the Hillsborough, a turf stakes for older fillies and mares. The Florida Oaks was a Grade 3, but lost its graded status. “It’s a frustrating process,” Berube said.

            Regardless, the track re-packaged its two-year-old stakes races in December and three-year-old stakes leading up to the Tampa Bay Derby. “We’re trying to build a strong three-year-old program,” he said.

            Doing so entails maintaining a balance between stakes purses and overnight races. “We understand where our bread and butter is, and that’s in the overnights,” Berube said. “I think there has to be a balance, and, since I’ve been here, we’ve maintained a balance, about 85 percent to overnights and 15 percent into stakes. But you have to be able to attract top horses. And the public has responded.”

            So have horsemen, who made a record 333 claims last year during the 94-day meet. “The increase in the number of horses claimed is a positive sign in the barn area, indicating a solid horse population,” said Racing Secretary Allison De Luca, who will be starting his second year at Tampa Bay this winter when racing resumes December 8th.

            Last year, leading trainer Jamie Ness arrived at Tampa Bay with eight horses and returned to his base at Canterbury Park in Minnesota with 27.

            “I’ll tell you what, I’m a claiming trainer,” the 32-year-old native of Heron, South Dakota, said. “I pay attention to every circuit. It seemed like there are good horses to claim in Tampa. I decided to go out on a limb, pack up and try it two years ago. It worked out very well. I had a good first year. Last year, I had a great year. I claimed a lot of horses. I’ve probably claimed and lost more horses than anybody there.”

            He’s going to have to go some way to make a better claim than Lookinforthesecret. Ness, who won last year’s training title with 38 victories, claimed Lookinforthesecret for $12,500, January 5th, 2007, and won three stakes with him: the $75,000 Turf Dash Stakes at Tampa Bay last March 16th, and two others at Canterbury. “He’s a once-in-a-lifetime claim,” Ness said. “I take notes on every horse. It’s been a pretty good ride with him.”

            He is understandably delighted to be part of the growth of Tampa Bay Downs, even if means more difficult competition. “It’s gotten tough,” he said. “For the facility and the weather, the track is good. The turf course is second to none, and the main track is good, too. It’s deep and sandy. It’s very good for horses.”

            It’s good for Tampa Bay Downs’ business as well. “The bettors love to bet Tampa because there are full fields,” Ness said.

            Last year’s average field size of 8.85 led to a record all-sources daily handle average of more than $4.1 million on live races. Records were also set for single-day attendance - when 11,014 showed up on Kentucky Derby Day, a number enhanced by a cooler-bag giveaway - and for all-sources single-day handle when $10.9 million was wagered on Festival Day, last March 17th. Average attendance of 3,437 was down a tick from 3,501.

            “Last year was kind of the changing of the guard with a new racing secretary, and a lot of new stables came in,” Ness said.

            They may just keep coming.

            Stakes purses for the 2007-2008 meet will be a record $2.6 million with total purses a record $16 million. On December 29th, Tampa Bay Downs will offer the Cotillion Festival Day, featuring a variety of races for two-year-olds on both grass and dirt, highlighted by the $65,000 Inaugural Stakes for colts and the $65,000 Sandpiper Stakes for fillies, both at six furlongs on the main track.

            Festival Preview Day on February 16th features the $200,000 Sam F. Davis Stakes at a mile and a sixteenth, the $150,000 Endeavour Breeders’ Cup for older fillies and mares at a mile and a sixteenth on turf and the $75,000 Suncoast Stakes for three-year-old fillies at one mile on dirt.

            The $300,000 Tampa Bay Derby is the marquee attraction on Festival Day, March 15th, which also offers the $200,000 Florida Oaks for three-year-old fillies at a mile and a sixteenth on dirt, the mile-and-an-eighth $175,000 Hillsborough and the $75,000 Turf Dash at five furlongs.

            Six $85,000 stakes races for Florida-breds will be held on Florida Cup Day, April 5th.

            The attractive stakes program will allow the track continued growth. Already, more people, both horsemen and fans, are focusing on Tampa Bay Downs than ever before. Asked what he’d like people to think of when they hear the name Tampa Bay Downs, Berube said, “A great track to race on, a very forgiving surface and just a very horseman/customer friendly racetrack.”

Willie Mullins - a trainer with strong opinions

I’ve come to Willie Mullins’ yard in County Carlow, Ireland, expecting to see some strong horses and to hear some strong opinions. With Hedgehunter trotting past me up to the gallops, I’m certainly not disappointed in the first instance. This is already second lot. Willie is behind schedule - “problems earlier on the gallops” - and should be under pressure. His phone won’t stop ringing, he’s got an interview to give and a runner in the first at Gowran Park. But Willie Mullins appears to have all the time in the world. I get the impression he’s unflappable, but in fact he simply knows how to prioritise. His horses are given all the time they need, without question.

The horses circle and he watches them for two or three circuits. You might think there’d be no evident change in condition from the previous morning, but any change is discernible to Willie. As they canter past for a third time he begins to call out instructions. “Two on the big gallop; one; one; two; two on the short; one on the short…” The lads hold up the relevant number of fingers in confirmation and exit the ring as instructed. The art of conditioning a racehorse comes right down to the minute attention to detail Willie has just exhibited, though he makes it look effortless. Perhaps, by now, it really is second nature to him. Few trainers are so deeply in tune with their horses and it shows, not only in the overcrowded trophy shelves in the kitchen, but as we walk back through the yard, the equine heads following his progress intently and ignoring, as one, the visitor. 

Of course, Willie’s greatest asset is his staff. Like most yards these days he employs a very cosmopolitan mix, with men and women from Ireland, the Ukraine, Poland, England and France. “To get staff from the EU a school needs to be set up to train them and provide them with the necessary skills,” Willie points out, “whereas you could go straight to countries outside of the EU, such as Russia, South America and Pakistan, where racing has been established for a very long time and the staff have a vast experience with thoroughbreds and already possess the skills we require.” 

And now, away from the horses, it’s time to hear those famous strength of opinions, to find out what really hinders Willie’s job as a trainer; what frustrates him about today’s industry regulations and what political changes he’d like to see made within the racing establishment. Willie sits back and smiles. But, like his horses, he is never going to get wound up.

“There’s been so much tinkering with the rules over the years and you’re never going to get a rule to suit everyone,” he says realistically. “I’ve got to the stage now where some days it will suit you and some days it won’t, and I don’t think there’s anything that really annoys me as much as maybe things used to. I just find you win some, you lose some. And the governing bodies are doing their best to make rules to suit the times we live in. If there is a problem then I think it’s the long delay in implementing change. With telecommunications being so fast it’s hard to understand why this should be. I often think if we have a problem and something needs changing it should be changed within six or eight weeks, but in actual fact by the time it goes forward to the governing body and it gets discussed it takes about two years. But I think HRI is better at changing things that need to be done quickly, it’s far more receptive and probably more professional than previous governing bodies.

“I think we are quite lucky in Ireland with our governing bodies. HRI has evolved from HRA, which got the running of racing from the Turf Club, and we’re also very lucky that our government views racing as such a strong Irish tradition. Consequently a lot of people in the government and the opposition have a huge interest in racing and our prize money levels have dramatically increased over the past ten years as a result.”

Asked if there is any one thing he would change about racing, Mullins seems surprisingly content. “In the general spin of things, probably harmonisation of rules in Europe and the rest of the world,” he says, after much thought. “Flat trainers travel more than National Hunt trainers, and jockeys travel all the time, so it would be better to have harmonisation within the rules, especially the rules of race-riding. That seems to cause most controversy. When punters are viewing a head-on film and stewards in different countries reach different conclusions, maybe it could be better explained to punters. But I think the Irish and English system is quite good at the moment, while the French seem to still have an old-fashioned type of view. Certainly, I would rather see more harmonisation in European rules.” 

When it comes to harmonisation of rules, medication seems to be another issue at the top of the list. “I think it’s fairly right in Ireland and England, where all horses are tested, the winners and other random horses. America has a different system, but then maybe it suits their racing. I’m not too familiar with the problems of dirt racing and keeping horses sound. They seem to have a lot of problems with bursting, that may just be the barn system and the horses don’t get enough air. It’s not as big a problem certainly on this side of the world. Obviously I had trouble with morphine contamination and, you know, I was amazed at the different interpretation of the rules by different governing bodies, even though the rules appear to be the same, with zero tolerance. But some countries’ interpretation of zero differs from others. And then there’s the way the different laboratories give the results of their testing; some have a different method of testing, which can lead to a bit of confusion. But we can see things being harmonised all the time and that can only be good for racing.” 

Which leads to the question of travelling. Has it got any easier? “Certainly. The bureaucracy has got easier; it’s just a matter of getting used to it. Maybe if it’s your first or second time going abroad you can get caught out with little rules and regulations and things, but it’s a matter of just setting in place the A, B and C of what you’ve got to do and it becomes second nature. When we have a horse entered in England my secretary has a particular protocol to carry out and it works out well enough. When you have things like foot and mouth and any other diseases it makes things difficult. You just need to plan in advance. It’s difficult, but once you know what you’re doing it’s not insurmountable.”

Not insurmountable, perhaps, but does it pay? “In France they have prize money down to seventh; in England and Ireland we prefer to give help to people travelling, even though our prize money’s only down to fourth,” Willie points out. “I would rather see our prize money in bigger races go down to sixth and maybe even further down. It would also help to prevent four or five runner races. You take the Irish Derby, for example: prize money goes down to tenth. That normally ensures you have at least ten runners and probably eleven. And that’s a big help for sponsors and I would prefer to see that in some of the National Hunt races. Our prize money should go down to lower places, it’s an incentive. Our top horses are the top horses in their sphere and even if they’re not in the first three they should still be getting prize money. You go through a lot of horses before you get a good one and they should be rewarded.” 

“In Ireland we probably have too many owners and too many horses at the moment. We’re in a situation where we’re balloting horses and we haven’t enough races or prize money for the horses that we have in training. In order to keep our prize money levels up we can only have the amount of races that we currently have, otherwise we dilute the prize fund - and we had enough of that years ago. Everyone made an effort to get into proper prize money, which we have now. But because people now can buy a horse for three or four thousand and race for ten, we now have too many horses. Racing is all about mating the best to the best to produce the best and I don’t see why we should provide opportunities for those who don’t quite make it. Every horse is entitled to a few runs, to establish whether they’re good or bad, but I don’t think bad horses are entitled to big prize money just because someone puts them in training. There has to be a cut-off point. We just can’t keep having racing for every horse that’s produced. The onus shouldn’t be on racing to provide opportunities for him. 

“We’re unique in Ireland in that we have enough owners and horses, thanks to the work HRI and Thoroughbred Marketing have done, and our government has also encouraged people, providing grants to upgrade our tracks and upgrade our racing. You always need new owners coming in, but we’ve plenty at the moment and we’ve an oversupply of horses. I don’t want to knock the breeding industry, I don’t care if they breed twenty thousand horses a year, but we can only cater for maybe six to eight thousand in Ireland. So I think we need to raise the bar a little bit, which our authorities are doing, so that horses that are good enough have a competitive chance of earning their owners prize money. Racing has to regulate its own standard and we are able to keep a standard because we’re a small country. There are plenty of other countries in the world where lesser horses can be exported to, lots of young countries starting up racing, and that’s where I see those horses going. Hopefully if China ever gets going there’ll be a huge market there.”

On a more domestic level feed merchants have been sending out alarming letters across the country and it seems feeding may have to become more cosmopolitan, too.

“This year we’ve had an extraordinary year with the harvest being so bad and very little hay being saved,” Willie explains, “a lot of trainers in Ireland are buying American and Canadian hay, and I’m told that there wasn’t a huge amount of hay saved in France either because it was such a wet summer. And our costs this winter will rise dramatically. Hopefully it’s just a blip for one year and we’ll have to ride it out, but feed costs are always rising and the cost of labour is always rising, too.

“We have found it very hard to get staff over the past few years, particularly with the Celtic Tiger causing a lot of people to go into other industries. We have had to import staff from both inside and outside the EU, and we’re constantly in consultation with the department of foreign affairs about importing non-EU staff. Horse riders, certainly work riders, is quite a specialised skill and while you can teach someone to ride a horse in maybe a matter of months, bringing them up to the level required to ride work and school is something that’s only gained after years and years of experience. Consequently we find that we’re employing people from Russia and Pakistan and South America, where there are thriving racing industries and lots of people with these skills who are quite keen to come and work in England and Ireland. 

“The EU is getting bigger, but we still find that there aren’t enough skilled people. The staff are being soaked up in England and France before we get them. We’re at the end of the line, on an island out in the Atlantic! A lot of Polish and Czechoslovakian people are going to France and Germany first. That could be why we find we have to go further afield. The most difficult part is just the red tape in bringing them in. You want a person next week or the week after and find that it takes three or four months to actually get these people in. Even then, it’s constantly being changed by civil servants. At the drop of a hat they might stop importing people or they might only let a certain amount of people come in, which has to be divided among everyone. They might only let fifty to a hundred people in during a certain three-month period. I can see their point, too, because a lot of trainers were importing non-EU people as riders when maybe they weren’t riders and they were just being used as cheap labour. When that gets back to civil servants of course they say, ‘here, this is a racket!’ A lot of responsibility is with our own trainers who maybe imported people they shouldn’t have.” 

Recruiting staff is all the harder these days due to a general increase in weight throughout the population. “Weight-wise in Ireland we’ve raised the minimum weight to 8st 4Ib and it’s helped, but a lot of the lightweight jockeys have been put out of business and have gone to England. You can’t just keep raising the weights, I imagine people are just going to keep getting bigger and bigger and there’s always going to be a certain amount of people who can do the weights. You’re never going to stop jockeys from wasting, if you raise the weights up to 10st then fellows who are 11st are still going to waste down to 10st, it’s just a fact of life. But what’s happened now in Ireland is that the better jockeys have the whole thing cornered and it’s harder for the younger lads to get a foot on the ladder. 

“In the last few years we have given riders longer to ride out their claim, which I think has stopped the turnover of riders. Middling riders can keep a claim and keep getting rides, whereas beforehand they lost their claim at maybe forty winners and if they weren’t able to ride without their claim the younger riders got the chance. With a greater turnover you’ve a better chance of getting new stars coming up. With riders keeping a claim for a long time trainers are always willing to put them up: ‘he’s not too bad and can claim five.’ If they lost their claim quicker the jockeys who hadn’t the ability to ride without their claim would be found out quicker.”

All of which makes perfect sense and it’s easy to see why Willie Mullins is held in such respect. Feed, staff and depth of woodchip, every trainer has his own method. But it’s the minute attention to detail that sets the trophies on the shelf.