VIVA ESPAÑA - a summer of sporting achievements

 This summer of 2008 has been great for Spanish sporting achievement. The national football team had a historic win in the Euro 2008 tournament, 44 years on from its previous international championship success, and Rafael Nadal was crowned with his fourth consecutive French Open, the title at Wimbledon, and Olympic Gold.

Katherine Ford (European Trainer- issue 23 - Autumn 2008)

Michael Dickinson - "The Mad Genius"

 Michael Dickinson is welcoming and instantly likeable, suffused with energy as he bounces around Tapeta Farm on the Chesapeake Bay in North East, Maryland. “I don’t say I’m good or great but I’m not boring”, he promises. Along that vein, the burning question is, why do people call him “The Mad Genius”, as coined by an American turf writer?

Frances J Karon (European Trainer - issue 23 - Autumn 2008)

TRM Trainer of the Quarter - Cindy Krasner

Standing in the Hastings Park winner’s circle after her three-year-old Krazy Koffee had captured the 83rd running of the $330,000-added British Columbia Derby Sept. 21, trainer Cindy Krasner was a bit stunned. This was the 51-year-old trainer’s first BC Derby.

“One interviewer said to me, ‘What kind of emotion is going through your head right now?’” she related. “I said, ‘You know what? I’m speechless.’ For me, that’s a big deal. I’m not usually speechless. It was joy and amazement and a sense of, ‘Thank God, it’s finally over.’ It was a fantastic feeling.”

The feeling was still there a week and a half later. “That was about as special as you could get,” she said. “Everyone strives to win the Derby. It doesn’t matter where it is. That was my first Derby. I’ve been in before and hit the board, but never won it.”

Krazy Koffee delivered her most meaningful victory, rallying five-wide to defeat Wink at the Girls by a length under Dave Wilson. That extended Krazy Koffee’s winning streak to five and improved his lifetime record to six-for-nine.

He’s always been Krasner’s big horse, literally. “He’s a huge horse,” Krasner said. “He’s almost 17 hands. He adapted well to our bull-ring that we have up here, but it would be really nice to see how he’d handle a one-mile track.”

That could happen next year. Krasner had just one more start penciled in for Krazy Koffee this year: an October 12th stakes showdown with Hastings Park’s top older horse, Spaghetti Mouse, who has won four consecutive stakes. He won the BC Derby in 2005 and has earned nearly $850,000 in his career, making him the top BC-bred earner ever.

Krazy Koffee was the only BC-bred in this year’s Derby, making his victory even sweeter for his owner and breeder, Butch Goertzen, whose stable includes just three other horses, a broodmare, a two-year-old and a weanling. “He’s a farmer who used to raise buffaloes and still raises pigs,” Krasner said.

Goertzen had never attended a BC-Derby previously. Krasner has seen dozens. “I grew up at the racetrack,” she said.

Her dad, William Olsen, was a trainer at Hastings. Her mom, Martha, was a hands-on owner. “We all worked side-by-side throughout my entire life,” Krasner said. Krasner’s older brother, Greg, helped out, too, before choosing another career. “He’s been with a company now for 20 years, a tree nursery,” she said. “He really wasn’t interested in racing.”

But Krasner was, and she got her trainer’s license when she was 16. After working for a couple other trainers, including Jack Diamond, who once owned Hastings Park, Krasner opened her own stable in her early 20s.

Krasner’s husband, Sam, is a recently-retired jockey who finally conceded to back problems which required two surgeries, and is now a groundskeeper at a local golf course. “He rode all over the country for 25 years,” Krasner said. “He was helping me, but the body couldn’t do the job anymore. Golf is his second love.”

Krasner’s first love continues to be horses, and she is having an outstanding year. Her P. S. Good N Ready took the BC Cup Debutante, and Krazy Koffee won two stakes before adding the Derby. Through September 30th, she was tied for sixth in the trainer standings with 23 victories from just 96 starts, an outstanding win percentage of 24.0. She also had 27 seconds and 15 thirds, and her stable has grown to more than 30 horses.

Winning the BC Derby won’t hurt her business.

She’s made occasional incursions into the United States, racing in stakes at Emerald Downs in Auburn, Washington. She’s unsure if Krazy Koffee will take her to grander, more difficult stakes in the U.S. in 2009. “He’s a little bit of a funny colt,” Krasner said. “He doesn’t take to change quickly. That’s why we didn’t race in all the other Derbies across Canada.”

That’s all right. He got the one that meant the most to his trainer and owner/breeder.

By: Bill Heller - (14 October 2008 - Issue Number: 10)

Peter Schiergen - we profile the leading German racehorse trainer

The number of champion jockeys who went on to become champion trainers afterwards can be counted on the fingers of one hand. In German racing history, only the great Hein Bollow scaled the heights in both professions, winning more than 1,000 races both as trainer and jockey. However, he will shortly be joined by Peter Schiergen, who was German champion jockey for five successive years in the 1990s, setting a European record of 273 winners in his best season of 1995, and retiring at the end of 1997 with 1451 winners to his credit.

David Conolly-Smith (European Trainer - issue 23 - Autumn 2008)

The role vitamins play in the diet of a racehorse

Vitamins are a key part of the diet for racehorses and although the clinical signs associated with an overt deficiency or excess of one vitamin or another are rare, we should not presume that the level of vitamins provided in the diet is optimised for performance.

Catherine Dunnett (Trainer Magazine - issue 23 - Autumn 2008)

Training the untrainable - how to improve the respiratory system

By David Marlin

Most body systems of the horse have some capacity to respond to physical training of the type used to improve fitness and performance in Thoroughbred racehorses. The art of training is of course assessing what each horse needs, when to start, when to back off and when to accept that you have reached a suitable level of fitness which should result in a horse being able to get close to achieving a performance consistent with its genetic potential. However, the one body system that training cannot improve on is the respiratory system and this article will highlight some of the implications of this.

So are winners born or created and how important is physical training? In my view the best racehorses are born with or without potential. Its true that a lot can go wrong from the moment a stallion and mares genes mix to produce an embryo that will grow into a foal. Often underestimated is the impact that the environment within the mare has on the development of the foal. For example, the genes may be saying “straight legs” but other factors such as stress on the mare, infections, diet, the condition of the uterus, may well modify how that message is “interpreted” leading to a foal with crooked legs. The impact of the uterine environment was perfectly demonstrated by some ground breaking studies by Professor Twink Allen at the Equine Fertility Unit in Newmarket, where he demonstrated that pony embryos transplanted into Thoroughbred mares resulted in large pony foals and that Thoroughbred embryos implanted into pony mares resulted in small Thoroughbred foals.

Once a foal is born, there is a long and potentially difficult path from birth to racing success, even with the right genes for performance. Diet, disease, trimming, shoeing and even luck all play a role. Then comes training. And here I am focussing on physical training rather than training the horse to run in company, quicken away from a group or go in stalls…what we might considered behavioural training. A recent scientific study from the University of Florida in the USA which looked at horses purchased at yearling sales in the summer for sale at 2-year-olds in training sales the following spring found that 37 out of 40 horses purchased became lame during training. Also interesting was the fact that “the frequency of new cases of lameness increased as the date of the 2-year-olds in training sales approached.”

The aim of training should be to maximise the genetic potential of a horse. How much is a horse born with and how much difference does training make? Scientifically that’s quite a difficult question to answer. My gut feeling is that training may add perhaps a quarter...so this leaves 75% of performance down to breeding or in other words, the genes. How do I come to this conclusion? Take a horse with a handicap rating of 70lbs with an average trainer and give it to an exceptional trainer, and the latter may be able to improve the horses rating by 15-20lbs. Its not uncommon to see a horse change trainers and increase by 10-20lbs, but to see a horse change trainers and go from a rating of 70 to 130lbs would be exceptional.

So I believe that elite horses are born, not created through management and training. That’s not to downgrade the role of the trainer. Training has to be very important. How many untrained horses win races? But we also know that poor training can take a horse with the potential to win the Derby and turn it into one that never even gets to race and good training could take a horse with an expected rating of 60lbs up to perhaps 80.
Hence, knowing that training can improve poor horses, ruin good horses and vice versa, there can be no doubt that training racehorses is a challenge. Too low of a training load and the horse performs below expectations. Too high and you risk injury; particularly of course musculoskeletal injury…injury to bone, cartilage, ligament, and tendons and to a lesser extent muscle. Getting it right for each horse is certainly a combination of art, science and skill.

Why is training horses such a challenge? Part of the problem is the way in which different body systems or components respond to training. With appropriate loading or “stress”, the locomotory muscles and the heart (which is of course also a muscle) have a tremendous capacity to adapt to repeated bouts of exercise…or training. However, the intensity and volume (amount) of exercise required to get these systems to adapt is high compared for example to the amount of loading required for healthy bone development. Thus there is a potential imbalance. The heart and locomotory muscles need relatively long durations of exercise at high intensities to cause them to adapt, but this amount of exercise loading is often in excess of what joints, bones and tendons need or are built to cope with.

During training, the period where there is a high risk of injury is also the period when there is the greatest need for “stress” to increase fitness and performance. Eventually there is some balance achieved between muscle fitness, performance and musculoskeletal injury – the green zone. However, there is one body system – the respiratory system - that never attains this balance and for which exercise almost appears to be contra-indicated. In fact, it may come as a surprise to many to learn that the respiratory system of the horse does not respond to training. The amount of air an unfit/untrained horse moves in and out with each breath with each stride at the walk, trot, canter and gallop does not change when that horse is fit/trained. Many refuse to accept this, but at least three independent scientific studies, including one in my own laboratory, have confirmed this.
Is the lack of adaptation of the respiratory system of the horse to training a problem? Well it is a problem when that system is a limiting factor or weak point in the chain to get oxygen from the outside down to the muscles where it can be used. In unfit/untrained racehorses the heart is probably the limiting factor to performance. But with training the heart adapts, leaving the respiratory system as the “weakest link”, even thought it is crucial to racing performance. Unless we want to race over distance of 1 furlong or less, the respiratory system is essential. Even in a 5 furlong sprint race around 70% of the energy to run comes from aerobic metabolism that requires oxygen to be brought into the body by the respiratory system, to allow the conversion of energy in sugars, stored as glycogen within the muscles cells, into energy for locomotion in the form of ATP.

How do we know the respiratory system is the weakest link? Because if we can give the horse more oxygen to breathe than the normal 21% that is in air, say we increase it from 21% to 30%, we know the heart is able to transport this extra oxygen to the muscles. The muscles are able to use this extra oxygen and as a result performance is improved. (I think at this stage we can of course dismiss oxygen cylinders carried by the jockey with a tube running to the horses nostrils.) Thus, the limiting point in the chain from nostril to muscle is in the respiratory system and to be more precise, in the deeper parts of the lung where the air containing oxygen passes into the lungs and is separated from the red blood cells in blood vessels on the other side.

We also know how fragile and delicate the respiratory system of the horse is. This is usually not apparent from the outside, but only when we consider the microscopic structure of the lung. The horse’s windpipe (trachea) is around 5-8cm in diameter, but as the windpipe passes deeper in the lung it begins to divide to produce smaller and smaller airways, much like a tree on its side, with the main trunk representing the windpipe. Each time an airway divides in two, the “daughter” airways are smaller than the “parent” from which they arose. When we get down to the level of the smallest airways, after perhaps 25 divisions, the airways are fractions of a millimetre in size. When the air gets to this point in the chain from nostril to muscle cell, it has to cross from the air space into the blood vessel. This is a passive process. There is nothing that can be done to speed it up as it depends on some fixed factors such as the total surface area available in the lung for oxygen to diffuse (move) across, which does not increase with training. (Incidentally, the total area for oxygen to diffuse across in the horse is equivalent to the area of 10 tennis courts!). It is also dependant on the difference in oxygen level between the air (high) and the blood vessels (lower). Oxygen moves from high to low areas. Finally, it depends on the thickness of the membrane separating the air in the air sacs (“alveoli”) and red blood cells in the blood vessels (“capillaries”). So one option is to evolve to make this membrane, sometimes referred to as the blood gas barrier, as thin as possible. And this is exactly what has happened in the Thoroughbred to the point where this membrane separating blood under pressure in vessels from the air in the airways is around 1/100th of the thickness of a human hair. Perhaps not surprisingly, these small membranes can rupture under the stress of exercise allowing the red bloods cells (RBCs) to spill from the capillaries into the alveoli, which we term exercise-induced pulmonary haemorrhage (EIPH).

So if the respiratory system does not adapt positively with training, the next best thing we can hope for is that it is not damaged by training. Unfortunately, this is not the case either. Studies from Japan demonstrated that Thoroughbred racehorses that were only trained at the walk, trot and slow canter still experienced rupture of small blood vessels in the lung. It is also true that the harder and more frequently a horse works, the greater the number of vessels that will rupture and therefore that this damage is cumulative. There is individual variation of course, with some horses being minimally affected and some horses affected to the extent that they are effectively untrainable. And to dispel a myth; this damage (EIPH) is occurring even if you do not see blood at the nostrils or even in the trachea (with a ‘scope) after exercise.

What are the consequences of the rupture of these small vessels? Perhaps the best analogy is to drinking. The bad news is that a bottle of wine may kill off 10 million brain cells. The good news is we start with around 100 billion brain cells. However, after 10 years of heavy drinking the effects can begin to show! In this respect, the lungs are no different, however, the effects are noticeable much sooner.

How many small blood vessels are there in the lung? Its hard to be precise about this, but if we work on the fact that there are 40 generations of airways (divisions or branches) in the horses lung and if each small airway had a small blood vessel around it, then this would give a figure of around 270 billion. How many break at Canter? At Gallop? In a race? Impossible to estimate and again it varies between horses. But what we do know is that after time we can see scarring on the lung surface as a result of previous injury (haemorrhage).

Contrast the relatively undamaged and unstained lungs of an untrained horse on the left with those on the right. Note the deep blue/grey staining showing areas of previous damage on the right, accumulated over many years of training and racing. Blood vessels that are damaged do not regenerate. Scar tissue forms and these areas cease to function normally. The more damage that accumulates, the greater the reduction in respiratory function.

One question that has always intrigued me is how much damage to the lung occurs as a result of broken blood vessels (EIPH) in racing relative to how much occurs in training? One way to try and work this out would be to give a “damage score” to different types of activity and then total up. For example, we could arbitrarily assign a value of 1 (i.e. low) for the damage caused by a slow canter and 3 for a fast canter….i.e. causing more damage. If we then scored a fast canter as 5 and a piece of work at home as 10, then we might put a value of 40 on the damage to the lung caused by a single race. Assuming 6 exercise days per week and therefore 24 exercise days a month from January to October, and starting with 48 days of slow canter in Jan-Feb, 36 days medium canter in Feb-Mar, etc, over this period our horse would have 48 bouts of slow canter, 108 bouts of medium canter, 108 bouts of fast canter and 52 pieces of work.

I’m then going to assume our horse ran 5 times in this 10 month period. When we total up the damage caused by training and compare it to that caused by racing, we may get a surprise. Although the damage in racing is more severe, the races are much less frequent and the total estimated damage by racing is only 12% of the total in this example. This leaves 88% of the damage to the lungs occurring during training – less damage per training day, but more training days. This type of approach shows us that perhaps it’s training, rather than racing, that we need to be more concerned about as far as EIPH.

So if significant damage is occurring to the lungs as a result of training and racing, what options are there in management? There seem to be an ever increasing number of products marketed for bleeders. However, there are only two treatments that have been scientifically proven to significantly reduce bleeding in horses; Lasix and nasal strips.

Lasix and nasal strips actually both work in a similar way in reducing stress on the blood vessel walls. Lasix works by decreasing the blood pressure in the blood vessels inside the lung and hence decreasing the stress on the walls and reducing the number that rupture. Nasal strips also work by reducing the stress on the wall of the blood vessel walls, but from the air side.

Lasix is a type of drug known as a diuretic. When given to horses it “tricks” the kidneys into producing more urine than normal. This in turn removes water from the blood, reducing the volume of plasma (the watery part of the blood as opposed to the red blood cells) in the circulation. This reduces the blood pressure so that the tiny blood vessels in the lung are less stretched and stressed.

The nasal strip works on the other side of these blood vessels in the lung – the side that is in contact with the air. Nasal strips work by supporting the loose flap of skin behind each nostril. When the horse breathes in this skin is sucked inwards. The more this skin is sucked in the more effort the horse needs to make to move air into the lungs. Horses, unlike us, only breathe through their nostrils, and so any obstruction in this area can have a big effect. This effort in breathing in causes the walls of the tiny blood vessels (known as capillaries) to bulge outwards and in some cases break, resulting in the loss of blood into the air spaces and tubes of the lung. The nasal strip supports this skin over the nose and allows the horse to move the same amount of air in and out with less effort, placing less stress on the lung.

So two treatments. In scientific trials, they showed the same level of effectiveness in reducing bleeding. One is a drug and one is mechanical. Does it matter which one you use? On a one off gallop probably not. However, with repeated use of drugs tolerance often develops. This may mean that over time you have to use larger and larger doses to get the same effect. Or alternatively, if you keep using the same dose then the effect you get becomes less and less. It is also not uncommon for drugs to have unwanted side effects with repeated use. The degree of dehydration induced by Lasix is also something to consider. Dehydration can have adverse effects on many systems, for example the digestive tract. Whilst to date no-one has looked at the effects of the dehydration resulting from use of Lasix alone on body systems other than the lung, trainers and veterinarians need to be careful to consider other possible factors that will increase dehydration further, such as hot weather, transport and sweating and decreased water and feed intake due to anxiety. The potential advantage of a mechanical device, such as the nasal strip, for treatment of bleeding is that it is almost certainly going to be equally effective each time it is used, tolerance is highly unlikely and there is no possibility of any side effects.
On the basis that each treatment works, is their any advantage to using both? The answer appears to be yes based on a study of horses racing in the USA. Even though both Lasix and nasal strips work on the blood vessel wall, severe bleeders still showed a further reduction in bleeding of 65% when they raced with a nasal strip and were treated with Lasix, compared to being treated with Lasix alone.

On paper, if you listed out the potential problems in training an animal where what one body system needs is what might break another body system, you would have to conclude that training horses is going to be extremely challenging. This is perhaps testament to the high level of skill that any moderately successful trainer clearly must have developed. Training clearly cannot be approached as a pure science and in fact there are some examples of very good scientists who have made poor trainers. But science can potentially help trainers understand more about how the different body systems of the horse respond to training and apply their skills more effectively.

CTT - The Changing Face of Racing Part 2

Are any of us old enough to remember a time when the training of Thoroughbreds was about providing enough care and enough exercise to obtain optimal performance? I suppose such a time existed, but not in recent memory. Hands on therapy and horsemanship have been replaced by fast acting and less labor intensive drugs and medications. By way of example, in the last decade we have seen the elimination of equipment such as the whirlpool tub. The whirlpool was as simple as a trash can that was attached to the exhaust end of a vacuum cleaner and then filled with ice and water. It was an effective technique in dealing with knee, ankle, and foot problems. Massaging legs has also become a practice of the past. Those techniques are no longer attractive alternatives to fast acting and comparatively inexpensive anti-inflammatory drugs and analgesics. I think back also to a time when respiratory problems where handled by a change in bedding, time in an outdoor pen, and adjustments in feeding procedures and feed products. Those days have given way to easier and more effective bronchodilators such as Albuterol and Clenbuterol. Those are just a few examples of the changing nature of the role of the trainer. I am not so naïve as to believe the old methods were more effective. But I am convinced that the change to a dependence on drugs has been a considerable factor in shortening racing careers, increasing expenses, and damaging the sport.

The demands of time and labor and competition, along with the efficacy of modern drugs have driven us away from patience as a training technique and pulled us into the world of pharmaceuticals. Unfortunately, the medicine cabinet of the barn area has morphed from its intended role into a cornucopia of performance enhancing alternatives. There has been no middle ground. We are all victims of what author Kevin Phillips calls “the inherent vulnerability of human nature exposed to pecuniary temptation.” As more and more trainers were seized by the gravitational pull of easier victories, new owners, and greater income, more and more trainers were enticed or, in most cases, forced into using alternatives they didn’t prefer. If a trainer wants to compete and wants to attract new owner-clients, he or she is left with little choice but to take the medical route; some trainers more so and some less so. Some trainers use the kitchen sink approach and give horses everything in the medicine cabinet, while others prefer not to administer anything unless they are certain of the therapeutic necessity. Success in racing favors those who lean towards the former approach.

The legal use of approved substances is not a moral failing. It is neither immoral nor unethical for the trainer, the veterinarian, or the owner to use, prescribe, or condone the use of therapeutic medications. If an allowable threshold level is 10 picograms, then there is no wrongdoing in seeking a level of 9.99. By setting thresholds, it is the regulators who have dictated what is acceptable and what is not. The regulators’ mistake has been in believing that their edicts regarding medications would allow the use of therapeutic medications while not creating performance enhancement. They were clearly wrong. Their mistake was using a standard that said the substance should not allow the horse to run beyond its natural ability. Stated differently, it was assumed that performance enhancement could be determined by testing for the detectable level of certain drugs and medications when they were present on race day. It was assumed that if there was a certain level of given substances there was performance enhancement. If there was no detectable level, it was assumed there was no enhancement. Both propositions were incorrect as shown by our everyday experience with Clenbuterol. Does anyone doubt that given the same conditions the following will happen? Take two horses of equal ability and physical condition, and give one the standard dose of Clenbuterol for fifty-seven days and give none to the other. Then race them against each other on the sixtieth day. The horse that has been on Clenbuterol will win. Frankly, I don’t know if scientists would agree, but I’m certain almost all trainers would. 

If preventing performance enhancement is the goal, the standard should be that the substance should not allow the horse to run beyond its natural ability given its pre-administration physical condition. An exception could be made for substances that do no harm to the horse and do not have an effect on the betting public. (Under such a rule, a horse would be allowed to run on Salix, but not with the aid of corticosteroids.) Unfortunately, assessing harm to the horse or the betting public is difficult, if not impossible. Therefore, some make the argument for a total ban on medications. New rules are coming and they are certain to limit and/or ban the use of some medications. Like it or not, we have entered a new phase of regulation.

The Racing Medication and Testing Consortium (RMTC) has instigated major changes in drug classification and penalty rules. It has spearheaded the move to control steroids. It is about to attack the issues of corticosteroids, and there are rumblings of new limits on Clenbuterol. Although it has not yet been discussed at the RMTC, it is theoretically possible that a ban on NSAID’s is next. The movement has started, and the times they are a-changin’.     

 
On board with the California Thoroughbred Trainers

By Ed Golden, Turf writer

Arguing religion and politics can erode the best of friendships. Debating sports can lead to divisiveness among the bosomest of buddies, too. Fortunately for Jim Cassidy and Mike Smith, their allegiance to the New York Yankees and the New York Mets hasn’t compromised the success they’ve enjoyed together on the racetrack. 

    
Cassidy, a native of the Bronx, has been a lifelong Yankee fan, while Smith, born in Roswell, New Mexico, became a loyal Mets’ supporter while earning 15 riding championships on the New York circuit during a tour that began in 1989.

When Smith moved permanently to Southern California in 2007, after an earlier hitch in 2001, he joined forces with Cassidy and, baseball fidelity aside, it’s been a match made in heaven on the track, where they have won a plethora of stakes races together.

Cassidy, 63, like Smith, was weaned in horsemanship on the East Coast, working for among others the legendary Frank Whiteley, trainer of iconic champions Damascus and Ruffian, before coming to California in 1981. His stint in New York included nine years as an aide to veterinarian Jim Prendergast.
Other Cassidy tutors back east included trainers Joe Cantey and Charles Sanborn. In California, Cassidy learned the ropes as an assistant to Gerry Moerman, Darrell Vienna, and the late Brian Mayberry. Flying solo as a trainer since the mid 1990s, Cassidy currently is president of the California Thoroughbred Trainers (CTT), a relatively new organization devoted to “Horsemen Helping Horsemen.”

“I was voted in over a year ago, and it’s an absolutely worthwhile organization that’s a vital component of the horse racing industry,” said Cassidy, whose board members include trainers William Anton, Tim Bellasis, Jack Carava, Eoin Harty, Gloria Haley, Dan Hendricks, Cliff Sise, Jr., Howard Zucker, and retired 97-year-old trainer Noble Threewitt. “I’m hoping we can do things on this new board that haven’t been done before. Our goal is to help enhance racing in California and act as a buffer between the TOC (Thoroughbred Owners of California), the California Horse Racing Board, and management. Right now, we’re working on increasing the CTT’s presence and improving our effectiveness within the industry.”

Cassidy’s demeanor is one of leisure, but his core is impregnable, thanks in large part to Whiteley.
“He was tough as nails,” Cassidy remembered. “I was working for Prendergast when I first met him, and we did all his (veterinary) work. Whiteley used to call the vet ‘The Butcher’ and me ‘Butcher, Jr.’ I was there through the Ruffian years (1974-75) and it turned out to be very sad years (she was euthanized after breaking down in a match race against Foolish Pleasure in 1975).”

Fellow Irishman Harty, who says,“I joined the CTT for the betterment of racing and its personnel,” believes Cassidy is a good fit as CTT president.

“I know from being around him at the board sessions that he’s very opinionated, very forceful,” Harty said. “He seems to have the interest of the horsemen at heart, which is a good thing. You need somebody like that. He’s very passionate about what he does and has a strong sense of what’s right and wrong.”

Other board members have made significant contributions, among them trainer Howard Zucker.

“My objective has always been to speak for the horses, because no one can speak for their safety,” he said. “I’ve been head of our track safety committee for more than eight years, seeking improved conditions for our backstretch help and making sure our hospital and our benevolent programs run well. Mr. (Ed) Halpern has been a fabulous executive director helping on the workmen’s comp situation. We went through that crisis and remedied that problem. We try to offer our input in meetings with the TOC so that, in general, we can mutually benefit. Owners and trainers are on the same page, working for the same goals. We were responsible for bringing changes in our surfaces, and, hopefully, have made them much safer than they were.”

Said trainer and board member Dan Hendricks: “We’ll try to maintain positive thinking about our future. We want to be involved in many of the decisions and will try to make improvements we hope will benefit racing.”
Trainer Jack Carava, a relative newcomer, has similar objectives. “I’ve only been involved a short time, so I haven’t had a lot of long-term goals, but I’d like to maintain the goals that have been on the table since I got here,” he said.

“The reason I became a member of the board and vice president in Northern California was to try and bring management, trainers, and the TOC together,” said Bill Anton. “We’re like three spokes in a wheel. If one breaks, we all go down. Communication and cooperation between the three entities will make things better. These are very trying economic times, not only for racing, but every business, so we must be prudent and not selfish, otherwise, we’ll all be looking for a job.”

Tim Bellasis has become pro-active. “I didn’t like the way things were going,” he said in explaining why he became a board member. “I’m pretty vocal about what I think is right and wrong. I was unhappy with the purse structure up North. I thought the fairs were telling cheaper horses they were unwelcome. I thought it was time to get off the stick and do something about it.”

Participation in a Northern California committee to gain TOC voting rights in 2007 inspired Haley to seek a CTT directorship. “I want to see a continued dialogue among TOC, CTT, and the rest of the industry create a unified force to further our sport,” she said. “I’m concerned about the safety of the horses and the condition of the tracks. I’m also in support of horse rehabilitation and retirement organizations.”

As a new Director, Cliff Sise, Jr. wants to see the continued growth of CTT’s strength as an organization. “There are issues that require the CTT to make a stand on behalf of the membership, and I want to ensure that that action is taken.”

Cassidy, who moved to California in 1981 when Sanborn became ill, has made his mark in the Golden State with fillies and mares. His most recent stakes winner is Dancing Diva, who captured the Grade II CashCall Mile by a nose at Hollywood Park last July 5.

“She’ll be pointed to a race at the autumn Hollywood Park meet and then run at the Santa Anita winter meet,” Cassidy said. “I’m skipping the Breeders’ Cup. It’s true that my career has been dominated by good fillies (he won his first Grade I stakes with English import Ticker Tape in the 2004 American Oaks at Hollywood; later that year she won the Grade I Queen Elizabeth Challenge Cup at Keeneland).”

Other female stakes winners trained by Cassidy include Katdogawn (another English import), who won three Grade II races on turf in 2004; yet another English import, Singhalese, who won the Grade I Del Mark Oaks in 2005; and Passified, who last year won the Flawlessy Stakes and the San Clemente Handicap, each time with Smith aboard. In 2006, Moscow Burning, a six-year-old mare, became the career earnings leader for California-bred females, passing Fran’s Valentine with earnings of more than $1.4 million. Moscow Burning was claimed for $25,000 in 2003.

That’s not to say Cassidy doesn’t have a way with colts.

“We’ve had a few decent ones, like Milk It Mick (winner of the Grade I Kilroe Mile in 2006), Ocean Sound (third in the 2002 Blue Grass) and Golden Balls (2007 La Puente Stakes winner),” Cassidy said. “A few of those turned out to be OK, but the fillies have been sensational.”

The same can’t be said this year about his beloved Yankees. The Bronx Bombers, despite Major League baseball’s highest payroll, languished behind upstart Tampa Bay and defending champion Boston almost all season, and missed the American League playoffs for the first time since 1993. Cassidy is on good terms with former Yankee manager Joe Torre, himself a horse owner, who now manages the Los Angeles Dodgers.
“This season has been disappointing,” Cassidy said, “because I love the Yankees fiercely. I check the scores 20 times a day. I’ve talked with Torre a couple times and I did see him with (trainer Bobby) Frankel one day and we talked. I wished him good luck (with the Dodgers), but said I was never going to switch allegiance, and he understood. There was no chance I would switch to the Dodgers.”

Smith, whose Mets won the National League East title this year after blowing a 7 ½ game lead with 17 games remaining in 2007 to give the crown to the Phillies, reserves his jibes at Cassidy and the Yanks. Business, after all, is business.

“We’ve had really good success and really work well together,” Smith said. “Jim’s the type of guy who wants you to be part of the team. He listens to what you have to say and he’s willing to try things if you think they might work.

“Riding for him puts no pressure on you. He makes you feel like the horse is yours, too, and you’re going out there doing the best you can and he’s going to be OK with whatever the outcome is. If something happens, you explain it and he understands it. He’s a great horseman and a great friend, too. We go out and eat dinner a lot and have a great relationship together.”

That doesn’t mean Smith won’t take an opportunity to take a shot at the Yankees’ fall from grace.

“He’s a Yankee fan,” Smith said. “That’s his only vice, and I’m a Mets’ fan, so we argue about that. We get together on Sunday and have dinner and talk about what happened during the week and what the future holds and we always have a good time.”

Baseball and socializing aside, Cassidy has a realistic approach on racing’s future.

“To a large extent, it looks bleak, with the economy and all,” Cassidy said. “The sales are down in most places, but there are some positive signs. People have become more aware of what the public wants. There’s a big push against medications, which is really good. (Synthetic) tracks are a lot safer. Horses shouldn’t have catastrophic injuries that we’ve had in the past, so I see a lot of pluses.

“I know the overall picture looked dismal to a certain extent, but I look forward to the future. If the right minds get together and can stay on track, I believe we can make a big improvement.”

Edward I. Halpern, CTT Exec - (14 October 2008 - Issue Number: 10)

TRM Trainer of the Quarter - Tony Martin

The TRM Trainer of the Quarter goes to Tony Martin. Bookmakers know where to look when they are preparing for a big race. If it's a big handicap - whether on the flat or over jumps - then the name of Tony Martin will always be at the forefront of calculations.

James Crispe (European Trainer - Issue 23 / Autumn 2008)

Michael Dickinson - "The Mad Genius"

By Frances Karon

Michael Dickinson is welcoming and instantly likeable, suffused with energy as he bounces around Tapeta Farm on the Chesapeake Bay in North East, Maryland. “I don’t say I’m good or great but I’m not boring,” he promises. Along that vein, the burning question is, why do people call him “The Mad Genius,” as coined by an American turf writer? Dickinson’s standard reply is that the nickname is “only half right,” without declaring which half. No relentless line of questioning will drag it out of him. “Who do you think you are, Barbara Walters?” he deadpans. “Or the guy with on CNN with the braces [suspenders]. Larry King.” What does his wife, Joan Wakefield, think? “Don’t answer that. Keep quiet! Could be divorce proceedings here!” teases her husband. She says only, “I know which half is right!” Draw your own conclusion. If he’s mad, or if he’s a genius, or if he’s both – he embraces it.

First, there is the interview. No, not this one. His interview of the writer who has arrived at his doorstep. It’s part of the process. He has made the appropriate phone calls, compiled a character reference and studied your transcript. He begins grilling immediately, disconcertingly scribbling away with the pen and paper he is never without. This is the quintessential Dickinson. The Mad Genius at work.

At heart, Dickinson is fundamentally curious. One of his many extraordinary features is his belief that there’s potential to learn something new or something better from everyone. He might not yet know what exactly that something is, but it is there, and he will find it.

The third generation horseman is from Yorkshire, England. His father and grandfather before him, and his mother after, were trainers. His father “was very low key and didn’t want the big lights. He was happy just churning out winners.” His mother, “Mrs. D” as Dickinson affectionately calls her, “was one of the best horsewomen England’s ever produced, and that’s a huge statement. She was selected to showjump for Great Britain, and she was one of the best of her time. She was a very good point-to-point rider, the best of her era. Then she started to train on her own for three years when I went to Manton and Dad was sick. She won the King George, the Queen Mother Champion Chase, the Welsh Grand National, the Whitbread. Yes, there’d been good female trainers; yes, there’d been good point-to-point riders, and there’d been good showjumpers, but nobody excelled in all three disciplines.”

Dickinson began riding over fences, and in his first season emulated his father as champion amateur jockey. He was also fifth in the overall jockey’s standings, “which was perhaps higher than I should have been. I rode five winners at the Cheltenham Festival, and there were better riders than me who rode less, so that was an achievement. Dad was a North Country trainer and I was a North Country jockey and we weren’t high profile. To have a couple of runners at Cheltenham was magnificent. We walked in ten feet tall, “oh, we’ve got arunner.” And weren’t we so pleased and proud to have a runner! If it ran well, oh, it was great. And then by the end, if we didn’t have a winner we were ready to jump off the grandstand.” He continued riding competitively for ten years. “I loved it. The only thing I didn’t like was the dieting, because I had to be 140 pounds and my natural weight was 168 pounds. The falls never worried me. You never worry about the pain, you just worry because you can’t eat all day. People, if they wanted to be kind, said I was good over a fence.” And if they didn’t want to be kind? “Well, they’d say I wasn’t very strong in a finish. That was fair comment. I was too tall and I was a bit weak because I was 140 pounds and I’d have been tired at the end.” After a fall at Cartmel left him 20 minutes from death, Dickinson traded in jockey’s license for trainer’s license. Remarkably, the whip he had used for ten years was sold at the “nearly new shop.”

“I never thought I’d be top trainer,” he concedes. “I just wanted to be consistently in the top ten every year. They like saying I’m famous for the Gold Cup, but that was just one race.” He closed out his brief steeplechase training career with three consecutive championship titles each by money won and by number of wins. There is some confusion as to whether he holds five, or “only” four, Guinness World records based on his exploits with the jumpers, primarily because he is not ego-driven. “I’ve got some accomplishments and they’re about that thick.” Dickinson neatly pinches the tips of his thumb and forefinger close together. “I’ve got another book with my mistakes and it’s that thick” – moving his hands exaggeratedly far apart – “and I wake up in the middle of the night thinking about them.”

His meteoric domination of the steeplechasing segued into becoming private trainer for Robert Sangster at Manton. Though he had switched to flat racing, Michael was facing insurmountable hurdles in his new job with a yard full of backward juveniles. “One of my work riders came to me and said, ‘Michael, you’re doing too much with these two-year-olds.’ And another rider came to me and said, ‘You’re not doing enough with these horses. They’re not going to win like that.’ Who was right? Well they were both right.” That was in the same year Lester Piggott struck out as a trainer, and “the bookies were betting on who was going to train the most winners, Lester or me. At the beginning of the season, Sir Peter O’Sullevan – a great man – came, had a look around, saw the two-year-olds and saw all the new gallops which needed a bit more time and he went out and had a big bet on Lester. He said, ‘Michael, you’ve got no chance. I’ve seen the two-year-olds, and they’re all big, tall, Nijinsky-type gangly things.’ So we knew in March we were in trouble because Sir Peter, apart from being an excellent racecaller, is a very shrewd betting man.” Six months into the season, Sangster fired Dickinson. “We didn’t have enough winners. We had Golden Fleeces and Kings Lakes, which weren’t good stallions, so that was part of it. I’m not blaming Robert for that. Losing a job’s not the end of the world. Losing my reputation was.”

As is often the case with such seemingly devastating setbacks, Dickinson reflects on it as “the best thing that happened. I still love visiting England but I couldn’t have been as happy. I like the freedom in America.” With help from Dr. David Lambert, Dickinson attended the Calder juvenile sale and was in business. He set up shop at Fair Hill in Maryland that year, in 1987, and stayed until Tapeta Farm was completed in 1998 to his exact, and exacting, specifications, right down to the in-house synthetic footing.

Tapeta Farm is a culmination of a dream germinated 25 years before its inception. Dickinson still calls his summers with Vincent O’Brien at Ballydoyle in the early 70s “the two happiest of my life.” He pulls out a notebook that is so old it had cost 10 pence, filled with meticulous notes dating back to his days with O’Brien, who may have been a quiet man but has through Dickinson’s observations an eloquent verbosity. Other notebooks follow, including the one in which he chronicled his three week “vacation” in California with Charlie Whittingham during jump racing’s off season in 1983.

At Ballydoyle, “The penny dropped, and I suddenly realised whey everyone sent [O’Brien] their million-dollar yearlings, because he didn’t break them down. There were no sore horses. He ignited my passion for surfaces. Ballydoyle is a magnificent environment and Tapeta Farm is just copying what an Irishman did many years ago.” Whittingham told Dickinson, “You’ll end up going on the flat.” When Dickinson responded, “I don’t think I’ll make the transition,” the Bald Eagle rebutted, “I’m sure you will,” with confidence. “He was a lovely guy, wasn’t he? Everyone liked Charlie. But I was only with Charlie for three weeks, so Vincent had more effect on me.” Yet there was a common thread in both these great trainers, whose words laid the foundation for the Tapeta surface. The most well-worn page in his Whittingham notebook is where he jotted down Whittingham’s oft-repeated phrase: “A bad turf track is better than a good dirt track.”

Touring the farm on foot is like taking a nature walk in the woods. On the 7 furlong synthetic course, the Tapeta mixture underfoot coaxes up to a steady incline which, in the summer heat, is tiring. You begin to understand how the miracle of Da Hoss came together here well before reaching the undulating turf course, which is another product of Dickinson’s “genius” half. It is comprised of three strips of different types of grass providing ideal training ground for normal, drought and flood conditions. Earlier, Dickinson had demonstrated the quality of the “mattress” that is his turf by lying down on it. “That goes along with the public perception that I’m just a bit mad, you know, lying on the grass. They would love that, wouldn’t they?”

Near the end of the solitary hike under the searing sun and thinking of the photo shoot, I take a breather on the turf mattress and mentally play back a conversation about Da Hoss. Dickinson and his partner of 27 years – and wife of two years, Joan Wakefield – agree that their greatest day came courtesy of a win by Da Hoss in the Breeders’ Cup Mile but they squabble over a triviality: for Wakefield, that day came at Woodbine in 1996, and for Dickinson, it was Churchill in 1998.

The 1996 Breeders’ Cup brings us to an urban legend we must debunk. The popular horsemen’s sheet Indian Charlie [motto: “We Never Let The Truth Get In The Way Of A Good Story”] has made the spectacle of Michael Dickinson wearing high heels well known to all backstretch denizens.

Dickinson sets up the story. “Forty years ago I was riding in a big hurdle race, and I was dating a model who came to the race in a cocktail dress and a pair of heels. She walked around with me, bless her, and I said, ‘I’m going to come up the left-hand side.’ And she says, ‘Oh no, I’d come down on the right. My high heels go in much more on the left than on the right.’ So by accident I learned that one way to test soft ground was high heels.” Incidentally, he won.
Decades later in Canada, inspecting the turf ahead of the race, Dickinson turned to his partner and said, “This is no good. You’re going to have to buy a pair of heels.” Wakefield dutifully approached a saleswoman at a nearby Shoe Barn. “I need a pair of the highest, thinnest stilettos that you can find. It doesn’t matter what colour they are, it doesn’t matter what size they are, as long as I can get them on my feet.” Within minutes, Wakefield had bought a pair of plastic red shoes to match the colour in her face at having to wear them, and three of them began to walk the course again with what Dickinson calls “science – the penetrometer; the old-fashioned stick; and the by accident high heels. It was important. I mean, you can’t be casual about it!” None less casual than Wakefield, accompanying the men for three circuits around the track in stilettos. “She made a speech and complained and I said, ‘Marilyn Monroe had high heels and she never complained!’”

“Yes, but she didn’t walk turf tracks, either! It’s not easy walking on soft turf with high heels. The other thing was, I said to Michael, that if anybody saw me…” says Wakefield. “This was October in Toronto, and there I am in open-toed plastic shoes and I said, ‘If anybody seems me I’m going to kill you.’ So we get around, and as we’re turning into the straight all of a sudden the horses come out on the track. We’d forgotten, or didn’t know, that it was twilight racing so they were coming out for the first race, and of course they’d seen us walking the track so Michael very kindly pointed me out to the cameras, pointed at me in those ridiculous bright red stilettos.”

“They’d be worth a lot of money now, wouldn’t they, Joan? They’d have been a collector’s item. But she threw them away.” Indeed, Wakefield confesses, “They were in the trash in Toronto. I was mortified!” Nevertheless, they had served their purpose, and Dickinson drew a detailed map for Gary Stevens to follow and told him, “We know you’re a world-class jockey but it’s rained for ten days and three of us have walked the track three times, which is nine circuits, so please allow us to impart you knowledge. We’re giving you some fairly difficult instructions and if it doesn’t work I will take full responsibility.” The plan was executed brilliantly.

Bright red plastic stilettos aside, the 1996 Mile is Wakefield’s favorite. Dickinson puffs up with melodramatic apoplexy, but his wife stands her ground. “Churchill was very stressful because he’d had a lot of problems and we expected him to win. That makes it stressful.”

Dickinson counters. “Well, I thought Churchill was easy. I knew he was 100%. We had him spot on because you and Miguel and Jon-Boy did such a good job with him. I knew he was spot on, and that was it.” Dickinson dances around the room impersonating announcer Tom Durkin: “Mark of Esteem’s got a lot to do but it’s the American Da Hoss…” Wakefield: “In da mile!” Dickinson: “And Spinning World is trying to reel him in! Oh my, this is the greatest comeback since Lazarus!”

Not having raced since the Breeders’ Cup at Woodbine, soundness and fitness were a concern for the then-6-year-old gelding, and Dickinson entered Da Hoss in an allowance race at Colonial Downs. “Six weeks before the race two good vets got together and said that this horse wouldn’t make the first race, let alone the second. But he was a miracle.” Twenty-three months following his previous start, Da Hoss won an allowance in Virginia but only made first reserve on the list of 1998 Mile entrants. “I wrote to the selection committee and I said, ‘This horse is better than he’s ever been, better than he was two years ago.’ Of course they didn’t believe me. ‘How can he be?’ [Colonial’s] Lenny Hale stood up for him, because he’d seen him win.”

On the first day of every month for that entire year, Gary Stevens’ agent Ron Anderson received a phone call from Michael Dickinson. “You will ride my horse in the Breeders’ Cup, won’t you?” “Yeah, yeah,” Anderson would reply, until October, when Anderson had a different answer. “Oh no, we can’t ride. We’re riding [Among Men] for Sir Michael Stoute.” Dickinson says, “If you were Ron Anderson what would you do? The other’s just won a Grade 1 and Da Hoss hasn’t run for two years. It was the right decision by him, really.” Yet Dickinson had so much faith in his horse he suggested a Da Hoss vs. Among Men wager between him and Anderson. “I’ll bet you now $1,000, wherever we finish, whether it’s first and second, or last and next to last, we’ll finish in front of that.”

Da Hoss drew in to the mile with John Velasquez named to ride. At the press party on Thursday, Da Hoss’ head man Miguel and exercise rider Jon “Jon-Boy” Ferriday surrounded Stevens. “Big mistake!” they told him. “And Gary was beside himself because there was so much conviction in what they were saying.” On Saturday, “We went to see Johnny at ten o’clock in the morning. I said, ‘Johnny, I know you’ve got a lot of rides today but you’re going to ride a winner and it’s going to be Da Hoss.’ I was crying at the time because I was so emotional, because I knew he was spot on, and I knew he would win. I felt really proud. I wasn’t worried.” Da Hoss nosed out Hawksley Hill (Ire) with Among Men unplaced, and Anderson paid up right away. “Well what could I do?” he said to Dickinson of his decision. “We hadn’t seen your horse for two years!” Dickinson split the thousand between Da Hoss’ Miguel and Ferriday.
In contrast to the ‘ease’ of running a horse against the world’s best competition after a two year absence, Dickinson was never more nervous than before what historical annals call the “Famous Five,” a.k.a. 1983 Cheltenham Gold Cup, when he saddled Bregawn, Captain John, Wayward Lad, Silver Buck and Ashley House to fill the first five places home. “I thought we might be sort of second, third and fourth but not win the race, so I was nervous as hell. And I knew my best horse wasn’t at his best.” Wakefield offers up her assessment of his nerves. “A couple of weeks before Cheltenham he’d won an award and had to go up to London. He put a suit on and I said, ‘My God, Michael, you are so skinny it’s unbelievable. How much weight have you lost?’ I mean, it looked like he forgot to take the coat hanger out because it was just pure bones.’” He’d shed 14 pounds.

Of his many amazing training accomplishments, what does Michael Dickinson consider the greatest? “Most people would say the Cheltenham Gold Cup, but the best horse only finished fourth that day, Silver Buck. He won it the year before, so I didn’t do a good job with him. I failed. I asked him to go into battle and he wasn’t at his best, and I felt guilty for it. I still do now.” He’s not lying. Here in his office, 25 years after the fact, his eyes tear up. “His owner came to me after. She had the best horse in the race and he finished fourth, but she couldn’t have been any nicer. She was so pleased for me. And you know, I was crying for her because I’d let her down. I’d let the horse down. Afterwards, it wasn’t elation. It was just…relief. It wasn’t, ‘Wow, this is great!’ It was just, ‘Thank God for that.’”
One word Dickinson uses infrequently when discussing his successes is “I.” “People,” he says, “always say you, but we had a great team. My father used to say that you can read what you want in the press clippings but don’t believe them, and Joan’s always been the same. She’s always kept me firmly in hand.” Wakefield asserts that he has relaxed in their 27 years together. “He never, ever used to sit and eat a meal. I’d put a meal in front of him, he’d take a bite, he’d get up, he’d make a telephone call, he’d wander around the house, he’d come back in, he’d sit down and play with it a little bit. He’d get up and wander off. He was a nightmare back then. He’s relaxed now to what he used to be.”

“You’ve got to have fun in your life, haven’t you?” With Wakefield, he does, and by the sound and look of it they have done from the time they began dating. They met at Wetherby Racecourse, through the cousin of a friend. “Michael always manages to find somebody to drive him because he doesn’t like driving, so Chris drove him and in between races with Michael running backwards and forwards between the saddling area and the jockey’s room Chris and six girls all stood in the middle. Michael stops and says to Chris, ‘How is it you always get all the women?’ and we got quick introductions. ‘This is Joan Wakefield. Her father builds horseboxes.’ We met for about 30 seconds. Two weeks later apparently he had got my dad’s name and called him at work and said, ‘Can you tell me where I can get hold of Joan Wakefield?’ I was obviously in the bad books that day so my father’s reply was, ‘Around the bloody neck!” which Michael thought was highly hilarious and proceeded to tell everybody in the racing world. Anyway, we decided to meet at the Wetherby roundabout at the hotel in the car park. By this time a couple of weeks have gone by.”

“We’re walking up the street there,” breaks in Michael. “I’m walking up one side of the street and she’s walking up the other and we didn’t recognise each other. I said, ‘Oh, are you Joan?’”

“So I get in the back of the car” – one of Michael’s riders was driving – “and he turns around and he looks at me and says, ‘What have you done to your hair? When I met you you had long, flowing blond locks.’ I said, ‘You’ve got the wrong one. I’ve never had long, flowing blond locks.’”

“I had six to choose from, and I chose the wrong one! Mistaken identity!”

“And how dare you ask me what I’ve done to my hair.” Dickinson had gotten aperm. “I said to him, ‘Michael, it’s bad enough looking at you with a perm, but I cannot for the life of me imagine you sitting in the hairdresser’s with all the rollers in!’ The press started nicknaming him ‘Demiwave Dickie.’”

At the end of 2007, Dickinson retired from training and put Tapeta Farm for sale. “It’s unique,” he says. “It’s easily the best private training center in America, and the only one on the East Coast between Washington, D.C. and New York, which is where all the racetracks are. It’s a great place to train. You just do what you want. If it’s raining, you can go in, have a cup of tea and play cards and wait for it to stop raining and then go and train.” The team now focuses entirely on their Tapeta surface.

Blending the first successful formula for Tapeta was harrowing. “I thought,” he says, “it would take me three months and it took me four years.” Give up? “I couldn’t.” Near the end, “we mixed all day. We started at six in the morning and stopped at two o’clock the next morning. I got up to see and it was terrible. The dream of my farm had blown up, and my ego took a beating.” They hit it on the next try, but the original mix has continued to evolve after he threw the gauntlet at Wakefield: “Here’s my product. Make it better. Learn all you can about sand, wax, fibers and rubber. And you’d better know more than anybody else, and you better be damn good at it.” The result is that they’ve gotten progressively “better every year.”

Dickinson denies being a perfectionist. “I’m old enough to realize perfection is never obtainable. It’s not worth killing yourself trying to get a ten out of ten, because it’s never attainable. So you just have to be happy with 8s and 9s out of ten.” Then why is he still fine-tuning his Tapeta surface? “I want to be better. I’m not a perfectionist because I know I can’t get there but I do the best I can.”

“There’s a big difference between training and building tracks. If a trainer is really good, and if he’s really lucky – say he has ten horses – he’ll probably do quite well with five of them, and the other five won’t do well. You’re all the time going around apologising for them. Even when you do everything right it can blow up in your face. And then trainers tend to beat ourselves up by saying, ‘If I hadn’t done that we’d have been alright.’ How many times do we say that? We all make mistakes, and very often afterwards it’s not the trainer’s fault. It just didn’t work out. But it’s not always black and white. You can’t definitely say, ‘It’s not my fault.’ It’s very easy to blame everybody else but deep down you’ve always got to take some responsibility. So I used to beat myself up and think, ‘Why did I do that?’” The self-proclaimed non-perfectionist asserts that a perfect win percentage is now possible. “If I do ten tracks, I can do ten good tracks, and I can go ten-for-ten. If it’s not a good track I’ve just got to look in the mirror. It was my fault and I go and fix it. If it does fail it’s my fault, where you could train a horse perfectly and it fails.”

Tapeta is featured at Golden Gate Fields, Presque Isle Downs, training centres such as the nearby Fair Hill, and in Dubai, England, Korea, Saudi Arabia and Singapore. Dickinson makes a case for replacing conventional dirt surfaces. “Why is the manager of an American racetrack going to spend a lot of money on a new track? First of all, it’s safest for jockeys. Two, it’s reduced injuries to the horses, which will help fill the barn area. The horses can run more often, leading to bigger fields and a bigger mutuel handle with no sloppy tracks. Owners trying to protect their investment want to go where the horse can last its longest and where when it’s finished racing he’s got a saleable horse. And then there’s litigation. Synthetics are proven to be safer, and you’ve got to be seen doing everything you can. The last thing is peace of mind. Priceless. You’re doing everything you can as a racetrack manager, and that is peace of mind.”

The market for synthetics can be fickle. After last year’s deluge at the Breeders’ Cup led to the fatal breakdown of George Washington (Ire), “the world saw the imperfections of dirt. That can happen to any dirt track any time. It wasn’t Monmouth Park’s fault, and I’m not blaming Monmouth. Any dirt track can turn into that.” However, interest soon waned after the well-documented problems at Santa Anita, which is not a Tapeta surface. Months of silence were broken after the very public fallout afterEight Belles. “The people who were on the fence went quiet after Santa Anita in January but now they’re all back in action again.”

Dickinson’s product is more than a racing surface; his pride and passion are part and parcel of any Tapeta deal, and he often travels to check on his tracks. “My feet can tell me. I like to feel it and I like to have a little dig with my hands. I like to run on them because I can tell how they perform when I run on them. I try and go barefoot whenever I can, but I don’t do it in the winter, and I can’t do it in the summer because it gets too hot.” A barefoot man running around racetrack doesn’t always go over well with an unsuspecting security detail, which inevitably gives chase. Once, he told the guards, “If you can’t catch a 58-year-old man I don’t feel sorry for you!” Another time, running in the evening, “This guy comes over in his truck and drives along next to me, stops and comes out in his uniform and says, ‘Please tell me you work here!’” His favorite incident was in Korea. “You know, I don’t look like many Koreans. I’m running around in my shorts testing it out and the security man was absolutely freaking out. He was peddling as fast as he could on his bike blowing his whistle” – Dickinson blows an imaginary whistle – “absolutely freaking out having about three heart attacks at once.” The man didn’t speak English, and Dickinson kept on going.

With training roots in two major racing countries and the ever-expanding reach of Tapeta, where does he see our sport headed? He believes, not surprisingly, that synthetics are going to become more prevalent as they improve, and that the ProCush whip mandatory in England and U.S. steeplechases will gain popularity in North America. The Europeans exercise strict rules on overuse of the whip, and Dickinson says, “That’s the way it needs to be. No one’s ever been called up for not hitting the horse enough.” From a health-of-the-industry angle, he sees a better product in England, where “the punter has tremendous choice. Some would argue that the bookmakers take too much out of racing and don’t give enough back. However, they do a marvelous job of marketing our sport. They take it to the public, they take it to the betting offices and they started SIS. I remember when we were at school, we would start betting on the Derby and the Grand National six months before. That’s always fun to try and have a pound on a horse at 500-1 six months before the race. Contrast America with the Kentucky Derby. Of 700 horses entered in February, we can only bet on 17 of them. It’s pathetic. We did better with the quill and ink 40 years ago than the so-called computers are doing now. In America, we don’t have a good enough racing product to make it attractive for enough bettors, and that’s a big stumbling block. We are handicapped, and the racetracks have to conduct their betting with 50-year-old laws which are way outdated.

“I enjoy racing anywhere around the world,” he goes on to say. “Arc Day in France is good. I don’t think there’s anything more exciting than Dubai World Cup Day. That’s terrific. After the fourth race they have a tremendous show there – fireworks, acrobats. And they have 19 nations competing, so that’s exciting. I’d like to see the Breeders’ Cup do more to entice more people from around the world.”

With an undocumented number of high-profile racehorses on a legal steroid regiment, Big Brown has become the unwitting poster child for Winstrol. While the arguments persist on the drug’s possible healthful benefits, Dickinson’s stance is that it needs to go if for no other reason than “it’s a bad perception. The public don’t like it. We’ve used anabolic steroids for the last 20 years but it’s going to be abolished in 2009 anyhow.” His opinion on Lasix is that “it’s a kind drug, because when a horse bleeds it hurts him. They think they’re drowning. In a perfect world of course they wouldn’t need it, but the fact is that 75% of horses do bleed, and it hurts them when they bleed, so I’m not totally anti-Lasix.”

Towards the end of our conversation, he says, “I’m just a farm boy from Maryland doing the best he can.” Surely he’s joking. Surely not “just a farm boy from Maryland” – or England – is this successful jockey, trainer, miracle worker and inventor of the Tapeta footing? Surely the first thing people ask when they meet him is about the Famous Five, the 12-winners-in-a-day, or Da Hoss? Surely that’s what we’re thinking? “I prefer not to know. They’re very nice but I’m sure they realise I’ve messed up a few times, and I hope they’ll forgive me for it.” His biggest mistake? “I don’t know how to answer that. I’ll have to think about that one. I just don’t know which is my biggest mistake.” He laughs. “Anyhow, you can’t help that. We all make mistakes. The man who never made a mistake never made anything, and I’ve always been a pioneer, an adventurer.” Ah! We’re seeing through this farm boy façade now. “I’ve always tried to think outside the box, and sometimes when you do things differently you do it the wrong way. But I accept that.”

Judging by the type of horses by which he has earned his “Mad Genius” label, Dickinson could be depicted as tilting at windmills, but he is no Don Quixote. Da Hoss; A Huevo, who won the Grade 1 DeFrancis Memorial Dash at seven; former $13,000 claimer Cetewayo, sidelined by multiple injuries, a Grade 1 winner at the age of eight; and Business is Boomin, who triumphed in his first race since May 8, 1992 on May 8, 1997. Six of the latter-named gelding’s seven career wins came in that 8-year-old season. Dickinson is quick to downplay accolades. “Nobody in their right mind would have tried, would they?” At the end of the day, all he really wants is something simple: “I want to do something good, make the world a better place. I want to do all I can for racing. I want to change all the surfaces of the world. I want to repay the horse for all he’s done to me. I would like to play a part in the racing industry, a constructive part, and I hope I produce good surfaces will keep horses sounder and produce good racing.”

In the midst of a heat wave, the temperature relents and our interview comes to a close. An evening walk across Tapeta, Latin for “carpet,” is pleasant, the Dickinsonian energy that runs throughout the farm feeling like a coiled spring about to be set loose, as a storm transforms the electricity from figurative to literal. The sky is ablaze, not unlike the mind of the “Mad Genius.”

The ‘Chief' Allen Jerkens

By Bill Heller

Ask anyone in Thoroughbred racing to name the savviest trainers in the history of the sport, and you may hear: Sunny Jim Fitzsimmons, Woody Stephens, Charlie Whittingham, Laz Barrera,D. Wayne Lukas, John Nerud and, certainly, Allen Jerkens.Jerkens has never saddled the winner of a Triple Crown or Breeders' Cup race, yet he's still training winners and winning stakes at the age of 79, 34 years after his induction into the Hall of Fame. At the time, he was the youngest trainer ever enshrined.Known as the ‘Giant Killer' for his historic upsets of Buckpasser, Kelso and Secretariat, and as the "Chief" for his incredible horse knowledge, Jerkens was honored by the Backstretch Employee Service Team (BEST) with a Lifetime Outstanding Trainer award at a benefit dinner in Sands Point, Long Island on May 28th this year.Rather than being passed by time, he has adapted. Though he doesn't own a computer, he has a cell phone and a website, www.AllenJerkens.com.

His beloved wife Elisabeth was asked how her husband continues to maintain a national presence. "He's very disciplined," she said. "He does everything at the same time, and his memory is excellent." Asked if he ever amazes her, she said, "All the time."

Hall of Fame jockey Chris McCarron recently began the country's first jockey school in Kentucky, and you immediately took in one of his students, jockey Robbie Davis' daughter. Why?

Chris just called me up. I always admired him and his riding, and he always tried to help the game, too. And Robbie Davis, I always liked him, too, and rode him. I didn't think it would hurt. She's willing to work, too. She has to get strong. She gets on two or three horses every day. She started in January.

Throughout the last couple of decades, you've repeatedly used low-profile jockeys who exercised horses for you in the afternoon in races such as Filiberto Leon, Ray Ganpath, Shannon Uske, Leah Gyarmati and Andrew Lakeman . Why?

A lot of times they started out on horses that they were taking a special interest in. They were coming back in the afternoon and taking them out to graze. Like Lilah (a top filly). Uske rode her - she was a filly that tied up a lot - she used to take her out in the evening and ride her around bareback and she got to be pretty good.
Every once in a while, I get the feeling that the horse is going to do especially good with somebody that's used to them and getting on them every day. It doesn't always happen. It's always fun to have somebody who really takes a great interest in the horse.

Leah used to ride for you, then she earned a Doctorate in Theology. When she returned to say hello at Saratoga, you got her back on a horse that day and she became a jockey and now a successful trainer in New York. What happened that morning?

Well, she had been riding a little bit. She was always one of the best in the morning, anyway. I said, "I'm going to breeze this horse." She says, "You don't want me to breeze him, do you?" I said, "You won't have no problem because he's a free-running horse. You won't have to push him or anything." (Jerkens laughed) It was a horse named Chief Master. 
He was a good horse.

You still love what you do?

Oh, yeah. We try. I always like to see horses do the best they can, naturally. And to get anybody to give you the horses to train, if they don't run good they're not going to give them to you. They don't want to hear about you being in the Hall of Fame or whatever you ever did. It doesn't matter. You just have to keep on going. If you don't keep on going, you're not going to stay in the game.
And I have to pay more attention to it than I used to. I used to play polo and everything else, take a little time off. But I have to keep reminding myself all the time: who I'm going to run and when I'm going to run. Otherwise, it gets out of your mind quicker than when you were young.
Do you still go back in the evening to check your horses and see whether or not they've eaten?

Oh, yeah. The only time I won't go is if we plan to go out later and somebody (else) wants to do it for me. It's kind of important to me. Once a week or twice a week, I'll have someone else to take care of things.

It's not only because I don't trust anybody else to do it. It's whenever you look at them it reminds you of what you had in mind. If you see one that leaves their oats that particular night, then you say, well, probably it's because the vet gave him a build-up shot that day and he's going the other way. Every once in a while, horses do change. There's always a reason why things happen.

Every once in a while, they'll just not eat. I remember Spite the Devil. I was worried about him ‘cuz' he wasn't cleaning up his feed, and I was wondering whether we should run him and he won that big race (the Empire Classic) and he won it two years in a row.

If you don't have the experience, a lot of things worry you more. If you haven't been through it for years and years and years and seen the results – both ways – then you would worry. Guys who first start training would worry more about it than I would because I know I can overcome it in some other way.
Just like training; a horse might work faster than you wanted him to, so then maybe you turn him out in the pen for two days in a row and let them relax and try to compensate for it. You can't always. But … the same thing when they work too slow. Then maybe you might go out - I‘ve done it a couple of times - even the same morning and work them a little bit again to try to have them do what you wanted.

If you don't keep reminding yourself and if you don't stay at it, I don't know how you can do it. ‘Cuz' a lot of smarter people than me, they can do it without. Well, look at these guys that have so many horses. They have to depend on other people to have the same ideas that they do. Otherwise they wouldn't able to be so successful.

You seem to always have an incredible relationship with your horses. People have even called you part horse.
Well, from the time I was a little boy, I always liked the horses. I wanted to be a jockey. Of course, naturally, I couldn't be. I rode in jumping races. Then I got to where I always thought I knew how to train them. Naturally, you make a lot of mistakes when you're young. You compensate. I mean you have to learn by your mistakes. There's a lot of trial and error.

You have to be willing to take a chance. A lot of times, modern owners think that you have to be going into a race thinking you have to be the favorite all the time. But you can't be. Every once in a while, you have to try something. If it doesn't work out, then you have to rest your horse up and try it a different way. You can't be thinking just because the figures don't show it (that you don't belong).

We won a lot of races where we had no business in the race, and a lot of times we looked stupid, too. But you've got to be able to go home and straighten it out.
If you have the kind of owner that's always going to chastise you when you don't do the right thing, it's no good for them, and it's no good for you because you're not going to learn anything.

You've had great success training first-time starters as far or even farther than the distance of their first race. Why do you do that?

I don't want them to get tired and a lot of times a slower work and going further works … I used to be successful doing that with babies that were running three furlongs. We used to breeze them half a mile in like :50, and then two days before the race, you'd send them a quarter of a mile as fast as they could go. So they would be both fit and sharp. So that's what you try to do.

If you want a horse to win first time out, you want them to be dead fit for one thing. And then you've got to sharpen them up and make sure he gets away from the gate.
But sometimes you can't go by the workouts in the paper (Daily Racing Form), because maybe you might have been intending to run him in a different race that didn't go, and then you come back to six furlongs. That's what happens a lot of times when you see the longer works. I intended to run him longer, and then that race didn't go, and then he went to six furlongs.

It worked for Society Selection, who won her first start at two at Saratoga, then the 2003 Grade 1 Frizette at Belmont Park in her next start, and then won both the Grade 1 Test and Alabama Stakes at three at Saratoga. Did you have second thoughts about going into a Grade 1 stakes off a maiden win?

I wasn't thinking about running her and then, I don't know what it was, maybe that a lot of people in the barn thought she could win. I didn't see that. She never impressed me that much. But then she won nice. We tried to run in a non-winners of two and it didn't go. Then, I was awful proud of that, that she could win a Grade 1 mile race the next start. It worked out. Of course, Ray (Ganpath) was riding her. We worked her one morning a couple of times coming from behind. One time it worked out just perfect. We had the two horses in front of her and she slipped through between the two of them… she beat the champ that day, Ashado (eventual 2-year-old filly champion). So she wound up being a good filly. To win the Test and the Alabama. That's really good.

Was she one of your best training jobs?

That was one of the best, I thought, when she won the Alabama. Uske was instrumental in that because we worked her a mile about four days before the Alabama and I wanted her to work even and go good at the finish. I was on the pony in the backstretch and I thought she was going to pick it up too fast. And just when I thought it, she must have thought it, too, and she slowed her down slightly, and then when she got into the stretch, she really let her go and she went the mile in 1:39 and did it the right way. It was perfect. If you see those two races (the Test and Alabama), she really had to be the best because she lost a lot of ground.Yet you haven't won a Triple Crown or Breeders' Cup race. Does that bother you?

Well, it doesn't bother me, but you just wish you have done it at least once.

You must have been thrilled when Miss Shop won last year's Grade 1 Personal Ensign at Saratoga.
We won that twice. We won another one (Passing Shot in 2003) with a horse that hadn't been a stakes horse until she won that race. We had tried to get Miss Shop stakes placed in one of those overnight stakes and she was fourth. And then she goes back to Saratoga and she wins a non-winners of two, and she comes back and wins the Personal Ensign. That was terrific.

You almost won the Alabama again with Teammate who opened a clear lead in mid-stretch in 2006.

You talk about disappointments. I thought Teammate was home the day that filly of Shug's (Pine Island) beat her. Of course, she turned out to be great anyway.

Teammate ran well in last year's Spinster then didn't fire on the sloppy track at Monmouth Park in the Breeders' Cup Distaff. What happened?

She ran good in the Spinster, but she was never a big mud filly anyway. A couple of her bad races were in the mud.

Was the track changing as the day went on?

That's what happens in modern racing. You see, years ago, when it was mud, it was just mud and that was the end of it. Now they do all the floating and the sealing. So different horses have different advantages.



What's your opinion of synthetic tracks?

I've always said I don't like it. It doesn't make any sense to me. I figure if they spent that kind of money on the track to start with, they wouldn't have any problems. Besides, if it is great, then how long is it going to be great? Between rain and all that manure from the horses and everything, it can't stay good. The thing that proves to me that it can be done is Pennsylvania and New York and a few places race all the time and they still have a dirt track. So it can be done.

What are the best tracks for horses?



Look at Calder. They race year-round on their track. Belmont is good because you have the option. Gulfstream is good since they built the new track. It's been a little hard to figure out when it rains, but most tracks are fine.

Do you use the Oklahoma Training Track at Saratoga?



No. Every once in a while, I'll take one over there and work him. We try to time it right after it's harrowed. There are so many horses on it now. It's narrower than an average track so there's more holes, more footprints, in it.



As your career continues, do you ever think back how it almost ended several years ago in Florida when you nearly died from pancreatitis?

It was 2000. You're lucky. Not a day goes by that I don't see how lucky I am. 
 

Andrew Lakeman - life after being paralyzed

By Bill Heller

Andrew Lakeman was paralyzed from the waist down in a racing accident at Belmont Park. Originally from England, Lakeman came to the United States in the mid-1990s and worked for Michael Dickinson, Hall of Famers Nick Zito and D. Wayne Lukas, Barclay Tagg and Tom Skiffington before finding a home with Hall of Fame trainer Allen Jerkens. Jerkens, who used Lakeman extensively in the mornings and afternoons, said, "Naturally, it's tough. He has better days than others. It's got to be an awful thing to get used to." It is.
"In the beginning, sometimes I thought, 'Why me?'," said the 33-year-old Lakeman. "Now I'm handling it better."

He proved that by attending "Simply the BEST," a dinner benefitting the Backstretch Employee Service Team of New York, Inc. and honoring Jerkens with a special award as Lifetime Outstanding Trainer.

At the dinner, Lakeman was treated like a rock star. "I thought it was really cool," he said. "I haven't been in contact with many people at all. There were so many people who came over and said, 'Hi, how are you doing?' Allen spent a lot of time at my table. He's very emotional. I'll never forget one time I won a stakes for him, he cried. He said, 'Way to go Andrew.' He was crying in the winner's circle. He's amazing. He not only helps people out, he changes lives. He changed my life."



Lakeman thought he had already endured the greatest challenge of his life when he overcame substance abuse problems with the help of BEST. "I went to them for help," he said. "The Racing and Wagering Board was going to take my license away because I had problems the previous two years with drugs and alcohol."



Lakeman earned his stripes working and/or riding four of Jerkens' top horses: Political Force, Miss Shop, Swap Fliparoo and Teammate. Lakeman is especially proud of his work with Political Force.

Though he never rode him in a race, Political Force might never have finished second in the Grade 1 Met Mile, won the Grade 1 Suburban Handicap and finished third in the Grade 1 Jockey Club Gold Cup without Lakeman's intervention. 

"I always had a connection with horses, just a real good connection," he said. "They're like a mirror to your soul. Because they can't speak, but they feel you."
With other stronger exercise riders, Political Force was uncontrollable. "This is when I'd just come back from rehab," Lakeman said. "One of the exercise riders, a big guy, 170 pounds, he dumped him. And two other guys. He'd rear up and they hit him."

Lakeman eventually convinced Jerkens to give him a shot with Political Force. "He said, 'What the hell are you going to do with him? You weigh 110 pounds,'" Lakeman recalled. Jerkens told him to go ahead.

 "What happened was the guy would pull the reins before hitting him," Lakeman said. "So what I did was put some spurs on and a pair of blinkers on him. When he got to the point where he'd begin acting up, I hit him. And he went good. Then I took the blinkers off. Then he really liked me. He used to go to the track and wheel. I got him on the track and gave him peppermints."

 "The Chief said, 'Now we have to work on him in the gate.'

The gate crew didn't want anything to do with him. I said, 'Don't worry about it.' I walked him toward the gate. He sniffed the gate. I gave him a candy. And he walked straight in. He left the gate awesome."

But the owners of Political Force, as well as the owners of Teammate, insisted Jerkens use a more experienced jockey in races.


However, Lakeman rode eventual Grade 1 stakes winner Miss Shop in her first two races, winning her maiden debut on a sloppy track at Delaware Park by 4 ½ lengths before finishing fifth in an allowance race. He also rode the eventual Grade 1 stakes winner Swap Fliparoo 10 times, winning a maiden and allowance race and finishing third in the Grade 2 Nassau County and second in an ungraded stakes.

In the fourth race at Belmont Park, May 25th, 2007, Lakeman's mount, Our Montana Dream, clipped heels and fell, throwing him hard to the turf. He was paralyzed.
From his hospital bed three days later, he watched on TV as Political Force finished second by three-quarters of a length to Corinthian in the Met Mile at 24-1. "He was awesome," Lakeman said. "That was my favorite thing: difficult horses. They want to run.

Allen is very good at that. He trains them as individuals. He really gets into their heads and gets the best out of them."

Lakeman is rebuilding his life with the help of rehabilitation and therapy. "At first it went really slow and I wasn't getting anywhere," he said. "I wasn't improving. But today I'm doing very good. I worked hard in therapy. I can transfer from my chair to the bed. I can shower on my own. I've become more self-dependent."

In January, he told his therapist he wanted to drive a car. "I took the lessons, 12 lessons," he said. "I did the course on a computer and the driving course right at St. Charles Rehabilitation. I got a car with hand control. Now that I'm driving again, I'll go by the track.

Allen said he wanted me to come with him and stay by him. I really want to train horses."

He knows other trainers and owners will help him, because dozens of them have already helped him get through the roughest part of his ordeal. And he takes heart in the continuing career of Dan Hendricks, the top California trainer who didn't let paralysis from the waist down suffered in a 2004 motocross accident end his career. He was back training in less than two months and developed Brother Derek, one of the top three-year-olds of 2006 who won the Santa Anita Derby.
Lakeman said, "There's no reason I can't do it, because it's already been done."

Is Conformation Relevant?

By James Tate

This year’s yearling sales are just beginning with Fasig-Tipton July in Kentucky quickly followed by Fasig-Tipton August taking place in Saratoga. Then it is the turn of the monstrous Keeneland September catalogue to lay host to thousands of blue-blooded Thoroughbreds desperate to have their conformation analyzed by trainers, owners and those conformation experts – the bloodstock agents. The 2007 September Keeneland yearling sale sold nearly four thousand horses for just short of four hundred million dollars in seven books, each illustrated with photographs of the current superstars sold at last year’s sale. Does examining a horse’s conformation really give you a better idea as to whether you are looking at next year’s superstar?

If you visit the saddling enclosure before the Breeders’ Cup, you will notice that some of the runners are offset at the knee, toe in or toe out, have long pasterns or perhaps even sickle hocks and curbs. Then you could visit the saddling enclosure before a maiden claimer and you would see just how many of these poor performers have good conformation. The racing media only concentrates on the good horses whose conformation often becomes exaggerated by winning lots of races. The legendary John Henry, the richest gelding in history, was unmistakably small, ugly, temperamental and back at the knee, but there are millions of other horses just as poorly conformed to which our attention is never drawn. In the same way, there are many poor performers with technically perfect conformation but we are led to believe that Secretariat’s conformation is superior because he won the Triple Crown.
 
Many U.S. trainers believe that training methods, tight turns and the unforgiving dirt surface make it difficult for horses to overcome poor conformation. Indeed, an argument could perhaps be made that some of the high-profile poorly conformed European Champions such as the dual guineas winning filly Attraction, may not have done so well on the other side of the pond. However, John Henry is far from the last Grade One winning performer with less than perfect conformation. Real Quiet, who missed out on the Triple Crown by a nose in the Belmont, passed through the sale ring as a yearling with both imperfect conformation and a poor veterinary report. Baffert said “When I bought Real Quiet for $17,000, I didn’t vet him. I just bought the athlete. I’ve had horses that didn’t pass the vet when they were yearlings and then went on to become great racehorses.” Five-time Grade One winner Congaree had poor knee conformation but that did not stop this giant colt winning twelve times in twenty-five career starts. Steve Asmussen will be hoping that his massive superstar Curlin continues his current great win streak, which includes the Breeders’ Cup Classic, the Dubai World Cup and now the Stephen Foster Handicap despite his less than perfect limbs. Ken McPeek purchased him at the yearling sales despite imperfect forelimb conformation as well as an OCD in his front ankle.
 
 
One thing is certain – a perfectly conformed horse in all areas except one bent foreleg will cost considerably less than the same horse with perfect conformation. Is it really correct to pay so much more to have little or no conformational faults, or should we be concentrating on certain faults and not others, or perhaps pedigree, size and stamp are more important? One only has to stand in the Keeneland sales pavilion for a minute to hear the phrase “I couldn’t buy a horse with hocks like that.” At this point, I would like to question the evidence supporting an opinion like this. Mike Ryan, one of the most successful yearling buyers in the history of auction sales believes that “it’s not a beauty contest where we should be looking for the perfect specimen. It is easy to find what you don’t like about a horse and strike him off the list. I go the other way and start with what I like about a horse. Then I look at whatever faults are there and ask myself, ‘Does he look like a runner?’ ‘Does he have the demeanor of a good horse?’ Good horses usually overcome their faults.” This article will attempt to illustrate some aspects of conformation before examining some of the available evidence concerning its scientific relevance to performance.
 
Conformation is defined as the form or outline of an animal but it may be expanded to include its movement. The conformation of the Thoroughbred racehorse today is a result of a combination of natural selection and the demands we have put on it. The assessment of a horse’s conformation is a personal process but many begin with the body, move onto the limbs and then assess the horse’s movement. The conformation of the body assesses the horse’s balance and center of gravity but in my opinion is an underestimated area of the assessment. Conformation textbooks detail limb ‘faults’ for pages after pages, but hardly mention assessing the future athlete’s body as a whole. When examining a yearling as a potential superstar surely it is vital to assess the whole horse– its height, length, width, girth and muscle mass, not to mention its neck, head, outlook and temperament.
 
When examining the biomechanics of the galloping Thoroughbred, one can see that its propulsion comes from its backend, hence the commonly held belief that sprinters are bigger in this area than distance horses. It also makes sense that any horse should have a large body allowing plenty of room for the heart and lungs. Good distance horses do not always have large girths but they are usually long, whereas sprinters are often shorter but stronger with a large girth and a big muscular back end. As a result, professional horsemen tend to use comments such as short-coupled, weak behind, weak necked, narrow and tubular. I would also suggest that this is an area in which so-called amateur owners can provide valuable insight when looking at yearlings, as some ‘experts’ seem to spend too much time assessing minor details and forget to look at the horse!
 
 
The assessment of limb conformation is quite complex but it is not a matter of opinion – a curb is a curb and back at the knee is back at the knee – conformation can change a little as the horse matures, but usually it is the onlooker’s assessment that varies, not the horse. The horse is assessed from a number of angles both at rest and in motion. Both hindlimb and forelimb conformation is important but their functions should not be forgotten – the hindlimb is providing most of the athlete’s propulsion whereas perhaps the most important function of the forelimb is simply not to break under the considerable pressure of training and racing.
 
Much is said about the side-on conformation of the knee in relation to the rest of the forelimb and everyone seems to have a different opinion. The 2007 Consignors and Commercial Breeders Association ‘Vet Work Plain and Simple’ booklet interviewed a cross-section of leading trainers with regard to conformational faults. Christophe Clement believes that “training methods in the U.S. make it difficult to overcome being back at the knee” and Carla Gaines, Eoin Harty, Bob Hess, Larry Jones, Richard Mandella, and Kiaran McLaughlin all supported his view to some extent. Yet in the same publication, Todd Pletcher is not so concerned by this conformational fault, stating that a lot of his best horses have been back at the knee and John Kimmel goes so far as to say that he would not buy a horse who was significantly over at the knee. From a veterinary perspective, horses who are over at the knee have extra strain placed on their sesamoid bones and the suspensory ligament, whereas horses who are back at the knee have extra strain placed on their knee ligaments, as well as having extra force placed on the front of their knee bones, thus knee chip fractures should theoretically be more common in such horses. However, statistical evidence for such injuries is severely lacking and as an anecdote, the over at the knee colt in the photograph has fairly major knee problems, whereas the back at the knee filly is a winner who has barely taken a lame step throughout two years of training!
 
 
Many buyers will also not buy a horse with long sloping pasterns, but is this sensible? A long sloping pastern theoretically predisposes a horse to injury of the flexor tendons, sesamoid bones and the suspensory ligaments. However, upright pasterns, which are not considered to be anything like such a serious fault, theoretically predispose a horse to fetlock joint injuries, ringbone of the pastern joint and navicular disease. The pastern angle is also irreversibly linked with the horse’s foot. This is a part of the horse that is often underestimated by non-professionals but trainers cannot help but notice poor feet as they seem to spend their entire lives trying to keep them right. Club feet are hated by trainers but also severely disliked are boxy feet, flat feet, contracted heels and unbalanced feet just waiting to form quarter cracks when training commences.
 
 
When looking at a yearling’s forelimb from the front there are several terms that are widely used – base-wide/base narrow, toed-out/toed-in and offset/rotated from the knee and/or fetlock, not to mention whether the horse is considered to have enough forelimb strength or ‘bone’. In order to be accurate, the yearling must be standing squarely and in most circumstances the horse’s gait will mirror its forelimb conformation. While none of the conformations listed above are considered desirable, all are seen in the paddock for most Grade One races, which is hardly surprising when it is remembered that although the forelimb has great relevance to the future superstar’s soundness, it has very little relevance to its future ability.
  
The hindlimb of the racehorse is where the majority of its propulsion comes from and therefore, despite the fact that there is slightly less lameness here than in the forelimb, their conformation is every bit, if not more, important. Whilst some of the forelimb conformational points carry relevance to the hindlimb, for example, pastern angle and foot-path, some new points have to be considered. When assessing the horse from side-on, the hindlimb/hock position is generally considered to be either ‘sickle-hocked,’ ideal or ‘camped behind.’ Sickle-hocked horses are predisposed to curbs (injury of the plantar ligament) and considered to have weak hind legs. However, it is also considered a ‘fault’ to have the limb too far behind the body as it is likely to be associated with upright pasterns. Also, there are horsemen who believe that a horse should not have an excessively straight hindlimb as this theoretically predisposes the horse to hock arthritis and a ‘locked stifle.’
  
When assessing the horse from behind, the onlooker is assessing pelvic and muscle symmetry as well as hindlimb conformation. ‘Cow-hocked’ horses are criticized because there is excessive strain on the inside of the hock joint, which may cause hock arthritis. This comment should be taken lightly when assessing yearlings as to some extent this is a normal conformation in weak, growing, young Thoroughbreds. ‘Bow-legged’ yearlings are also criticized as it is believed that excessive strain is placed on the outside aspect of the limb. These bow-legged horses which are base-narrow behind are often prone to knocking themselves at exercise.
 
Having considered some of the conformational faults of the Thoroughbred and cited some of the reasons why these may cause veterinary injuries, it would now make sense to advise potential purchasers to avoid horses with any significant conformational faults. However, the statistical evidence must be considered first. In 2002, one of the most renowned equine orthopedic surgeons in the world, Dr Wayne McIlwraith, presented the findings of his research into Thoroughbred conformation leading him to famously question corrective surgery performed on foals. His research concluded that “a perfectly correct leg is not ideal for soundness” and some degree of carpal valgus can be a good thing. The extensive study came up with several mildly unexpected conclusions. A longer toe increases the odds of knee problems, a longer shoulder decreases the odds of a fracture and offset knees lead to fetlock problems, not knee problems. The study also found that a longer pastern predisposes to forelimb fractures, Thoroughbred foals achieve 95% of their full height by 18 months of age and manipulating the knee for cosmetic reasons is not helpful and can actually contribute to unsoundness.
 
McIlwriath is not the only person to have carried out valuable research into this area. The late English veterinarian and trainer Peter Calver conducted a much more extensive survey of the conformation of Thoroughbred yearlings seen at the British sales. The study categorized and looked for statistical differences in the performances of many different conformations, for example: Back at the knee, offset and weak hocks. It concluded that the pedigree was more important than any conformational fault and that it was difficult to determine if conformation actually affected performance at all, or if horses performed poorly due to other, inherited characteristics, such as heart and lung function or size.
 

In summary, assessing the conformation of a Thoroughbred yearling is complex, personal and of questionable relevance. The size and shape of a future athlete should be relevant, as should its limb conformation. However, neither is proven to be relevant in determining whether or not it can win a Grade One race. This is the beauty of the sales – what one man loves, another hates, and no-one knows for sure who is right until at least a year or two down the line!

First time on turf - how to prepare a horse

By Bill Heller

Preparing a horse for his first start on turf is trickier than most people realize. Most tracks ban maidens from their grass courses, and many allow only grass stakes-nominated horses who have not made their last start against maidens or claimers to work on the turf course.

On Saturday, June 14th, 14 first-time turfers were entered at Belmont Park; one at Monmouth Park; one at Churchill Downs; nine at Delaware, eight at Philadelphia and three at Hollywood Park. On Colonial Downs' all-turf card, 35 starters were making their grass debuts. Of the 71 first-time turfers across America, only two had a workout on grass.
 

"I don't think it's very important," said California based Hall of Fame trainer Richard Mandella "If they like it, they like it right away. If they don't, they don't."
When asked if he's ever trained any grass stars who hadn't even galloped on turf before racing on it, Mandella said, "The Tin Man. His first start ever was on grass."


Mandella paused a second. "But he had about a year and a half in Kentucky in a big paddock," Mandella laughed. "I said that as a joke, but it's something they grow up doing. It's pretty natural for them.

"

It sure was for The Tin Man, whose sire, Affirmed, had never raced on turf. After overcoming two bowed tendons which required surgery when he was two years old, The Tin Man became one of America's outstanding grass horses, capturing the Clement L. Hirsch Memorial and the American Handicap twice, the San Louis Obispo Handicap, the Arlington Million, the San Marcos, and, at the age of nine, the Grade 1 Shoemaker Mile. He finished his career with 13 victories, seven seconds and two thirds from 30 starts and earnings of more than $3.6 million.



New York trainer Rick Violette, Jr., also trained a Grade 1 grass stakes winner who had never worked on it before winning a race, Man From Wicklow. "He was very disappointing on dirt," Violette said June 7th. "And, actually, he was disappointing on the grass the first few times as well. We finally put blinkers on him and he sprouted wings.

" 
In his first two starts on dirt in 1999, Man From Wicklow, finished fifth in an allowance race and 11th against maidens. Switched to grass, he was seventh, eleventh and eleventh (which could be thought of as a work on grass). When Violette added blinkers, the horse still didn't win, checking in fifth in a maiden race at The Meadowlands. But in his seventh lifetime start, a maiden race at Belmont Park, he finally clicked, winning by three-quarters of a length.



In the winter of 2002-2003, Man From Wicklow won the Grade 2 W.L. McKnight Handicap at Calder and the Grade 1 Gulfstream Park Breeders' Cup Handicap by 4 ¾ lengths, easily the best performance of his life. Not bad for a horse who finished 11th three times before breaking his maiden.

"It can happen," Violette said. "Marquette, who got beat 40 lengths on the dirt, I ran him as a maiden against winners at Gulfstream and he broke his maiden.It can be a dramatic reversal of form."



Both ways. Cigar was an ordinary horse on grass and an extraordinary champion on dirt.Most trainers never get to train such stars, but all trainers have maidens and young horses. Some of them are better on grass; others on dirt. Finding out which they prefer may not happen until later in their career. In the beginning, it's easy to see how inexperienced horses perform on dirt or on a synthetic track simply by working them on it. That's an option not available to maiden grass runners unless they're stabled at training centers with turf courses.
 


Barclay Tagg, who is having a phenomenal spring/summer meet at Belmont Park, says most of his maiden grass winners never worked on turf first. "Absolutely, mostly all of them I had for the last 30 years I trained," he said. "Because I didn't have anywhere to work them on the grass. They don't usually let you have a grass work unless you're down at Palm Meadows Training Center (in South Florida) for the winter. Nowadays, I try to get them all a grass work down there. I don't really think you need a grass work for them, but if you can do it, fine. But at most racetracks you can't do it. They won't let you on it with a maiden.

"

Hall of Fame trainer Shug McGaughey wasn't sure whether his first-time starter Tourism would handle grass or not when she made her debut in the sixth race at Belmont Park, June 6th. The three-year-old filly is by Seeking the Gold out of the Pleasant Colony mare Resort, and she had never even galloped on grass. "This filly here, we couldn't have her on the turf at Belmont; maidens can't go on grass," he said. "So she had never been on it before. But there was a race going seven-eighths the other day, and I had another filly I wanted to run there. So I knew this race was coming up. So I said, `Well, let's go on and give it a try'. Being by Seeking the Gold, she probably should like it."



Just like all of McGaughey's young horses, Tourism had been thoroughly prepared for her debut. She showed workouts in the Daily Racing Form from mid-February through late March at Payson Park in Florida, then seven workouts at Belmont Park. McGaughey rarely works first-time starters quickly, but Tourism's final work was a sharp one, four furlongs breezing in :48 3/5, the 19th fastest of 50 horses working that morning at that distance on Belmont's main track.



Tourism loved the turf. Breaking from the rail and benefiting from an excellent ride by new Hall of Famer Edgar Prado, Tourism got through on the inside and won her debut narrowly.



If Tourism had made her debut at Saratoga, she might have had a grass work first. In New York, maidens are barred from working on grass at Belmont Park, but that's not true at Saratoga Race Course, thanks to the Oklahoma Training Track turf course. "Saratoga is a little different because of the training track," Race Secretary P.J. Campo said. "Maidens can work on it any time. On the main course, maidens are not allowed during the meet. We don't want 100 horses to go over there every week. We work Monday, Wednesday and Friday."



During the six-week Saratoga meet from July 23rd through September 1st, McGaughey will work his first-time turf maidens on grass. "At Saratoga, I will, just to see," he said. "Sometimes, a change in atmosphere helps them."



The day after Tourism scored for McGaughey, George Weaver and Keith O'Brien sent out first-time turfers in a $57,000 New York-bred maiden grass race at a mile and an eighth at Belmont. Weaver's Beyond Challenge had been beaten badly in three dirt starts. O'Brien's Imperial Way had a pair of thirds, a sixth and a fifth in four dirt starts.


Because Beyond Challenge was stabled at the Oklahoma Training Track, Weaver was able to give him a grass work, and he went four furlongs around dogs (pylons) in :50 1/5, 11th best of 16 at that distance on the grass course that morning. Imperial Way had not worked since finishing fifth in his last start.
Neither excelled on grass. Beyond Challenge finished eighth and Imperial Way 10th.



Like Weaver, trainer Tom Bush is more inclined to work first-time turfers on grass at Saratoga. "Every trainer at Saratoga utilizes that option," he said. "Some horses, you like to see them on the turf before you run them."



He wanted that look at Belmont for A Zero Trap, a three-year-old New York-bred colt by Quiet American out of Gold 'n Sugar by Java Gold, who had won his debut by a neck, then finished third and fourth in three dirt starts.
 


Bush gave A Zero Trap a grass work at Belmont before he made his grass debut in a $49,000 non-winners of two allowance race for New York-breds at Belmont Park, June 12th. A Zero Trap breezed four furlongs around dogs in :50 4/5 on a good Belmont turf course, 15th best of 20 that day. Then Bush breezed him on dirt, and A Zero Trap went four furlongs in :49 4/5, 14th fastest of 21.



"I had nominated him to a turf stakes, probably one I won't run in, so I could work him on grass," Bush said the morning of the race. "He hits the ground pretty hard, this horse. He's kind of big and chunky, a heavy, thick kind of horse. My hope is that he can stay sounder on turf if he likes it."
He didn't. The grass work didn't help. A Zero Trap finished 10th.



Regardless, Bush said, "I've actually had a few surprises recently, horses that did well on turf. Sweet Madness, who is by Freud, she fit the profile. She's kind of long and has big feet, too."



Gary Contessa, New York's leading trainer and the country's sixth leading trainer in earnings halfway through 2008, is less enthusiastic about turf works for first-time turfers. "If the turn is open on the day that I was planning to breeze them at Saratoga, I will," he said. "But I don't have to. It's not a prerequisite. The ones that I think are going to run well on the turf generally do anyway. I think horses are either naturals on it or not."



Violette voiced a similar opinion: "Sometimes, it can give you a little bit better educated opinion on whether they're going to adapt to turf or not, but it's not necessary to work them out there. I don't really know that it's an edge. I think, a lot of times, pedigree and the way they look and their running style is more important than works on the grass, because I really do think they either like it or they don't. I really think it goes to, a lot of times, just the female family. If they have some turf there, you might have a good shot they'll like it."



Racing principally in Florida and New York, Violette's horses work mostly on dirt, even those about to make their grass debut. How first-time turfers who have been racing on a synthetic course will fare in their grass debuts is still conjecture. Will they do better than first-time turfers who have raced on dirt? "Well, it seems like more grass horses like the synthetic; I'm not sure about the reverse," Violette said. "You would think it would be true."

There's only one way to find out.

Feed contaminants - how big a risk are they?

By Dr Catherine Dunnett and Dr Mark Dunnett
​

For all professionals associated with the training and competition of horses under the rules and regulations of racing, the choice of which feed products to use has never been greater, and the range appears to grow on a daily basis.  This is especially true of the plethora of dietary supplements (otherwise known officially as complementary feeds) available.

Feeds and other contemporary nutritional supplements are not pure products in the same manner that veterinary pharmaceuticals are and thus they will, in a traditional sense, contain foreign substances, even though this is commonly only at trace levels that will have no discernible effect on the horse. Numerous harmful or undesirable substances can potentially contaminate the equine diet, whether manufactured feeds and supplements, or grazing and preserved forages. 

These dietary contaminants can be divided into groups including heavy metals, non-metallic toxic elements, pesticides, mycotoxins, plant toxins, and pharmacologically/physiologically active substances that are considered prohibited or foreign substances within the horse under racing rules and regulations.  There is some crossover between plant toxins and prohibited substances, but it is the latter category that concerns us within this article.

Prohibited (foreign) substances
Under the framework of the International Federation of Horseracing Authority's International Agreement on Breeding, Racing and Wagering, Article 6, a prohibited substance is described as  -
"…substances capable of giving a horse an advantage or being disadvantaged in a race, contrary to the horse's inherent merits."

Article 6 further defines prohibited substances as- "

Substances capable at any time of acting on one or more of the following mammalian body systems:


•    the nervous system


•    the cardiovascular system


•    the respiratory system


•    the digestive system


•    the urinary system


•    the reproductive system


•    the musculoskeletal system


•    the blood system


•    the immune system, except for licensed vaccines against infectious agents


•    the endocrine system


•    Endocrine secretions and their synthetic counterparts


•    Masking agents

In broad and simple terms, a prohibited substance can be described as any substance (usually but not exclusively drugs/medicines) that has been given to a horse in its feed, or by any other means, that can exert an effect upon the horse.
 
Certain factors make the presence of prohibited substances as contaminants in the production of equine feedstuffs almost inevitable. 

Analytical techniques employed are increasingly sophisticated and sensitive and this latter fact serves to increase the likelihood of the detection of contaminants at levels that have been historically unattainable.  Furthermore, the increasing diversity of dietary supplements leads to the introduction of unusual components into the equine diet.  This is particularly the case with products that contain herbs or plant derivatives or extracts.

Additionally, there is increased sourcing of feedstuff raw materials from previously unaccessed regions of the world where quality control measures may be below the desirable standard and where novel crop infesting plants may be found. 
 

Contamination in compounded equine feeds and raw materials is varied, but the major sources can be categorized as follows:


Endogenous, natural feed constituents     

Salicylates, DMSO
Ubiquitous environmental contaminants   

 Arsenic
Transport contamination of raw materials Caffeine, theobromine
Manufacturing cross-contamination     

Antibiotics
Crop contamination by invasive plants   

 Morphine, atropine
Racing yard feed contamination         

Veterinary medication



The most commonly encountered prohibited substances in equine feedstuffs include salicylates, dimethylsulphoxide (DMSO), caffeine and theobromine, morphine, hyoscine, atropine and hordenine.  There are however, a considerable number of pharmacologically active compounds potentially present in manufactured feeds, grazing and preserved forages that will be viewed as prohibited substances. Examples of these are listed in the table below, however the list is indicative rather than exhaustive.




Prohibited substances potentially present in feedstuffs and grazing:


Prohibited substance   

Feedstuff


Salicylic acid    Alfalfa (Lucerne), willow
Dimethylsulphoxide (DMSO)    Alfalfa, others
Caffeine    Coffee
Theobromine    Cocoa
Theophylline     Coffee, Cocoa
Morphine    Poppy
Codeine    Poppy
Hordenine    Germinating barley, Phalaris grasses
Hyoscine    Belladonna plant species
Atropine    Belladonna plant species
Lupanine    Lupin seed
Bufotenine    Phalaris grasses
Valerenic acid    Valerian
Dicoumarol    Spoiled sweet clover
Borneol    Carrots, wood shavings
Camphor                Rosemary

Unlike in the US, in Europe it is common practice for feeds and supplements to be tested by their manufacturers for potential contamination with prohibited substances before being released for sale.  This practice is particularly evident for those products marketed to the performance sector.  Typically, the service offered by laboratories such as HFL Ltd in the UK and the Laboratoire Des Courses Hippique (LCH) in France screens for the presence of commonly recognized feed contaminants which includes:

Contaminant        ARCI Classification† 
Morphine        UK/France    1
Hyoscine        UK/France    3
Atropine        UK/France    3
Hordenine        UK/France    Not stated*
Caffeine        UK/France    2
Theobromine        UK/France    4
Theophylline        France    3
Bufotenine        France    Not classified/not actioned
Methylbufotenine        France    Not stated*
Dimethyltryptamine        France    Not stated*

? ARCI classification defines the regarded severity of a positive post-race test with these contaminants which will affect the severity imposed, with class 1 being the most severe.*Presumably, these would be regarded as being akin with bufotenine as they can all be associated with Phalaris grasses.
Such pre-sales laboratory analysis is not common for US feed manufacturers.

To some extent this may reflect a reduced risk of contamination of feed with naturally occurring contaminants such as these above, due to less importation and transportation of raw materials.

 Natural feed constituents
 Salicylates and dimethylsulphoxide (DMSO) are present in numerous feed ingredients and pasture species.  Salicylates are particularly abundant in grazing and forage legumes, such as clover and alfalfa respectively, and in willow-containing herbal supplements. 

Plant salicylates are metabolized in the body to salicylic acid, a mild pain killer (analgesic) and anti-inflammatory.  Salicylic acid is a metabolite of Aspirin.  DMSO occurs at high levels in alfalfa and is also a weak analgesic and anti-inflammatory. DMSO can be used to enable other drugs to penetrate the skin. Owing to their widespread occurrence and pharmacological properties, international racing jurisdictions have established thresholds for their presence in post-competition urine and blood samples.  In itself it is unlikely that feed-related salicylate load will cause testing thresholds to be exceeded and feed products are not tested to identify the presence of these substances.



Hordenine and bufotenine are recognized as occasional contaminants of equine feedstuffs.  Both substances are constituents in Phalaris grass species (Reed Canary grass), and hordenine also occurs in germinating barley and other cereal grains. 

Hordenine and bufotenine affect the central nervous system (CNS) of horses and are thus are regarded as prohibited substances under racing rules. They have both been detected in post-race urine samples across the US, Europe and Australia  

Feed crop contaminants
 Morphine and codeine present a less common but significant feed contamination issue.  Their presence in post-race samples is a breach of prohibited substance rules as they can exert a significant stimulatory effect in the CNS of horses even at low doses.

During the last decade post-race urine samples have tested positive for opiates in the US, Australia, the UK and Ireland.  Whilst the route of contamination has not always been established, feed contamination with material from opium poppies (Papaver somniferum ssp. somniferum), wild poppies (P. somniferum ssp setigerum) or ornamental poppies (P. Orientale) is likely due to the use of contaminated raw materials.
  
The alkaloids hyoscine (scopolamine) and atropine are also known contaminants of horse feed that derive from contamination of growing cereal crops by Solanaceous plants including Deadly Nightshade, Henbane and Jimson Weed.  Deadly Nightshade (Atropa belladonna) contains predominantly atropine, whereas Henbane (Hyoscyamous niger) contains primarily hyoscine. Owing to their potent pharmacological effects within the central nervous system and cardiovascular system, the presence of hyoscine or atropine in post-competition urine samples is regarded as a breach of the rules relating to prohibited substances. 



Manufacturing and shipping contamination


Caffeine and theobromine are recognized contaminants of feeds and numerous instances of feed contamination and post-race positives occurred globally during the 1980s and 1990s.  In the past, cocoa husk was used as a bulking agent in feed manufacture however, more recently its presence in feeds is believed to have arisen from contamination from other feed residues, such as biscuit meal or from contamination of raw materials, usually grains, during transport. 

We are all aware of caffeine as a constituent of coffee and tea, whereas its chemically similar cousin theobromine is found naturally in tea and cocoa (chocolate). When ingested, both substances can act as stimulants to the heart, lungs and brain, and may also exert some degree of diuretic action (increased urination). As a consequence of the prevalence of caffeine and theobromine in the feed production chain and the difficulty in removing them, racing's regulatory authorities worldwide have largely implemented a threshold for theobromine in post-race urine samples. 

In the recent past in the US mepyramine, an antihistamine, has been identified in post-race samples and its appearance on these occasions was attributed to contaminated vitamin preparations. 

Procaine, a local anaesthetic, has also been implicated in post-race positives on a number of occasions where on further investigation the source was discovered to be horse feed cross-contaminated at the mill with pig feed containing the antibiotic procaine penicillin.  

Environmental contamination
Arsenic is a prohibited substance under equine competition rules, but as it is a ubiquitous environmental substance, a threshold level has been established for its presence in post-competition samples. 

Additionally, arsenic levels in the racing environment can be increased by contamination from the use of pesticidal arsenic compounds, the most commonly encountered being wood preservatives used to treat construction timber and fencing materials.  

Cross-contamination
Many veterinary drugs used therapeutically in a racing environment are formulated as powders so they can be administered mixed in with normal feeds. 

Although this is a convenient method in contrast to a reliance on injections for example, it can present a significant risk of dietary contamination to horses other than the animal under treatment if shared feeding equipment is not kept scrupulously clean.  Dusts from some drug formulations can contaminate and linger on surfaces in feed rooms, mangers or stables. 

Certain drug formulations including isoxsuprine, clenbuterol and flunixin, can present a particular problem in this regard.
Dietary supplements
Racing is first and foremost a business, with the end-point being to maximize race wins and prize money and hence hopefully to increase future income from training fees.  It is consequently understandable that any legitimate dietary approach which might benefit race performance and training capacity, or reduce the incidence of illness and injury, and accelerate recovery both from racing and ill health, might at the very least be evaluated. 

This search for an ‘edge' is common to business and sport.  Indeed, the perceived beneficial effects of dietary supplements in human sports have been to some extent translated to equine sports including racing. 
 
The increased availability of dietary supplements for horses can often be supported by sophisticated technical marketing and detailed scientific research. 

But, whatever the motivation for the use of such products might be, whether backed by rigorous evidence of efficacy or not, the reality is that complementary feedstuffs are also potentially at risk of contamination.  Although there has been no comprehensive survey of contamination in equine feed supplements, three such surveys have been conducted on human sports supplements, the results of which indicated that up to 20% of supplements tested contained prohibited substances (under IOC rules), principally anabolic steroids including nandrolone and testosterone. 

As the levels of contaminants found were generally low and variable it was assumed that their presence arose through poor manufacturing practice on the part of the manufacturer or the ingredient supplier(s).  Undeclared stimulants, such as caffeine and ephedrine, have also been identified in human sports supplements and these findings suggest deliberate adulteration to improve efficacy. 

A recent doping case suggests that equine supplement contamination may become an issue for the feed and supplement industry and regulatory authorities, but on this occasion this post-race positive for the presence of the anabolic nandrolone seems to have arisen through the use of a human sports supplement in the horse, rather than a contaminated equine product.

The use of dietary supplements in racing is becoming commonplace.

Products containing herbal or other plant based or nutraceutical ingredients are increasingly popular, possibly through a belief that these are not drugs and thus do not infringe the rules relating to prohibited substances. A useful example here would be products containing Devil's Claw powder or extracts.  Devil's Claw is a plant related to Sesame and is native to southern Africa. It has recognized pain-relieving and anti-inflammatory properties in people and has been offered as an alternative to established over-the-counter pain relief medicines, such as Aspirin, paracetamol and ibuprofen, for many years, and is currently undergoing clinical trials.

Widespread promotion of Devil's Claw, as an herbal alternative to phenylbutazone for horses, began at a time when the continued approval for the use of this veterinary pain-relieving drug was in doubt.  It is worth pointing out that the French racing laboratory, Laboratoire Des Courses Hippiques, have recently published methods for the detection of harpagosides, the active components in Devil's Claw, in equine post-race samples, and thus is it reasonable to assume that US regulatory laboratories may be screening for these substances.



The irony here is that, when viewed within the strictures of the rules and regulations of racing, if a supplement, or more accurately one or more of its constituents, has efficacy, by extrapolation it must affect one of the horses' body systems and is therefore prohibited, whether or not the laboratory is able to test for it.

Trainer protection
We should not be complacent on this issue and it would be prudent for trainers, wherever practical, to retain representative samples of all batches of feeds and supplements that they use, indeed the regulatory authorities proffer just such advice. This is certainly a worthwhile exercise, as in the event of a failed post-race test a defense of feed contamination will be strengthened by such physical evidence, which can be subjected to analytical scrutiny. 

In practice, a successful demonstration of contaminated feed or supplement will not exonerate the horse's connections from a regulatory offense, but may well be a persuasive argument in mitigation concerning subsequent sanctions.
In addition, being fully aware of the ingredients within feeds or supplements and of the nature and extent of any pre-sale quality assurance analysis by a manufacturer for the common contaminants (prohibited substances) should afford trainers some further protection and allow them to make informed purchases.

Federal Intervention in the regulation of steroids in racing

On February 27th, the United States Congressional Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection conducted a day-long hearing on drugs in sports. Discussion of one of the topics, anabolic steroids in horseracing, triggered the typical, knee-jerk reaction by the horseracing industry: heaven help us if there's federal intervention.

 But anabolic steroids, which are barred in most, but not all, racing states, are just the latest red flag telling the federal government that racing cannot adequately regulate itself because of the lack of uniform medication rules. The racing industry was put on notice in 1981 that if an effective, uniform national medication policy wasn't implemented, the federal government would reluctantly step in.

There has been progress recently. In its seven-year history, the not-for-profit Racing Medication and Testing Consortium (RMTC), working with the Association of Racing Commissioners International (RCI), has made significant progress toward uniform medication rules. Yet today, seven of the 38 racing states in the U.S. have not adopted the RMTC's model rules, which include one on anabolic steroids.

The sad reality is that not everyone in horseracing is on the same playing field. How could they be, without uniform, national rules? Could you imagine the National Football League, the National Basketball Association or major league baseball operating under different rules from state to state?

"The federal government is not going to stand for this very long,” said Cobra Farm's Gary Biszantz, a long-time owner/breeder and former board member of the RMTC. "If they come in, they are going to ban just about everything. It's a very risky thing.”

That risk is one racing has been living with for more than three decades, ever since it allowed the anti-bleeding diuretic Lasix and the analgesic bute to infiltrate backstretches around the country. Since then, a sea of new drugs has plagued horseracing, forcing trainers to decide whether or not they will stick to the rules or chase the latest drug of choice, hoping that their veterinarians can stay one step ahead of the drug tests which would reveal their illegal presence in horses.

"The integrity of our sport is in question and has been for years,” Biszantz said. "The fans know they need two Racing Forms, one on past performances and a second on medication in the horses' system on the day he races.

"Some of them are on the cutting edge trying to get away with what they can; the others are following the rules and they can't keep up,” Biszantz continued. "All we're doing is maintaining a way to keep the veterinarians alive. Many owners have left the game because they know some trainers have an edge and others don't. The owners who stay pay a horrendous price for that.” So does anybody who loves horseracing. On August 9, 1981, speaking to industry leaders at the annual Jockey Club Round Table, the late Maryland Senator Charles "Mac” Mathias, said: "The time has come to do something about horse drugging, horse medication. My position is that the federal government should only be the regulator of last resort. It should only intervene where there is a widely perceived need for action and where no action is being taken either by the individuals in groups who are effected and involved, or lacking that, by the states. And I think there is a widespread feeling that we have that kind of situation in relation to horses.” He continued, "Right now, more than a third of the (then) 30 states with pari-mutuel betting do not restrict in any ways the use of anti-inflammatory or steroids or diuretics.”

In conclusion, Mathias said, "The choice is clearly before you and before state officials now. If you don't want the federal drug busters sniffing around your stables, then act now on your own to remove any pretext for federal intervention in your affairs. I can't say it any more simply than that. The Sport of Kings doesn't needdrugging, so let's get rid of it now.” Obviously, that message didn't hit home. "We're 27 years later and there's still no uniformity around the country,” said Congressman Ed Whitfield (R-Kentucky), who was the ranking member of the Congressional Subcommittee Hearing on drugs in sports. "There is cause for federal intervention. You go to Europe, Asia, Dubai – they have uniform rules and everyone knows what they are. I firmly believe that medication does contribute to the number of breakdowns on the track. I find that appalling. There are jockeys on every one of those horses. What kind of injuries do they face?”

In Europe, Asia, Dubai and almost all of the racing world outside of North America, there is no race-day medication allowed, period. "Around the world, we're frowned on,” Biszantz said.

He's right. Speaking at the Irish Thoroughbred Association Trade Fair & Symposium on January 24th, 2008, Winfried Engelbrecht-Bresges, the CEO of the Hong Kong Jockey Club, spoke on the issue of medication as it relates to global Thoroughbred racing:

"I feel very strongly about the harmonization of medication, which I think is essential. And not being disrespectful about our colleagues in America, I am convinced that the medication approach in America will not be able to sustain itself in a much more different environment where people are much more critical. They call it good help from the vet, and it is important that we play them on a level playing field.

"Even a horse like Takeover Target, who was racing around the world before he came to Hong Kong, we found out that obviously he was on medication, an anabolic steroid. This is not in the global world acceptable. We have to have one standard. I have very strong feelings as a breeder, too. I, as a breeder, would like to know what is the real potential of the horse, and for the selection process in breeding. And therefore I think it is absolutely important from a horse welfare standpoint that we get an international racing platform to be harmonized.”

Harmony has never been a word associated with racing in the United States. Heck, for a very long time, there were two different national groups of racing commissioners. How can you achieve uniform rules when you can't even decide which group is going to be responsible for them?

The sad truth of racing in the U.S. is that each individual state operates independently of all the others. Being only human beings, each state's regulators think they've got the right answer and the others don't.

Even Alex Waldrop, the president and CEO of the National Thoroughbred Racing Association who testified on behalf of Thoroughbred racing at the Congressional Subcommittee hearing, acknowledged the heart of the problem in a commentary he wrote for The Blood-Horse: "Much of what Rep. Whitfield said was hard to refute. Seven states have yet to adopt the model medication rules. Far fewer have adopted the model penalties, and 22 states have taken little or no action on the model anabolic steroid rule. That doesn't even count those jurisdictions that passed the model rules, but only after modifying them to some degree.”

During the hearing, Whitfield made it clear that if the racing industry did not adopt all model rules and penalties, including a rule banning anabolic steroids from competition, by December 31st, the federal government would.

Whitfield then asked Waldrop, "Would it be unreasonable to say if a state doesn't adopt the rules, they could lose simulcast rights as authorized in the International Horseracing Act (IHA) of 1978?”

Waldrop answered that it would not be unreasonable, and he has been asked about that response many times. In his Blood-Horse commentary, he explained, "I could not honestly say that it would be ‘unreasonable' for Congress to premise the IHA projections on the adoption of specific medication rules and penalties. Clearly, some in our industry are urging Whitfield to do just that. Is federal intervention the preferred route? The answer to that question is categorical – ‘No.'”

Waldrop explained why. "Federal intervention in medication issues shifts significant control of our industry from the states to the federal government, which has no expertise and little or no interest in effectively regulating our industry.”

Waldrop also said such a shift would increase taxation on commerce under the IHA. "Too much money is already being siphoned off our industry by antiquated, state government-imposed excise taxes – money the RMTC would rather see spent on research and testing by the states,” he wrote. "Federal intervention might force uniformity, but at a price our industry cannot afford.”

The obvious solution would be all racing states adopting the model rules proposed by the RMTC/RCI.

The conclusion of Waldrop's commentary is simple, yet chilling: "As long as states drag their feet in adopting the RMTC/RCI model rules, federal intervention is a real possibility. We in horse racing are faced with a simple choice: we can move with purpose and resolve to gain national adoption of the model rules as put forth by RMTC and RCI following broad scientific and regulatory input from the industry, or we can delay implementation and await the very real possibility of federal intervention. Given this choice, the time to pass the model rules – including the anabolic steroid rule – is now.”

But that call to action has been made many times without unifying the industry. Nobody is more aware of that than RMTC Executive Director Scot Waterman, who has piloted the RMTC since its inception. "On the face of it, we should have uniform rules, but the devil is in the details,” he said. "I'm not trying to apologize for the industry. That's just the way it is.”

That's the way it's been for decades.  Mathias' speech at the 1981 Round Table was dovetailed around proposed legislation which would have rocked horseracing. Called the Corrupt Practices in Horseracing Act, the bill would have banned the use of all drugs in horses, as well as nerving, numbing and freezing. "State racing commissioners descended on Senator Mathias' office after that speech, and they assured him 27 years ago that they were going to address the problems, that they were going to crack down on the use of these drugs in racing,” Whitfield said at the hearing. "Here we are 27 years later, and not much has changed.”

Maybe the only way to change racing is by federal intervention. Time is running out.

Maryland - can slots solve the problem?

By Sean Clancy

It's come to this. The Maryland racing industry starts and ends at the same place, the same date, the same issue – the voters' booth come November. The slots referendum – the denouement – will decide once and for all whether Maryland will attain slots to help staunch the losses of horses, horsemen and handle to neighboring states.

The once storied tradition of Maryland racing has come to this. The slots uncertainty has replaced all that was Maryland racing – the spectacle of the Preakness, the buzz of the Maryland Million, the hype of the renovated dirt and turf courses at Laurel Park, the history of Sagamore and Windfields Farm and the legacies of Northern Dancer and Native Dancer. Today, ask anybody about Maryland racing and it goes no further than the slots referendum in November.

Destined to put 15,000 slot machines in five sites across five counties, the bill could generate up to $700 million in state tax revenue and pump nearly $100 million into the racing industry. Presently, the annual purse structure at Pimlico and Laurel taps out around $33 million. The numbers are complicated – a percentage goes to Standardbreds, another part goes to the Maryland breeders, some goes to facility improvements –  but any direction it's doled, the passage of the slots bill remains paramount to Maryland racing.

If there's a one-word answer to why Maryland remains in the throes of the slots woes, it's politics. The slots bill has been locked in dispute in Annapolis for over a decade. First there was Governor Paris Glendening's "No Slots" manifesto. Then Governor Bob Ehrlich's tepid endorsement of the slots bill was basically declared a non-starter. Gridlock on the Beltway has had more wiggle room. Finally, Governor Martin O'Malley decided, it's up to the voters. Yes or no. What's it going to be, yes or no?

That's when the 12-year odyssey to land slots in the state will come to a head. Vote yes, and Maryland racing receives a life rope. Vote no, and it slips further into oblivion behind states with slots-induced purses. Worst of all, the waiting game will finally be up and owners, trainers, breeders who have been hanging on will wait no longer. Pack your bags, this bus is leaving.

"I'm in the same spot as a lot of people are, hoping that come November something good happens for us," said trainer Mike Trombetta, who led all trainers last year in percentage at the major Maryland meets of Pimlico and Laurel. "We can start aiming in the right direction again. My worst fear is what would happen if November doesn't go well."

Richard Hoffberger, the president of the Maryland Thoroughbred Horsemen's Association, knows what will happen. He's represented horsemen throughout this maze of inefficiency.

"If it doesn't pass now, the people in Delaware Park, Philadelphia Park, Charles Town, they're going to break out the champagne," Hoffberger said. "We'd still have some semblance of a race meet but you've got no horses around here, I mean it's bad here. The racehorse business in Maryland sucks."
 
There was a time when Maryland's product towered above Delaware, Charles Town or anything offered in Pennsylvania. Those days are over.

At Laurel Park on a recent Thursday, the first race, a $25,000 claimer for 3-year-old fillies running for a $24,000 purse attracted three horses. The second for $10,000 claimers collected five runners. It didn't get much better through the rest of the card – 59 horses competed in nine races. It's not a titillating product. Turf racing on Laurel's state-of-the-art turf course will jump start the product in the spring and the Preakness build-up will invigorate the scene at least for a week in May. But there are fundamental flaws which damage the vibrancy of racing. Pimlico, the second oldest track in the country, remains decrepit and Laurel Park's facility is only marginally better. Laurel closes for much of the summer when the Colonial Downs meet in Virginia begins, leaving the turf course dormant for some of the most viable days of the year. The Maryland Jockey Club operates Bowie as a training center, adding to the accounts payable side of the ledger.

But still it's Maryland – the best racing state in the Mid-Atlantic area. They don't run the Preakness in Pennsylvania. The Washington D.C. International wasn't run in West Virginia. It's not the New Jersey Million, it's the Maryland Million. Bernie Bond didn't call Delaware home.

But here it lies in limbo – like a transplant patient, waiting for the call. The slots bill has tantalized horsemen in Maryland for over a decade. The jackpot has always been a house bill or a vote or a referendum away. Like teasing a Labrador Retriever with a tennis ball. Pumping up your racing product with slot money doesn't necessarily offer a palatable solution, but a necessary one when neighboring states Delaware, Pennsylvania and West Virginia employ slots to raise money for their racing product. They have forced the issue. Bigger purses across state lines create an exodus for horsemen and horses. It hasn't been a mad dash but more of a Chinese water torture as horsemen have moved in search of the almighty dollar. And that's a credit to Maryland horsemen, most have hung in there like they're defending the Alamo.

High-profile trainers such as Graham Motion, Tony Dutrow and Tim Ritchey have already taken that bus route off the Maryland racing circuit. Trainers who used to stick around Laurel Park for the winter now venture to other circuits like Oaklawn Park or Tampa Bay Downs. It's one thing to go to Gulfstream Park, but now they flee for tracks that used to operate well below Laurel's par.

"Aww, it's horrible," Trombetta said when asked what it was like to watch his state falter. "We went through this exercise every year for I don't know how many years now, and the best the legislators could come up with is to basically tell the voters, ‘Ah heck, you guys decide on this.' It's definitely frustrating."

Maryland's purse structure has slipped behind neighboring states. The slots-induced purses in West Virginia, Delaware and Pennsylvania have sapped Maryland's pool of horses. In a state that was renowned for its horsemen – the year-round lifers who trained a string, utilized a farm and bled Maryland are waning. Some stick around because they like the lifestyle, they own that farm and they keep thinking "one of these days..." Horsemen like Dickie Small, Larry Murray, Ann Merryman, Jimmy Murphy; they represent the old-school Maryland mystique. Then there are prolific number runners like Dale Capuano, Scott Lake, Ben Feliciano Jr. and Trombetta who win consistently wherever they go but stay despite the purses. How long any of them will last is the question and threat. If the bill in November fails, start crossing off the calendar blocks.

Hoffberger has lived the slots debate, from the time he and former Maryland Jockey Club president Joe DeFrancis stood up in front of the media at Pimlico Racecourse and tried to choreograph the impact slots could have on racing. That was three governors, one DeFrancis and countless horses and horsemen ago. Still no slots.

"The referendum is the big story," Hoffberger said. "If it passes, we should be in halfway decent shape. If it doesn't pass...we're a small-time market."

But will it pass?

Right now the proponents of slots are on the lead while the opponents lag about 20 points behind. But read the form.

"The anti-slot people are come-from-behind runners, and you've got to be at least 20 points ahead, because they'll come get you at the end," Hoffberger said. "We're about 20 points ahead now. What's that mean? It's almost a photo."

Most horsemen who were originally against slots have long since hugged the monster. Have a better plan to balance Maryland's budget shortfall? Another way to inject some life into to Maryland's racing and breeding industry? Think the lesser of all evils.

"We're competing with the state – the state's running a lottery system. We're competing with casinos in New Jersey that are funding purses to the tune of $25 million a year. We're competing with Delaware Park, with Pennsylvania, with West Virginia," Hoffberger said. "Is it the answer? No. But if you want to run a track meet, having a good pair of shoes is not the only answer, but if you don't get dressed up, you don't have a chance."

Breeders in the state continue to dress up, surviving on tradition and striving for change. Northview Stallion Station, near Northeast, continues to churn out winners with a stallion brigade led by Not For Love and Two Punch. The Pons family's Country Life Farm survives, despite being nearly engulfed in urban sprawl, ducking and jiving in search of the next Malibu Moon who will reach across state lines. Don Litz has led a small group of investors in the development of Maryland Stallion Station which houses eight regional stallions. Allen and Audrey Murray guide their family-oriented operation, Murmur Farm; the couple hit the jackpot buying and quickly selling Our Emblem, in middle of the firestorm created by War Emblem's victories in the Kentucky Derby and Preakness.

Dr. Tom Bowman of Northview sees a much bigger picture than just slots at racetracks.

"The whole thing is highly disappointing, but not surprising," Bowman said. "It runs much deeper than just the demise of the racetracks, it symbolizes a radical change in our state and the philosophy on our state's well being. We're no longer a state that sees agriculture as important. Most of the states that approved slots recognized the value of keeping their state an agricultural state and saw horse racing as a way to protect rural land and agriculture."

There's the rub, it's hard to convince politicians and citizens that open spaces actually keep taxes lower and slows the expense account. The more houses that grow in the fields, the more tax money needed to supply police, roads, education and everything required to keep a society moving.

"Several of my children work with me and the future isn't too bright for them in this state," said Bowman, who served as the president of the Maryland Horse Breeders. "With a magic wand, they can affect racing. Look at Penn National, they're up and running again and you're seeing some big-name trainers run there. But when you try to sell the slots legislation in this state, the open spaces, the agriculture, the horse racing, it means nothing to the politicians and their constituents. They can't comprehend how it's going to affect them."

All the Maryland breeders operate under the encroaching shadow of neighboring states' breeders incentive programs. Breeding

a Maryland-bred doesn't hold the same appeal as it once did. Pennsylvania, West Virginia, even a Delaware-certified program has leached some of Maryland's prominence.

Northview made the first tangible step to develop in other states, breaking ground on a division in Pennsylvania. Right now, yes, they're still tried-and-true Maryland but it's not unfathomable to think of them as one day being pure Pennsylvania.    "Northview is a little bit of an enigma because we have a couple of stallions that reach across state lines," Bowman said. "For two years we set a record of mares bred in Maryland but we noticed where the mares were coming from and where they were going. You have to be where the business is, we moved 30 miles up the road and the economic picture is grossly different. I don't like it but you can't be an ostrich."

Trombetta makes up another high-profile trainer moving into Fair Hill Training Center, one of the few thriving Thoroughbred entities in the state. The sprawling spread in the northeast corner of the state struggled to hold its own for years. Now it's booming. Prominent owner Earle Mack recently purchased two barns. Rick Porter of Fox Hill Farm purchased a barn site, flattened the existing barn and will place Larry Jones (of Hard Spun fame) there this spring. Tickets to Fair Hill Steeplechase Meeting are sold out.

Trombetta owns a small farm in Maryland, will train at a training center in Maryland, and will have horses at Laurel in Maryland. That's how committed he is to the state, but he also had horses at Gulfstream this winter, will have horses stabled at Delaware and will race his nearly 100 horses all over the East Coast.

"For me Maryland is home. It's where I grew up, where I came around the racetrack. It's got a long-standing history

and tradition. The Preakness is very nice and all, but it's more than just the Preakness," Trombetta said. "It's everybody in the industry in Maryland. But it's struggling. First the breeders, now the racehorses stables are the next ones to go. This thing is very much changing and evolving, and you've kind of got to roll with the punches as you go."

Trombetta has accepted that sometimes you have to dance with the devil.

"I'm not a big fan of the slots, but unfortunately it's the money that keeps everything rolling," Trombetta said. "When your competitors have that asset and you don't, you don't stand to stay at it very long."

See you in November.

Eco Trainers - converting manure to electricity

By Katherine Ford

Trainers at the main French training base, Chantilly, have gone green and are soon to be the envy of their contemporaries around the world with a ground-breaking manure-disposal project. Faced with piles of manure, the bane of all trainers' lives, Chantilly professionals are working together to launch a pioneering scheme which looks set to solve all their problems and at the same time reap both environmental and financial rewards. The 10-million euro project, which should be operational towards the end of 2009, is at the cutting edge of technology and consists of using a process of methanization to convert the waste into electricity which will then be sold to the EDF (French Electricity Board), and into heat which will be used locally.

With some 2500 Thoroughbreds currently in training in and around the towns of Chantilly, Gouvieux and Lamorlaye, the region is France's leading training center and among the most prestigious sites for preparing racehorses in the world. A further 700 polo ponies and 800 riding horses are stabled in the area to make a grand total of 4,000 equine inhabitants. Slightly less glamorous than the haul of Group 1 victories which the four-legged stars of Chantilly bring home each season is the waste they produce. Each horse creates one ton of manure per month. The muckheaps of Chantilly are overflowing and a solution is urgently needed.

Dual-purpose handler Richard Crépon was one of the first to react to the issue, and in early 2006 he became president of the Lamorlaye Bio-Resources Association. "We started to research ways to deal with our large quantities of manure and initially came up with the idea of converting it into compost, or incineration. Local farmers made a small contribution by spreading shavings-based manure on their land. But none of these systems were perfect and we realized that we needed to take control of the situation ourselves." It was then that the current CUMA (Co-operative for the Utilization of Agricultural Material) was born, again under the presidency of Crépon. All of Chantilly and the surrounding area's hundred or so license holders, as well as the towns' riding school, livery and polo proprietors, have been invited to invest the modest sum of 100 euros to join the co-operative which, as Crépon explains, "needs manure in order for our project to be feasible."

The CUMA'S methanization project offers a mutually-beneficial solution to a relatively new problem. Until recently trainers had been able to rely on the abundance of mushroom producers in Chantilly to dispose of their troublesome "by-product." The farmers had chosen Chantilly for its combination of an unending supply of the horse manure necessary for their fungus to grow, and the geological characteristics of the surrounding area. Chantilly is built on valuable limestone which has been excavated over the centuries, notably to construct the spectacular Grandes Ecuries and Chateau which give such charm to France's Classic racecourse. The quarrying left vast underground caves perfect for mushroom cultivation and thirty years ago the area was home to around 25 mushroom farms. "They used to pay us to take away our manure. Nowadays, the industry has largely moved to Eastern Europe, leaving only 4 mushroom producers in Chantilly. We have trouble to get anyone to empty our manure pits and it costs more and more." In Chantilly it now costs 15 euros per ton for trainers to dispose of their organic waste.

Aside from the purely practical inconvenience of evacuating the tons of waste produced weekly, fellow trainer Tony Clout, making a regretful gesture towards a steaming skip full of manure, comments, "we don't realize it, but we contribute to the greenhouse effect every day with all this manure." Clout is another board member of the French Trainers' Association who is an active player in the CUMA. Like all his trainer colleagues, he is primarily concerned by another form of pollution. "Horse manure is officially considered as a waste product and we are responsible for it until it has been completely destroyed. At the moment we have no control over where it ends up. In the current crazy situation, our manure is transported the length and breadth of France. It is always worrying to see piles of manure left standing in fields across the countryside, as they could easily have originated in our stables. There is a real risk that effluent from the waste will pollute the ground water in these instances and the trainer will be held liable and fined."

The increased environmental awareness on the part of the authorities, aside from making them more likely to take trainers to task for inadequate disposal of their waste, has another more beneficial side for the CUMA. "The timing has been ideal for us," explains Crépon. "We started to think about environmentally-friendly ways to recycle our manure at the same time as the government was creating grants and finance schemes for exactly this type of project." One such policy is that proposed by EDF, who pay a special tariff of 140 euros per megawatt hour (compared to usual rate 60 euros MW/h) for electricity produced by renewable sources. This price operates on the basis of a 15 year contract, which the CUMA has secured. "All this is possible thanks to our contract with EDF," states Clout.

Although the finer details have yet to be settled, the principle behind the Chantilly project is the same as that used in Germany by around 4,000 methanization plants for pig slurry. Nevertheless this will be the first time the technology has been used for horse manure. Bruno Battistini, consultant to the Lamorlaye Bio-Resource Association, explains, "We are setting a European and worldwide precedent. The pig manure operations are common in Germany and function in the same way as sewage processing plants as the slurry is highly-concentrated and in liquid form. However this is the first time anyone has attempted the process with dry matter, although it is similar to that used for household waste." In France there are two such plants, in Calais and Lille, for recycling household waste but there remain a number of unknowns concerning Chantilly's innovative project and the CUMA is still conducting research in conjunction with the INRA (National Institute for Agronomic Research) of Narbonne. "Our primary concern is to verify that our horse manure is compatible with the anaerobic breakdown process. We must also be sure of the levels and composition of the biogases produced, and finally that the equipment will stand the test of time." At the current time, around 18 months before the project is due to leave the starting stalls, Battistini and the trainers are certain that the process will work with straw-based manure and are expecting confirmation from the INRA that shavings will be able to be recycled in the same conditions.

Methanization is an anaerobic fermentation process through which the waste is decomposed by bacteria in an air-free environment. The manure will therefore be collected in giant sealed silos, where it will ferment to give off biogas consisting largely of methane and carbon dioxide. These gases will in turn be used to drive turbines which produce the electricity destined for EDF. "While EDF is our guarantee of income," explains Battistini, "we have a legal obligation towards them according to which, in order to benefit from their favorable rates, we must not waste potential energy." The latent heat generated during the methanization process therefore becomes a secondary resource. In addition to its utility in heating the plant's reactors, which need to be maintained at an operational temperature of 131°F, it will also be sold locally for heating purposes.

A 3 ½ acre site has been chosen for the plant, on land owned by the Institut de France and subsidized by France Galop. Its central location at Mont de Po, between the training centers of Chantilly and Lamorlaye, while being practical for trainers, is of vital logistical importance for the sale of the heat. Within just a few hundred meters of the site are the AFASEC jockeys' school and the Bois Larris Red Cross Hospital, the two major clients whose heating systems are to be supplied by the warmth created by the turbines. Their proximity means that a minimal amount of heat will be lost during transfer.  Another bonus with the location is that there is already a 20,000 volt cable running underground across the site to cater for the hospital, which means that no unsightly pylons will be required.

After the three-to-four-week methanization process has been completed, around 60% of the initial volume will remain as biologically stable residue. "Our profitability is also dependent upon the use we make of this residue," says Battistini. "The heat we sell to the hospital and the AFASEC will be running at 100% of its potential in December and January, however that will be reduced to 10% in the summer months. This seasonal issue will affect our global efficiency and in order to qualify for the subsidies on offer, we need to prove that we utilize at least 75% of the energy produced."  The solution to this final conundrum is to recycle the residue a second time to create fuel briquettes. The latent heat which is surplus to requirements over the summer will be used to dry, and then carbonize, the waste from the digestors at temperatures of up to 752°F. The resulting matter will be compressed into briquettes for use either in households or possibly by the AFASEC or the hospital if their boilers could be converted to use this type of fuel. The CUMA are also keen not to leave the remaining mushroom-growers in the lurch and are working together to determine whether the farms can make use of the residue.

The project is expected to cost in the region of 10 million euros. "We have yet to finalize a finance plan as we are still awaiting the various technical validations from the INRA. When we have these we will be able to make an accurate evaluation of the cost of the plant and then source funding for our operation." However Battistini does not have any concerns on this score. In addition to the EDF contract, a whole range of grants and support dedicated to the development of biomass projects and the recycling of waste are proposed on regional, national and European levels, including Grenelle Environment and Brussels. The scheme is supported by the government ministries of agriculture and environment as well as by Finance Minister Eric Woerth, who is Mayor of the prestigious racing town. Indeed the town of Chantilly itself, thanks to its status as a Pole d'Excellence Rurale (Center of Rural Excellence), is eligible for European money dedicated to this type of project. Another source of income could quite simply be a bank loan. This may be more simple than it first appears, as Battistini confirms, "According to a law which was passed five or six years ago, all the major French high-street banks offer loans called ‘Sofergies' which are dedicated to the financing of this type of equipment. The interest rate is negotiable but the real advantage of the idea is that banks must give priority to innovative projects such as ours which will produce renewable energy." In the future, carbon credits may be recuperated by the CUMA, although there is still work to do on this front as they are currently only available for porcine and bovine schemes. Battistini intends to change this state of affairs. "We are lobbying the CITEPA (Technical Interprofessional Center for the Study of Atmospheric Pollution) to convince them to change this ruling and hope to benefit from carbon credits within a year or two."

Richard Crépon and Tony Clout aim to have written off the cost of the factory within seven or eight years, whereas Battistini offers the slightly more conservative estimate of ten years. Whoever is right on this minor issue, the CUMA seems assured of success on both economic and ecological levels. "Once we have repaid the cost of the plant, the trainers, who are the shareholders in the CUMA, will reap the financial benefits," says Clout. "In the future we should be able to return to a situation in which trainers are paid for the removal of their manure, and not vice versa." While the renewable energy supplied to EDF and local services will make a small impact on country-wide electricity production, the project is also advantageous in cutting down on primary pollution which currently originates from the currently steaming muckheaps of Chantilly. The CUMA will seek to standardize manure storage for all the region's trainers so that all waste is kept in covered pits or containers prior to transportation to the plant's closed fermentors, thereby considerably reducing current methane emissions.

While the project is far from completion, the ensemble of favorable circumstances mean that the members of Chantilly's CUMA can be confident of a cleaner, cheaper future in which they will be in control of the manure their horses produce. Their progress will be followed with interest by trainers around Europe and the world.

Kentucky Downs - America's only European-style turf course

By Ken Snyder

Working as a groom between his junior and senior years in college, Corey Johnsen wagered his entire week's salary on a horse in his care in hopes of earning his second-semester tuition. Decades later, Johnsen, now president and part owner of Kentucky Downs in Franklin, Kentucky, gambles on the success of a turf-only course accommodating shippers-only with just a six-day annual race meet. Will it be a winner? If uniqueness were a guarantee of success, Kentucky Downs, hard by the Tennessee border, would be a huge overlay. It is billed as the nation's only European-style turf course but General Manager John Goodman modifies this slightly and perhaps best expresses its essence: "It's English racing meets the county fair."

Only the whine from tractor trailer tires on nearby Interstate 65 disturb a pastoral setting that might surpass the most scenic track in Ireland. There is no tote board in the infield, and the "grandstands" are the balcony on the two-story clubhouse and two well-weathered bleacher sections at the finish line that look as if they have been imported from the nearest football field. The large clubhouse, with tall palladium windows and white columns at entrances fore and aft, is Southern Colonial meets Belmont Park minus the ivy.

There is also a touch you won't find at a county fair: The jockeys' quarters are in a doublewide trailer, the kind likely to be found throughout a rural Kentucky far removed from the plank-fenced splendor of Bluegrass horse farms to the north. Taken together, Kentucky Downs is a delight, a jewel in comparison to big-city "race factories," and a total surprise among the chain restaurants and motels that are the obligatory fixtures at the Franklin interstate exit and seemingly all others in America.
Johnsen and ownership partner Ray Reid, a Texas investment banker, bought the track in August of 2007, gaining an 85% controlling interest from former owners Churchill Downs, Turfway Park and Kelley Farms. (Each of these entities retained a 5% ownership in the track.) They are proceeding with renovations and other changes as if the odds are far better than the 8-1 that Johnsen got on Hi Ho Dash many summers ago at Centennial Park in Denver.

The path to Franklin and ownership of Kentucky Downs is a long one for both Johnsen and Reid. For Reid it began in his college days, also. While at the University of Pennsylvania, he roomed with a member of the Hanover family of harness racing fame and became interested in racing. Perhaps not surprisingly, given that he was a student in Penn's Wharton School of Business, his interest specifically was in racetrack ownership.
Ownership of horses in partnership with Johnsen preceded Reid asking his partner to create a list of five tracks that might be in play for possible purchase. Kentucky Downs was on the list.

For Johnsen, his position is the latest in what has been a career lifetime at racetracks. From groom, he progressed to the grandstand side, working seasonal jobs first at Turf Paradise in Phoenix then at Arlington Park in the marketing and publicity department. "I was director of media relations for the inaugural Arlington Million," he said.
His first year-round job was at Louisiana Downs before becoming part of the management team that developed Remington Park. He moved from there in 1994 to help develop Lone Star Park in Arlington, Texas before leaving for the presidency and part ownership of Kentucky Downs. Additionally, he helped with the reopening in 1999 of Hipódromo de las Americas in Mexico City and Hipódromo Nacional de Maroñas in Uruguay a few years after that.

Perhaps reflecting his experience in developing tracks from the ground up like Remington and Lone Star, Johnsen's first priority at Kentucky Downs was, quite literally, the ground; and renovation of the turf course.

"I feel that a racetrack surface is the foundation to the success of any track," he said. In November, after Kentucky Downs' six-day September meet, Game Day, a company that maintains several different kinds of athletic fields throughout Kentucky, renovated the turf course. Game Day mowed the mile-and-five-sixteenths course down to the base, aerated it, seeded it with a specialty seed, and then top-dressed the turf with fine sand. Improvements followed in the clubhouse. A new sports bar opened and a chef was brought in from the Hyatt Regency hotel organization to add appeal to non-racing fans in the area looking for a night out. Significant, too, the track gained a liquor license last year.
With things seemingly in place for the new owners, the question is how can the track build on last year's second-highest on-track handle in history, $444,601, and a $9,618,208 all-sources handle that was 21% over 2006 numbers?

With only a six-day September meet that, while obviously brief, culminates in a $500,000 Kentucky Cup Turf Festival, the possibilities might seem limited. It is, however, the inactivity of Kentucky Downs, aside from six-day-a-week simulcast racing, that creates potential, according to Johnsen.
Future plans call for a regional horse center on the grounds--a "Kentucky Horse Park South," as Johnsen refers to it, or a counterpart to the real Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington that is a center for equine events for all breeds. "We have 250 stalls that sit empty 50 weeks every year. Why not utilize that infrastructure for horse shows, events, auctions, and those types of things?" Johnsen said

Steeplechasing is also a natural for Kentucky Downs and not just because of the gently undulating turf course. Nashville, barely 45 miles away, annually hosts the biggest steeplechase race in the country every year, attracting between thirty and fifty thousand people every May. "The event is a fund-raiser for a local hospital down there," Johnsen said. "What we want to do is tie in to that same hospital with a fall event."

Johnsen also foresees a time when his track would be in line to host the Breeders' Cup Steeplechase as well as turf races that would serve as strong prep races for the main Breeders' Cup event.

The foundation for the plans would seem to be solid. In addition to good numbers from last year, Kentucky Downs attracts top horsemen. Todd Pletcher sent out Kentucky Cup Ladies Turf winner Quiet Royal and won three other races during the meet. Calvin Borel, rider of ‘07 Kentucky Derby Winner Street Sense, also came down to ride the final three days of the meet. In addition, Jeremy Rose, regular rider of 2005 Preakness and Belmont winner Afleet Alex, piloted the Grade III, $200,000 Kentucky Cup Turf winner, General Jumbo, to victory last year. Indicative, too, of the niche carved by the racetrack with Kentucky horsemen is field size: Over nine starters on average went to the post per race last year.
David Carroll, Churchill Downs-based trainer and conditioner of Derby third and Belmont second show-finisher Denis of Cork, is an unabashed fan of Kentucky Downs. "We've never had a problem with a horse there coming back," he said. "It's a fun place to go and I love going down there."

He does acknowledge that some trainers are concerned for the safety of their horses because of the gently rolling surface but believes concerns are misplaced. "What I find is that it is not so much the horses that don't handle it, but the riders," he said.

Jockey James Graham, also an Irishman who has ridden at Kentucky Downs, seconds Carroll. "You're best off walking the course before you ride it.
"Believe me, it's not a course you can ride like you ride every day," Graham added
.
A false straight on the kidney-shaped course's far turn has caused riding mistakes, according to Carroll. "You turn and you've got another turn too, and that's where a lot of jockeys get caught out and move too soon," he said.

With improvements, success, and acceptance by horsemen, a move to more race dates would seem obvious, but there are obstacles. First and foremost, a commission structure unique to Kentucky hampers purses at Kentucky Downs. "It calls for 50% of the commission earned on simulcast wagering at Kentucky Downs to go to the host track in Kentucky that is running at the time," explained Johnsen. Basically, half of what could go into purses or association expenses at Kentucky Downs goes to Ellis Park, Churchill Downs, Keeneland or Turfway Park.

Kentucky Downs must also weather something already experienced by Turfway Park and Ellis Park especially in Kentucky: trainers leaving the state for bigger purses at casino-supplemented tracks or racinos. Presque Isle in Pennsylvania, specifically, has already caused problems for Kentucky Downs.
"We had trainers who had run many horses with us in the past who have actually moved their Kentucky division to Presque Isle," acknowledged Johnsen.
"I can't blame them. They're running for $500,000 a day and we run for about $200,000."

Any purse total below that, according to Johnsen, would take away from Kentucky Downs. "You drop below that and I think the quality of our race meet decreases dramatically and thus the handle decreases and you head into a negative spiral.

"What we've found out is our year-round simulcast efforts and our on-track live handle for our race meet supports about six days of racing. If we wanted to do 10 days, then all of a sudden your purses drop significantly and then you don't get the horses.

"I think we've found a nice niche that has a limited effect on other tracks in the state, if there's any effect at all. At the same time we're an additive to the racing industry here by helping Kentucky benefit from the Nashville market." Penetration of that market, a tantalizingly short drive away, is a key objective but one contingent on increased purses and the bigger handle that would come with them. Casino gaming at Kentucky tracks, according to Johnsen, could increase purses and fund the kind of marketing efforts that Johnsen oversaw at Lone Star Park in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

This year the Kentucky legislature thwarted new governor Steve Beshear's push for casino gambling that would have brought slot machines to Kentucky Downs. Despite the defeat, Johnsen believes casino gambling at Kentucky racetracks in one form or another is inevitable. "We going to have fun without gaming and then, when we can supplement our purses, it'll be tremendous," he said.

Others without a stake in the success of Kentucky Downs echo a sunny outlook for the racecourse. Sports writer Michael Compton, who has covered Kentucky Downs racing for several years for Bowling Green's Park City News, believes the racetrack is "the little engine that could." Of the new owners he said, "You get the sense that they definitely are thinking about the future and have some nice ideas." Already, according to Compton, they've piqued interest in the area beyond racing fans with restaurant improvements and the liquor license.

The location, too, despite the small size of Franklin (population 8,000, approximately) is a plus. "Franklin, Kentucky used to be a sleepy little town, but now every month it seems there's an announcement about a new distribution center or a new manufacturing plant," Johnsen said. In short, the Nashville-Bowling Green, Kentucky corridor is growing, Johnsen observed, and he even sees some parallels between it and growth of San Antonio and Austin in Texas.

Johnsen would hope that there are similarities between his bet on Hi Ho Dash while a college student and his investment with Reid in Kentucky Downs.
With a knowing smile he recounted how he came to bet his week's wages- "$82 take home"-which he put on the horse. "Hi Ho came to us from California and the owner insisted he be run right away and ran horribly because of the climate and altitude," Johnsen said. "Three weeks later, he was acclimated and I knew he was ready." He won going away. "My tuition was $620, so I basically won it in my bet."

Inside knowledge might not be at work with Kentucky Downs but the improvements, strategy, and ownership seem to be in place. Johnsen is, after all, the same man who while president at Lone Star, snared the ‘04 Breeders' Cup from more established tracks. Continued and long-term success might not be nearly the surprise for industry observers as it would be for those venturing off Exit #2 - Franklin to discover Kentucky Downs. 

Is the Grass Greener? Investigating State Incentive Programs

By Caton Bredar

When lifelong horsemen Nancy and Harvey Vanier were married in 1960, state racing programs were barely in the discussion phase. The concept of millions of dollars allocated specifically to and for horses bred or raced in a particular state was at least a decade away. The closest thing to an Illinois-bred was Nancy herself.

A handful of Illinois champions, hundreds of winners and hundreds of thousands—if not a million purse dollars and breeder bonuses later, the Vaniers are virtually synonymous with the Illinois breeding and racing program. But with increasing complications in state oversight, increasing competition from states like Pennsylvania- with new or rapidly growing incentive programs and new found dollars from venues like casino wagering- the Vaniers and several others are wondering if the old adage no longer applies; “No place like home”.

     Finding specifics for state incentive programs is a little more complicated these days than clicking your heels together three times. Figuring out the ideal or best program, particularly for a trainer, is even tougher. With programs from Arizona and California extending across the country to Florida, New York and West Virginia … the choices are endless and extend not only from state to state, but in some cases, track to track.

     A quick internet search reveals at least a dozen web sites detailing specifics of breeding programs for Arizona, California, Florida, Indiana, Illinois, Louisiana, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and a host of others. Most of the websites are similar, focusing on the benefits of membership—everything from scholarships and educational programs, to discounts at gift shops, and free admission to the state’s racetracks. Most include at least an outline of rules and deadlines for registration of foals, stallions or broodmares. Some include news releases and political updates.   Many sites are outdated. No site that was discovered includes any mention of specific dollars to be given away.

     While there is no definitive history or record of the development of state incentive programs for Thoroughbred breeding and/or racing, the earliest programs appear to have come into existence in the early 1970’s, an offshoot of state farm or agricultural agencies.

     “I remember they were talking about it soon after we got married,” Nancy recalls. “The intent was to encourage people to raise horses that would help support agriculture and racing in Illinois.”

     Nancy’s father Dr. Louis Aiken had a farm in Illinois, so when the program was finally unveiled just a few years after her and trainer Harvey’s wedding, the decision to focus their efforts on the Land of Lincoln was a no-brainer.

     “We were racing at the time on the East Coast, and one of our main owners had died,” Nancy explains. “We pretty much had to start over. But I had been following the discussions and the program all along,” she continues. “Even though we weren’t racing there, and even though there weren’t any races for Illinois-breds at the time, I had been going through the Department of Agriculture and registering all our horses.”

     When the program finally got off the ground, the Vaniers were ready to be a part of it.   She remembers a misconception, though, that plagued the program in its earliest stages and continues, to at least some extent among state leaders and decision makers today.

     “They thought everyone would just breed to the horse next door, because it saved gasoline,” Vanier recalls. “I said; I’ll travel to California to breed to a stud if it means I can get a nice horse.”

     Similar to the incentive programs in most other states, the Illinois program was initially based around added-money or stakes events specifically for Illinois registered horses, along with daily restricted races “so Illinois horses could exceed” their usual earning potential, according to Vanier, and “we wanted to keep it closed to Illinois stallions.”

     Somewhere along the way, the program was opened up to include stallions outside Illinois, as is the case today in many, if not most, state programs. But the concept of a lucrative stakes program along with a restricted overnight schedule has existed to this day and is, in fact, the backbone of most state racing and breeding programs, for better or for worse.

     “The restricted races keep you alive,” Vanier says, although the current requirement of two restricted Illinois races a day is something many racing officials and some horsemen would argue- keeps at least one hand tied behind the back of the industry in terms of the fight for quality as well as diminishing gambling dollars. 

     While the core base of Illinois breeders and horses remains viable, the long-term vibrancy of the program is questionable.   In other states, such as Ohio where over-all purses have dropped to among the lowest in the nation, the core base of breeders’ isn’t even enough, long-term, to keep a program afloat.

     In Illinois, as is the case even in New York and California, state-restricted races generally prove less attractive to gamblers thus generating fewer dollars in handle. Vanier points to a combination of factors, including a reduced number of racing dates in Illinois along with an uninformed state government and a troubled economy as reasons for uncertainty.

     As budgets have tightened in Illinois and most states throughout the nation, and culture has shifted from farming and agriculture to industry and technology, the importance of Thoroughbred incentive programs has become increasingly difficult to maintain or justify.

     “I don’t know about the program needing tweaking, so much as the state needs tweaking,” Vanier concludes. The same could be said in New York, arguably one of the more successful state breeding programs in the U.S., but where the New York Breeders’ Association increasingly finds themselves in the position of defending their program against political assault.

     While the home page for the N.Y. Breeders’ Association website proclaims the group’s vision, to “create an environment which maximizes the opportunity for New York’s Thoroughbred breeders to produce horses competitive at the highest levels of racing,” the latest news, as of June 1, was much more combative.

     In a self-proclaimed “strongly worded” letter to Governor Paterson, the breeders’ voiced opposition to a proposal to cut OTB payments to outside groups by 20 percent. Chief among OTB’s “partners” are the breeders.

     “This proposed cut represents a $1.2 million annual loss to New York’s Thoroughbred breeding programs,” wrote New York Breeders’ President, Michael McMahon. “It would have devastating effects on over 400 mostly small, family-owned and operated farms, and ultimately damage the entire horse racing industry in New York State.”

            An official statement from McMahon in response to a New York Post article in May detailing OTB’s plans for liquidation echoed the same sentiments.

     “Mayor Bloomberg should stop threatening and start thinking about how the city’s OTB can reform its ways, improve efficiencies and become more profitable, without hurting horseracing and taking money out of New York’s thoroughbred breeders’ who are the backbone of our state’s horseracing industry.”

     The statements, and the situation itself in New York, underscores the role government and politics directly play in state horse racing programs, even programs occurring under the most ideal of circumstances. But if government is the puppet master controlling incentive programs, revenue from casino gaming may turn out to be the strings from which everything dangles. Maybe nowhere is that more evident than in the state of Pennsylvania.

     At the start of 2007, Pennsylvania horses and horsemen may have met their messiah, at least for the time being, in the form of one-armed bandits. Coins from the slot machines started clinking in to the tracks by July of that year. For the breeders, the subsequent impact--$5.2 million in awards, up over 80 percent from the previous year, was obvious.

    The subsequent impact in racing, according to longtime racing official Sal Sinatra, is also nothing short of remarkable.

     “People are calling from all over the place,” Philadelphia Park’s Racing Secretary since 1999 explains. “Guys from New York are bringing in P.A.-breds now. There are big changes. The former President of Panama was at the track the other day. The Eagles coaching staff is putting together a string of horses. It’s definitely different.”

     Which is also the best way to describe the program, a program of incentives manifesting itself differently at each Pennsylvania track. According to Sinatra, track officials and horsemen at each location have worked to come up with a plan for distributing the new-found money, with the system varying by location.

     A glance at any of the condition books tells the story. On any given day, for every race in the Philadelphia Park condition book, there’s a 40 percent bonus for registered Pennsylvania horses, including lower level claiming races.

     “A decent P.A.-bred who breaks his maiden (in open company) then puts together a couple seconds or thirds,” Sinatra says, “can earn close to $200,000. That’s big.”

      Maybe not quite as big, but equally important: Penn National’s condition book lists a 25 percent bonus for every race, along with more races restricted to state-breds. With a smaller population base to draw from, the size of the slot revenue for Penn National is generally lower than Philadelphia Park. The base of Pennsylvania-bred horses, though, is solid on location, and the condition book caters to it, with more restricted races for state-breds. Generally, Penn National offers at least one state-bred restricted race a day, in addition to the bonus.

     And then there’s the newest track, Presque Isle. As soon as the track opened last year, horsemen from throughout the Midwest started making the trek to the sport’s newest, synthetic track facility, with the added slot money part of the jackpot.

     “They can’t spend the money fast enough,” Sinatra says. In addition to a 50 percent bonus on every race, Presque Isle offers an average of two restricted Pennsylvania-bred races every weekend, and a $1,000 guaranteed bonus for every Pennsylvania-bred that just makes a start.

     “Basically, the track makes a proposal,” Sinatra offers as to the process by which the program is set, “and then everyone tries to fit their horses into a program.”

     In addition to the overnight opportunities offered at each track, the stakes program is strong, too, with well over $3 million given out this year through events like Pennsylvania’s Day at the Races and other Pennsylvania stakes, the majority of which are $75,000 events. It’s the most stakes money ever offered in Pennsylvania, but something Sinatra says he would like to see changed.

     “I still think a championship race should be at least a $250,000 race,” he says. “Then, if there’s a Hard Spun out there, he might use one of those races as prep for a Triple Crown race or a Breeders’ Cup race.

     Hard Spun, who played a strong supporting role in the 2007 Triple Crown races before winning the King’s Bishop at Saratoga, was one of three Pennsylvania-breds to reach millionaire status, the first time in history Pennsylvania-breds have reached such lofty standards. Sinatra talks of a state head to head challenge with New York’s breeding program one day, similar to the Sunshine Millions, an annual event designed by Frank Stronach and his Magna Entertainment pitting California-breds against Florida-breds for over one million dollars in purses.

     “I think Pennsylvania-breds have gotten fairly competitive on most levels with New York-breds,” Sinatra says, adding that discussions with P.J. Campo, the racing secretary for the New York Racing Association, are already underway. “I’d hope we could have something by 2010 or so and think it would be a nice little challenge.”

     The concept of single day, big money events is not necessarily universally endorsed. Vanier says that while her family has been the beneficiary of Illinois showcase days, she, for one, would rather see bigger purses daily, and that the purpose of an incentive program should be about encouraging people to breed in the state and race in the state—not just for one day, for every day.

     Still, she has her eye on states like Kentucky, which in 2006 instituted the Kentucky Breeders Incentive Fund, which paid out $15.6 million in incentives last year, to breeders of Kentucky maiden and allowance winners.

     Or Indiana, where slot machines were scheduled to roll out this summer.

     Or Pennsylvania, where as of June, a Philly Park conditioned claiming race carried a purse of $18,000.    For a Pennsylvania-bred winner of such a race, that translates to $9,600 plus the 40 percent bonus, or over $14,000 for winning a $5,000 claiming race.

     “These days, a P.A.-bred has to run above what he’s worth,” Sinatra says. “We’re averaging eight claims a day.”

     The changing economy has led Sinatra to make some changes in his condition book. “We’re trying to keep the small guy in the game,” he says, and added starter allowance races to his menu, to give owners and trainers of winning claimers the opportunity to at least run once or twice more before risking the loss of the horse in the claiming box.

     “The bottom line is, we’ve tried to get the bottom claiming horse to at least be able to earn $25,000,” Sinatra says. “The goal -- that a horse, if he can run a little, could pay for his keep.”

    The end result, according to Sinatra and others, is a trickle up effect.

    “My guys,” he says referring to his local core of owners and trainers, “… are solid guys. These guys are doing okay now, and it’s nice to see.”

     “In the Fall, our guys were at first getting their heads beaten in…it was Todd Pletcher shipping in and winning by ten, Kiaran McLaughlin coming in from New York, winning by ten. And while it was nice for me to see those horses and horsemen, it wasn’t great for our horsemen.”

     With some minor changes, Sinatra says local horsemen can still protect their horses, and now some of the better horses are finding local places to stay.

     “Some of my guys used to get third string horses from major outfits. Now that the money is there, those outfits are sending better horses.”

      For the moment, it seems, even from loyal supporters of other state programs, Pennsylvania is worth looking at.

     “Everybody’s looking at Pennsylvania now, and it’s just nice to see.”

Can fractures be predicted?

While catastrophic fractures are relatively rare - less than 2 percent of all horses racing worldwide sustain them - they account for nearly 80 percent of racing-related fatalities. Even with advances in modern veterinary medicine, fracture diagnosis can often be elusive. What if a simple blood test could reveal a fracture or a predisposition to one before it became a crisis?

Dr. C. Wayne McIlwraith, BVSc, Ph.D., the Barbara Cox Anthony University Chair in orthopedics at Colorado State University, professor of surgery and director of the university’s Orthopedic Research Center, said, "We have been working with biomarkers for more than 10 years. If we get good biomarkers to predict a fracture, then we can draw blood samples to identify horses at risk. We are working with a company to develop a commercially viable platform for a blood test to be available within two years."

A biomarker is a substance in the blood or urine that indicates a certain disease state. In normal bone, anabolic and catabolic processes are balanced and release molecular entities as they function. Biomarkers are these molecular entities and when their levels deviate from normal, they depict a risk or progression of disease. 
There are two types of biomarkers: direct and indirect. A direct biomarker supplies a straightforward assessment of what disease process is happening while an indirect biomarker reflects inflammation, which is usually a secondary result of damage or disease.

 "We have a collection of biomarkers, which are antibody-based, that we do the testing with," McIlwraith said. "The principle is to get early degradation of the molecule and we have the antibodies to mark changes in the collagen or protein of the cartilage and bones."

In a study published in 2005 and funded by the Grayson Jockey Club Research Foundation, McIlwraith, in conjunction with fellow faculty members Dr. David Frisbie, DVM, Ph.D. and Dr. Chris Kawcak, DVM, Ph.D., studied the biomarkers of 2-and 3-year-old Southern California Thoroughbred racehorses over 10 months. They analyzed biomarkers for four types of musculoskeletal disease: bone chips, damage to the tendon and/or ligament structure, stress fractures and bucked shins.
 
From the group of 145 horses, 74 sustained an injury during the study with 60 percent incurring either bone chips or stress fractures."Not all of the markers were specific for bone but that doesn’t always mean something," Frisbie said. "It’s weird because you would think if it’s a fracture you would see the bone turnover biomarker go up, but we realized that is not always the case and as long as the marker, whatever it’s for, is related to the disease, it doesn’t really matter in the end. If you don’t have something which can predict injury in general, it’s not going to be worthwhile. What we wanted was a screening tool to say there is an impending injury and then use diagnostics like radiographs to deduce the specific injury."

The four disease processes examined are the most common in Thoroughbred racehorses and the researchers found they could predict a disease was going to occur 65 or 66 percent of the time before it did.Bone disease is "a pretty innocuous thing, but it’s like cancer," Frisbie said. "Picking it up doesn’t have to be horribly accurate because you throw a big net. If there’s a possibility, you would want to take a closer look and are happy when it’s a false alarm. As long as you do a better job, even if it only improves your percentage 10 or 15 percent, you are not letting somebody that has cancer go undetected."

Biomarkers were endorsed as useful predictors of disease in the laboratory but only one prior study was performed in a clinical setting.  A study conducted at the Royal Veterinary College in London, England, at roughly the same time as the Colorado State University project, showed significant biomarker variances in horses with bucked shins compared to horses with normal shins.

 "We wanted biomarkers to hit the pavement and work in a clinical situation," Frisbie said. "The studies in the United Kingdom were at the tracks but concentrated mainly on shin splints. We wanted to run the entire gamut of the most common Thoroughbred diseases and as far as I know, we were the first to do that." 

Racehorses are prone to fracture because they place intense pressure on their musculoskeletal system. Any location where damage from repetitive loading surpasses a horse’s innate ability to lay down new bone can become a fracture. In normal bone, cells called osteoclasts eradicate damaged or diseased bone and cells named osteoblasts replace the unsound bone with healthy tissue. When the bone cannot be restored quickly enough, open pockets develop, which make the entire bony structure susceptible to an eventual catastrophic fracture.

Dr. Susan Stover, DVM, a professor at the University of California, Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, in Davis, California, has examined numerous post-mortem fractured bones from Thoroughbred racehorses and determined that stress fractures are the precursor to catastrophic fractures.

Stover discovered a predominant fracture pattern with new bone structure on opposite surfaces in the identical site for each bone. The bone was fresh and therefore, formed shortly before the complete catastrophic fracture. Stover approximates almost 90 percent of the catastrophic fractures she has studied originated from a prior injury.
Most veterinarians believe fractures rarely occur from spontaneous events, such as a bad step or hitting the starting gate, but are the end result of insidious bone disease. 
 "I’m not saying that a misstep can’t complete the fracture propagation but the disease is already there," McIlwraith said. "All fractures start as subchondral bone disease, with subchondral bone being the bone under the cartilage. If you can identify that bone disease before the fracture then you can save the horse."

Subchondral bone’s two primary functions are to absorb stress and maintain the shape of joints.  Undue stress to this bone causes micro-damage which alerts the body to increase production to strengthen the bone. If the bone cannot remodel itself quickly enough, micro-cracks develop and could lead to bone sclerosis, an abnormal hardening of the bone, or necrosis, when cells that create bone cells die. All these forms of subchondral bone disease ultimately weaken bone structure, paving the way for catastrophic fracture and/or joint disease.Signs of disease are subtle."That’s the trouble," McIlwraith explained.

"When you have a complete fracture you can see it on radiographs but you can’t see that early bone disease. That is why we want to screen with biomarkers and go from there." 
Radiographs or x-rays illustrate pathologic change in bone and have been the main tool to diagnose fractures. While computer and digital radiography systems have improved bone definition, the bone must lose 50 percent of its density before disease can be found.

In bone scanning or nuclear scintigraphy (a subject covered in depth in Issue 8 of North American Trainer magazine), a horse is injected with radioactive technetium bonded to phosphorus and is scanned several hours later with a gamma camera for "hot spots." This technique works well by identifying early areas of inflammation and stress fractures but is very expensive and is usually used only after a horse comes up lame.

Computerized tomography (CT) diagnoses inflammation, stress fractures, early subchondral bone sclerosis and variations in subchondral bone density, but most machines require anesthesia. A portable machine is under investigation in France, but until this becomes widely available, it will remain difficult to use.
Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) could prove instrumental in detecting early disease but like CT, until a portable model or standing model is developed, it’s difficult to use because it requires anesthesia.

Even though biomarkers are an exciting breakthrough, they have limitations. The liver and kidneys play a crucial role in the metabolism; therefore, the function of these organs must be considered whenever biomarkers are measured. Other factors that affect biomarker levels are exercise, age, breed, diet, sex, surgical history and general anesthesia. 
Biomarkers originate from all the bones or joints in the body, so they may not show what is happening in a specific location.

 "Biomarkers do vary," McIlwraith said. "In our study we took monthly blood samples and when a horse was injured, we looked at that horse’s biomarkers compared to a horse that was the same age and the same sex. The blood test is only a screening tool. If you find a horse at risk, then you would have to do imaging to localize it to a certain area." 
Can biomarkers discern the difference between diseased bone and bone that is remodeling to accommodate stress, but is otherwise perfectly healthy?

"In our control study, we were able to differentiate between normal exercise and pathologic change," Frisbie explained. "All the horses in the study were exercising and we were still able to deduce they were experiencing disease, so it stands to reason we could distinguish between remodeling and disease."

When the blood test is presented on the open market, its initial use will probably be relegated to trainers and owners, and not sales agencies.
 
"In a sales environment you don’t necessarily know the horse’s history," Frisbie explained. "A trainer or owner knows when a horse isn’t performing well and a blood test showing biomarkers three deviation levels above the mean would scream out to you something was wrong."
Biomarkers alone are not a cure for bone and/or joint disease, but they do hold tremendous promise to predict or prevent catastrophic injury.

Kimberly French
 (10 July 2008 - Issue 9)