TRM Trainer of the Quarter - François Cottin

The TRM Trainer of the Quarter goes to Francois Cottin with more than €4 million in winnings and €600,000 advantage over Guillaume Macaire, the Chantilly handler is almost certain to be champion French jumps trainer this year.

Katherine Ford (European Trainer - Issue 24 / Winter 2008)

Richard Mandella on the basics that make racing work

Hall of Fame trainer Richard Mandella is not in his tack room office between sets at Del Mar this morning. Instead, the son of a blacksmith is at the end of the long indoor barn, artfully sweeping a rasp across a back hoof of a two-year-old Storm Cat filly. When prompted, he says, simply, “The basics are what make this game work. Believe me, basic horsemanship will hold you in good stead. It's the most important thing. Knowing that a horse is shod as correct as he can be, that the blacksmith's doing a good job You? Embarrassed, he downplays his handiwork. No, I tinker around, that's all. I don't do it every day. And it doesn't make me any better than anybody else.

Frances J Karon
 (14 October 2008 - Issue Number: 10)

Better Talk Now - the multi-millionaire BC winner

It's hard to imagine that Better Talk Now, Graham Motion’s remarkable, late-running nine-year-old gelding, would ever cost his trainer a good nights sleep. After all, Better Talk Now's victory in the 2004 Breeders Cup Turf gave Motion a national presence, one which has only grown as Better Talk Now continues to perform at the highest level of racing with 14 victories in 47 career starts and earnings of more than $4.2 million.

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

From Good to GREAT - the pain of losing a good horse to another trainer

Losing an under-achieving horse is a reality trainers live with daily. But how do you lose a horse who performs spectacularly in his debut? How do you lose a horse you’ve waited your whole lifetime to train?

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

The Gate Crew - behind-the-scenes but in full view

On Blue Grass Day in 2008, roughly 26,000 people in the stands went crazy as Visionaire, the last to load into the starting gate, took his place in the lineup. When the doors shut behind him, it was the signal that the feature race of Keeneland’s spring meet was only seconds away, and the crowd cheered, wild with anticipation. Everything fell perfectly into place, and head starter Robert “Spec” Alexander released the field: the shrill clang and sharp burst of the metal gate springing open gets the blood flowing like no other thrill associated with horseracing.

Frances J Karon
 (14 October 2008 - Issue Number 10)

Picky Eaters - a common problem in horses in training

Poor appetite in horses in training is not uncommon, whether this is a transient problem following racing, or, more regularly, during training in particular horses. In some situations, ‘failure to clean up’ may simply be explained by horses being offered more feed than they require and so they are being overfed, whilst in other instances, where it is accompanied with poor condition, the causes may be more complicated. Certainly, physiological mechanisms exist in horses to match energy and nutrient intake to daily requirements and these systems form the basis for self regulation of feed intake in horses in the wild or at grass.

Catherine Dunnett (14 October 2008 - Issue Number: 10)

The Role Vitamins Play in the Diet

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 optimized for performance. Horses are, generally speaking, quite tolerant of sub-clinical deficiency or excess with regards to vitamins, and the margin of acceptable intake to prevent health issues is therefore relatively wide in most cases. However, maintenance of health is a separate issue compared to optimal performance, which is the ultimate target for horses in training.

Catherine Dunnett
 (14 October 2008 - Issue Number: 10)

Palm Meadows - the best training center in the country

By Bill Heller

For all the criticism Frank Stronach has received for turning Gulfstream Park from a racetrack into a casino/concert hall/shopping mall that offers racing, he’s received very little credit for developing the best training center in the country, 49 miles north of Gulfstream in Boynton Beach: Palm Meadows.

What drives appetite?

Owned and operated by Stronach’s Magna Entertainment Corp., Palm Meadows is just off the Florida Turnpike. The immaculate 304-acre facility has received rave reviews from horsemen since it opened in 2003.

“It’s very nice; it’s the best training center in the world,” trainer Dale Romans said. “For one, everything is so new. The racetracks are in good shape. Everything is state of the art. The barns are nice. They’re airy for the horses. The upkeep is great. It’s as good today as it was the day it opened.”

But Palm Meadows has more than just the fine facilities offered to horses and horsemen from November 1st through May 1st. Under Stronach’s direction, the living quarters for exercise riders, hotwalkers and grooms resemble college dorms rather than the rundown slums found on many racetracks’ backstretches.

Four three-story dorm buildings each consist of 52 rooms. Each 12-by-20 foot room has two beds, its own shower, toilet, microwave, refrigerator, heater/air conditioner and storage locker. Each building has a laundry room equipped with three washers and three dryers. In the courtyard, there are two sand volleyball courts and a patio with benches and barbecue grills.

Imagine that: backstretch workers living like human beings.

“That’s Mr. Stronach,” Palm Meadows General Manager Gary Van den Broek said. “He wanted to provide better living facilities for the people who work here. There’s nothing fancy about them, but they’re better than other facilities.”

Just about everything at Palm Meadows is better than other facilities.

“From the creation and design of the training facility to the creation and design of dormitories for the backside help, Frank continues to show a genuine and unique concern for those who play such an important role in this sport,” Gulfstream Park President and General Manager Bill Murphy said.

There are three training surfaces for horses on Palm Meadows’ spacious site: a 100-foot wide, mile-and-an-eighth dirt track, a 176-foot wide, seven-eighths mile turf course and an 80-foot wide, one-mile, L-shape jogging track which borders the main track. The dirt surfaces are similar to the ones at Gulfstream Park. “We have a little less clay content than what Gulfstream has,” Van den Broek said. “We’re here to leg up horses.”

That’s an option that trainers employ. Romans had a 32-horse barn stabled at Palm Meadows as well as a barn at Gulfstream. “So we go back and forth,” Romans said. “Most of the horses here at Palm Meadows are getting ready to run. They’re young horses, not quite there yet.”

Other horses at Palm Meadows already have amassed impressive credentials. Last winter’s 1,100-horse population at Palm Meadows included Hall of Fame trainer Nick Zito’s then-undefeated War Pass, the 2007 Two-Year-Old Champion Colt, as well as an unheralded runner in Rick Dutrow Jr.’s barn named Big Brown, who had won his only start in 2007 by daylight.

Dutrow kept Big Brown at Palm Meadows as he prepared him for this year’s Triple Crown run. “I have about 80 horses in New York, and I talk to my people up there every day,” Dutrow said last spring. “But I’d rather be here with this horse because it’s so much fun. He wants to be here at Palm Meadows.”

Palm Meadows’ configuration may have been one of the reasons why. The barns at Palm Meadows are connected to the main track by a system of horse paths designed so that a horse doesn’t have to walk on pavement to get to the track.

Though Dutrow spent much of the spring denying that Big Brown had ongoing foot problems, the quarter crack he developed before the Belmont Stakes became the hottest story in racing and certainly did nothing to help his chances of becoming the first Triple Crown winner since Affirmed in 1978.

Before the Kentucky Derby, Big Brown’s major works were at Palm Meadows. He breezed five furlongs in 1:00 3/5 – galloping out six in 1:14 2/5 – on April 18th, then five furlongs in :58 3/5 on April 24th nine days prior to the Run for the Roses.

Big Brown’s powerful victory in the Kentucky Derby, and his triumphs in the Preakness and Haskell Stakes, will do nothing to diminish Palm Meadows’ stature.

When Big Brown was eased in the Belmont Stakes in the only loss of his career, the longshot winner who beat him, Zito’s Da’ Tara, had also wintered at Palm Meadows.

The quickly growing list of Palm Meadows’ alumni who have had tremendous success include 2003 Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner Funny Cide, 2004 Belmont Stakes and Travers Stakes winner Birdstone, 2004 Horse of the Year Ghostzapper, 2005 Horse of the Year Saint Liam, 2006 Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro, 2006 Horse of the Year Invasor and 2007 Kentucky Derby winner Street Sense.

Street Sense’s success last year helped propel his trainer Carl Nafzger into the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame this summer. Nafzger remains enthusiastic about Palm Meadows. “This training facility is great,” he said. “It’s fantastic. It’s quiet. You can do so much here to train a horse. You’ve got the chute. You’ve got the turf. You can do everything in the world to train a horse. Of course, everybody comes to Florida because of the weather.”

Zito is well aware of the difference in the weather between Florida and New York every winter. “You always say you’re a product of your environment,” he said. “Obviously, this is a great facility. The surface is good. It’s quiet. It’s a good place to train. That’s the main thing.”

Van den Broek defers accolades to his boss: “All of the credit has to go to Mr. Stronach,” he said. “Ninety-nine percent of the facility was his design. We didn’t do a thing until he approved it, anything from the color of the screws to the color of the turf to designing the stalls. Everything. It was all him.”

Among the 66 trainers who were stabled at Palm Meadows last winter in addition to Dutrow, Nafzger, Romans and Zito were Jim Bond, Dominic Galluscio, Stanley Hough, Jimmy Jerkens, Steve Klesaris, Michael Matz, Kiaran McLaughlin, Kenny McPeek, Graham Motion, Angel Penna Jr., Linda Rice, Tom Skiffington, Barclay Tagg, John Terranova, Jimmy Toner, Rick Violette, John Ward and Marty Wolfson.

There are 40 barns at Palm Meadows, each with 36 12-by-12 foot stalls with rubber mats. Every other stall is lined with rubber on the walls. Each barn contains an office, a private restroom, two tack rooms, a second restroom for staff, provisions for a washer, dryer and ice machine and a storage loft for light equipment. Twenty 40-foot-wide sand rings allow horses to roll in for fun. A 55,000 square-foot composing plant processes horse waste into compost.

A three-storey administration/lodging building has an employee lounge, a kitchen and a trainer’s lounge with men’s and women’s locker rooms on the first floor. The second and third floors have 30 fully-furnished, one-bedroom efficiency apartments for trainers and assistant trainers with approximately 480 square feet of living space.

Stall rent is $1,200 per stall for the season; dorm rooms are $500 per room for the season and trainer apartments are $1,000 per room with a six-month lease only.

Training hours are from 6:30 to 11am. with one harrow break at 8:30 a.m. The turf track is available for breezing on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays from 10 to 11 a.m., and numbers are limited. The starting gate is available on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays from 7 to 9:30 a.m. Free horse-shuttle transportation is available to Gulfstream Park on race days.

Last spring, Tagg had Triple Crown hopeful Tale of Ekati stabled at Gulfstream Park, but transferred him to Palm Meadows. Romans and many other trainers shuttled horses back and forth. A training facility completely separate from a busy, crowded racetrack is a nice option for any trainer.

Nationalizing the Rulebook - can it be done?

The Autumn 2008 issue of our sister publication European Trainer includes an article on Worldwide Rules, in which Katherine Ford examines European efforts to establish a worldwide ruling system for governing horseracing. When we looked at running the same article in this issue we realized that America had to first look at coordinating their own rules of racing at a national level before joining in the international debate. 
Frances J Karon
 (14 October 2008 - Issue Number: 10)

Treating Joint Degeneration the Drug-Free Way

The Background -
Lameness resulting from joint degeneration or osteoarthritis (OA) is one of the most prevalent diseases affecting horses and the most common reason that vets are called out to competition horses. OA causes inflammation of the joint lining and progressive destruction of articular cartilage that covers the ends of the bones composing a joint. This destruction decreases both the natural shock-absorbing function and the range of motion of the joint, ultimately resulting in lameness in the affected animal.

Conventional treatments for joint disease include reduced or altered exercise regimes, bandaging, the use of anti-inflammatory agents, anti-arthritic drugs, artificial joint fluid and corticosteroids. For many years these treatments have helped to improve the condition of horses’ joints and subsequently helped maintain their overall soundness. Yet the fact is that all of them offer only limited efficacy; some are associated with side effects and the fact that some of them involve the administration of prohibited substances creates a headache for trainers.
New treatment
With these factors in mind, perhaps it’s not surprising that a completely new form of ‘drug-free’ treatment is attracting increasing interest from both the equine vets and trainers. While it’s still early days, its advocates believe that it may, over time, prove to offer a more effective and side-effect free way forward for the management and treatment of equine joint disease.
The new treatment, which is gaining an increasing foothold in the UK, US, Europe, Australia, South Africa and Saudi Arabia, is called an ‘autologous’ treatment because it effectively involves the horse healing itself.
A range of in-depth studies are underway to test the efficacy of autologous therapies and, while not yet conclusive, initial research results and anecdotal evidence are proving encouraging.
The causes
So, let’s examine how it works. Joint cartilage destruction is caused by a number of substances that increase when inflammation occurs in the joint.
Laboratory and clinical research has shown that one of the main substances responsible for cartilage destruction is interleukin 1 (IL-1). A multitude of research has also shown that antibodies produced against this cartilage-destructive substance can have a beneficial effect in arresting cartilage damage. A protein called IL-1RA has proved particularly helpful in this respect.
Treating the problem
The autologous treatment involves harnessing the regenerative and anti-inflammatory properties of the horse’s own blood cells, including IL-1RA to combat the IL-1, and encouraging damaged musco-skeletal tissues to heal. Effectively then the horse heals itself, a huge potential advantage for hard-pressed trainers trying to juggle horses’ treatment regimes around racing commitments.
The treatment involves a veterinary surgeon taking blood from the horse with a special syringe containing specially treated glass beads. The syringe is then incubated for 24 hours during which time white blood cells locate onto the beads and produce the regenerative and anti-inflammatory proteins.
After incubation, the syringe is placed into a special centrifuge to separate the serum from the blood clot and create a solution known as Autologous Conditioned Serum (ACS) – effectively a type of ‘anti-inflammatory soup’ with boosted levels of IL-1RA and other regenerative proteins. The ACS is then decanted into three to five vials for later intra-articular injection by the vet into the affected joints of the horse to reduce inflammation and initiate cartilage healing. Typically, three treatments are recommended for optimum clinical effect whilst the horse remains in training or is rested.
Results
A study published in 2005 and carried out at Colorado State University examined the efficacy of the ACS therapy compared to a control (placebo).
Sixteen horses were involved in the trial. Eight underwent the ACS therapy and the remaining horses were treated using saline solution. The horses were injected with the protein intra-articularly at weekly intervals for one month and then monitored for therapeutic success until day seventy of the trial. Factors measured included lameness, movement in the joint and a determination of the volume of synovial fluid.
The study demonstrated that compared to the control group the horses treated with the new therapy showed improvement in lameness and swelling.
Further examination histologically showed that there were also significant reductions in cartilage erosion with the ACS therapy compared to the control group.
The ACS process also encouraged the concentration of IL-1RA, the protein that promotes healing, to increase in the affected joints until day 70 showing that the benefit of the treatment is not short-lived.
Veterinary surgeon Dr. Thomas Weinberger, Müggenhausen, Germany, who led the study, commented: “The arthrosis study clearly demonstrates that the ACS Therapy is an efficient and safe alternative to common therapeutic interventions.”
The late Prix d’Amerique winner and world record trotter Victory Tilly is known to have undergone the treatment successfully.
The experience so far
So, what do equine vets make of this revolution? Consultant Equine Surgeon Cedric Chan BVSc CertES(Orth) DiplECVS MRCVS says the results he’s experienced so far have been encouraging but it’s too early for definitive conclusions.
A RCVS and European Recognised Specialist in Equine Surgery, who runs NW Equine Referrals, UK and France, based in England, Chan says: “I became interested in the therapy as a new physiological form of joint treatment for OA after attending a lecture by Professor Wayne McIlwraith and also using it at one of my referral centers in France, which was using it based on Orthogen’s (the company which first developed the treatment) experience.”
He has, in particular, used the treatment after arthroscopic surgery where OA had been demonstrated.
Neal Ashton, BVet Med Cert EP Cert ES (ST) MRCVS, shares Cedric Chan’s views: “The Autologous Conditioned Serum is now regularly considered at Oakham as an option for intra-articular joint disease in a range of joints. It’s proved particularly effective in treating horses which have been non-responsive to steroids.”
Ashton treats a high percentage of competition horses which are competed regularly and cites a key advantage of ACS as its flexibility when fitting in treatment around events. “Certainly trainers and riders seem to understand and are attracted by the concept of the horse healing itself,” he comments.
Andy Bathe MA, VetMB, DipECVS, DEO, MRCVS, Head of the Equine Sports Injuries Clinic at Rossdale & Partners (Newmarket, England) and another user, says: “I was the first user of the new therapy in the UK. Over the last eighteen months we’ve been pleased with the usefulness of this product in treating our practice population of racing Thoroughbreds, as well as on our referral population of a broader range of horses.
“We’ve found it helpful in the management of traumatic joint disease in racing Thoroughbreds, which have only been partially responsive to corticosteroids.
We’ve had some noticeable successes in helping high quality horses achieve the kind of success they deserve. We have also found beneficial effects in soft tissue injuries such as tendon and ligament injuries. It’s a very exciting technology and one which certainly adds to our armory when trying to treat injuries in these athletic horses.”
Lanark-based Clyde Vet Group recently treated the first horse in Scotland and Andrew McDiarmid BVM&S, Cert ES (Orth), MRCVS, head of the practice’s equine division, says: “While the use of this treatment is in its early stages, preliminary results are encouraging and it is definitely an exciting addition to our therapeutic range of treatments in the management of equine lameness. It represents new territory for equine vets and may herald the start of a completely new direction in treating joint disease.
At the moment, we, like other clinics, are primarily using it to treat cases that have not responded to conventional therapies.”
So, what’s the conclusion so far? “At its best, the therapy has proved extremely effective,” says Neal Ashton. “While it hasn’t worked in every case, I’ve treated racehorses which have gone on to win races and eventers which have got round Badminton and Burghley – something they would have struggled to do the year before.
ACS has a well-deserved place in our toolkit of treatments for joint disease.”
With more research indeed planned and in-depth studies underway, the development of autologous therapies could well be a key area to watch for 2008.

Howard Wilder (14 October 2008 - Issue 10) ​

The Equine Larynx – on a Knife Edge!

Men have been interfering with the equine larynx for centuries, but so far with only limited success. When a horse is heard to be making a noise for the first time, it is of serious concern. Sometimes the concern is only short lived as the horse may be unfit, have a mild respiratory infection or perhaps a sore throat. However, on other occasions the equine athlete in question is on the verge of being diagnosed with a problem that will limit its performance for the rest of its life.

The equine athlete is anatomically designed on a knife edge in so many ways. Firstly, rather than having five digits like a human, the horse is precariously balanced on the equivalent of our middle finger. Add to this the obscure meandering anatomy of the horse’s gut leading to regular occurrences of painful and life-threatening colic episodes, and it is easy to get a sense of just how the thoroughbred has been built for athletic ability rather than soundness – the horse’s respiratory system is no exception. The horse has a massive, powerful cardio-respiratory system but unfortunately air is inhaled and exhaled through a small unreliable larynx and a rather narrow complex nasal system, especially considering that the horse is an obligate nasal breather and thus does not receive any air through its mouth. It is for this reason that any abnormality in the upper respiratory tract of the horse causes a reduction in the amount of oxygen it receives. Clearly, the result of this is an adverse effect on performance.
When faced with a horse that makes a respiratory noise we have a few diagnostic tools at our disposal. Firstly, and perhaps most importantly, we must analyze the noise that the horse is making at exercise. Is the noise inspiratory (when the horse is breathing in) or expiratory (when the horse is breathing out), or are there both excess inspiratory and expiratory breathing sounds? Also, the noise must be accurately described as certain noises are characteristic of certain abnormalities. For example, an inspiratory ‘whistle’ or ‘roar’ made all the way up the canter often indicates laryngeal hemiplegia (paralysis of the left side of the larynx), whereas an expiratory ‘gurgling’ or ‘choking’ sound whilst the horse is at peak exercise or pulling up at the top of the canter usually indicates dorsal displacement of the soft palate.
Young, unfit horses coming into training for the first time often sound ‘thick’ in their wind and can also make an expiratory gurgle when pulling up at the top of the gallop, especially if they have a sore throat (pharyngitis). This condition is essentially inflammation of the pharynx characterized by enlarged white spots (lymphoid follicular hyperplasia). It is a condition that is easily diagnosed by endoscopic examination and will affect almost all horses at some stage and is present in nearly one hundred percent of horses in training under two years of age. The exact cause is unknown but it is probably initiated by challenge to the young horse’s immune system. It is not a serious condition and it usually self-resolves with time. However, when it is causing problems, various treatments may be attempted including anti-inflammatories, antibiotics and immuno-stimulants.
Endoscopy is a crucial diagnostic aid; however, it can have its limitations when carried out in a horse at rest. If the horse has a respiratory infection, pharyngitis or an obviously paralyzed larynx then endoscopy is an excellent diagnostic aid, but in other cases scoping a horse at rest can provide little in the way of information as to why the horse is making such a noise. For this reason, equine veterinary medicine has looked to more advanced technology for assistance. The idea of ‘scoping’ horses on a treadmill whilst galloping came first. Whilst this certainly has obvious merits it does come with some downsides such as the question of whether a treadmill truly represents an equivocal test to a gallop or race and the surface on which the horse has to gallop. In fact, many of the treadmills around the country are currently not in use as too many injuries have occurred. There is now a new idea of fixing a scope in the horse’s nostril, which stays in place whilst the horse canters or gallops. It transmits a signal that can be viewed on a monitor and so we could see exactly what the horse’s larynx was doing as it makes the noise. As yet only a prototype of this ‘over-ground’ endoscope exists but could this be the future of accurate diagnosis of equine wind problems?
By far the most common condition that causes an abnormal inspiratory sound, and possibly the most common cause of any abnormal respiratory sound in the thoroughbred racehorse, is idiopathic left laryngeal hemiplegia (paralysis of the left side of the larynx). This condition is caused by degeneration of the nerve that supplies the left side of the larynx so that that it ‘hangs’ into midline causing an inspiratory ‘whistling’ or ‘roaring’ sound during cantering or galloping and thus obstructing airflow to the lungs. The cause of this nervous degeneration is not known but this again leads me onto yet another poor anatomical design point of the horse. The right laryngeal nerve has a simple route, branching off from the vagus nerve (which comes from the brain) travelling directly to the larynx. However, God decided that the left laryngeal nerve shouldn’t have it so easy and instead it must travel all the way to the heart, where it wraps around a large pulsing artery, before coming all the way back to the larynx. The left laryngeal nerve is also the longest nerve in the body and so it stands to reason that it is commonly damaged and perhaps unsurprisingly, there is also data to suggest that the bigger the horse, the greater its chance of developing laryngeal hemiplegia.
This disorder is not desirable for a number of reasons, not least the fact that it is a progressive disease and hence a small problem in a two-year-old can rapidly become a huge problem in a three-year-old. Nevertheless, surgical treatment is commonly attempted and there are three main operations. A ‘Hobday’ operation refers to the removal of a large portion of the left side of the larynx and thus theoretically reduces the amount of respiratory obstruction. However, many veterinary surgeons argue that although this may alleviate the noise (as the left vocal cord has been removed) it struggles to reduce the obstruction significantly and hence they prefer the ‘tie-back’ operation. Here, the larynx is permanently tied open and so the obstruction should be alleviated. However, things are never so simple in wind surgery and occasionally the larynx can end up in a mess if things do not go well, for example, the stitch breaks down. Hence, the last resort is to insert a permanent metal tube into the horse’s throat through which it can breathe, by bypassing the larynx altogether. This can also be very messy and it is not easy to keep the tube clean, however, Party Politics did win a Grand National with a tube in his windpipe!
Perhaps the most common cause of an expiratory ‘gurgling’ sound is dorsal displacement of the soft palate. During normal breathing, the soft palate sits in front of the larynx just below the epiglottis allowing maximal airflow through the larynx. During eating on the other hand, the soft palate rises above the larynx, directing food into the food pipe rather than the windpipe. What happens in this condition is that the soft palate rises up during exercise thus blocking airflow and often causing an expiratory gurgling or choking sound. Although the clinical signs of this problem are quite characteristic, confirmation of the diagnosis can be difficult as the larynx often looks normal at rest and thus the use of a treadmill or over-ground endoscope may be necessary for an absolute diagnosis.
There are many possible treatments for soft palate displacement, probably because none of them are one hundred percent effective. Starting with the simple solutions, if there is respiratory infection, it should be treated. Next, if the horse is unfit, it should be trained further before considering anything more radical. Then various items of tack can be tried – these include a cross-noseband, a tongue-tie, a spoon-bit, a ring-bit or an Australian noseband. If none of these treatments works then surgery is often attempted. There are a number of possible operations but two are more commonly carried out than the rest – soft palate cautery and the ‘tie-forward’ operation. This is because most soft palate operations are approximately 60% effective; therefore the easiest operation with the shortest layoff is usually tried first. The soft palate can be cauterized with a hot iron to make the palate firmer so that it does not displace during breathing. This may sound a little unsophisticated and slightly barbaric but it is very easy to do, it hardly interrupts the horse’s training and it can make a large difference in some horses, although it often has to be repeated. The second most commonly carried out operation, the ‘tie-forward’, tackles the problem from a different angle. Here, the larynx is manually tied forward with steel stitches, which reduces the amount of soft palate that is available to rise up and block the airway. Some horses have performed much better after such an operation and examples include Royal Auclair, who had his best season following the surgery culminating in finishing fourth in the Cheltenham Gold Cup and second in the Aintree Grand National.
There is a piece of tack that acts in a similar way to the tie-forward operation called the ‘Cornell Collar’ or throat support device. Researchers at Cornell University in the state of New York believe that a deficit in one particular muscle contributes to soft palate displacement and the device intends to mimic the effect of this muscle.
However, although it is in use in some American states, Canada, Australia and Hong Kong, it is banned by most racing authorities including most of Europe. There may be many reasons for this but perhaps the main one is the possibility of cheating as unlike an operation the tack is not permanent and so it could be fitted correctly one day and deliberately incorrectly another day.
Another common upper respiratory condition is epiglottic entrapment or aryepiglottic fold entrapment as it is sometimes known. The epiglottis is the tongue-like structure that should sit in front of the larynx. However, the epiglottis can become enveloped by a mucosal fold and so it becomes trapped in front of the larynx causing a partial obstruction. This usually results in a gurgling or choking sound that may be inspiratory or expiratory. The cause is not completely understood but diagnosis can be made relatively easily at rest if the horse has an ulcerated epiglottis representing the regularity with which the horse entraps its epiglottis, or alternatively a treadmill or over-ground scope could be used to visualize the horse entrapping at exercise. Treatment again involves checking for infection and using different tack, however, surgery can often be successful, at least in the short term, by cutting the mucosal fold and thereby preventing the epiglottis from becoming entrapped.
No discussion of equine wind problems would be complete without at least touching on respiratory infections. Respiratory infections can predispose horses to many of the conditions mentioned above but they can also target the larynx itself. Such laryngeal infections must be treated quickly and aggressively as any scarring or permanent damage to these important structures can leave the horse with a significant problem for the rest of
its life. The cause of laryngeal infections is not fully understood. Some have suggested that kick-back may cause damage to the horse’s larynx, which then becomes infected. However, if this were true then we should expect an increased incidence of laryngeal infections associated with dirt racing due to the large amount of kick-back, an idea that has no statistical evidence to support it.
In summary, the horse’s larynx is a complex topic and I have only succeeded in scraping the surface of a very large subject. There are essentially two major obstacles that so often cause us to fail in its treatment. Firstly, we are not always certain about a horse’s specific problem as we cannot scope it in the final furlong of a race. Secondly, even when we know what the problem is, the area is so delicate and there is so little margin for error that surgery fails to improve equine wind issues with alarming regularity.

James Tate BVMS MRCVS 
(14 October 2008 - Issue 10)

Is conformation in racehorses relevant?

The 2008 yearling sales have begun! Thousands of blue-blooded Thoroughbreds will have their conformation analyzed by trainers, owners and those conformation experts – bloodstock agents. Each catalogue is promoted with photographs of the current superstars sold at last year’s sale. However, does examining a horse’s conformation really give you a better idea as to whether you are looking at next year’s superstar?

James Tate BVMS MRCVS (European Trainer - issue 23 - Autumn 2008)

Comparing cold therapies and their uses in Racehorses

How do commercial cooling systems compare with the more traditional cooling methods? In recent years there has been an introduction of therapeutic cooling systems combining cold therapy with compression to produce a rapid reduction of soft tissue swelling in new injuries and therefore faster recovery times for many types of leg injuries. 

Nicole Rossa PG Dip. (European Trainer - issue 23 - Autumn 2008)

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)