State Of The Art is coming to China

By Sally Duckett

Horses being led back to stables after security checks.

The dream for many trainers is to be based at a top-class state-of-the-art training centre with wonderful gallops, leading rehabilitation facilities, top-class staff accommodation as well as an ambitious site owner prepared to establish the facility as the very best of the best. For nine Hong Kong-based trainers, that dream has come true. 

In August 2018, an eight-year project conceived by the Hong Kong Jockey Club (HKJC) came to fruition with the opening of its Conghua racecourse and training centre in China. 

Horses enjoy the spacious and comfortable living environment at CRC.

There is the slight downside for Sha Tin-based trainers, as the centre is a four-hour drive away from their main Hong Kong stables—across the border and in China. But every possible negative that it might have caused has been mitigated by the HKJC through discussion, cooperation with the Chinese authorities, big-planning, alongside the focused use of technology and ambitious ideas.

The trainers pavilion has an unobstructed view of the racecourse.

Nine trainers were invited to send horses to Conghua last autumn, and each has a string of between 15 to 20 horses based at the 150-hectare site—the trainers now termed ‘dual-site trainers’. Currently around 150 horses are in training at the €377 million facility, although by December 2018 the number of horses who had shipped to Conghua, returned to Sha Tin and travelled to China had already exceed 500 individuals.

The equine swimming pool has a depth of 2.6m.

The trainers were fully involved with the design and planning of Conghua from outset; the racecourse and gallops are in fact a replica of Sha Tin. Ensuring that the daily work and training processes are exactly the same, methods honed in Hong Kong can merely be picked up and transferred to China. There is though, at the trainers’ request, an additional 5f uphill straight gallop.

Selected trainers were invited to trial the Chinese venture and were chosen on their own abilities and that of their staff. The HKJC wanted to ensure that stable staff sent to China were capable and experienced. 

The nine trainers with horses on site include leading trainers John Size, John Moore, Danny Shum, Casper Fownes and Tony Cruz.

All have been successful back in Hong Kong with their Conghua-trained horses (which are identified as such in the media for the betting public); and the Sha Tin nine are kept fully abreast of the training at Conghua courtesy of video, timing facilities and real-time technology all provided by the HKJC. The trainers, however, can spend as much time as they wish in China.

“John Size and Danny Shum in particular have spent a lot of time at Conghua”, reports Andrew Harding, the HKJC’s executive director of racing. “We have had applications from other trainers to send horses, and we will be adding another two later in the year”.

CRC will serve as a world-class facility for the training of Hong Kong's racehorses.

The success of the training process has kicked into gear quicker than even the ambitious HKJC team planned, and the site has already lost its initial ‘pre’ training tag.

“We had thought trainers would take horses back to Hong Kong two or three weeks ahead of a race, but they are travelling down and running just two days later—and winning”, smiles Harding. “We thought this would take perhaps a year to phase in, but it has come much quicker. The HKJC provides all the transportation, and we are already needing to ramp up the logistics—the transport initially between the two sites was twice a week, but we have extended it to six days a week (much earlier than anticipated). The travelling process had also been taking five business days to process with the levels of administration required for the border crossing, but our dual site trainers said that was too long. We have already narrowed that down to two days. Trainers can now ship on Monday in order to race on Wednesday at Happy Valley, and the horses need to undergo certain veterinary examinations ahead of racing; so they have to be in Hong Kong two days ahead of racing. They can then return to Conghua on Friday. The transport costs are all part of the HKJC’s service, and owners do not see any extra expense”.

Establishment of the Equine Disease Free Zone

Wash-down facilities.

The HKJC’s CEO Winfried Engelsbrecht-Bresges has driven the concept. (Engelsbrecht-Bresges is the organisation taking advantage of a unique opportunity that emerged in 2010.) 

That year the People’s Republic of China hosted the Asian Games at Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong province. The equestrian sector was based at the site in Conghua, and in order to successfully host the equine side of the games, an Equine Disease Free Zone (EDFZ) had to be established. 

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Castrating Racehorses: A routine procedure not without its pitfalls

By Tom O'Keeffe

A recent study published in the Equine Veterinary Journal assessed the routine procedure of gelding and the complications associated with this procedure.  The research was a retrospective study of horses castrated at the Sha Tin training complex in Hong Kong, between July 2007 and July 2012.

Hong Kong is a unique training and racing environment, and all horses training and racing there are imported, as there is no breeding in the region. Fillies are rarely imported. The majority of colts are castrated at some stage in their career, and open standing castration (OSC) is the method of choice by the vets of the Hong Kong Jockey Club (HKJC). Until now, nobody has looked at the prevalence of complications following castration of horses at the HKJC. This recently published study aimed to describe the prevalence and severity of complications in the 30 days following castration.

Reasons for gelding a racehorse in training

Most trainers perceive geldings as easier to train than colts, and if the horse has not shown enough ability for a stud career to beckon, there is little to lose by gelding.  In Hong Kong, due to the unique environment the horses live in, there is an added incentive to geld these horses sooner rather than later. Once gelded, their management becomes significantly more straightforward.

Castration Method Options

Three surgical techniques are commonly used for equine castration: 1) open, in which the parietal tunic surrounding the testicle is incised and, usually, retained; 2) closed, where the portion of the parietal tunic surrounding the testis and distal spermatic cord is removed, and 3) half closed, where an incision is made through the exposed parietal tunic at the cranial end of the testis or distal end of the spermatic cord allowing the testis and part of the spermatic vasculature to be prolapsed through the incision prior to removal.

In most cases, racehorse castration is done standing via the open technique under local anesthetic, with sedation and pain relief as necessary. The testicles and spermatic cords are first injected with local anesthetic to numb the region. Once the tissues are totally desensitized, a slash incision is made into the scrotum. The testicle is exteriorized, and it is removed with a surgical instrument called an emasculator. The emasculator has a set of interlocking crushing blades with a cutting blade placed at the bottom of the array. Once the testicular cord is clamped in the emasculator the testicle will usually fall off, but the cord is retained within the interlocking crushing blades for approximately one to two minutes. This creates trauma to the tissues, which causes them to swell once the crush is released, reducing blood flow. The second effect of the emasculators is for the blood to be held in position long enough to begin the clotting process, which carries on once the clamp is removed.

An alternative method of castration is to anesthetize the horse and carry out the procedure with the horse on its back, as a completely sterile operation in an operating room. This has the advantage of minimal post-castration swelling as there is no infection in the area, which can be a common problem with standing open castrations.  In horses who are cryptorchids (ridglings), which is when there is only one descended testicle in the scrotum, standard open standing castration is contraindicated. These horses require either castration under general anesthetic or testicle removal under standing surgery via laparoscopy (inserting a camera and instruments into the abdomen to remove testicle via a surgical incision).

Complications of Castration

As with all intrusive surgical procedures, there is the potential for things to go wrong. While the castration procedure is relatively straightforward, post-operative complications including excessive edema of the scrotum and surrounding tissues, infection and fever, hemorrhage, lameness, hydrocele formation, peritonitis, eventration, penile paralysis, scirrhous cord formation, and death have been recognized.

With castrations done under general anesthetic, there are all the attendant risks of putting a 1000lb animal on its back and up again. All anesthesia carries a risk of death in the horse. This has been calculated as approximately 1% in equine practice, and can be as low as 0.5% in the major well-equipped equine hospitals. In addition to this, occasional cases show prolonged bleeding after the surgery, which results in significant swelling that sometimes has to be resolved by opening the scrotal sac.

For standing castrations, some of the problems encountered include prolonged bleeding, which can occur irrespective of the length of time the cord has been clamped for. This can become serious enough to require a further surgery to identify the bleeding vessels and tie them off, but thankfully this is rare. Another rare complication is herniation of intestines through the potential space left in the inguinal canal with removal of the testicle. The intestines can either get trapped under the skin producing severe colic, or worse still, dangle out of the abdomen and become contaminated. This presents a very serious risk to the horse’s survival and requires immediate surgery to attempt to clean the exposed bowel and return it to the abdomen. Fortunately this is extremely rare in the Thoroughbred.

However, the most common complication is infection at the site of the castration. This procedure leaves an open wound and obviously the horse can lie down in bedding full of urine and feces on the same day it has been castrated, therefore potentially contaminating the open surgical site. Unfortunately many racehorses’ ability to be turned out in a paddock is often controlled by the training environment they reside in. Infection post-castration, and the added expense and lost training days associated with it, is a bugbear for trainers and vets, and this study reviews a common problem encountered worldwide.

Hong Kong Study....

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The ongoing effort to minimize the rate and impact of fractures

By Professor Celia Marr

In Thoroughbred racing, musculoskeletal injury is a major safety concern and is the leading reason for days lost to training.  Musculoskeletal injury is the greatest reason for horse turnover in racing stables, with financial implications for the owner and the racing industry. Injuries, particularly on race day, have an impact on public perception of racing.  

Upper limb and pelvis fractures are less common than lower limb fractures, but they can lead to fatalities. Reducing the overall prevalence of fractures is critical and, at the very least, improving the rate of detection of fractures in their early stages so the horse can be withdrawn from racing with a recoverable injury will be a big step forwards in racehorse welfare. Currently, we lack information on the outcomes following fracture, and an article recently published in the Equine Veterinary Journal (EVJ) from the veterinary team at the Hong Kong Jockey Club (HKJC) addressed this important knowledge gap.

Hong Kong Fracture Outcome Study

The HKJC veterinary team is in a unique position to carry out this work because their centralized and computerized database of clinical records, together with racing and retirement records, allows them to document follow-up, which is all but impossible elsewhere in the world. Dr. Leah McGlinchey, working with vets in Hong Kong and researchers from the Royal Veterinary College in London, reviewed clinical records from 2003 to 2014 to identify racehorses that suffered a fracture or fractures to the bones of the upper limb or the pelvis during training or racing, confirmed by nuclear scintigraphy, radiography, ultrasonography, or autopsy.

During these 11 racing seasons there were an average of 1468 horses in training each year, amounting to 102,785 starts over 8147 races, with 11% on dirt tracks and the rest on turf. McGlinchey found records of 108 racehorses that sustained 129 upper limb or pelvic fractures during 119 injury events. The most commonly fractured bone was the humerus at 50%, followed by the tibia at 30%. Nine horses sustained fractures that led to their immediate demise, five involving the scapula and four involving the humerus.

The majority (65%) of fractures occurred in training.  The overall incidence of upper limb and pelvic fractures in Hong Kong was three per 10,000 starts, and there were very similar incidences comparing both turf and dirt surfaces. The fatality rate due to upper limb and pelvic fracture was 0.8 per 10,000 starts. Over comparable time periods, race day upper limb and pelvic fracture rates were four per 10,000 starts in the UK, while race day fatalities were 1.8 per 10,000 starts in the UK and 1.9 per 10,000 in California; thus, rates of upper limb and pelvic fracture and fatality were lower in Hong Kong than in other racing jurisdictions.  Differences in training and racing regimens, racehorse surveillance, and veterinary care will vary across these racing centers, leading to different risk profiles for horses racing in these different locations.

This CT image taken during an autopsy, shows a comminuted fracture with multiple bone fragments.

All horses presented with lameness but importantly, the lameness grade was not necessarily very high. Indeed, 6.7% of the horses were Grade 1 of 5 lame, and 30.3% were Grade 2 of 5 lame, highlighting how important it is to rest and investigate mild new lameness. Typically, stress fractures cause acute lameness following fast work that soon eases in severity, and incipient fracture of the upper limb and pelvis can present as mild lameness with a subtle onset, which is all too easy to overlook. The degree of lameness associated with stress fracture is typically greatest when the scapula is involved and progressively less severe with the tibia, humerus, or radius. The diagnosis is all too obvious once severe, complete fracture has occurred.  In many cases, however, a diagnosis cannot be immediately made. Nuclear scintigraphy (also known as bone scanning) is the most sensitive method to detect stress fractures of the long bones and pelvis, although radiography and ultrasonography may also be useful.

Following fracture, all of the Hong Kong horses had a period of box rest followed by handwalking only. Three-quarters of these horses returned to racing a median of 169 days after sustaining the fracture; these made numerous starts, and 45 won.  In total, 59 horses had retired from training, 23 of which retired without returning to racing and, in 13 of these cases, with retirement directly attributable to the upper limb fracture.

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