"How Veterinary science, synthetic soils and robotics are changing thoroughbred racing"

[Delmar Deb]

http://www.signonsandiego.com/sports/delmarraces//20050907-9999-lz1c07turf.html

How veterinary science, synthetic soils and robotics are changing thoroughbred racing

By Suzanne Clancy
UNION-TRIBUNE

September 7, 2005

 
The scents of kettle corn and fine perfume will mingle with those of dust, sweat and well-oiled leather as crowds fill the paddock this afternoon for the last day of racing at Old Del Mar. After the last horse crosses the wire, close to 3,000 horses will have roared down the backstretch this season, thrilling casual fans and railbird regulars alike. Each race offers a new opportunity for glory and excitement – and payouts at the betting window – but also risk of traumatic injury to horse and jockey.
 
Last month, the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club, long recognized as an innovator and leader in the racing industry, hosted a meeting of experts from around the U.S., Europe and Australia, who shared the latest science on racing surfaces and minimizing injuries.
\"Most sports – football, golf – have their turf down to an exact science,\" said Leif Dickinson, superintendent of Del Mar\'s turf course and organizer of the conference. \"We\'d like to see more standardization.\"

Demanding pursuit

As fans of Seabiscuit will recall, in its early days, thoroughbred racing was frequently a brutal business for both horse and jockey. Developments in emergency and veterinary medicine, not to mention institution of regulations and insurance policies, have changed the picture dramatically.

In California, every horse that is put down or dies of natural causes at a racetrack is subject to compulsory necropsy, a program headed by Susan M. Stover, a veterinary professor at UC Davis.

Efforts by Stover\'s team and others in the 1990s eliminated the use of \"toe grabs\" in the state. These metal cleats were attached to the front edges of horseshoes to increase speed and traction, but were shown to lead to higher incidences of suspensory ligament and other musculoskeletal injuries.

Despite the advances, racing remains a demanding profession for a horse. A hoof strikes the ground with 5,000 pounds of pressure on a bone the size of your wrist, according to Steve Wood, superintendent of Del Mar\'s dirt track.

In order to measure those pressures precisely, Michael \"Mick\" Peterson, an engineering professor at the University of Maine, has developed a robotic hoof tester. The device is designed to drop down to the ground at the same angle and velocity as the front hoof of a galloping horse. It measures what a living hoof experiences when it meets a particular racing surface.
 
\"We need to develop measures based, not on inputs like water or sand content, but on biomechanics,\" said Peterson.

Within each galloping stride, a racehorse\'s front hooves go through four distinct phases. The first is the impact phase, when a hoof initially strikes the surface. Then the horse\'s full weight is transferred to that hoof during the stance phase. This is followed by the propulsive phase, when the hoof \"breaks over\" and begins to push off into the airborne swing phase, in which the horse\'s weight is transferred to the next leg that contacts the ground.

During impact, a hoof experiences \"deceleration in a very big way, we\'re talking 80 to 100 Gs,\" according to Peterson, as it slows from approximately 70 mph to a momentary standstill to make full contact with the ground and bear the horse\'s weight. By comparison, fighter pilots typically experience forces of about 6 to 9 Gs.

As the hoof enters the propulsive phase, this deceleration reverses – the hoof must now accelerate to push off the ground and catch up with the forward motion of the horse\'s body mass.

By measuring load and acceleration in response to various surfaces, the robot has shown different track layers are important to different phases of the gait. The cushion, typically a three-inch layer of soft dirt, slows down entry and can reduce the load on a hoof by up to 50 percent. But it\'s the underlying areas that are important for supporting propulsion.

\"We saw that the horse can be affected by what\'s going on up to a foot below the surface,\" Peterson said.

The reversal of acceleration that occurs between stance and propulsion exerts a force called shear stress on the base layers underlying the cushion. If those layers cannot withstand this stress, shear failure occurs, and the hoof does not decelerate at an optimum rate.

\"Horsemen talk about a \'cuppy\' track,\" said Peterson, \"when the hooves slip and can\'t propel. We showed that what happens on that type of track is insufficient deceleration – it drops down to only 30 to 40 Gs.\"

The horse must work that much harder to push itself forward, which leads to enormous stresses on the forelimbs. Such forelimb injuries are the most commonly seen on racetracks.

If the base is infinitely stiff – \"if we use concrete,\" in Peterson\'s words, shear failure will not occur. \"But we can\'t do that because we have to worry about the load on the horse\'s legs. So we have contradictory demands on the surface, and we need to find a balance.\"

In order to examine track base layers, Peterson has paired his robot with ground-penetrating radar. He has traversed tracks around the U.S. with machines strapped to the back of a station wagon. At one track, the robot indicated an unusually soft area, and the radar revealed a base layer that was sinking away from the cushion.

During morning workouts at Del Mar last season, robot readings showed the track getting harder. As a result, Wood checked his equipment and found a dysfunctional harrow, the spike-toothed machine used to redistribute soil on the track. Workout times were also a bit fast, another clue that something was up.

\"Did we prevent an injury? We can\'t know that, but we do know we can be proactive, to act before injuries creep up or horsemen complain,\" said Peterson. Currently, his device is a prototype, but eventually robotic testers might be commercially produced and readily available to track managers.

Seeing into bones

Veterinarians, trainers and grooms also do all they can to head off injuries before they appear. After races and workouts, grooms on the backside rub down horses\' legs, probing for heat, swelling and anything that feels wrong. They apply ice, liniments, wraps and poultices, some from recipes that have been honed through decades of experimentation and are well-guarded family secrets.

Rick Arthur, an attending veterinarian at Del Mar, recalls trainers who insisted on mud gathered from a specific location in San Pablo Bay.

Advances in veterinary medicine, however, are making it possible to detect issues before they become apparent to even the most practiced hand and eye.

In the early 1990s, results from Stover\'s team showed that a new technique called nuclear scintigraphy could be used to detect bone remodeling in thoroughbreds before catastrophic injury. In nuclear imaging, radioisotopes are detected with a gamma camera. Areas that \"light up\" on a nuclear image indicate increased physiological activity. A screening facility, sponsored by the Dolly Green Foundation, was instituted at Santa Anita Park in Arcadia. Arthur has directed it since 1993.

In that time, more than 6,000 horses have been screened for bone changes that warn of impending fractures. Horses are referred for screening by their attending veterinarians.

\"Horses that would have broken down and been put down 10 years ago are now coming back to race, and they race very well,\" said Arthur. He recounted two cases of young horses that were diagnosed with stress-related remodeling in the tibia, the long bones of the upper leg. With proper rest, both horses recovered and went on to win Horse of the Year titles.

But ultimately, Arthur believes, more information is needed on how injuries, equine biomechanics and track surfaces correlate. For example, at the Newmarket (England) track, fractures of the pastern, the bone between the hoof and ankle, are commonly seen. At Del Mar, however, fractures in the cannon bone above the ankle predominate.

\"And we don\'t know why. We need a hoof\'s-eye view,\" Arthur said, which is why he and his colleagues are watching Peterson\'s work with great interest.

Leveling the field

Consistency of the track is paramount, according to Arthur. \"Ideally, all tracks would be the same, but variability within a track is a bigger problem (than variability between tracks). These horses are working at maximum physical ability – you don\'t want them to hit a hole.\"

In an effort to standardize conditions, some are seeking to eliminate traditional dirt tracks altogether and replace them with a synthetic dirt. Several manufacturers have developed so-called all-weather surfaces, consisting of a blend of sand and polymers of rubber or polypropylene doused with a wax coating.

The result is a granular substance that can be rolled out just like a traditional dirt track but is resistant to both rain and drying out.

One of these commercial blends, Polytrack, has been used in England since 1987 and was installed at Kentucky\'s Keeneland training track in 2004. The synthetic blend appears to cushion the impact better than natural surfaces. Horses that trained on Polytrack at Keeneland made 28 percent more starts than their peer group a year earlier, indicating a lower frequency of training injuries.

(The track reports it has not needed to water the surface since installation. By contrast, Del Mar typically uses 80,000 gallons of water a day.)

Synthetic surfaces offer an additional advantage in that turns can be banked, which makes them safer and more negotiable for horses. As they fly around turns, horses\' forelegs have to work against centrifugal forces that exert a lateral pull, stressing the joints. Banking reduces lateral forces on the joints by tilting the bones away from the vertical, directing stress to travel straight down through the bones rather than tugging on joints.

George Pratt, professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has developed formulas for banking turns based on the radius of the turn, the average weight of a racehorse and the angle at which horses lean into their turns. Using a standard physics equation for computing centrifugal forces, Pratt determined the lateral force on an average turn to be 240 pounds.

This force can be offset by banking. According to Pratt\'s formula, a 1,000 pound horse leaning into a turn at a typical four-degree angle will experience a lateral force reduction of 170 pounds on a turn banked 10 percent. A 2-percentbanked turn reduces lateral force by only 90 pounds.

Most tracks in the U.S. are banked only a few percent, because dirt simply won\'t remain in place if banked more steeply. Michael Dickinson, trainer at Tapeta Farm in Maryland, says he has successfully banked turns at 10 percent using a trademarked synthetic surface he developed.

This summer, Polytrack was laid down on the main track at Turfway Park in Kentucky. Racing on this surface will begin for the first time in the U.S. in September.

Although no one has yet created a synthetic turf suitable for racing, plastics are gaining a foothold. This season, Leif Dickinson is testing turf grids at Del Mar, polypropylene \"honeycombs\" that are inserted under the turf and help anchor roots into soil.

\"We want to eliminate large divots, chunks of turf coming up,\" he said. With the grids, \"we\'re seeing the horses lightly tamping down into the turf, which is what we want.\"

Dickinson and his colleagues believe that exchanging information is an important first step toward making race tracks safer for horses and jockeys. Participants repeatedly remarked, \"If this (advance) saves one horse, it\'s worth it.\" No doubt those clustered along the paddock rail anticipating post time will agree.

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[davidrex]

     So stronach decides to drop a bomb on opening day at Laurel.
     Along w/opening day you get free parking,a program, 1/2 price hot dogs,and by the way we\'re slashing our race dates in half!
     The good news is that no one pays attention to magna anymore..the question is? ..the motive.
     Trying to sell?..cash money to buy N.Y. franchise?...putting pressure on Md. legislature for passage of slots?(probable)
     Whatever the reason..this corp. has shown time and again it will stoop to whatever level the man behind the curtain deems necessary.

[Michael D.]

maryland citizens will not have decent horse racing. maryland citizens have voted for politicians that 1) do not want a thriving gaming industry, and 2) will not provide a decent tax structure for horsemen..... and yes, stronach is pulling this stunt to get the legislature to move on slots. if you think a different owner could make maryland racing work without slots, you simply don\'t understand the current dynamics of the business. if you live in maryland, GO TO THE POLLS IN \'06!!

[Chuckles_the_Clown2]

Ok, so he\'s resurfaced Laurel.

He\'s rebuilt Gulfstream.

He developed \"The Horse Wizard\".

he put a huge infield T.V. Monitor up at Santa Anita.

And he\'s got a marble mouth Australian or South African calling races.

Hindsight is proving that Gulfstream project was a waste of money. The track is as capricious as it ever was. The other item that was lost in the project is that Gulfstream is the preeminent track for developing 3 year olds and there are no 8.5 mark races there for them due to the congifuration of the oval. They need to extend the chute or build it bigger next time.

Every track in America should be 12 furlongs, Grade I\'s won at that distance should involve 2 million dollar purses and the winner receive new black type....Grade Ia winner.

We act like two minutes is a lot of horse race. When Kelso won the Jockey Club Gold Cup he ran for near three and a half minutes.

[TGJB]

Deb-- great catch with the article, and it\'s great to see science finally starting to catch up with our industry (or vice versa). In the interest of SELF interest, I will point out that both scientists mentioned were among those who responded to my requests and gave me quotes for the \"Changing Track Speeds\" presentation-- Peterson was the one who said that what we do is the best way to measure track \"speed\".

Anyone who hasn\'t listened to it yet can check it out in the archives section of this site.

[Michael D.]

i can\'t figure out why they didn\'t build a shute at GP. i hope it\'s not too late. the place is a major success according to horsemen though. think \'06 will be a bit rough as they struggle to get things up and going. by \'07 though, i think we are looking at the premier racing facility in the world. the racing sure will be better than anything else in this country.

[richiebee]

Really no excuse for Gulfstream not to have a spectacular meet with the uncertainty regarding racing\'s other eastern winter venue. Now lets see if they can have decent WEEKDAY cards. Also, evaluate whether Sunshine Millions is hurting the winter stakes programs at SA and GP. If it is having a detrimental effect, scrap it and have the marketing geniuses find another excuse for having cheerleaders at a racetrack

State of New York could end up stuck with NYRA. No telling what effect Katrina will have on CD\'s bottom line. While (opinion) they will be adequately insured for business interruption, my guess wpuld be that they are probably not adequately insured to rebuild the facility from whatever insurance proceeds they will collect. Magna Entertainment continues to flounder, and I still contend that Stronach is Robert Brennan without the helicopter. The end result of the pissing contest he has started in Maryland could be sale, at a large loss to Magna, of the Maryland properties. Maybe the Mid Atlantic circuit of the future is Philly, Delaware, Colonial.

FUNNY CIDE... relatively sound, a very good turn of foot, but what a shame that this gelding is not trained by Bobby Frankel. Barclay Tagg has been a good trainer for many years, but he does not like training an animal which brings him into the spotlight, and FC has underachieved under his tutelage after his 3YO year, IMO. You could make room for FC by moving out High Limit, who Frankel really seems lost with. I would love to see him entered in one turn dirt races.

\"by moving out High Limit, who Frankel really seems lost with. I would love to see him entered in one turn dirt races.\"

How\'s this edit Jerry?  Does this make you happy?

I agree. They should at least try sprinting him.  He started out showing very good speed sprinting as a 2YO. His only good route races came under favorable conditions. Why Frankel has continued to run the horse in routes and now on turf is beyond me. He may have a pretty good sprinter/miler there and he\'s wasting it.    

[TGJB]

Ch-- I\'m going to let that stand. Next post that repeats that specific nonsense will be number 100, and it and all that follow on that subject will come down. You are free to continue to post new nonsense.

[bdhsheets]

d-rex:

Whhhaaaaaattt? Too difficult to start a new thread?? Your comments and follow-ups had absolutely nothing to do with D-Debs most informative and interesting article. It really isn\'t that difficult keeping stuff separate...really it isn\'t.

[SJU5]

Great scientific article...I agree, it\'s about time that racing catches up to other sports and utilizes the scientific community and medical personnel for all us us to benefit!

Keep up the pressure JB!

[Chuckles_the_Clown2]

richiebee Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>> FUNNY CIDE... relatively sound, a very good turn
> of foot, but what a shame that this gelding is not
> trained by Bobby Frankel. Barclay Tagg has been a
> good trainer for many years, but he does not like
> training an animal which brings him into the
> spotlight, and FC has underachieved under his
> tutelage after his 3YO year, IMO. You could make
> room for FC by moving out High Limit, who Frankel
> really seems lost with. I would love to see him
> entered in one turn dirt races.
>


I dont know. If Funny Cide never wins another race he\'s still had a phenomenal career. Derby, Preakness, jockey club gold cup. That said he didn\'t win at 12 marks. Barclay Tagg is a fantastic Trainer. I\"m trying to remember the great turf horses he\'s had that scored for me repeatedly in the pre EPO era. Lets be real about what we are saying....we want Tagg to turn him over to trainers that utilize White Mercedes. Every time Funny steps onto the track Tagg is getting a little less out of him than guys like Frankel or Pletcher or Romans, but what he is getting out of him is the real deal. The horse has had a back issue, lets see where he is now.

CTC,

Why is 12 furlongs so important to you?

I also think Tagg is very good, but he did cave in to some pressure a few times when it came to running Funny in various races like the BC.

[jimbo66]

Chuckles,

Winning at 12 marks is completely irrelevant these days as far as measuring great horses, especially on the dirt.  How many 12 mark stakes races are there in the U.S. on dirt?  One?  So, if a horse doesn\'t win the Belmont Stakes, he doesn\'t qualify as great.

Not to say that I think Funny cide is great, but get over the 12 marks criteria for dirt horses.  It is 2005.  Unfortunately, the breed is now geared to speed and fragility, which is part of the reason why we have 5 horse fields in Grade 1\'s.  We have few horses that want to run 10 marks, let alone 12.  (See the Saint Liam posts)./

Jim

[Chuckles_the_Clown2]

Theres a couple reasons. The Arc d\' Triumphe and the Epsom Derby and the Irish Derby and the German, French and Italian Derbies are 12 marks for a reason. That distance is the international standard for quality. Contrary to what everyone wants to believe that was the American standard for quality at one time as well. Obviously, six furlongs isn\'t going to seperate horses very well. Everyone thinks Lost in the Fog is head and withers above the other sprinters. Lets wait and see.

My personal belief is that 9 marks is a distance that can be enabled by modern cheating. At 10 marks I think its significantly less effective, though there are several horses recently that have impinged upon that belief. Still I believe that the greater the distance the more the horses biology and natural ability come into the picture. The more his heart and lungs and muscle matter and the less blood chemistry can cover for.

Add to that the fact a horse must generally be sound to get 12 marks in fast time and I think it inures to the betterment of the breed to mate and race horses for 12 marks as opposed to 10 or even 6 furlongs.

I\'m quite certain I\'m right about this. Its not a unique idea of my own. Much more influential people than I have said the same thing for years. My hope is the harm done by drugs and shortening distances will be observed by the powers that be and that the traditional races will be lengthened back to their former tests of physical quality.

The way to cure what ails thoroughbred racing is to go back to the future and race long.

 
> CTC,
>
> Why is 12 furlongs so important to you?
>
> I also think Tagg is very good, but he did cave in
> to some pressure a few times when it came to
> running Funny in various races like the BC.
>
>