3 minute read
Two eminent authorities in the field of racing-related horse injuries from the Melbourne Veterinary School spent two days presenting their studies to various participants at the Singapore Turf Club during the week.
Dr Chris Whitton, a specialist in equine surgery and the School's Head of Equine Centre and Dr Peta Hitchens, an equine veterinary epidemiologist, gave lectures to Kranji trainers and assistant-trainers on Wednesday, followed the next day by a second round to the local vets as well as those from the Hong Kong Jockey Club via two 'live' video links – one from the Sha Tin headquarters and another one from its Conghua training facility.
Both experts were invited by the Singapore Turf Club's veterinary department as part of their research work in the field of minimising the risk of injuries and fatalities in racehorses, and by ricochet, those who sit atop, the jockeys.
Dr Whitton specialises in bone-related injuries, having led a 14-year-long programme in that area, the Equine Limb Injury Prevention Programme, mainly in Victoria, while Dr Hitchens spoke mostly about horses' catastrophic musculoskeletal (CMI) injuries being the leading cause of jockey injuries, and sometimes fatalities.
A large turnout attended the talk held at the Club's Auditorium on Wednesday, including major industry players such as trainers Daniel Meagher (and assistant-trainer Danny Beasley), Tan Kah Soon, Michael Clements, Jason Lim, Cliff Brown, Stephen Gray (with assistant-trainer Nick Selvan), James Peters, Ricardo Le Grange, among others.
On Thursday, the presentations dug deeper into more technical details for the benefit of the STC's veterinary team headed by Dr Koos van den Berg as well as their HKJC counterparts who dialled in from Hong Kong.
An array of topics from loading factors, bone fatigue to prevention were covered, but the main message driven by both Drs Whitton and Hitchens was that in order to sustain longevity in racehorses, and ultimately that of the horse racing industry, injuries, in particular CMI, can be prevented through the education and instilment of a different mindset in horse training methods.
In a nutshell, plenty of rest will help give bones the chance to remodel and regenerate before fatigue sets in and that can eventually lead to a career-ending or even life-ending fracture.
While the idea of rest might sound dichotomous with a multi-million dollar industry like horse racing where the general mindset is to get more bang for your buck from each racehorse, Dr Whitton is adamant that in the long run, that is the direction to be taken for the survival of an industry already beset by other problems globally.
"I focus more on bone injuries than soft tissue injuries. I've been gathering data mainly from Victoria and a bit from Tasmania, but also from Asia, Hong Kong in particular," said Dr Whitton.
"The data from Hong Kong tends to be better as it's more centralised whereas in Australia, we have a lot more racecourses and so many different surfaces, that can present subtle variations.
"Over the years, the observations have changed so much. For example, in Australia, we now have a lot more synthetic tracks than just turf, and it's interesting to see there has been a higher incidence of sesamoid fractures than the cannon bone and condylar fractures normally associated with turf tracks.
"But regardless of surface, the pathogenesis to subchondral bone injury is the repeated high loads that lead to fatigue. It is an accumulation of damage over time, exacerbated by a shorter time between races.
"The worse part about bone fatigue is it is poorly understood because we can't see it. It's difficult to measure, sometimes you analyse a bone which is maybe in the last 20% of its fatigue life and you can't detect anything wrong.
"But the microdamage is already deep into its loss of stiffness against its loading cycle to failure. Maybe it's down to molecular chemistry - and that's why we're working on a mathematical model to understand this better – but all it takes is one cause to trigger the failure.
"It's a hard concept to grasp that it was the lead-up, the cumulative nature of causes, and not one cause that led to the effect.
"It's the law of physics, you can't avoid it, but the good news is you can prevent it through bone adaptation or bone repair through less intensive training and higher frequency of rests.
"We saw that in the training of new military recruits for example. Less intense training did not impair performance and the same theory can be applied to horses – why waste money and effort if an increased training volume doesn't improve performance?
"The general accepted average for rest in Australia is six weeks. We found out by increasing that by only one week can cause an increase in bone turnover.
"I'm aware that the concept of increasing resting periods may not sit well with some people. Even in England, they tend to keep training if there is nothing wrong with the horse.
"That is why I tend to get a more receptive audience with younger trainers who are desperate for new information in such areas they may not be familiar with. The older so-called more established trainers don't normally attend my talks as they think they know all.
"By the same token, I was very pleased with the session with your local trainers yesterday. They were keen to learn."
Dr Whitton advocates four steps in the prevention of bone fatigue that can lead to catastrophic injury.
(1) Adaptation of the skeleton to what the horse is meant to do, like the speed and surface eg increased speed over a shorter distance hence his theory barrier trials may help.
(2) Limit the accumulation of damage through safe volumes of training.
(3) Maximise bone repair through higher frequency of rest.
(4) Monitor closely and adapt the training method.
Dr Hitchens also touched on her epidemiological studies that identify potential associations with racehorse fatality, specifically bone damage brought about by both seasoned horses with well-adapted bone after undergoing a period of intense training or less experienced horses with poorly adapted bone at relatively low levels of training intensity.
But the former horse breeder from Canberra and former cadet Steward developed a keen interest in such research after frustratingly encountering a serious lack of documentation on jockey fatalities, which to her, portended a root cause that was not being investigated – a direct co-relation between CMI to the horse and jockey injury or death, even if the caveat is the conflicting evidence base stemming from differing racing jurisdictions (rules and regulations, track surfaces) around the world.
"In every 800 falls, two jockeys die. While falls can be due to clipping of heels or a horse stumbling, more than 70% of these falls are due to riding a horse that suffered CMI," said Dr Hitchens.
"In Singapore, there are two falls for every 1000 races. 1.1 is due to CMI, and 0.5 is due to distal forelimb (cannon and fetlock) injuries.
"There are several risk factors for racehorse injury and we investigated 275 of them, like horse characteristics, race characteristics, exercise history. An older horse of 6-8 years of age would have a higher risk factor, dirt or all-weather would have a higher incidence.
"The pathway to injury can be two ways. First, a period of intense training that leads to an accumulation of bone microdamage that we are unable to repair.
"Then we have horses who are early in a training period like unraced two-year-olds or those who are back from a spell. The damage comes from the loading of unadapted or de-adapted bone.
"But we have different tracks with different bias, and also the non-reporting of risk factors that gives a 65% predictability factor which horse will have a failure."
Just like Dr Whitton, Dr Hitchens said all was not lost as long as sensible solutions are brought to the table.
"We need to modify those risk factors like horse level, race level, track conditions, field sizes, exercise history, rest periods, to prevent common injuries like fetlock injuries," she said.
"We should also review training programmes, medical restrictions, track management, and more pointedly, we should standardise our record keeping. It will help us in our data analysis from an epidemiological point of view."
The informative workshop ended with a Q&A session where specific concerns pertaining to Kranji like the incidence of catastrophic injuries versus soft tissue injuries on the Polytrack, the benefits of the uphill track or the feasibility of ordering "long periods of rest" were raised.
The Hong Kong team also shared an experience where spelling horses succumbed to injury the moment they were put back in work – a phenomenon in line with horses whose bone structure was not adapted to the sudden impact of the workload applied.
Both experts fielded the questions, with Dr Whitton summing up the lecture with that apt last message to his audience.
"Every gallop uses up fatigue life, intensive campaigns need time for repair – horses are not machines," he said.
"There are no drugs that stop fatigue. It's hard to contain as incomplete fractures are challenging to detect, scintigraphy is the most sensitive method of detection, but it's not specific.
"So, prevention is not only important to avoid loss of training and racing time and premature ending of careers, it is also critical for optimal performance.
"It's all about education. We have a responsibility towards jockeys' life and it's time to have a change in culture."
