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RACING
CONDITIONS UNDER FOOT Since the untimely and high-profile deaths of George Washington and Eight Belles in America, research has stepped up a gear in an attempt to understand what causes horses to breakdown By Fran Jurga
F
ARRIER Mitch Taylor lugs a camera instead of a tool box today. Behind him along the rail at Keeneland’s training track trails a crew of technicians, a couple of horses, an exercise rider and an equine motion-analysis software developer. Their goal is not to shoe the horses, but to tape them as they run. But first they must convince the exercise rider that only the strides caught by the camera count, and that the horse needs to maintain the same speed, which is tracked by a police radar gun.
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Taylor will collect simple video footage that real people – trainers, owners, racetrack officials, veterinarians, farriers – can watch and understand. He will replay the tape over and over, until people see the difference between dirt and synthetic stride characteristics. That is, if there is one. Welcome to American horse racing. Since the public outcry over the tragic deaths of Eight Belles, George Washington, and other stakes horses on national television, racing is on the defensive, looking for answers. Like a fairgoer caught in a hall of mirrors, racing looks one way,
then the next, and sees a distorted picture of itself, partly because the very things it once knew to be true may not be so anymore. When the US Jockey Club’s first Welfare and Safety Summit (WSS) tackled the isolated topic of the possible ill effects of toe-grabs, Taylor’s crew headed to the track to record the difference in foot action between different types of shoes. The WSS Shoeing and Hoof Care Committee built a case that brought about a swift model rule change adopted by several state jurisdictions to reduce the