Is it possible that the difference in the vet’s opinion of soundness (sport horse vs racing vets) could contribute to the breakdown rate in racing?
It is an interesting contrast that you have raised. I am asking because I am only familiar with soundness as viewed in sport horses. I didn’t know that there were different standards.
I personally don’t believe so. Racetrack vets are incredibly thorough. Until major advances in technology and imaging somewhat leveled the playing field, it was desirable to have a racetrack vet evaluating your horse’s soundness, be it for race or sport, because they had superior knowledge and experience.
Trying to compare injuries in racing versus sport is more extreme than comparing apples to oranges. There are really different forces and conditions causing those injuries.
Also, I think it’s relevant to mention FEI jogs will often excuse similar “unevennesses” that I’m referring to (think: some of these horses who get spun repeatedly at CCI events, yet are almost always accepted). Any vet at the top level can recognize a lameness v. an unevenness that does not affect soundness. It’s more of a problem when the horse is being evaluated by less experienced eyes who decry, “he’s lame!”
Gotcha. Race track vets may perhaps be better at seeing “that’s just how he moves” than are sport horse vets.
We all know that horses that have passed the jog at Eventing competitions have had fatal injuries, not related to jumps, though not many.
It may well be comparing apples to oranges. We’ve all seen horses that are “off” in FEI Dressage competitions, that were not “rung out”. Few of those break down in a catastrophic manner due to the lack of speed or jumping factors. They tend to retire with soft tissue, tendon, or ligament injuries.
I wonder if sport horse people are more likely to use those new technologies than are race trainers? Do you have a guess?
Mongolian Humor seems as if he may have benefited from a close look at his hinds.
Has he always moved like he does in the video? He may have had a close look with the newer tech done on his hinds , I don’t know.
I’ll throw more mud in the discussion…the vets at Santa Anita are not all what I would call racetrack vets. Some were newly minted just graduated vets and I don’t know what their background was otherwise.
The BC was only relevant in the last few weeks or whenever the special saddle towels came out. Before that there were still vets swarming around out there looking at every horse from unnamed two year olds to aged claimers. There was no discrimination between horses worth $2 million and those worth $2000. Horses were being pulled out of their stalls and examined without warning. I saw it myself. Hell I had to deal with it myself.
The good part is that I don’t think they were playing favorites. No one I saw would have given a damn if you brought a horse in from the ends of the Earth or paid $500,000 in a sale or $200,000 in an entry fee. Their standing orders were to stop the breakdowns even in the morning when no one but the connections used to care unless it involved a very high profile horse.
But I am not sure what the background or experience was/is of some of these people. The ones I saw and interacted with didn’t seem as savvy as racetrack vets and they were very eager to declare unsoundness based on a couple of short strides.
That is why none of this makes sense. I keep coming back to War of Will who we know has stringhalt. I would imagine a young War of Will without his reputation never making it to the starting gate under this regime. But everyone saw War of Will look “lame” and go out and win the Preakness. I imagine that they looked at him a lot but he was otherwise clinically sound so they let him run.
I don’t know enough about Mongolian Groom to know whether he had a hitch in his giddyup which was not necessarily clinical lameness. I do know that he was running at Santa Anita last spring before the new world order. Could it be that it was a War of Will situation where the vets knew he was a little short strided but clinically fine? That is the only thing that makes sense to me.
I can’t imagine that heads aren’t going to roll on this because of the uproar. All 30 vets did not look at Mongolian Groom but several of them had to and they had to sign things that said he was OK. Given the way this bunch is, they will be walked off a short plank. Helluva way to start your career.
I do recall the segment on TVG mentioning in the cast of 30 vets that some were from other places/tracks like Belmont and across the pond so the vet pool was more than just 30 SA track vets fresh out of school.
I would not be surprised if the overall direction was to scratch if there was any doubt about the soundness of the horse (which we did see if top level trainers are to be believed… Chad Brown, Aiden O’Brien).
Mongolian Groom didn’t even show up on the radar screen until he won the Awesome Again which was barely 4 weeks before the Classic.
I’ll be interested (although may never see it) in reading the necropsy. I think we’d all agree that in general catastrophic breakdowns are more often occurring in front limbs than they are hind limbs.
Was Mongolian Groom’s breakdown a result of something that occurred during the running of the race or was there truly an unsoundness that finally gave way? Also, IMO very untrained opinion, that the damage was both above and below the fetlock rather than some sort of condylar fracture (above the fetlock) or blowing out the pastern below the fetlock. He was alone on the track at the time of the fracture but when, if there was a precipitating cause, did that happen?
Barbaro and Ruffian come to mind that there was conjecture that the actual injury occurred prior to when the bones actually failed.
Speaking only of the “irregular” horses jogged/galloped, I believe the underlying issue was related to the horse’s ability to push, not a weight-bearing unsoundness. This is because the horse would feel pretty sound and normal posting on one diagonal (or off it’s back), and then awkward and flat on the other diagonal. However, the horse showed no pain or soreness when the feet hit the ground, as you would expect from a bone/joint/ tendon injury.
Yeahbutt the owners cared and may have put subtle (or not so subtle) pressure on the trainer to keep going as long as nothing was obviously wrong…like a vague feeling of NQR. I get that. Not the way I did it, but understand, and that’s why we need the 3rd party intervention.
MG, to me, looked like a very large horse and he seemed to be a bit awkward at times and not a great mover. Some might have kidded themselves all was well and pressed on.
Necropsy will be eagerly awaited.
Not to derail this important discussion, but this is 100% what I experienced with my last OTTB. I purchased her 5 days after she won her last race. Never been on the vet’s list, never been injected, came out of a good barn. Turned out to be a proximal supensory strain. I wonder how many are missed - there is no heat/swelling, no outward indication that anything is wrong. Heck, even my Barn Owner, Trainer, and a few good horsemen & women told me there was nothing wrong - she was just weak behind. But that lack of ability to push, and the sound/normal on one diagonal vs awkward and flat on the other told me there was something more going on. Turns out I was right. It reminded me of Songbird, who was still racing competitively and winning in Grade 1 races with proximal suspensory desmitis. Amazingly enough, it was her owner Rick Porter who insisted something wasn’t right, and she was working too hard to win a Grade 1. Hollendorfer didn’t see it.
I have always wondered if lameness evaluation at the track may just be different than in the sport horse world, and maybe isn’t turning up all the potential issues that we catch more often in other disciplines.
Here is the Paulick Article, which has an interesting quote from Bramlage:
“It wasn’t surprising that [Hollendorfer] didn’t see that,” Bramlage said. “Trainers are looking at their horses when they are performing in a straight line and watching them at less than peak performance when they are training. Horses when they have symmetrical problems and they go in a straight line, they don’t show that one leg is bothering them over another. If they have a problem with one leg then they get obvious lameness.”
My answer is probably biased by the fact that our horses are based in Kentucky for most of the year. But everyone I know at the track is well aware that we have the best vets and the best veterinary clinics in the country literally right down the road. If a trainer or a track vet has any doubts about a potential issue or a diagnosis, the horse is popped on a van and off it goes to Hagyard or Rood & Riddle–where the newest technologies are not only being used, they’re being developed.
Considering the amount of money there is in racing compared to other horse sports, I would guess that the majority of the new equine technologies were developed specifically for use on racehorses. And the owners and trainers I know are very happy to have the opportunity to make use of them.
a racetrack vet vs any other large animal equine vet; is irrelevant. Soundness is soundness. and any short strides should be noted and taken into consideration; no matter what type of horse is being jogged for the veterinarian.
Newsflash; the majority of all vets who go through the strains of vet school to take care of your horse are not “clueless”. they may not have grown up on the backstretch or in the show ring but chances are; they have horse experience which drove them into their career choice. And they put up hundreds of thousands of dollars and years of their life to become veterinarians. They’re not clueless idiots and they can asses a lame horse on the jog strait out of school. They went to school to learn these things and assess them.
Regardless of the years’ of experience; its the fresh eyes that don’t see the horse everyday that can often pick up on the small abnormalities that conditioned eyes may miss.
Regardless; MG should’ve been yanked off the track and fully assessed after he turned up dead lame at the trot on the track at the end of October. Some of it may have been trantering; the majority of his performance that day was lameness.
It would be interesting to know if recent xrays were taken of that leg within the last 4-8 weeks to look over to see if there were any issues. I am sure Bramlage is already on that.
I have to wonder why the quality of farriery doesn’t seem to have improved at the same pace as veterinary care and diagnostics. Thoroughbreds are, perhaps unfairly, known for “crappy TB feet”, though I suspect it’s the trim/shoe job rather than the feet themselves in many cases. I’ve seen an awful lot of underrun heels and too-long toes, along with the “bullnose” appearance which indicates the foot isn’t being trimmed to align with the internal structures.
Is it the racetrack mentality some have of “we’ve always done it that way”? The mindset of “longer toe means longer breakover, therefore longer stride and faster horse”?
I mean, why throw beaucoup dollars at the vet while at the same time declining to pay the same attention to the feet?
Um, are you saying a vet fresh out of school has a practiced eye for lameness the same as a specialized track/sport horse vet who is partner at a large clinic in KY, FL, PA?
My regular Ocala vet is great for average needs, and EXCELLENT at repro. But he’ll be the first to refer me to a better vet at his practice when I have soundness concerns. He can do basic flexion and take xrays, but he will pass the films on to a better sports med focused DVM. He ultrasounds hundreds of mares, but if I need a leg scanned he recommends someone specialized in that area.
Coming from Lexington, and now living in Ocala, maybe I’m spoiled. But I certainly wouldn’t trust “just any” vet’s opinion if they don’t have many years experience and knowledge in that field.
It’s complicated. There’s definitely a genetic part, and some horses will always tend to have better feet than others. There are some excellent race horse farriers, who I would let shoe my sport horse any day of the week. Those farriers encourage short toe, a strong heel, and proper biomechanics. However many farriers, both at the track and in other disciplines, tend to shoe to the end of the toe without proper heel support. The speed of a galloping racehorse throwing its legs out and landing firmly with every stride tends to encourage the stretched toe, and crushed heels, that are seen in many race horses. It doesn’t help that some many of the cheaper horses that end up in sport horse homes, tend to come from cheaper tracks, cheaper trainers, who use cheaper farrier, with less education, experience, and effectiveness at creating a healthy horse foot.
With good farrier care, many horses off the track can improve their feet to a large degree. The race trainer i gallop for actually runs most of her horses Barefoot. She gets them from other trainers typically with poor feet, pulls their shoes and leaves them turned out for several months. Then they start up training on the grass, barefoot, and many of them are able to run this way on the polytrack. A lot of those horses tend to have really decent feet, as it’s easy to keep their toes short, and encourage heel growth. However, I know some sport bred thoroughbreds, who have never seen a race track or racetrack farrier, who still had terrible feet. In this case, it’s simply genetic and even with supplements and good care, these horses’ feet will never be as good as others’.
Yes ,Kentucky folks are lucky to have so many specialists in one place. We had to haul out of state to get really good lameness Vet and surgical services… The local vet was a general practice guy. (This was long ago, and not in Colorado)
Vino Rosso and Mitole retired to stand at Spendthrift stud.
https://www.bloodhorse.com/horse-racing/articles/236874/vino-rosso-mitole-retire-to-spendthrift
Interesting take on green and fresh out of school vets. I once saw a vet, who graduated top of her class at a prestigious western US university, working her first job out of school and she was life and death to draw a Coggins. That’s the assignments green vets receive…drawing Coggins, filling out health certificates and oiling horses for transport (btw when attempting to oil a horse the previously mentioned top-of-her class practitioner could never get the tube set and would have to call in another vet,) or maybe handling a colic case. A top notch vet will take years to hone his or her craft and to imply that a green vet is on a par with experienced lameness vets is laughable.
I continue to be fascinated at the source of videos that you find that show things that I just don’t see.
I did not see a “dead lame” horse in any of the videos floating around the internet. Perhaps a horse slightly off as assessed by people looking at very short snippets of video with no knowledge of the horse nor being there in person for a more detailed assessment.
You’d get rung out of a dressage test for that trot.
Exactly. Not to mention that the pool of experience sports medicine equine vets is not large. Much easier and much more profitable to be a small animal cardio specialist.
That horse would get spun at an FEI jog. And, shouldn’t horse racing be just as stringent?
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