A call for an enhanced screening process for long-absent older horses and a centralised digital database of medical records for all horses in training.
Unusually for a Flat racing fixture, there were two fatalities at York on Tuesday. Some superficial details of these catastrophic injuries chimed with a matter of objective principle on which I’ve been musing for some time. What I’ve got to say here is on that matter of principle and not intended as direct comment on Tuesday's events, the individual circumstances of which I do not know.
In Britain, a horse who races again within two days - that is, declared to run again before it has raced on the first occasion - or returns from an absence of 300 days or more is subject to a pre-race check from the British Horseracing Authority’s on-course veterinary officer. This examination involves checking the horse’s heart, palpating its legs, and a trot-up. One of Tuesday’s fatalities, Dubai Instinct, was returning after an absence of 669 days and was subject to this check.
Yet for this pre-race screening process to be more robust and effective, input from the trainer’s home vet and confidential access to its medical records would surely be needed. I think it’s time this was done, universally, for all horses returning from X period - whatever that period might be, perhaps 300 days still, to be agreed by the BHA’s veterinary team.
Perhaps the two-day trigger also requires reflection - the other horse lost, Creative Force, had raced four days earlier - but it is Britain’s population of older horses returning from extended absences whom I have long felt could be better served than they are currently.
There is already a heightened screening programme for all potential runners at the Cheltenham Festival and Aintree’s Grand National meeting. Trainers are asked to provide 45 days’ worth of medication records for horses they have entered, and to flag any more long-lasting treatments - such as corticosteroids and bisphosphonates - supplemented by video evidence if a horse has an unusual gait.
Potential runners are then classified green, amber or red by the BHA and this knowledge is subsequently combined with veterinary examinations on the day to determine whether the horse is permitted to participate. To my knowledge, this system has in the past prevented at least two horses even from travelling to Aintree, which in one case – after extensive further investigation – flagged a potential future “smash” fracture to hitherto unwitting but grateful connections.
The enhanced screening process I’m advocating for long-absent older horses, as suggested to me by veterinary experts, would go even further than these Cheltenham and Aintree checks because they would require a horse’s specific medical history relating to the reason for its absence plus evidence that the problem had been resolved to clinical satisfaction prior to its return.
The horse's programme of conditioning since its return to training would also be relevant as there is emerging evidence that medication such as bisphosphonates coupled with inflammation or infection can actually cause bone necrosis or body-tissue death. This tends to occur approximately ten days after injury or treatment, so potential exists for horses to be coming back into training during peak bone weakness.
To my mind, the introduction of this scheme is urgent. No doubt the National Trainers’ Federation would ask for evidence to substantiate why such a screening process is necessary, thus requiring more time and resource to be spent on what would seem to me a straightforward, common-sense proposal. This initiative would help to safeguard the sport’s reputation - and ensure it still exists for the next generation of trainers.
Centralised digital database needed
But this leads me to another issue. How in 2023 is there not a centralised digital database of the medical records of all horses in training, available on a confidential basis to the regulator? The BHA can already, of course, demand such records when carrying out unannounced yard inspections, but a centralised digital database would significantly advance welfare precautions in the sport.
Without this data, the BHA is unable to tell me whether - for instance - corticosteroids might play a statistically significant role in catastrophic injury. Without a centralised medical database, the BHA or any other regulator cannot carry out population studies that would actively inform and improve the sport’s understanding of its own behaviours, and the welfare of the animals on which it relies.
The BHA did at one point pursue a voluntary trial whereby its vets followed up all fatalities, asking trainers for all relevant information about the horses, including their medical records. Only two-thirds of trainers unfortunate enough to find themselves in this category responded, plus the scheme lacked the control test of identical information about sound and healthy horses.
A population study would provide that context - although, of course, the BHA would also need the money to pay data-analysis personnel to interrogate the information such a scheme would generate. The BHA currently can’t even provide data on whether extended absences, or quick reappearances, display any sort of correlation with an increased risk of injury - and how long, in the former case, that threat continues to exist beyond a long-absent horse’s first run back.
That a connection between bisphosphonates and bone necrosis, for example, is only now emerging also underlines the need for vets to receive mandatory updates on the medications they regularly administer for clients. The BHA could take the lead here, initiating an annual conference or update forum for ‘sports vets’. Investment in this area is obvious and urgent.
Derby wants more pre-race trot-ups
When I spoke to York’s chief executive William Derby following the second fatality on Tuesday, he said he would like to see pre-race trot-ups introduced for all horses entered at his racecourse’s fixtures. This is a safety measure routinely carried out for high-profile meetings in other jurisdictions around the world and yet, inexplicably, had not yet happened as a matter of course in Britain at the time of our conversation.
I later learned that this Saturday at Newbury, when the Group One Lockinge Stakes is the feature, trot-ups will take place prior to all races for the first time in Britain outside of Cheltenham, Aintree and some summer-jumping fixtures. The same will happen for all five days of Royal Ascot. They will be carried out over a distance of approximately 25 metres, with the horse asked to trot up and back in a straight line on a firm surface. Trainers of horses with an asymmetric gait have been advised to contact the BHA’s veterinary team in advance of those racedays and to follow the regulator’s ‘Suitability To Race’ protocol.
Doubtless this measure will have been vehemently opposed by some British trainers, albeit I would be interested to hear how such opponents would articulate their case in an era when the sport is facing an existential threat in the field of animal welfare.
Perhaps they feel trot-ups make little material difference, and play more to perception than actuality? In which case, that’s a very good argument for going further. Having spoken regularly about how well horses are cared for in this industry, participants must join up their words with their actions, which might involve some personal inconvenience.
'Suitability to race' is a key focus for the Horse Welfare Board (HWB), British racing's independently chaired body that drives its welfare strategy. Work on its Jump Racing Risk Model (JRRM) has been accelerated in recent months via the involvement of Royal Veterinary College experts in epidemiology and integrates essential data on risk factors - including age, previous injuries, time away from the track, time since last race, etc. The first JRRM report is due in August, and it is intended to widen the scheme's remit to Flat racing.
Investment badly needed for welfare reforms
Despite its funding challenges, the sport in Britain must put its money where its mouth is and invest in the evidence-based proposals projects such as these will generate. The HWB also supports the invaluable welfare tool of a centralised digital medical database, for which the support of the training community will be vital, and an expansion of the trot-ups programme.
Finally, a respected peer-reviewed veterinary study has laid out a valid case for the use of corticosteroids, an anti-inflammatory medicine, in low doses in terms of cartilage repair. As far as I’m aware, however, there is no peer-reviewed veterinary case for the welfare benefits to the horse of bisphosphonates, which promote bone remodelling and can be traced in the body for an extraordinarily long amount of time. Their use is now banned in horses under the age of four in Britain and Ireland.
HISA - America’s emergent Horseracing Integrity And Safety Authority - wants to go further by banning bisphosphonates entirely but, depressingly, this body’s Anti-Doping & Medication Control Program has been delayed and continues to face fierce opposition from vested interests in the sport of horseracing in the US. The scheme is set to relaunch on 22 May, objections notwithstanding.
Those vested interests, in all racing jurisdictions worldwide, need to understand that their actions - and the industry’s inaction as a result - are the very definition of short-termism.
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