In wake of breakdowns, Keeneland issues results of track surface review

Keeneland has the unique perspective of being able to compare racing statistics over two different surfaces in recent years. Here, a horse trains on the Polytrack surface, which was removed in the summer of 2014 in favor of a new dirt main track. (David Paul Ohmer photo)

There's nothing like a beautiful day of fall horseracing at Keeneland outside Lexington, Kentucky. Unless it's the dark flip side of that coin: the sickening news that another racehorse has broken down. In the first week of the Keeneland fall meet this year, three horses suffered varying injuries classified as catastrophic breakdowns– one during racing and two during training, ending their lives.

The recent tragedies at Keeneland are magnified by attention on the track as the host of the Breeders Cup at the end of the this month, which will be held at Keeneland for the first time. To accommodate the championship, Keeneland ripped up its all-weather Polytrack surface on the main track and replaced it with a dirt surface, which was used for the fall 2014 and spring 2015 meets.

One of the horses lost was Stonestreet's Rock Fall, a highly-regarded contender for the upcoming Breeders Cup trained by Todd Pletcher. 

Special testing of the racetrack surface has revealed no irregularity, according to a press release issued today by the racetrack. 

Keeneland shared news that Dr. Mick Peterson, University of Maine Professor and executive director of the school's Racing Surfaces Testing Laboratory, was on site this weekend, working with track officials to review testing and daily measuring procedures to ensure the safety of the dirt track. The review found that Keeneland’s dirt surface met all of the pre-meet test criteria and all maintenance had been performed in accordance with protocols developed for the track. 

The findings were similar to those reported in Dr. Peterson’s Composition and Performance Testing review, conducted just before the start of Keeneland’s 2015 Fall Meet. 

Dr. Peterson performs a review of Keeneland’s dirt and turf surfaces prior to the start of every race meet. In addition to the pre-meet testing, daily measurements are taken on both racing surfaces every race day by Keeneland officials and complete electronic records are maintained and reviewed by Dr. Peterson. 

“Keeneland, along with a small group of industry leaders, has made a commitment to advancing knowledge and providing the most consistent surfaces in the industry,” Peterson 

said. “By participating in the maintenance tracking system to measure and monitor the surface performance, Keeneland both defines the state of the art and is helping to advance our understanding of racing surfaces. When questions arise these records allow us to review all of the maintenance and operating conditions as well as the daily surface inspections, that help to ensure that the most consistent possible surface is provided. Because the racing surface is a critical safety system, all of the maintenance must be performed in accordance with best practices in the industry.” 

Keeneland’s 1 1/16-mile main track was converted from an all-weather Polytrack surface to a dirt surface during the summer of 2014, and racing first was held over the new track during the 2014 Fall Meet. Today, the dirt surface is among the most extensively researched and most sophisticated in North America, with data collected and monitored by state-of-the-art technology and equipment. 

“The safety of our horses and riders is priority No. 1, and we remain confident in the performance of our race track,” Keeneland Vice President of Racing W.B. Rogers Beasley said. 

“Our team works very hard every day to carefully maintain and monitor the race track.”

“The status quo is unacceptable to Keeneland when it comes to safety and other issues critically important to the future of our industry,” Keeneland President and CEO Bill Thomason said. “We want everything we do here to be shared with the industry in an effort to benefit racing as a whole.”

“These equine injuries are complicated, multi-factorial events,” Dr. Mary Scollay, equine medical director of the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission, said. “The Commission conducts a mortality review for every exercise-related fatality. Information is currently being acquired and compiled for these case reviews.”

Portions of this article were extracted from a news release provided by Keeneland.

© Fran Jurga and Hoofcare Publishing; Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog is the news service for Hoofcare and Lameness Publishing. Please, no use without permission. You only need to ask. This blog may be read online at the blog page, checked via RSS feed, or received via a headlines-link email (requires signup in box at top right of blog page). Questions or problems with this blog? Send email to blog@hoofcare.com.  

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Ageless Tahoe Warrior Runs Again: In Shoes, This Time, for Keeneland's New Dirt Track

At some point today, someone in the stands at Keeneland Racecourse is sure to read the fine print in the program and notice that in the second race, there's a 12-year-old horse running in his 96th lifetime start. And if he or she is a savvy horseplayer, they'll put a few dollars on Tahoe Warrior, and cheer him home.

Today is opening day at Lexington, Kentucky's magnificent Keeneland Racecourse. It's raining, and 61 degrees. The track is listed as sloppy and at least some of the turf races are moved to the dirt track.

Yes, to the dirt track.

Just Wait Til Next Year: Shoes Off, On, and Off Again as Shoeless Senior Racehorse Tahoe Warrior is Claimed and Re-Claimed

Some older horses race once or twice a year. It's a big deal when they run. Tahoe Warrior started 11 times between April and September in his 11th year. 

Once upon a time there was a barefoot racehorse.  Now, that's interesting.

Once upon a time there was an 11-year-old racehorse who started 11 times in his 11th year.  Now, that's interesting, too.

What's even more interesting is that they are the same horse. 

Shoeless in Lexington: Polytrack Podiatry at Keeneland's Last Artificial Surface Meet

An interesting experiment was available to bettors Sunday at Kentucky's Keeneland racecourse as trainer Wayne Rice prepared to send no less than six horses to the post in five races. None of them would be wearing shoes.

Shoeless and Ageless, Tahoe Warrior Wins at Keeneland

Keeneeland Racecourse in Kentucky has a Polytrack all-weather surface that has been used by trainers as a test for a few horses each week to run without shoes. 

It was the last race of the day. Maybe no one will remember it, except it’s not every day that a horse pays $40 on a $2 bet. It’s not every day that a ten-year-old gelding with no less than 84 starts under his girth wins one. It’s not every day that trainer Wayne Rice stands in the Keeneland winners circle, a place usually reserved for the likes of Todd Pletcher and D. Wayne Lukas.

And it’s not every day that a horse with no shoes wins a race.

Shoeless Thoroughbred Wins at Keeneland; Track Lists Barefoot Entries as Trainers Experiment with Polytrack Surface Effects on Hoof Slide

The racing surface known as "Polytrack" is one of several artificial surfaces that have been installed at racetracks in North America to improve safety and help cope with bad weather. But it also changes the way the hoof interacts with the surface. The characteristic slide that horses experience on dirt can be "sticky" for some horses. Experimenting with and without shoes during training and racing has led some trainers to try some unorthodox combinations of shoes--or no shoes at all.

Update: A second "no shoes" designated horse won a race at Keeneland on Sunday, bringing the total of winners to two in three days. Updated information has been added at the end of this article.

Video: Breeders Cup Piques Interest in Surfaces; Instrumented Horseshoe for California Racetrack Surface Study at Keeneland

by Fran Jurga | 19 October 2009 | Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog

Are you counting the days to the 2009 Breeders Cup, the international championship of Thoroughbred horse racing? If so, get ready to start counting the ways that Santa Anita's Pro-Ride racing surface will be interpreted as enhancing or handicapping the chances of the top runners.

The running of this year's cup at California's showcase racetrack has inspired a renewal of the debate of just how safe and just how fair to bettors and horsemen the artificial surfaces will be.

Perfect timing, then, for the J.D. Wheat Veterinary Orthopedic Research Laboratory at the University of California at Davis to release this little video slide show about its use of an instrumented horseshoe in their study of horse racetracks at Kentucky's Keeneland racecourse. This study was conducted on Polytrack, not the Pro Ride used at Santa Anita.

The study is comparing hoof impact on synthetic, dirt and turf surfaces. Three horses were tested. Hoof accelerations and ground reaction forces (GRF) were measured for the front legs with an accelerometer and a dynamometric horseshoe during trot and canter (not the gallop). Maxima, minima, temporal components, and a measure of vibration were extracted from the data. Acceleration and GRF variables were compared statistically among surfaces.

The dynamometric horseshoe contained piezoelectric sensors sandwiched between two aluminium plates.

Results of the study according to the abstract:

1. The synthetic surface often had the lowest peak accelerations, mean vibration, and peak GRFs. Peak acceleration during hoof landing was significantly smaller for the synthetic surface (mean ± SE, 28.5g ± 2.9g) than for the turf surface (42.9g ± 3.8g).

2. Hoof vibrations during hoof landing for the synthetic surface were American Journal of Veterinary Research (AJVR). Click here to read the abstract as posted by AJVR.

The debate is contentious enough that it will take a lot of studies of many parameters to quiet skeptics. The defection of the USA's top racehorse, champion Rachel Alexandra, has been attributed to her owners' distaste for running on synthetic tracks. Conversely, top European horses are flocking to Santa Anita and defecting from turf to "dirt" races with the belief that their turf races prep them for spectacular results at Santa Anita. Last year's Classic winner Ravens Pass followed that formula. The Bird cousins, Summer and Mine That, have relocated to Santa Anita and trained over the Pro Ride surface on Saturday.

Watch for more reports from Santa Anita as the surface debate is sure to elevate in the next two weeks.

© Fran Jurga and Hoofcare Publishing. No use without permission. You only need to ask. This blog may be read online at the blog page, checked via RSS feed, or received via a digest-type email (requires signup in box at top right of blog page). 

Turfway Park Brings Back Toe Grabs on Hind Shoes After Eight Horses Break Down in December

You know those hind shoes you just threw away? Most of the shoes in this pile are old draft horse shoes with holes where removable calks could be applied for icy streets.

Just when you think you have things figured out...

Turfway Park in Florence, Kentucky runs Thoroughbreds over a Polytrack (artificial) surface that has been in place since 2005. After a new policy went into place in September that banned all but the flattest horseshoes on front and hind feet, the track was a model for reform and safety. Then the calendar turned to December: Turfway reported breakdowns that caused the death of eight horses, most of whom injured the left front leg.

Are the breakdowns related to the shoe changes? It's impossible to tell but one theory is that a slipping hind foot puts more stress on the opposite front. This is still a brainteaser, though, since the foot slips less in Polytrack than on dirt, such as you'd find at Churchill Downs.

Whether as a result of the breakdown or in deference to trainers wishes, Turfway has announced a policy change on shoes. While flat shoes are still required on front feet, toe grabs no higher than 1/4" are allowed on racing and training horses as of the first of January.

Here's the new rule:

Shoe Policy for Turfway Park

Effective January 1, 2009, the following shoe policy will govern racing and training at Turfway Park

Prohibited – Front and Hind
The following devices are prohibited both front and hind for racing and training at Turfway Park: turn-downs, bends, jar calks, stickers and any other traction device worn on the shoes of Thoroughbred horses.

Acceptable – Front
The following front shoes are acceptable for racing and training at Turfway Park: Queen's Plate, Queen's Plate XT, King's Plate, King's Plate XT, Fast Break, Speed Toe, and Outer Rim.

Acceptable – Hind
Hind shoes with a toe grab not exceeding one-quarter inch (1/4") shall be permitted for racing and training at Turfway Park.

Could the same shoe modification believed to cause injury and strain to the front legs actually be of benefit to the hind legs? Time for more research...and keep those new shoe designs coming.

© Fran Jurga and Hoofcare Publishing. No use without permission. You only need to ask. Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog is a between-issues news service for subscribers to Hoofcare and Lameness Journal. This blog may be read online at the blog page, checked via RSS feed, or received via a digest-type email (requires signup in box at top right of blog page). To subscribe to Hoofcare and Lameness (the journal), please visit the main site, www.hoofcare.com, where many educational products and media related to equine lameness and hoof science can be found. Questions or problems with this blog? Send email to blog@hoofcare.com.

Greetings from the Gluegrass: Will Big Brown and Pyro Choices of Designer Footwear Turn It Into the Ken-STUCK-y Derby?

Risen Star and Louisiana Derby winner Pyro impressed a lot of people this winter. He did it wearing glue-on shoes called Polyflex, shown here on stakes winner Malibu Mint. Little Belle won the Ashland Stakes at Keeneland wearing these shoes last week; that's the track that Pyro will run on today. The shoes are more or less transparent, with a yellowish hue. They have a steel wire core which is shaped like the foot in a special mold, then urethane is poured in to the ideal shape. A steel toe insert completes the kit. (Hoofcare and Lameness Journal photo)

Glue-on horseshoes are the stuff of legend this year as at least two of the Derby favorites flaunt their footwear on the road to the Triple Crown.

In the Southeast corner, we have Big Brown, winner of the Florida Derby by a landslide in spite of recovering from heel wall separations in both front feet. The photo (bottom of this post) shows a typical injury of this type, usually caused by a subsolar abscess, trimming too short, or training and racing on hard tracks (or a combination of these factors).

Ian McKinlay, the New Jersey quarter crack specialist who repaired the detached wall on the first foot, said that the colt "is not a bad-footed horse" and just needed cushioning on the inside heel where an abscess had been. "Chances are, it will grow down, on both feet, and he'll be fine going into the future," Ian said yesterday. "His trainer knows what he's doing."

Ian's solution, which we hope to show on the blog, is a standard one; he says the injury is quite common among both Standardbreds and Thoroughbreds. He cleaned up the wall from the quarter back to the heel and put a gum rubber insert under the deficit. There's one heel nail holding the glued shoe from slipping, along with a copper clip (the PMMA adhesive sticks very well to copper) on the outside. The gum rubber material is like window caulking; it acts like a gasket. The glue-y shoe is a regular race plate.

(To read more about Big Brown's fancy footwork, see photo below and scroll down to posts and photos from earlier this week, marked April 8.)

And in Kentucky, all eyes will be on Pyro in the Bluegrass Stakes today. I didn't know until this week that Pyro won the Risen Star and Louisiana Derby wearing Curtis Burns' Polyflex all-urethane shoes, and he will apparently have them on today, as well,to run on Keeneland's Polytrack. Pyro's gluesmith is Steve Asmussen's regular horseshoer, David Hinton.

What's in a name? Polytrack seems to agree with Polyflex; you'll agree if you watched Kiaran McLaughlin's trainee Little Belle win the Ashland Stakes at Keeneland last Saturday, with Curtis's see-through shoes glued on her fast little feet.

And who gets the last word in this sticky story? That maven of the media, 2007 Belmont Stakes winner Rags to Riches. It seems R2R, who now resides at Ashford Stud in Versailles, Kentucky, was bred to Giant's Causeway last week. To celebrate her future marehood, farrier Steve Norman pulled her raceplates and replaced them with glueons which will stay on for a cycle or two. This is called "transitional shoeing" and is meant to encourage sole growth before she goes barefoot.

Traditionally, fillies and mares coming from the track have their shoes yanked off and they go straight to a barefoot lifestyle. This usually means gimping around the breeding farm for a number of weeks, since the feet are often cut quite short at the track, and the soles can be thin, until the feet toughen up.

One horse who I cannot imagine in gimp-mode is Rags to Riches.

Note: There are special shoes for gluing on racehorses, such as the Polyflex shoes or Sigafoos shoes, with cloth cuffs. Farriers can also glue on or glue-and-nail normal plates or shoes. There are some amazingly creative people working on these horses.

Thanks to all the farriers and trainers who contributed to this and other posts. I know they had a lot to do this week but most took the time to talk because these new shoes are past the "experimental" stage and are now considered creative equipment adjustments. We've come a long way.

This foot has been cleaned up after being blown out by a subsolar heel abscess, similar to the problem that necessitated glue-on shoes for Kentucky Derby hopeful Big Brown. Ian McKinley padded the exposed heel with gum rubber and glued window caulking like a gasket to hold it in so the area is cushioned. At this stage in the procedure, dead or hangnailish wall has been removed. This is NOT Big Brown, who is now well on his way in the healing process. (Ian McKinlay photo)

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Shoes for Thought: Burns Polyflex Synthetic Glue-on Prototypes Put to the Test at Major Racetracks

The new Burns Polyflex shoe is made of polyurethane with a wire core (Fran Jurga © photo)

Have you seen one of these before? Probably not. You're looking at the prototype of a new glue-on shoe made entirely of polyurethane. What makes it different from most plastic shoes is that these are made with a steel core, so the shoe is somewhere shapeable, and it has a steel toe grab. The shoes are made in molds.

This shoe is the brainchild of Florida-to-New-York farrier Curtis Burns. I ran into him at Keeneland back in April, and then again at Saratoga. The shoes are underneath some very good horses--this is the foot of a top stakes-winning filly.

People talk about the eternal quest for a better mousetrap...for me, the quest is for a better horseshoe. And as long as there are farriers out there, they will never stop trying to come up with a better design and a safer way to keep a horse's feet in perpetual motion.

Curtis deserves a big pat on the back, as does his wife Diane, who does a lot of the molding. I think you'll all be hearing a lot more from them, but for now it is one horse at a time.

Will there be a special shoe design needed for the new Polytrack surfaces being installed at the California tracks and Woodbine in Ontario, among others? I'm sure there is one on a drawing board somewhere right now!