Inside the Thoroughbred Racehorse: Just Watch This!

Of course you have never taken the Thoroughbred athlete for granted, but after watching this 48-minute documentary, you'll be in even more awe of the complex biomechanics and physiology of the running Thoroughbred. Anyone who's squeamish in a dissection might want to skip over this, but you'll miss a lot!

This documentary, part of the multiple award-winning Inside Nature's Giants series broadcast on Britain's Channel 4 over the past three years, is hosted by veterinarian Mark Evans. Hoofcare + Lameness readers may recognize contributors Renate Weller and Alan Wilson, two leading veterinary researchers at the Royal Veterinary College in England.

Farrier Billy McQueen has a few minutes on screen.

There are several sections of the documentary that focus on the racehorse foot. This clip (below) details the function of the flexor tendons in moving the limb and hoof forward, not the anatomy of the foot itself, but it has some great animation and a startling demonstration by Alan Wilson and a scalpel.

You might not agree with the way that everything is presented on this video. Students of equine evolution may be surprised at the way presenter Richard Dawkins (6:06 in the full video) describes the progression of the hoof from multi- to single-toed (the way that everyone was taught in Pony Club). It must be easier to explain it to a television audience as if the horse just kept dropping toes to run more efficiently. Weightbearing theories that include the horse employing more than just the hoof wall are not mentioned, either. But the producers had the task of explaining a running horse in 48 minutes to a universal audience, so this is pretty general information in some parts.

You'll have to watch the entire documentary to see all the information on the foot. But it's all connected. Don't miss a minute of this documentary, even if you're sure you know it all. You just might see it presented in a new way.

Are you a professional who works with horses--a farrier, trimmer, veterinarian, vet tech, gait analyst, or bodyworker? Or an educator? This video is highly recommended to explain to anyone who doesn't "get it", why you do what you do: because the athletic horse is simply the most amazing creature on earth.

Note: the video team made a stop at the breeding barn at Coolmore Stud in Ireland, so if you are sensitive to what goes on there, or have children or students who might be, you might want to skip over that part.

© Fran Jurga and Hoofcare Publishing; Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog is a between-issues news service for subscribers to Hoofcare and Lameness Journal. 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 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.  

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Equine Sport Science, ESPN-Style, Looks at Zenyatta

During today's Breeders Cup broadcast, ESPN took a stab at trying to explain Zenyatta's superior performance ability. They put together great graphics and computer images but understandably had to take some shortcuts to "dumb it down" for the casual national television audience.

I can just see Professor Hilary Clayton, the leading biomechanics expert in North America, pursing her lips and shaking her head, "Well, noooo, not exactly..." and Professor Jean-Marie Denoix over in France,  rolling his eyes, throwing up his hands and sighing, "Oh, mon dieu! The Americans just don't understand..."

How do you squash a PhD into three minutes? Well, you don't. But at least they tried.

Of course ESPN can't go into detail--John Brenkus only had three minutes to explain the whole thing! Anyone who knows about horses will know that it's not just about stride length and height at the withers--if it was, the big horses would dominate, and we'd have no way to explain Goldikova, Smarty Jones, Northern Dancer, Mine That Bird (he did win the Derby!) and all the smaller, more compact Thoroughbreds who are, after all, the more common horses running in our races. And the more commonly found horses in the winner's circle are not over 17 hands.

The same is true of jumpers; it might seem like bigger horses would be better jumpers but it's not a given. There are many factors to consider.

The great 18th century racehorse champion Eclipse is believed to have excelled because he was extraordinarily "normal". His body parts were in harmonious proportion to each other, which scientists believe facilitated speed.

Studies have been done that show that the most successful racehorses are not the largest or the smallest or the most anything but the most "average"--the ones whose proportions are average. Take Eclipse, for instance. That most successful of original racehorses left us his skeleton, which has been analyzed by Professor Alan Wilson and his researchers at the Structure and Motion Analysis Lab at the Royal Veterinary College in England.

Based on Eclipse and other racehorses, Wilson's data analysis determined that it was not size that mattered in  champion racehorses but proportion. The champion racehorses like Eclipse had all their body parts in proportion to each other--no one body part was out of a statistical range in proportion to others. Their skeletal systems demonstrated a balance of dimensions.

(By the way, the great Eclipse went down in history in the 1700s for winning 18 races--one less than Zenyatta. It is said his jockey never used a whip or spurs.)

The formula for speed is not just the distance covered in a stride, but the stride length x the stride frequency. There is also the x factor of efficiency--how straight are the limbs, how much excess motion is there, how efficient is the respiration, etc.?  How easy is it for the horse to reach his hind limbs underneath his body, and how far under his body do they reach? There are many ingredients to a racehorse's stride and speed formula.

So a horse with a shorter stride but a fleeter, more efficient turn of foot can potentially run faster than a long-striding large horse, although one wonders if the smaller horse may tire sooner if taking more breaths and more strides. But they may be more efficient strides.

This is where shoes come in. A horse that can't "get hold" of the track loses stride efficiency and, often, even stride frequency if the foot is delayed in breakover or the horse struggles to re-orient the foot to land in a certain pattern to avoid pain or limb interference or simple fatigue from sinking too deep into sandy footing.

It's probably harder and more time-consuming to train a huge huge with a huge stride like Zenyatta's, and the racing public should remember and respect that John Sherriffs opted to delay her start in the races until she was ready, probably because of her need to finish developing physically and no doubt "find her balance" when running at speed. Most big horses would not be given that luxury to develop first, race when ready.


Those are just some of the factors that enter into the equation of why Zenyatta excels. You can do formulas and analyze her all day but there are some intangibles. One them is called "heart". Not the heart in the chest, but the heart in the spirit. Zenyatta is loaded with that.

We saw that heart today.

A great racehorse will always be just out of the reach of science. If not, there'd be no reason to go to the races. Handicapping would be an exact science. But thankfully we still have that x factor.

© Fran Jurga and Hoofcare Publishing; Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog is a between-issues news service for subscribers to Hoofcare and Lameness Journal. 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 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.
 

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Calgary Stampede: Where the Competition is Hot This Weekend for Farriers from Around the World

Former World Champion David Wilson of Balmullo, Scotland has been the judge of the 2008 World Championship Blacksmiths Competition at the Calgary Stampede this week.

David, who is 71, was invited to judge for the fourth time in his career; no other farrier has judged the prestigious Calgary event so many times. He was the World Champion in 1985; I remember him on the stage in front of the entire rodeo audience receiving his award...dressed in a beautiful kilt.

The bronze sitting on David's anvil in the photo is the coveted trophy he won as World Champion at the Calgary Stampede.

According to an article in a Scottish newspaper last week, David has won 13 gold medals for draft horse shoemaking at the Royal Highland Show and has been show champion eight times, also receiving a special honor in 2005 to mark his 50th Highland Show. He also won the North American Challenge Cup Futurity in 1988. In 1983 Queen Elizabeth presented David with the British Empire Medal for services to farriery.

Word is that entries from Scotland were especially high this year, so there may be an entire flock of kilts on the stage tonight when the awards are presented.

Click here to read more about David Wilson, who will celebrate the 50th anniversary of his marriage to Mari this summer.

One person that David was judging in Calgary is Ben Yeager, who lives near Victoria, British Columbia. Ben is the current Canadian champion and was scheduled to compete in Calgary along with three teammates from the Vancouver area. They will also compete in the international team competition in England later in the summer.

Here's a little video clip from last year's Calgary Stampede shoeing events, courtesy of the Stampede:



I don't know for certain who the winner was tonight. I do know that former World Champion Grant Moon did come out of retirement and competed at Calgary this week.