Champion Australian trainer Chris Waller has opted to perform CT scans on his horses that will potentially be pointed to the 2023 Melbourne Cup, he told The Age, in order to prevent “gut-wrenching” scratches like the 2022 withdrawal of top contender Durston. Durston was scratched by Racing Victoria veterinarians after a mandatory CT scan shows a lesion in the horse's left hind leg.
At the time of the horse's scratch, Waller said: “The specialists cannot determine whether it is old or new, or whether it is even something to be concerned about, but we must respect this.”
Now, Waller hopes that running preliminary CT scans will show the difference between fresh health concerns and pre-existing blemishes.
“Our basic belief at the moment is that, while everyone's still learning about the CT scans, we just want to be proactive and not have too many surprises close to the race,” Waller told The Age. “It's a reason why anything [horse] that we think we are possibly going to run in a Melbourne Cup, we should be scanning them now, so we've got a baseline to compare against.”
All Melbourne Cup entrants are required to undergo CT scans of all four distal limbs prior to the race, while Racing Victoria also required the scans be performed on all international runners prior to entering quarantine. The requirement is among a total of 41 new safety measures that were adopted after the 2020 edition of the Melbourne Cup, in which Aidan O'Brien trainee Anthony Van Dyck suffered a fatal injury.
Read more at The Age.
The post ‘A Baseline To Compare Against’: Waller Begins CT Scanning His Trainees To Avoid Melbourne Cup Scratches appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.
