Godolphin Lifetime care | Horse Racing Free Tips

JRA Calls on Top Eventer Boyd Martin for Ex-Racehorse Clinic

At no time has the issue of welfare within the horseracing industry been more of an important topic, and that includes what happens to horses beyond their racing careers. Encouragingly, there is much work being done around the world to ensure that retired racehorses are homed and utilised in a range of ways, from being companion horses through to competing at the highest level in other disciplines.

With a leaning towards the latter option, the Japan Racing Association (JRA) hosted a clinic with leading event rider Boyd Martin in the week before Christmas.

Based in America since 2007, the Australian-born Martin recently collected his seventh Rider of the Year Award from the United States Eventing Association. Along with competing all over the world, he has been a regular visitor to Japan, where the three-day clinic included tuition and advice in cross-country, showjumping and dressage. Held in conjunction with Godolphin's Lifetime Care programme, the programme also featured guest appearances from top jockeys Christophe Lemaire and Hiroshi Kitamura to discuss the versatility of the Thoroughbred.

“It's been absolutely brilliant,” Martin told TDN as the clinic wrapped up. “This is the fourth time we've done this clinic and it's awesome coming out to Japan, working with all the Japanese riders with a lot of retired racehorses. There were 36 horses here at the clinic and we were lucky enough to use the venue where the Tokyo Olympics were held, right in the centre of the city.”

The work did not all take place in the saddle, however, with classroom sessions supplementing the ridden phases in the arena. A number of the riders in attendance were repeat visitors from previous clinics, and one former attendee now works for Martin as the head rider at his stable in Pennsylvania.

“We had an awesome group of riders. They were all passionate about restarting Thoroughbreds in their second career once they've finished racing,” he said.

“There was an assortment of off-the-track Thoroughbreds: some that had not finished racing long ago, and then a few that have been converted into sport horses for a couple of seasons. We had six or seven groups, some Thoroughbreds looking to change career into eventing, a number into showjumping, and then a couple of groups of dressage.”

Martin is a fervent believer in the power of the Thoroughbred in other disciplines, especially his own field of three-day eventing. He speaks from experience, too, having campaigned the American-bred former racehorse Blackfoot Mystery, a gelding by Out Of Touch whom he took all the way to the Olympics.

He said, “In the sport of eventing, our most influential phase is the cross-country, where we need an animal that's got stamina and endurance and athleticism to take us around the courses. And the off-the-track Thoroughbred is the ultimate breed. The horses are born and bred to gallop and run, and their spirit and nature is just a horse that gives its all. And if we can find ones that are good at the dressage and showjumping, there's no better horse in the world.”

Martin continued, “I rode an off-the-track Thoroughbred around the Rio Olympics in 2016. And through my success there, I had to give a speech at the Preakness on how unbelievable this horse was. Blackfoot Mystery came through a retired racehorse programme.

“At the same time, the folks from Godolphin and the JRA and the National Riding Club Association of Japan were really looking to change the culture a bit in Japan and to make sure that the horses had a second chance of a new career once they finished racing here, and that's how I ended up getting involved.

“With the racing in Japan, there's a lot of longer-distance racing. The Thoroughbreds here are bigger, stronger animals. And they're just beautifully suited to a second career as a sport horse because they are big-boned and they're tall and rangy, and the majority of them have just wonderful movements.”

Blackfoot Mystery went from being unsold when offered as a yearling to making three underwhelming starts on the track in California before eventually finding his metier at five-star level in eventing, the equivalent of being a Group 1 winner. The fact that, with Martin, he represented America at the Olympics at the age of 12 is also testament to the great durability of Thoroughbreds, wherever their second walk of life may take them.

“It's something I'm very passionate about, and I'm very honoured and privileged that they'd have me out here to do this,” said Martin.

“This is the fourth year we've done it. And each year the quality of training and the quality of riding is getting better and better.”

The post JRA Calls on Top Eventer Boyd Martin for Ex-Racehorse Clinic appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

Source of original post

The Blueberry Bulletin Presented By Equine Equipment: With Makeover Two Weeks Away, This OTTB Is Already A Winner

Exactly two weeks from today, I will have finished my second dressage ride at the Thoroughbred Makeover. The last few months of training and competing with Blueberry have been preparation for two five-minute sessions in the enormous outdoor stadium at the Kentucky Horse Park normally resolved for much more advanced, professional riders and very expensive horses.

For those who aren't familiar, the Retired Racehorse Project's Thoroughbred Makeover is a training competition open to recently-retired off-track Thoroughbreds. Much like the Kentucky Derby, you're only eligible to do it for one year, because the purpose is to show off how much Thoroughbreds can learn in the first ten months or so of training for a new sport or 'discipline.' There are ten different horse disciplines running at the Makeover, and you may pick one or two to compete in. Blueberry and I will be competing in dressage, so the format for us is that we will perform two tests – a prescribed test which we must memorize and replicate as accurately as possible, and a freestyle where we have five minutes to ride in whatever sequence or pattern we choose to show off what he has learned. We'll get to do this in the Rolex Stadium, which is a giant arena with plenty of distractions so he'll also need to be calm and focused in order to do well. Our placing is determined by our combined score from the two rides.

The top five scores from each horse sport will return for a finals round to determine the winner from each discipline. Then, an overall winner is chosen from the various horse sports, with the judges favoring the horse who has proven the best example at their chosen second career.

While we have a few things we'll be practicing in our last two weeks, I think we're as ready as we can be. Reporters always grumble a little in the last days before the Derby as the field's trainers all give us very much the same quotes morning after morning. Their work is mostly done by those last few days. They're hoping to keep their horses happy and sound; you can acclimate them to the new track, you can school them in the paddock, but you're either almost ready to run 1 ¼ miles or you aren't. If you aren't, you're already out of time. There's not much else for a trainer to say in that situation, but it makes for boring copy. As a rider though, I get it.

Likewise, we will school in the big stadium, and we will practice making our trot-to-halter sharper, our right lead canter departs smoother and more correct…but the big pieces are in place. Since we began training in late April, Blueberry has gone to two shows as a non-competing entry just to check out the environment and four shows as a competitor. He has performed four different tests a total of six times, including one we'll do at the Makeover. He has seen chaotic show environments and spent a night away from home, handling all of that with the ease I'd expect from a horse who witnessed busy racing barns and spent lots of time on the road during his race career.

My conditions for whether we'd attend the Makeover were always two-fold: He must be sound and healthy (so far so good, but cross your fingers his front shoes stay on), and I must feel I've mentally prepared him for what the competition requires of him. I feel like I've accomplished the latter, which is an enormous task in itself.

There are hundreds of horses and riders coming from all around the country to compete at the Makeover, and nearly 100 pairs in my dressage class alone. I'm a competitive person, but I'm also a realist – our goals for this event aren't about where we finish, because we're not likely to appear in the finals. We'll be facing professional riders with horses who started their training months before us; while I believe that Blueberry is athletic and has a lot of potential in dressage, there will also be horses with more raw talent here than us.

And all of that is fine. Because we've already won.

An evolution of Blueberry's body condition and muscling through this year

In the five months we've had together, he has completely changed jobs and made it look easy. He has completely changed the way he uses his muscles, and built muscle in new places, keeping his little ears pricked even when I know I'm asking him to do something challenging. When we ride down the center line of a dressage ring at a show, a switch flips in his mental energy. With no previous experience, he somehow knows when he is competing, despite the fact his competitors no longer run alongside him. He stands patiently in the wash rack at home or the trailer at the show grounds like a horse who has done this all for years. He lets me kick my feet out of the stirrups in an open grass field and carries me carefully, allowing me to wobble as I work on my core strength and balance. He walks through puddles and over tarps, trots through ground pole exercises, and calmly ignores it when his friends in a nearby pasture start galloping and bucking while we're trying to finish up a schooling session. In many important ways, Blueberry is so advanced for a 4-year-old in this stage of training.

My mare, though I love her, was a tough ride. He has made dressage fun for me for the first time. He has taught me that patience can be rewarded. He has helped me retrain my own muscles to ride more correctly and quietly. He has given me so much confidence. And it's all just the beginning.

The Makeover was a bucket list event for us, but it'll only cap off our very first season together. We plan to have many more, with new goals. The way we'll ride a Training Level test in two weeks will be very different from the way we ride it in another year. But when we come down the center line to salute the judge, I will be so incredibly proud to present him. However he compares to everyone else, he is an absolute champion to me.

The post The Blueberry Bulletin Presented By Equine Equipment: With Makeover Two Weeks Away, This OTTB Is Already A Winner appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

Source of original post

The Blueberry Bulletin Presented By Equine Equipment: The Mental Side Of Riding A Young OTTB

This is the third installment in our monthly column from editor-in-chief Natalie Voss following her journey with her 2021 Thoroughbred Makeover hopeful Underscore, fondly known as Blueberry. Read previous editions in this series here and learn Blueberry's origin story and the author's long-running bond with this gelding and his family here. You can find Blueberry's Facebook page here.

Like a lot of other people, I've spent a lot of time this week absorbing the ongoing coverage of gymnast Simone Biles and her decision to withdraw from several Olympic events. Her choice has meant different things to different people, and has been a jumping off point for discussions about mental health, athlete image, and the unfathomable pressure surrounding Olympians. What I have found most interesting – and most understandable – was her discussion of the phenomenon she was experiencing that led to her decision.

As Biles has explained, she was not simply discouraged by a less-than-perfect performance early in the team competition: she was experiencing something gymnasts call “the twisties.” The twisties are apparently a phenomenon where a gymnast suddenly loses track of their position in the air, having no idea where the floor is in relation to their body. It's something many of them experience at some point, and apparently there is no straightforward cure. They have to break down their routines into smaller, simpler pieces and hope the feeling dissipates. Some move past it, and some can't. The twisties are more likely to happen in times of stress, and of course spur their own kind of stress. Imagine how terrifying it is to suddenly realize you may come crashing down out of the air onto your head because you don't know if your feet are pointed at the floor or the ceiling.

I can't pretend to know what it's like to be the greatest gymnast of all time, but I do think there's some degree of constructive delusion that's required for any dangerous, athletic endeavor. Biles knows that (particularly with her unique and difficult skills) she could end up dead or paralyzed if one of her routines goes wrong, but she must go out every time and suspend her awareness of the fact in order to do it successfully. Riding horses (at any level) is like that, too. You have to be aware that at any moment, the 1,000-pound beast beneath you could make today your last. But if you ride like you know it, you're going to make it more likely to happen, so you have to pretend that the stakes are low.

As Blueberry has advanced in his dressage training, I've had a lot of people ask me whether we're going to begin eventing once we get through the Retired Racehorse Project's Thoroughbred Makeover in October. I made the switch from riding hunters to eventing when I got my draft cross mare years ago. The horse loved it and I'm never sure whether I did or not.

When I was younger, I had no fear over fences. I jumped school ponies with sometimes reckless abandon through rollback turns and over skinnies. I was wary of a horse with a dirty stop, but not afraid, happy to push for a long takeoff or hold for a difficult turn. Then, in one of my first rides schooling a horse by myself, I had a crash. I was 18 and on board a willing little mare who had a lot of spunk. I spotted a skinny fence in a tough spot in the outdoor arena and thought, 'You know, I bet that's even harder if I jump it the opposite way from what we do in our lessons.'

[Story Continues Below]

I had good, forward energy coming out of the very difficult turn I'd plotted for us. I saw a good spot. I did not see that there was no ground line on the jump coming from this direction. Without a pole on the ground to help create depth perception for her, the well-meaning mare saw the wrong take-off point, and the wrong height. She launched into the air a solid one and a half strides early, high enough that I had time to realize that something was wrong. I realized we were hurtling through the air way too high, returning to the ground in the general vicinity of the jump standard. We were going to fall. We were both going to fall. We were going to fall on top of the jump. And we did.

We were lucky – we hit the rails instead of the standard, and they collapsed under us. The horse hit the ground and tossed me clear of her. She crushed the rails but did not get them tangled between her legs, as I've seen horses do in similar falls. She ended up with a few scrapes on her knees, and I took the skin off my arms and face. Thankfully, the mare moved on in about a day, once again attacking fences with no fear. But I couldn't stop remembering the suspension of that constructive delusion. I realized how it felt to have made a mistake, lost control, and thought I was about to be seriously hurt as a result.

So far, Blueberry is progressing well in his blossoming dressage career. Photo by Joe Nevills

I've never quite let it go, even all these years later. My mare, Jitterbug, does not frankly care much about my anxiety and loves jumping so much she has covered for the many moments when I have frozen, unable to figure out where our bodies are in space, how many strides we have left, paralyzed in my own loop of fear. My legs come off her sides, my upper body curls forward and I forget to breathe. For a lot of horses, that's a really mixed message about whether you actually want them to jump or not. It comes and goes – sometimes I can tackle the most wicked bending line, and other times I have a mental breakdown over a crossrail. I can navigate a course; I was trained well before my accident. The trouble is, once you look into the face of your own vulnerability, it can be hard to access the muscle memory that lets you actually do the thing. The brain is trained to hang onto traumatic experiences so that you won't repeat them, and you don't get to pick and choose what to delete and when.

I worry that Blueberry may not be as resilient as my mare. Is it fair to someday ask him to learn to do this, knowing that I'm an unreliable partner on a jumper course? Will I train him to be fearful? He has the heart so many people rave about in off-track Thoroughbreds – eager to please, happy and trusting of whatever I ask him to do. I don't want to wreck that. I also don't want him to miss out on the opportunity to do something he may really enjoy, or deny myself the chance to work through my fear and enjoy something I used to be good at.

As long as we've got the Makeover in our sights, it's a moot point. He has made a fantastic start in his dressage career, winning two of three classes we've entered at local schooling shows and picking up a second place ribbon. We have lots to improve upon before October however, and there wouldn't be much time to work in baby crossrails even if we wanted to. At some point though, I'll have to decide whether I want to face my fears again.

The post The Blueberry Bulletin Presented By Equine Equipment: The Mental Side Of Riding A Young OTTB appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

Source of original post

The Blueberry Bulletin: A Young OTTB Learns His First Lessons In Retirement, And Teaches A Few

This is the first installment in a series following the early training of OTTB Underscore, fondly known as Blueberry. Blueberry was the subject of a popular column in the Paulick Report soon after editor-in-chief Natalie Voss adopted him via the Godolphin Lifetime Care Program in late 2020. You can read about his origin story here.

If you like a good OTTB training series, check out our Thoroughbred Makeover Diaries series, which tracks Jonathan Horowitz on his road to the 2021 Retired Racehorse Thoroughbred Makeover here.

Although I have spent many years writing about off-track Thoroughbreds (OTTBs), working professionally with on- and off-track Thoroughbreds, and cheering on friends with their OTTBs at horse shows, Blueberry is the first Thoroughbred who has been all mine.

When I took an internship and later a part-time job at the Secretariat Center some 13 years ago, the whole notion of working with off-track racehorses was somewhat different. Many people with OTTBs believed they needed to “restart” them, taking them back to the very beginning of training and almost rebreaking them to saddle, as if the experience would be entirely new and overwhelming for the horse otherwise. Now, from what I understand, the philosophy has shifted – it's best to capitalize on what the Thoroughbred already knows. They have been ridden before, they've trailered frequently, and they've been groomed, bathed, clipped and handwalked extensively through their lives. This isn't the same as starting a green horse, and the training trajectory shouldn't be the same.

Until now, my education as a horse owner comes from a Percheron/Thoroughbred cross mare named Jitterbug who I started under saddle when she was five years old and eventually brought through the lowest levels of eventing, dressage, and jumpers. She was a case who had to be taken from the ground up. Jitterbug was a formerly feral horse who spent her first three years with little to no human contact, and that has drastically impacted the way she has progressed in her training. Accepting a saddle and rider was no problem for her; taking instructions like 'Trot' and 'Turn' was a personal affront. She reminded me loudly and often that she was bigger, smarter, and faster than I am, and that working with me was always her choice and not her obligation. Some of this is down to being a mare, but a lot of it is down to having grown up independent of human kindness or authority. It took years and lots of help of my esteemed trainer Stephanie Calendrillo of Graystone Stable to even begin trotting crossrails, let alone polish her into the productive citizen she is today.

I already knew that Blueberry would have a different concept of the horse/human relationship and as we have begun our early ground work, he indeed tries very hard to do what he is asked. We've learned to lunge, ground drive, long line, walk forwards and backwards over poles, and have conquered minor skepticism of tarps, plastic, puddles, tires, umbrellas, and pool noodles – all with great ease. I think part of his success, besides his very hands-on beginning, was that I entered into each new task with some idea of what aspects could be new or unsettling for him, but behaved as though I expected him to be familiar with the new task.

Most racehorses haven't been crosstied in a grooming stall before, but this is common practice in riding stables. Almost all of them have become used to standing quietly while tied to the back wall in their stalls in the mornings, though. The main difference, I reasoned, would be pressure on two sides of the halter instead of one, but the principle would be the same – Blueberry should know that this was time to stand quietly, and that if he hit the slack on one tie, he could move himself easily to relieve that tension. On our first afternoon, I clipped him in, ensured the quick release hardware worked, and pulled the barn door closed just in case he became upset and broke out. Then I went to work grooming him as though this was perfectly ordinary. The first time he stepped to one side and felt the tension increase, I gently tapped his shoulder to direct him to move sideways to create slack. From there, I let him figure it out—and he did. We'd spend short periods in the grooming stall at first, and gradually increased our time there, sometimes taking a break from grooming for me to put equipment away so he would see that this is a time for relaxation.

Blueberry on his first day of long line work

We've progressed this way with each new obstacle or task, and through a combination of a great brain and past experience, he has met every expectation with minimal confusion and almost no anxiety.

That doesn't mean my years of study have left me without fault, of course. I had some idea of what to expect from a retired Thoroughbred based on my past experience, I thought, but I believed I came into the process relatively free of faulty preconceptions about what the experience would be like.

Well. Horses have a way of teaching you things about yourself that you didn't realize you needed to know, and mine has already taught me that I came in with a lot of management stereotypes in the back of my brain. Here are a few of the ones Blueberry pointed out by proving them wrong:

Thoroughbreds will struggle to gain weight. Blueberry arrived in late November with some race fitness to him still, about four weeks after his last breeze. For my purposes, I wanted him to gain a little weight but he didn't need much. He was going onto 24-hour turnout, and I assumed that with winter looming it would be an uphill battle to improve his condition even a little bit. In roughly a month, he looked fantastic with two modest grain meals a day. Granted, he lost some ground again during the extreme cold and precipitation in February, but made it up again similarly easily.
Thoroughbreds may struggle in extreme cold if they enter turnout mid-winter with a slick coat. I got a light sheet for Blueberry in December but found my draft mare's clothes were way too big for him so I had didn't have a ton of different blanket choices to work with at first. I worried about this — would he shiver and shake without a puffy medium weight and neck cover? No, as it turned out. In fact, he runs warm and even before his winter coat grew in, I had to be more cautious about letting him get overheated with a blanket than too cold without one.
Barefoot Thoroughbreds will immediately and constantly abscess and chip their feet, especially in a wet winter. Blueberry arrived barefoot and my plan is to keep him that way as long as I can to let his soles toughen up before he begins under saddle work in another couple of weeks. So far we've had one bruise in four months and while I anticipate he'll need shoes when he starts real work, that's a much better record than I thought we'd have.
Horses, including Thoroughbreds, are bonkers for treats. Did not imagine this was a misconception, but Blueberry tells me with great authority that only red and white mints are treats. Carrots, apples, horse cookies, green and white mints, and even candy canes (yes, that's right – a mint in a different shape) are not edible and must be thrown out of a grain pan immediately.

I believe that no matter what type of work you're doing, horse training is a two-way street: if the horse isn't also teaching you something, you're probably doing it wrong. So far, Blueberry is a patient, kind teacher and I hope to be the same for him as we progress in our journey together.

For more of Underscore's OTTB journey, follow his Facebook page.

The post The Blueberry Bulletin: A Young OTTB Learns His First Lessons In Retirement, And Teaches A Few appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

Source of original post