The Real Rider Cup, a charity show jumping event created by Anita Motion to benefit Thoroughbred aftercare, is once again bringing the racing and equestrian worlds together in Fair Hill, Md. Following a record-breaking inaugural run in Lexington in July, the Maryland leg of the event returns to its home at the Fair Hill Thoroughbred Show on Friday evening, Sept. 16. A talented lineup of familiar faces mounted on some real horsepower will take center stage!
Past winner Penelope Miller returns for her fifth Real Rider Cup, riding once again for Team Racing Media. Past top fundraiser Keira Nygaard, whose parents Erik and Pavla own and operate Thor-Bred Stables, was among the leaders in Kentucky and comes now to Maryland with her eyes on the top prize. Paddock analyst and host for America's Day at the Races and Saratoga Live, Maggie Wolfendale Morley, returns for her second Real Rider Cup. 1/ST Racing once again maintains a strong presence with Maryland Jockey Club's marketing & events manager Brittlan Wall and analyst/broadcaster Kali Francois, among others. MidAtlantic Equine Medical Center also steps to support, furnishing a team of its own. And don't count out the kids: Team Racing Kids is back with a strong lineup!
No one does horse racing like Maryland, and some of the state's best racehorses will be demonstrating their talent in a new career. Two-time winner of the Maryland Million Turf, multiple stakes winner and earner of $434,801 Phlash Phelps will be in attendance with Sabrina Morris. Multiple stakes placed warhorse Grandiflora, winner of $357,334 will also compete with junior rider Jaidyn Shore in the tack. From outside of Maryland, Maggie Morley will be riding multiple stakes winner Ninety One Assault, who earned $440,283.
There's plenty of time to get involved to show your support: while the roster of riders is closed, title sponsorships are still available for the Maryland event and riders are actively fundraising to meet their pledges. Spectators are encouraged and there is no cost for admission. Come for the thrilling competition and stay for the lively afterparty! Refreshments will be on hand courtesy of Wesley's and Spring House Spirits with live music by Release. Learn more and donate today at therealridercup.com!
All proceeds benefit the Retired Racehorse Project, New Vocations Thoroughbred Adoption and the Fair Hill Thoroughbred Show.
Fair Hill Thoroughbred Show is a 501c3 organization supporting riders of Thoroughbreds by providing affordable show fees, scholarships, stakes classes and prizes in every division. By supporting their riders, we are helping more OTTBs find second careers.
The Retired Racehorse Project (RRP) is a 501(c)3 charitable organization working to increase demand for off-track Thoroughbreds in the equestrian world. In addition to producing the Thoroughbred Makeover and National Symposium the world's largest and most lucrative retraining competition for recently-retired racehorses, the organization also publishes Off-Track Thoroughbred Magazine, produces the Master Class retraining clinic series, and presents programming at major horse expos and events around the country. The RRP maintains an educational library of content to empower more equestrians to ride a Thoroughbred.
Founded in 1992, New Vocations has grown into the largest racehorse adoption program in the country. Its mission to rehabilitate, retrain and rehome retired Thoroughbred and Standardbred racehorse has led to the placement of over 7,000 individuals, with 500 retirees entering the program each year. With facilities in Kentucky, Louisiana, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania, New Vocations serves over 40 racetracks, working directly with owners and trainers in need of aftercare options.
Rehabilitation and athletic programs for horses often include water treadmill exercise. However, little research has evaluated the effect of water depth on limb and back kinematics. Therefore, researchers in the United Kingdom sought to determine the effect of walking in different water depths at a constant speed on limb and back kinematics of horses.
Six mature, adult horses were equipped with ten waterproof light markers and reflective spheres attached along the limbs and back. Additionally, inertial-measuring units were attached to the poll, withers, left and right tubera coxae, and sacrum to measure range of motion (ROM). Prior to water treadmill exercise, the horses were walked in-hand over a firm surface for 5 minutes to warm up. On the treadmill, horses walked at 5.25 feet/second for 3 minutes at each water depth: 0, 2.95, 8.27, 13.39, and 18.50 inches. Videography was used to quantify back and limb kinematics during water treadmill exercise.
Flexion in the limb joints (carpal and tarsal) increased at maximum flexion angles during swing as water depths increased. Thoracic spine flexion-extension ROM and dorsoventral and mediolateral ROM of the pelvis increased with increases in water depth. The horses' response to increases in water depth leveled off after reaching a threshold, where water depth was either above or below the carpus depending on the individual horse.
The researchers concluded that changes in limb kinematics brought about by relatively modest increases in water depth at walking speed of 5.25 feet/second are sufficient to induce significant changes in back and pelvic movement.
For more information on this research, view the abstract published in the Journal of Equine Veterinary Sciences.
Like most major advancements in horse racing, there was an element of chance that came with the development of one of the most effective technologies for ensuring the safety of racehorses.
Although it likely won't be part of the same lore as the coin flip in 1969 that resulted in Penny Chenery receiving the rights to a foal that would be named Secretariat, a brainstorming exercise in 2013 at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine would make a lasting impact on evaluating the soundness of racehorses.
“An engineer at Davis was working on developing a new scanner,” Dr. Mathieu Spriet, a professor in surgical and radiological sciences, recalls. “He came to me because he was writing a big grant, and he was looking for additional goals for his grant. He was like, 'Can we do PET on a horse?' I was like, 'Whoa!' And that's how it started, with a guy coming knocking on my door.”
What Spriet is referring to is positron emission tomography (PET), where a small amount of radioactive material is injected into the horse and then a sophisticated scanner detects how it has moved throughout the body. The image the scanner produces of the radioactive dye inside the body alerts to the discovery of an issue, similar to the theory behind other imaging technologies like X-ray, computed tomography (CT), or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).
PET scans produce particularly detailed three-dimensional images. The technology was first developed for humans in 1974 by two professors of nuclear medicine and biophysics at UCLA. It is most commonly used to detect the presence and spread of cancer.
“If there's one good thing with horses, it's that there isn't much cancer,” Spriet said. “They get in trouble in many other ways.”
Spriet's intellectual curiosity extends as far as his world travels, with a veterinary degree from France, a subsequent master's of science from Canada, and now a professorship in the United States. So, he started to brainstorm.
“The truth is that, a lot of the time in vet medicine, we end up following what's happening in human medicine but, at least at the time, there was not much done looking at the bone [with PET scans] except looking at metastases,” he said. “But then I came across an early paper that was describing using [PET scans] in people for foot pain. And I thought, that's what we have in horses all the time. So, that's how I got excited.”
Spriet says he shared his ideas of how the advanced imaging technology could be used to detect indicators of lameness in horses with Dr. Sue Stover, director of the orthopedic research laboratory at UC Davis.
“I showed it to her, and she was like, 'Oh my god, you've found gold. You've found a mine of gold,'” Spiret recalled. “That's something that started out of an academic interest question of whether you can do PET on a horse.”
On April 15, 2015, a research horse named Fancy Piece of Candy, an 18-year-old Quarter Horse with a lesion in her left front foot, became the first horse to undergo a PET scan.
“Fancy Piece of Candy” would also be an appropriate nickname for a promising new piece of technology at a veterinary school. Four decades after the initial PET scan on a human, the first PET scan on a horse was deemed a success.
“It was actually a pretty good fit for the horse foot,” Spriet said. “That thing was never built to image a horse. It was built to image the human brain.
“At the end of the day, today's scanners look very different from that, but the detectors are pretty much the same.”
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A number of factors contributed to making the application of this revolutionary idea in equine medicine more accelerated than the application of other academic innovations.
PET scan machines were subsequently built specifically for horses. As such, instead of horses having to be under general anesthesia and turned on their sides to position the foot inside the machine, the MILEPET scanner allows horses to stand while under sedation. The machine maneuvers on wheels to the horse. A ring of sensors is opened and positioned around the limb that will be scanned. Each image takes approximately four minutes to produce, meaning that multiple leg scans can be done in less than a half hour.
The application of PET to horses came at a time when racing was on high alert about equine safety. There were 144 fatalities during the 2018-19 season in California, according to a California Horse Racing Board annual report, including more than 20 in a three-month period at Santa Anita that caused the track to cease operations temporarily in March 2019.
Grants and funding from organizations like the Grayson Jockey Club Research Foundation accelerated the integration of PET scans into assessing equine welfare.
Perhaps most importantly, rather than collecting hundreds of thousands of points of data and then assessing what they all mean in the big picture, radiologists knew what to look for with a PET scan.
“The sesamoid bone is of high interest for us because the majority of breakdowns that happen are due to fracture of this little bone at the back of the ankle, the sesamoid bone,” Spriet said. “They've figured out that a lot of horses that break the sesamoid bone have on pathology this area that becomes abnormal. But the challenge is that it's not something you can see on an x-ray. It's something you cannot see on bone scan [scintigraphy]. It's something that's actually quite difficult to see on MRI. But, PET is really good at picking up that.”
What a PET scan will detect is “stress remodeling,” which represents abnormal bone trying to repair itself. This repairing process attracts increased blood flow to that area, which a PET scan can detect. Bone that is repairing is more fragile than established bone and less conducive to holding up to the high impact of racing or other equestrian sports. This is represented by bright coloring on the image produced by the scan.
“That is what we know from all the necropsies that have been done on the horses breaking down on the track is that typically they don't break down out of nowhere,” Spriet said. “They break down because there are some underlying changes in the bone, which is what we call stress remodeling changes.”
A horse undergoes a PET scan with the MILEPET scanner, which was specifically designed for equines. Photo courtesy Dr. Mathieu Spiret
The ability of PET scans to detect underlying indicators of lameness attracted the attention of the horse racing industry looking for solutions to the fatality crisis.
“We were basically very interested in looking for any type of imaging modality that could really move the needle in terms of safety,” Dr. Ryan Carpenter, a veterinarian practicing at racetracks in Southern California, said. “I think, for the typical Thoroughbred racetrack practitioner like myself, the injury that we struggle the most to identify are sesamoid bone fractures because we don't have a great imaging modality that can help us with that yet. They're the ones that, so to speak, will sneak up on you.”
By that, Carpenter means that horses do not present outward signs or symptoms of being at risk for a sesamoid fracture, which happens to be the major cause of breakdowns, like they would for other types of fractures.
“The cool thing we were seeing early on with the PET scan is that it was able to identify this lesion on the sesamoid bone that no other imaging modality was able to up until this point,” he said. “That was the real exciting thing for me as a racetrack practitioner because you look at the necropsy reports and you see where these things fracture repeatedly, but you're still left scratching your head saying how do I figure this out before the horse ends up on the necropsy floor.”
The Stronach Group invested $500,000 for the first ever MILEPET scanner that allows horses to be examined while standing and under sedation to be installed at Santa Anita Park in December 2019.
“We purchased the machine, which allows for a greatly reduced cost to the owner,” Dr. Dionne Benson, the chief veterinary officer for the Stronach Group, said. “You're talking about approximately, over a private facility, a 50 percent or more reduction in cost.”
It's one thing to show success in the laboratory and an entirely different undertaking for it to be applicable to the real world, especially one as fast-paced and unpredictable as horse racing.
“With any new imaging technology that comes on the market, there's always this big learning curve,” Carpenter said. “There's a learning curve of what's normal and what's abnormal, when do we react and when are we overreacting.”
A comparison of the images a veterinarian sees from a bone scan (left) versus a PET scan (right). Images courtesy Dr. Ryan Carpenter
However, the PET scan proved to be a front-runner capable of a sub-22-second opening quarter mile.
“The amazing thing about the PET technology,” Carpenter said, “is that from a new imaging modality that's been rolled out, I would say it's probably the smoothest and most seamless type of modality we've had that can be integrated into clinical practice. I don't think there was much of a time when we didn't fully understand what we're doing.”
The PET scan technology builds upon previous work done on the racetrack with other bone scanning modalities. Now, veterinarians like Carpenter and Spriet are looking to build upon the initial successes of the PET scan technology with research into how horses' PET scans evolve over time. One longitudinal study looks at horses returning from layoffs. Another examines horses that have won races to study what their PET scans look like. The total number of horses that have undergone PET scans is approaching 500. (“We're throwing a party for 500,” Spriet joked.)
Access to PET scans is part of the formula that has helped Santa Anita reduce its number of racing fatalities to three out of more than 4,800 starters during its 2021-22 meet. That represents a 74 percent reduction since the installation of the first MILEPET scanner at Santa Anita.
“I'm super grateful that the private veterinarians have embraced these technologies like they have,” Benson said. “As we continue down the road, I'm hopeful that the veterinarians and trainers will continue to embrace these technologies as tools, not as judgment and jury, and that way, we'll just be able to keep horses safe more effectively.”
As veterinarians are getting a handle on the promise that PET scans have shown in clinical practice, so are racehorse trainers. Trainer Doug O'Neill said he's found the technology helpful in determining whether a horse needs a layoff to prevent an injury – and when they don't.
“We have found the PET scan to be very useful from both the perspective of pinpointing the problem but also giving us a level of confidence to know the horse will not get hurt in a race,” he said. “When you have a clean PET scan, you know your horse is 100 percent safe to run and that's a good feeling.”
Doug O'Neill
O'Neill said the 3-year-old bay filly It's Simple that he trains for Reddam Racing showed a change in her PET scans from before winning an allowance optional claiming race at Santa Anita on May 1 to after her fifth-place finish in the Melair Stakes at the track on May 28.
“We did it and gave confidence to press on but then it was clear when we needed to stop,” O'Neill said.
Spriet's initial idea of applying PET scans to horses is extending to other species of animals as well.
“There's a big concept right now in health research, the concept of 'One Health,'” Spriet said. “It's the concept that health involves the health of humans, animals, and the environment and combining that so you learn from one species to another.”
It's now coming full circle back to humans as well.
“The Santa Anita racehorses are the first population of athletes that have been followed up as much with PET because in the human field it has not been used that much,” Spriet said. “It's coming. There's more and more interest into that. I have presented some of the racehorse stuff at a human conference, and it's kind of fun because we vets are usually learning from the human doctors, but once in a while, we have animals that can inspire people like football players and track athletes.”
There is a crevasse of knowledge between when the starting gate pops for the last time in an American Quarter Horse's racing career, and the moment when he becomes a “point-and-shoot” arena horse – able to prance into a barrel or roping arena feeling confident in the chances that he'll come out the other side with a new saddle or a shiny buckle.
It's a deep crevasse and it can be tough to negotiate without the proper knowledge and skill. But the people who possess that knowledge and are able to bridge that gap to take a horse from one career to the next, are horse trainers with a rare and desirable skillset.
AQHA world champion barrel racer Lance Graves is an expert at negotiating this task and has done so countless times in his storied career. The Hartshorne, Oklahoma-based trainer and coach has also noticed a disturbing trend in the industry.
“Just by the nature of things, as we go through life as young people, and we age and become parents, I think we try to do all we can to help our kids not go through the struggles we had as kids,” he said. “We just put our little people on finished products. It comes from a good place, but in doing that, I think we push our kids past understanding why their horses stop, turnaround, and why he might want to run off or be barn sour. What we've ended up with is a generation of 'competition cowboys.' And there's a lot of difference between a competition cowboy and a horse trainer.
“I see these young, talented kids who have won cool stuff, but they don't understand why their horse won,” he said. “If we want to keep our sport going, we need new trainers. Those of us who are aging out, we don't want to take 16 head anymore (to train or on which to compete). By nature of the beast, we need to pass down that knowledge of 'this is how you do it.'”
And seeing a need, Graves stepped up and developed the LG Legacy Project, which pairs passionate teenage youth with an off-track racehorse, and immerses them into a 10-month training program that teaches them the nitty gritty of horse training. It will culminate with a final event. There, a winner is chosen and scholarships are awarded. Additionally, the youth are given their horse's registration certificate as their very own.
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“We set them on a course to changing these horses from a just-off-the-track horse to one that is ready to become an arena performer,” Graves said. “The whole challenge in the game is to put a start, a handle, a foundation on a horse after they come off the racetrack so the next person can make a barrel horse or a rope horse or a 'dogging horse or whatever out of. This program's challenge is not to win a barrel race at the end of the 10 months, it's for your mentors to get on your horse and say, 'Yep, I'd show this horse to a client of mine.'”
The non-profit program is led by Graves as the head mentor. Stepping up with him is a group of passionate volunteer mentors.
The process begins with racehorse owners who donate a horse to the program. The horses might be just days from their last race start or coming out of a long down time, but each horse has the potential for a second career. The owners donate the horse and its registration certificate to the program, and get paperwork for a tax deduction.
“To be honest, I'm not sure everyone even asks for the paperwork,” Graves said. “The (racehorse owners) do this because they love the program, they believe in the program, and they have horses they want to be able to follow and support. They don't want those horses to end up who-knows-where doing who-knows-what. And they want to support these kids and cheer them on.”
Graves interviews and chooses youth that come from all walks of life and socioeconomic status. He said what he's looking for is heart and moral character, and a willingness and desire to learn and advance. The number of youth he selects depends entirely on the non-profit's available funding.
Once both horses and humans are selected, they're paired up and are introduced to their first mentor, Lianna DeWeese, who is a champion barrel racer and professional colt starter.
She takes each pair into the round pen and begins their education.
“She gives those kids a lesson,” Graves said. “This is what we're going to do in the round pen, this is how we're going to saddle him, this is what we're going to ask him to do. She gives them their start. Then as they all advance, the other mentors step in.”
In addition to Graves and DeWeese, the other key mentors are Oklahoma State University Rodeo Coach Cody Hollingsworth, world champion barrel racer Mark Bugni and world champion roper Steve Orth.
DeWeese, Hollingsworth, Bugni and Orth also serve as the judges at the end of the competition.
Over the nearly year-long course, they are joined by a host of other mentors from across the horse industry, including veterinarians, nutritionists and trainers.
The youth are asked to come to Graves' ranch several times during the program for intensive clinics, but they also must attend online clinics several times per month to further their education.
They are taught not only the mechanics of training a horse, but also the mechanics of running your own business, and how to run it with integrity.
“A love of horses isn't enough if you're going to try to make a living,” Graves said. “You need to understand the horse, understand their behavior and understand how to manipulate that behavior to get what you or your client wants. We teach ethics and honesty to these kids. Nobody wants to do business with a shady cowboy. We talk about what kind of character you have to display to get committed, loyal owners. I'm literally trying to teach these young people how to be trainers, how to be self-employed and make a living at it.”
At the 2022 final, the winner was Saylor Smethers of Henryetta, Oklahoma, and Favorite Hot Ko Ko, a 2018 mare donated by Brenda Reiswig of Diamond R Racing, based in Bismarck, North Dakota.
Favorite Hot Ko Ko was bred by AQHA all-time leading racehorse breeder Dr. Ed Allred, and is by red-hot sire Favorite Cartel and out of the Walk Thru Fire mare Hot Looker, a full sister to 2019 world champion He Looks Hot. Favorite Hot Ko Ko was guided in her racing career by AQHA champion trainer Jason L. Olmstead, and after lighting the board in two of her five race attempts, was guided to her new racing career.
“How would you like to be gifted a horse like that to start your training career?” Lance asks, reflecting on the pedigrees of the horses provided. “I'm proud of the fact that we get to do that. These horses are real racehorses that have been well-handled and well-cared for.”
The LG Legacy Project is celebrating its fourth year of helping develop the next generation of horsemen. Graves hopes to see the program grow and maybe even have its own documentary series on television.
“My hope is to give everything I ever learned right back to the community,” he said. “Ultimately, I'd like to leave this world with a strong program where good-hearted young people are matched up with a good-quality horse and they're taught how to train.”
Second Career Stars is an ongoing series on retired racing American Quarter Horses in new careers. If you know of a horse that should be featured, write to acaudill@aqha.org. AQHA News and information is a service of the American Quarter Horse Association. For more news and information, follow @AQHA Racing on Twitter, “like” Q-Racing on Facebook, and visit www.aqha.com/racing.
