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Montplaisir: How Educating People Can Better Our Horses’ Lives

In my new role as Equine Education Coordinator for the Kentucky Equine Education Project (KEEP), I've been tasked with building awareness for the equine industry's educational and employment opportunities. This includes creating relationships with youth organizations, leading outreach through events, and serving as an ambassador for the initiatives we have in place.

The industry struggles with recruitment and retention of workforce, and I repeatedly hear sentiments that today's youth can no longer relate to this 'way of life'. Countering that notion, I believe in maintaining a positive growth mindset, and in the transformative power of education. I also believe we already have a template for recruiting and developing people in the way we develop racehorses.

We begin working with horses at a young age, through lots of human contact and handling with foals, ground work with weanlings, and starting yearlings under saddle.

When working with a young horse, it is rewarding to see and feel the learning cogs starting to turn – the softening into your hands, ears intent on a human teacher rather than calling out for equine friends, head lowering and stretching out from poll to tail. Early training facilitates progression, establishes trust, and builds confidence.

We do not expect horses to succeed without a proper foundation, so why would we expect that of humans?

To find future racehorses, we go to sales and select prospects. When it comes to finding people for the workforce, the process should not be much different. Many of the under-30s I know who are working in the equine industry stumbled upon it by chance. Their stories range from turning on the television and catching a big race, going on a class tour to a farm, or introduction through a family friend or relative who was a casual fan. This process could be improved through intentional, strategic recruitment. Connecting with schools, integrating equine into existing curriculums, and demonstrating how horses can improve educational attainment are all ways to get kids thinking about careers with horses.

Even when we have our prospective racehorses, they are not loaded onto the horse van and shipped directly to the racetrack. They spend ample time at training centers, learning with other youngsters about how to gallop in company and on their own.

The Thoroughbred industry values experience in its employees, and I can't count the number of times I've heard the phrase, “Young people need to pay their dues.” However, I have never had someone define to me exactly what this means. We cannot expect people to just figure out how to find a mentor, which technical training or university programs they should apply for, and where to locate internships. We must formulate a training plan, and outline the pathways required for gaining experience and upward mobility in jobs. This sets people up for positive experiences and success.

Finally, when we have our horses fit and ready for the track, we don't expect them to win races without daily training. In addition to that training, they also receive time off and rehab to keep them mentally and physically healthy. No matter someone's age, knowledge level or job title, continuing education should never be overlooked. There is no ceiling blocking anyone from being a more diligent employee, involved team member, compassionate manager, and devoted steward of the horse.

It comes down to this: the better we educate the industry's workforce, the better the horses will be cared for. Hands guided by knowledge and experience are developed through a strong foundation – and maintained through continued training.

Annise Montplaisir is the equine education coordinator for the Kentucky Equine Education Project (KEEP) and is a graduate of the Godolphin Flying Start program.

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Palmer: Want To Make Racing Safer? Get Your COVID-19 Vaccine

As COVID-19 vaccine rollouts continue to ramp up across many racing states this week, New York State Gaming Commission equine medical director Dr. Scott Palmer said the best thing racing industry participants can do to make horses safer is to sign up for a shot.

Why?

Because in analyzing data on Thoroughbred fatalities from 2020, Palmer said he has determined the COVID-19 pandemic could be considered a novel risk factor for fatal injuries last year. Overall, there were 24 percent fewer fatalities per 1,000 starts in the region in 2020 as compared to 2019, but Palmer noticed some shifts in the types of fatalities that did occur. The number and percentage of overall fatalities that occurred during racing (versus training or other activities) went down, which Palmer said was to be expected since the pandemic pause resulted in resulted in fewer race cards in 2020 versus 2019.

He did see a change in the proportion of fatalities occurring in training, however – especially in juvenile runners.

“We had a very unusually high number of fatalities in 2-year-old racehorses, particularly at Saratoga Racetrack this summer,” said Palmer, who presented the data during a teleconference hosted by the Association of Racing Commissioners International. “There are always many factors that enter into fatalities and I'm not going to try to tell you COVID was the only reason for that, but you put COVID on top of a really crummy winter where it was tough to train anyway, and it wasn't like we could move the Saratoga meet back to September.”

Once racing was cancelled, Palmer said it didn't make sense for some owners that keep their horses on the farm to send them to the track as usual and pay a day rate when they had no idea how much longer racing would be shut down. Some 2-year-olds didn't post their first official timed works until June, much closer to their debuts than usual. Out of the eighteen 2-year-old fatalities in 2020, eight occurred in horses that had never made it to the races.

“That's a really big deal,” Palmer said. “That was an enormously different experience than we'd ever had before.”

Palmer pointed out that many horses, including those 2-year-olds, did not get the usual timeframe for the bone remodeling process which is crucial to preparing the skeleton for the rigors of racing.

Equine (and human) skeletons undergo a constant cycle of response to environmental stressors, with the bone surface absorbing micro damage, then removing damaged bone cells and replacing them with new cells. In this way, the skeleton can respond dynamically to the stresses it undergoes, which is why a period of gradually-increasing workload ahead of a race prepares the horse for the rigors of running. The removal of damaged bone cells is quick, but Palmer said the creation of new, stronger bone is much slower. It's not always clear to a trainer where a horse is in the development process, since horses may appear sound throughout.

By the time horses did get to the races last year, many ran fewer times overall than they would normally have in a calendar year, reducing the opportunities for their skeletons to respond to intense exercise before the next race.

Palmer also reported that in New York, the pandemic had a serious impact on the number of out-of-competition tests (OOCT) that could be administered. OOCTs typically happen with two regulatory staff getting in a car together to collect the needed samples; during COVID-19, that kind of travel couldn't happen. It's hard to say whether trainers were using more medication out of competition to patch horses through a busy summer and fall because they simply weren't tested as much.

That's why he wants you to get vaccinated – horses, trainers, and regulatory veterinarians can only return to their regular duties as COVID-19 rates continue to come down and developing herd immunity will contribute to that, he said.

The Mid-Atlantic region has generally improved its fatality numbers with time; when expressed as a rate per 1,000 starts, racing-related fatalities are down 43 percent from 2010 to 2020, which officials find encouraging. For the first part of the decade though, the Mid-Atlantic tracked higher than the national average rate. Those rates have become more similar in the past five years, and while the national data from the Equine Injury Database is not yet published for 2020, Palmer expects they will once again be very close. The racing fatality rate in the Mid-Atlantic for 2020 was 1.39 per 1,000 starts.

The way numbers are expressed makes a big difference in their specificity and their context for regulators, and Palmer said the public and the media do not always grasp the importance of this. For example, New York saw 24 fatalities from 14,895 racing starts last year, and 42 fatalities from timed workouts; that would make it seem as though working out is more dangerous than racing in New York, but leaves out the context that there were 49,073 official timed workout events. The state's racing fatality rate was 1.6 per 1,000 starts, but its training fatality rate was 0.8 per 1,000 timed workouts. Expressing numbers as rates also makes it easy to compare data between years like 2019 and 2020 when the state had drastically different numbers of races.

The EID has yielded numerous reforms to improve racing safety, but Palmer said commissions need to begin focusing on making appropriate changes in the morning, too.

“We don't regulate training in the same way we regulate racing,” Palmer pointed out.

Even in jurisdictions where there are regulatory veterinarians observing morning training, there may not be enough of them to visually cover all parts of a track, and it's easy for a trainer to sneak a horse with questionable soundness through a different gap before the sun is up.

Video surveillance can help veterinarians pick up on problems (though, citing the case of Mongolian Groom ahead of the 2019 Breeders' Cup, Palmer pointed out it's only as good as the monitoring of that video).

Palmer believes regulators need a better idea of how much medication horses have on board for timed workouts; he pointed to California's recently-updated rules prohibiting non-steroidal anti-inflammatories within 24 hours of a timed work and subjecting horses to post-work sampling to verify compliance. Even if a jurisdiction doesn't have that rule, Palmer suggested random sampling as a fact-finding endeavor, as well as sampling any training fatalities.

Palmer also suggested that track maintenance become a priority in the mornings. He recently conducted a study of moisture levels at Belmont and found significant differences between the main and training track. During a drought, it's difficult to keep New York's sand-heavy track surfaces sufficiently watered in the afternoons, but the water trucks and harrows can make much more frequent passes over the surface than they can in the afternoon.

Data showed the main track surface at Belmont is considerably wetter than the training track surface.

“Is that good? Is that bad?” he said. “I have no idea … what I do know is we want to have a consistent surface for all horses and I'd submit to you that this is not as consistent as it needs to be.”

The final component for improved safety, according to Palmer's recommendations: mandated continuing education for licensed trainers, to make sure those who might miss this story have all the information they need.

Currently, trainer CE will be required in Delaware, Maryland, New York, and Virginia in 2022. It will be a condition pending legislative approval next year in West Virginia, and is still “under consideration” in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

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Breeders’ Cup Presents Connections: Russell Family ‘Lucky’ To Have Each Other

It seems like some things are just meant to be.

Then-assistant trainer Brittany Trimble Russell first met and dated the man who is now her husband, jockey Sheldon Russell, in 2012. Then, Brittany's boss at the time, Tim Ritchey, offered her the chance to travel the country working at different racetracks, and she couldn't pass up the opportunity.

As Brittany spent the next several years working for trainers like Jimmy Jerkens, Jonathan Thomas, Ron Moquett, and Brad Cox all across the Eastern half of the United States, she and Sheldon remained long-distance friends.

Eventually, the racing game brought them back together again.

“I think everything just worked out the way it was meant to,” Brittany said simply. “It was like I'd never left.”

Each made their way back to Maryland in 2017, and things picked up almost where they'd left off. Today, the couple has built both a relationship and a successful Thoroughbred training business at Laurel Park.

They were married in August of 2018, and their daughter, Edy, was born a year later.

“She is our why; she's why we work so hard,” said Brittany. “I love that I'm able to enjoy this game with my family. It's 24-7 and a lot of dedication and can be a lot to handle, but the fact that Sheldon can ride for us and we can enjoy it together, it's so special.”

Sheldon helps out at the barn and breezes horses in the mornings, while their daughter stays with either his mother or the mother of Brittany's top assistant, Luis Barajas.

“Their family is like our family now,” Brittany said.

Edy is young yet, but she's already fearless with the horses.

“She struts down the shed row like she owns the place,” Brittany laughed. “She has no fear, and you have to watch her or she'll duck right under the webbings. She does have a pony, of course. Sheldon says she's not going to be a jockey, but you know she already loves to ride!”

Both Brittany and Sheldon's careers have been booming over the past four years. Sheldon, a four-time leading rider in Maryland, has won 80 or more starts each season, and Brittany has increased her number of winners each year she's been in business.

She began with 11 wins in 2018, improved to 17 in 2019, and built up to 46 wins and over $1.6 million in earnings in 2020. With 13 wins thus far in 2021, Brittany is on target for her best year yet.

Five-time stakes winner Hello Beautiful has played the starring role in Brittany's career thus far. The Maryland-bred 4-year-old has won seven of her 14 lifetime starts to earn $384,610, well out-performing her $6,500 purchase price.

“She's special for many reasons, and she's really done a lot for us,” Brittany said.

Brittany has come a long way from her beginnings in Peach Bottom, Pa., where her family didn't have anything to do with horses.

“We lived in Amish country, and they're farmers, but not horse farmers,” Brittany quipped. “As a young girl, I always wanted to be able to do everything, right? First I wanted to be a ballerina, then to play softball, then to learn an instrument. … It was always something new. But when I started riding horses, that was the one thing that stuck.”

Her primary equine learning came at nearby Breakaway Farm. She was cleaning stalls on weekends by the age of 12, and by 14 she started to learn how to break and gallop the babies.

“It was a good way to learn how to gallop, the babies and I kind of learned together,” Brittany said. “I didn't really have any formal riding lessons.”

She rode a few amateur jockey races along the way, but Brittany learned she preferred puzzling out the horses from the training side of the industry.

Trainer Jimmy Jerkens was the biggest influence on that part of her horse racing education. Learning from the veteran master horseman taught Brittany what questions she needed to be asking to understand her equine charges.

“I still have the 'Jerkens text hotline,'” she joked. “If I ever have a question or wonder what to do in a specific situation, he's always willing to help. He's wonderful.”

Working for Brad Cox in Saratoga sealed the deal in terms of Brittany's career choice.

“He really intrigued me when he offered me a job, even though I wasn't sure about making the move up to Saratoga at the time,” said Brittany. “That was the job that made me realize I want to do it, to be a trainer. He left me on my own, he trusted me. He was a good teacher, he's a good horseman, and he knows how to win races. He's really good to people, you see so much of his staff stays with him. In this game that says a lot about a person.”

In turn, the thing that says a lot about Brittany is her enduring positive attitude. She doesn't acknowledge the industry treating her any differently due to her gender, and she is grateful for all the time spent as a nomad assistant trainer traveling around the country.

“Being away from family when I was younger, that's sort of what molded me into the person I am today,” Brittany said. “It gave me that education I needed to go out on my own. I missed holidays and things with my family, and they don't quite understand because they're not horse people. But I wouldn't trade it.”

In addition, she and Sheldon have learned to work together in harmony, win or lose.

“At the end of the day you have to realize that the rider doesn't want to mess up,” Brittany explained. “Sheldon will be the first one to say, 'I'm sorry,' and he's done way more good for us than bad. It's one of those things where I'm lucky to have him.”

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Louisiana Derby Aftermath: Hot Rod Charlie Back to California; Mandaloun May Run In Lexington

The dust has settled after a thrilling 14-race card Saturday at Fair Grounds Race Course & Slots, with the TwinSpires.com Louisiana Derby (G2) and Oaks (G2) in the rearview mirror. Both the local Derby and Oaks offered 100-40-20-10 qualifying points for the May 1 Kentucky Derby Presented by Woodford Reserve, and the April 30 Longines Kentucky Oaks, and several of the top finishers emerged with both races firmly on their calendar.

The connections for several of the major players had a chance to sleep on the results, evaluate how their respective horses came out their races, and plot a path to Churchill Downs. Fair Grounds media caught up with several trainers Sunday morning to get their thoughts moving forward.

Louisiana Derby:
Doug O'Neill, trainer, Hot Rod Charlie (Leandro Mora was trainer of record in Louisiana Derby) (1^st): Charlie looked great this morning. He flies back to California on Tuesday. I love the spacing (six weeks) leading up to the Kentucky Derby. It's ideal. He's proven to travel well. I'm very proud of my nephew Patrick (with Boat Racing). He's a real good young man and I'm very excited for him and all of the owners.

Scott Blasi, assistant trainer to Steve Asmussen, Midnight Bourbon (2^nd): Big effort and he's another horse (like Clairiere) that's just going to continue to improve. I don't think distance will be an issue with him and the timing, back to the Derby, off this series here, there will be plenty of time to freshen up and run his best race. We'll train here for a week and ship a week from Sunday (the 28^th).

Greg Foley, trainer, O Besos (3^rd): We all want to go forward after yesterday. The only question we had was the distance, and he answered that pretty good. He galloped out past the winner. We've got 25 (derby qualifying) points. If we got second, we wouldn't have to think about it, but now we have to hope we get in. we just have to wait and see. I don't want to run him back (before the Derby). I don't think it will affect our training. He's a dead-fit horse. We'll get hi back home next week (to Churchill Downs) and we'll just wait and see. If it gets us in, great, if it doesn't, oh well, we'll go from there. I'd like to try and get in the big one and hopefully that will get it done. At least we're not wondering any more (about the distance).

Mike Stidham, trainer, Proxy (4^th): He came back in good condition. I will discuss it with the Godolphin team and decide which direction we go in next.

Brad Cox, trainer, Mandaloun (6^th as the 6-5 favorite): We couldn't come up with any reasons for the dull performance. We'll get him back to Kentucky, see how he trains, and then go from there. I've thought about it, but I think right now I'll probably nominate him to the Lexington (G3, April 10 at Keeneland) and we'll see. He was done at the half-mile pole, so I don't think the distance was the reason (he was so dull). He ran out of horse fairly quickly. He handled everything in the paddock, so to show up and get beat by those horses we had run so well against, that was obviously disappointing. He's not that bad. We were the favorite. It's almost like you'd like to see a reason or an excuse but we aren't seeing it yet. The six weeks (to the Derby) is almost a blessing. I don't think it's a bad thing. We'll see how he trains. I'm not going to change too much with him. He bounced out of it in good shape, scoped good, no issues. He'll probably go to Churchill at some point later this week.

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