training | Horse Racing Free Tips

Breeders’ Cup Buzz: Trainers Discuss The Event’s Greatest Training Feats

It takes an incredible amount of work to get a horse to the starting gate in any race, much less the Breeders' Cup, but some efforts take a little something extra.

In this installment of Breeders' Cup Buzz, we asked current and former trainers for their opinions on the most impressive training feats in the event's history. For some, the answer lied in an individual horse's performance, while others looked at dominance over the course of a card.

Kenny McPeek

“Dick Mandella winning four in a day (at the 2003 Breeders' Cup). I was there that day, and I think even Dick was in shock.”

Mandella's quartet of winners during the 2003 Breeders' Cup at Santa Anita Park were Halfbridled in the Juvenile Fillies, Action This Day in the Juvenile, Johar in the turf, and Pleasantly Perfect in the Classic.

Elliott Walden

“Da Hoss and Michael Dickinson (in the 1998 Mile). He had a long, long time off, and it was a heck of a performance to come off that layoff.”

After winning the 1996 Breeders' Cup Mile at Woodbine, Da Hoss didn't race for 715 days, hampered by recurring injuries that kept halting his progress on the comeback trail. Dickinson finally got the horse right for a return start in a Colonial Downs allowance less than a month before the 1998 Mile at Churchill Downs. He won the race at Colonial Downs, then won by a head in the Breeders Cup; an effort billed by announcer Tom Durkin “the greatest comeback since Lazarus.”

Steve Asmussen

“Wild Again, because he was the first one (to win the Classic).”

Wild Again, trained by Vincent Timphony, made history as the first Breeders' Cup Classic winner in 1984 at Hollywood Park. He raced 16 times that season, winning six, including the G1 Meadowlands Cup, the G2 New Orleans Handicap, and the G2 Oaklawn Handicap.

Chad Summers

“Da Hoss. Training horses is always stressful – training good horses is many sleepless nights – to take a horse who won the Breeders' Cup and not make it back to the races for almost one year – prep in an allowance at Colonial Downs in his only start in a year, and have the confidence off that race to go on to the Breeders' Cup and win it again – I can't imagine what the day-to-day thoughts were and training job Michael Dickinson did to have him ready to go.

“All connections who have run well in Breeders' Cup should be commended but that was the most impressive one to me.”

The post Breeders’ Cup Buzz: Trainers Discuss The Event’s Greatest Training Feats appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

Source of original post

Omega-3s And Inflammation In Athletic Horses

Inflammation is part and parcel to building strength and fitness in equine athletes. One key to training, however, is keeping inflammation at controllable levels after exercise so recovery occurs quickly and training continues unhindered. New findings from Kentucky Equine Research (KER) suggest long-chain omega-3s may be useful in managing inflammation in hard-working horses.

Using eight Thoroughbreds in race training, the researchers designed a 28-day study to determine the effect of long-chain omega-3 (EO-3) supplementation and exercise on blood serum gamma-glutamyl transferase (GGT) levels and inflammation. The enzyme GGT breaks down glutathione, a potent antioxidant. As levels of GGT rise, less glutathione is available to neutralize free radicals, leaving more cells susceptible to the damaging effects of oxidation.

[Story Continues Below]

“Interest in the effect of omega-3s on inflammation stemmed from consistently high concentrations of the enzyme GGT in blood samples of some racing Thoroughbreds,” said Laura Petroski-Rose, B.V.M.S., a veterinarian with Kentucky Equine Research.

In the study, four of the horses were supplemented daily with 60 mL (2 ounces) of EO-3, while four horses served as controls and received the same feed without EO-3. All horses were fed 13to 15 pounds (6-7 kg) of a commercial racing feed (12 percent protein, 8 percent fat) with free-choice timothy hay. During the study, the horses were galloped three times per week (1-1.5 miles per session) on a racetrack and jogged three times per week (30 minutes per session) on a mechanical exerciser. At the conclusion of the 28 days, the horses performed an exercise test on the racetrack that consisted of a warm-up jog, ten-furlong (2,000-meter) gallop, and a two-furlong (400-meter) breeze. Blood samples were taken before exercise as well as two and four hours post-exercise.

The horses supplemented with EO-3 had significantly lower GGT levels two and four hours post-exercise compared to the control horses. This may have resulted from a reduction in inflammation observed post-exercise in the horses fed EO-3. Read more about the study.

Three-Year License Revocation, $50K Fine For Rice’s ‘Improper and Corrupt Conduct’

Linda Rice had her training license immediately revoked for a period of “no less than three years” and was fined $50,000 May 17 when New York State Gaming Commission (NYSGC) members voted 5-0 to agree with a hearing officer that Rice's years-long pattern of seeking and obtaining confidential pre-entry information from New York Racing Association (NYRA) racing office workers was “intentional, serious and extensive, and that her actions constituted improper and corrupt conduct…inconsistent with and detrimental to the best interests of horse racing.”

Rice had testified during eight days of NYSGC hearings late in 2020 that she had handed over cash gifts amounting to thousands of dollars at a time to NYRA racing office employees between 2011 and 2015.

But the veteran conditioner, who has been training since 1987 and owns seven NYRA training titles, also testified that she did not expect any special favors in return for that money, and that any entry-related information she did receive from NYRA employees was a type of disclosure that was routinely divulged to other trainers.

In most racing jurisdictions, telling trainers which other horses have been entered or are considering a particular race is a clear rules violation, because it affords a trainer an advantage over others who enter horses without knowledge of the caliber of competition.

But in practice, one could make the case that some form of tipping-off to trainers exists to various degrees in racing offices all across America, particularly in the current era of races routinely needing to be “hustled” to fill because of a thin nationwide horse population.

Within that realm of rules-bending there are numerous gray-area distinctions, ranging from the relatively innocuous encouragement of trainers to enter into what is considered an easy spot all the way up to trainers proactively and sometimes predatorially seeking a steady stream of inside info and paying handsomely to receive it.

TDN left email and phone messages for Rice and her attorney Monday seeking comment and to find out if a court appeal is in the works. Neither replied prior to deadline for this story.

The specific accusations against Rice stemmed from a separate NYRA investigation that had been launched in 2014 when it was revealed that several NYRA racing office employees with access to The Jockey Club's InCompass entry management software had been improperly sharing login access to the system with horsemen and jockey agents. One employee was eventually fired after the scheme was uncovered and another had his license suspended for other racing-office infractions.

In early 2018, Daily Racing Form first reported that Rice allegedly made payments to NYRA officials in order to obtain knowledge–and sometimes the past performances–of rival horses likely to be entered against her trainees.

It was then nearly two years later, in November 2019, that Rice was first summoned to a NYSGC hearing on the matter to determine whether she received “regular, continual and improper access to the confidential names and other information concerning the other horses entered in races…before the entries closed and you decided to enter the horses you were training in such races or not.”

The start of that hearing was delayed during the early stages of the pandemic, so it took another full year before Rice's case finally commenced in November 2020. The proceedings stretched out over eight calendar days and included 60 evidence exhibits and testimony from 16 witnesses.

As is routine during NYSGC hearing adjudications announced at public meetings, the merits of the case were not debated Monday among commissioners, who had previously voted on the outcome after receiving the hearing officer's final report dated Apr. 13. The results of the vote were merely read into the record.

NYSGC chairman Barry Sample did underscore when reading the results of the vote to suspend and fine Rice that commission members “concurred with the penalty recommended by hearing officer [Clark Petschek] but modified the report to specifically reflect that the hearing officer found multiple violations,” which was a factor in the board fining Rice above the $25,000 per-violation penalty that is recommended in the state's racing rules.

A TDN request to the NYSGC to obtain a copy of the hearing officer's full report did not yield a response prior to deadline for this story.

The post Three-Year License Revocation, $50K Fine For Rice’s ‘Improper and Corrupt Conduct’ appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

Source of original post

Training Time, Season, Gender May Play Role In EIPH For Steeplechasers

A study completed by the Royal Veterinary College has shown that the amount of training steeplechase horses undergo significantly increases the chance of them suffering from exercise-induced pulmonary hemorrhage (EIPH). EIPH is most frequently seen in Thoroughbred and Standardbred racehorses, and can cause significant performance issues.

The exact cause of the condition is unknown, though some believe it's a result of pulmonary capillary stress failure. This occurs when the blood-gas barrier in the alveoli is broken during intense exercise.

Drs. Tegan McGilvray and Jacqueline Cardwell used 177 racehorses in the British National Hunt to test for the prevalence of EIPH using a tracheobronchoscopy and a tracheal wash. In addition to blood, the researchers tested for the presence of hemosiderophages, which are cells that indicate previous lung bleeding.

Tracheal blood was found in 26 percent of the horses, hemosiderophages in 94 percent of the horses) and “significant” hemosiderophages in 78 percent of the horses.

The team drew these conclusions:

Each year in training increased the chances of tracheal blood and the presence of hemosiderophages by 1.5 percent.
Male horses had 85 percent less of a chance of bleeding than female horses
Tracheal blood was twice as likely to be see in winter and spring than in the fall
Horses with significant hemosiderophages were five times more likely to tracheal blood
Horses completing high-impact work were 60 times more likely to have tracheal blood

The researchers' findings support the capillary stress failure theory. Increased time in training causes “cumulative remodeling of the pulmonary vasculature, increasing susceptibility to EIPH through capillary stress failure with ongoing training.”

They note that EIPH may not be avoidable, but identifying horses at risk of the condition will be helpful in determining preventative measures in the future.

Read the article here.