Data, Data, Data: The “New Frontier” for Horse Racing

Last week at Royal Ascot, The Ridler (Brazen Beau) sprang a surprise in the G2 Norfolk S. when out-performing his odds of 50-1. That wasn't the only odd spell The Ridler cast during the race.

Into the final furlong, The Ridler drifted markedly left across the field, hampering the chances of several other runners. Controversially for some, The Ridler kept the race after a steward's inquiry.

During a presentation at Wednesday's Grayson-Jockey Club Research Foundation Welfare and Safety of the Racehorse Summit, Will Duff Gordon, CEO of Total Performance Data, which provides in-running horseracing data, provided another intriguing way to examine the race.

Duff Gordon presented a chart showing the acceleration and speed of a horse during the race, and how it was impeded by the winner.

“You can see how that horse in blue, how much its velocity was cut off,” said Duff Gordon, pointing to the marked deceleration of a beaten runner at the time of The Ridler's antics.

“That's a much better way of telling the story rather than running the replay 700 times, which is what the TV companies have done to date,” said Duff Gordon. “The stewards can't yet use that information,” he added, “but hopefully they will soon.”

TPD's chart shows the deceleration of the impeded horses in the Norfolk

Duff Gordon was part of a panel looking at some of the data collection technologies forging a new path in equine welfare and performance during racing and training, and racecourse customer experience.

“This is a new frontier,” said Scott Palmer, equine medical director for the New York Gaming Commission, about the StrideSAFE sensor, which TDN has written about here.

Nevertheless, the panelists emphasized how, in many regards, the stamp from data collection on the racing world is still very much a fresh one.

Greater accuracy comes from sheer depth in numbers, and pick-up of these technologies among industry stakeholders at large has been finicky at best.

Correct interpretation of the data is also key. Racing is hardly awash with number crunchers, data analysts and epidemiologists. That's why, said Palmer, “this is baby steps right now.”

Duff Gordon agreed.

“We create in-running odds. That's making 10,000 calculations per-horse, per-second to predict who's going to win the race. We can refine that all the time,” he said.

“The last few years has been about acquiring the data, getting onto as many racecourses as possible. The present and the future's all about producing front ends and mining that data, so we're hiring huge numbers of data scientists,” Duff Gordon added. “Any budding data scientists, please do get in touch with me. We can never get enough of them.”

Presided over by New York Thoroughbred Horseman's Association president, Joe Appelbaum, the panel also included Valentin Rapin, managing director and co-founder of Arioneo, a horse performance company.

The technologies that Arioneo produces are geared around morning training, including heart-rate monitoring, locomotion and stride data, and GPS tracking of speed, distance and acceleration.

Broadly speaking, these discreet, easy-to-use technologies can be utilized to gauge things like the overall fitness level of the horse, it's optimum speed, suitable distances and ground preferences.

There's a welfare element, too, explained Rapin, as the heart-rate monitor gives trainers the ability to check for cardiac abnormalities.

“Let's say the horse is about 125 beats a minute every day. If one day you see the heart rate go up to 140, 150, it will probably mean there is something wrong,” said Rapin.

“You can contact your vet directly or your vet can also have access to the data via distance to monitor this for you,” Rapin added.

“It's really in the strike-rate,” interjected Duff Gordon.

“The trainers who have that huge, extra level of insight, their horses are ready to rumble and you have trainers with less horses punching above their weight,” Duff Gordon said, pointing towards the likes of George Boughey, a young UK-based trainer with an English Classic win to his name into just his fourth year with a license.

“He's got less than 50 horses, and [has] no right to be winning [like he is],” said Duff Gordon, adding how the likes of Boughey have harnessed the use of performance monitoring technologies with shrewd purchases at the sales.

StrideSAFE is a technology that fits into a horse's saddle towel with the ability to detect at high speeds lameness invisible to the naked eye. Since last summer, it has been used on thousands of starters across Saratoga, Belmont and Aqueduct.

“What were able to do with this device is actually detect lameness in early stages to provide for timely intervention,” said Palmer.

“We can work with the trainer and say, 'Your horse is not lame today, but the warning signs are clear. You need to get this horse evaluated by a veterinarian. It needs a good diagnostic workout because something's going on here,'” Palmer added.

Hundreds of times a second, this wireless iPhone-shaped device takes an assortment of measurements to capture in minute detail the movement of the horse at high speed.

These measurements include the horse's acceleration and deceleration, the up and down concussive movement of the horse, and its medial-lateral motion–what is, in other words, the horse's movement from side to side.

It works like a traffic light signal, providing a green for all-clear, an amber for possible caution, and a red for possible danger. These ratings are calculated by how many standard deviations the horse is from the norm.

“If they exceed three standard deviations from the mean we have what we call red alert, and that means there's something happening in this race that needs to be investigated,” said Palmer. “There's a change here.”

Palmer told the story of early on into the trial of a horse that finished second in a maiden special weight at Saratoga.

Immediately after the race, the horse appeared healthy and sound. But when Palmer received the StrideSAFE read-out of the race the following day, it showed worrying abnormalities in the horse's balance.

“When I got this data, I didn't know exactly what it meant,” said Palmer, who said that he called the trainer, asked about the horse.

“The trainer said, 'Well, this horse finished the race great.' Jockey had hopped off. Trainer was there in the unsaddling area. Everybody was happy, finished second in a maiden special weight for 2-year-olds at Saratoga,” said Palmer.

By the time the horse had walked back to the test barn and began to cool-out, it became lame–so much so, the horse had to be shipped back to the barn. A subsequent radiograph showed the horse had suffered an acute fracture of the third carpal bone.

“It was a very dramatic example for me that we were measuring something important,” said Palmer.

While researchers are still analyzing the data from the longer study, Palmer shared some numbers showing attrition rates among a small cohort of horses studied at Saratoga: 15 that had received red alerts, 25 with a yellow alert, and 91 with green alerts.

Broadly speaking, the horses with a red alert generally did not make it back to race for a “significant amount of time” as compared to the yellow and green horses, said Palmer.

The red horses didn't compete in as many races as the yellow and green alerted horses during a four-month follow-up period, nor complete as many high-speed workouts, added Palmer.

“Interestingly, only 40% of the horses that had a red classification were able to race at all over the next four months after the analyzed race compared to almost 80% of the greens and the yellows,” said Palmer. “I thought that was powerfully significant.”

In his “zealot's pitch” at the end of the panel discussion, Appelbaum implored the industry to accelerate its adoption of these kinds of technologies.

“There's not a human football player or soccer player at the professional level that's not using a catapult vest. In F1, the drivers all use gloves that track their heart rate and perspiration. Weightlifters are all using push-bands to understand their load,” said Appelbaum.

“Humans sports are about 10 years ahead of us,” Appelbaum added. “But we can catch up and we should catch up. It's not just for the benefit of the betting public, but it's really for the benefit of the horses.”

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Jockey Club Round Table: HISA ‘Best Ever Opportunity To Right Our Badly Listing Ship’

The 69th Annual Round Table Conference on Matters Pertaining to Racing concluded Sunday with emphatic support for the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act (HISA) by The Jockey Club Chairman Stuart S. Janney III, who presided over the conference and referenced in his closing remarks the arguments made by groups in the racing industry that have stated their opposition to HISA.

“When the history of this is written, it will be clear who the obstructionists were and who opposed this industry's best ever opportunity to right our badly listing ship,” Janney said. “I am proud to stand with those who support HISA, and I look forward to the needed reform it will bring to our industry and to seeing our ship finally sailing a straight course.”

Sunday's event was held virtually and streamed on jockeyclub.com and made available on NYRA's YouTube channel, Racetrack Television Network's respective platforms, and bloodhorse.com.

Janney was preceded by presentations from Charles Scheeler, chair of the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority board of directors, and Dr. Tessa Muir, director of Equine Science for the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA).

Scheeler described the components of the authority's work ahead, which include the establishment of an anti-doping and medication testing program and a safety program; constituency outreach; and utilizing the industry's plethora of data, much of which will be sourced from The Jockey Club's databases. In advance of the implementation of HISA next year, plans call for the authority's board and standing committees to publish proposed rules for public comment before they are submitted to the Federal Trade Commission.

“What I saw when [I looked at HISA] was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make the sport safer for horses and jockeys, to serve the overwhelming majority of horse people who want to win fairly and who want to play by the rules…” Scheeler said.

Muir spoke of USADA's plans to work with the Thoroughbred industry, including leveraging expertise for both human and equine athletes to create best practices.

“Our aspiration is to establish and maintain a uniform and harmonized program that is centered on promoting and safeguarding the health and welfare of horses and protects the rights of all participants to race clean and win fairly,” she said.

Emily Lyman, founder and chief executive officer of Branch & Bramble, a digital marketing agency used by America's Best Racing (ABR), discussed how “social listening” online can be used to gauge public sentiment of horse racing and how highly publicized events can have a positive or negative impact on how the sport is viewed. She talked about how ABR's marketing strategy is influenced by this data and that influencers can be effectively used as brand ambassadors to introduce new audiences to horse racing.

“Maintaining the status quo doesn't protect a brand's long-term health,” Lyman said. “Without growth in impressions and public sentiment, your key audience will eventually die out.”

Will Duff Gordon, the chief executive officer of Total Performance Data (TPD), spoke in a presentation with Will Bradley, director and founder of Gmax Technology Ltd., on how TPD and Gmax have collaborated to create timing systems for horse races and how they are working with Equibase to determine how the tracking data can supplement and enhance the information that Equibase provides. They noted that this information will become more valuable with the expansion of sports betting in the United States.

“We do know from our European experience that sports that have the richest set of data, as well as pictures, as well as odds, capture the most betting turnover and handle,” Gordon said.

Dr. Yuval Neria, professor of Medical Psychology at Columbia University and director of the PTSD Research Center, was joined by Dr. Prudence Fisher, associate professor of Clinical Psychiatric Social Work at Columbia University, to talk about the Man O' War Project, which was founded by Ambassador Earle I. Mack. It is the first university-led research study to examine the effectiveness of equine-assisted therapy (EAT) in treating veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Neria described the findings as “extremely encouraging,” noting measurable changes in the parts of the brain involved in the capacity to seek and experience pleasure among trial participants. There were also decreases in symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder and depression.

Moving forward, plans call for the creation of the Man O' War Center, with goals to train others in EAT protocol for veterans, adopt the protocol for other groups, pursue a larger research study, and expand the use of former racehorses for equine-assisted therapy work.

“We are proud to partner with the Thoroughbred Aftercare Alliance to connect groups trained in the Man O' War protocol with accredited aftercare facilities,” said Fisher. “It's a great way to incorporate more retired Thoroughbreds in EAT programs throughout the country.”

Kristin Werner, senior counsel for The Jockey Club and administrator of The Jockey Club's Thoroughbred Incentive Program, moderated an aftercare panel with panelists Erin Crady, executive director, Thoroughbred Charities of America (TCA); Brian Sanfratello, executive secretary, Pennsylvania Horse Breeders Association (PHBA); Beverly Strauss, executive director, MidAtlantic Horse Rescue; and Dr. Emily Weiss, vice president, Equine Welfare, American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA).

Each panelist shared their perspectives on challenges in the aftercare landscape, from securing a safe first exit from the racetrack to placing retired breeding stock. Crady talked about the TCA's Horses First Fund, which helps Thoroughbreds in case of an emergency.

“Plan, plan, and plan some more,” Crady said. If you've prepared a business plan for your racing operation, include a section on aftercare.

“Please remember one thing that I feel is paramount to your horse's future. Make every effort to retire your horse while he or she is still sound. A sound Thoroughbred can have an unlimited future.”

Strauss talked about the kill buyer market and the frequent social media frenzies when Thoroughbreds are offered for inflated prices to save them from being sold to slaughter. She warned that individuals and organizations that participate in these practices are often scams.

“If you're contacted because one of your former horses is in a kill pen, do some research, don't just throw money at it, don't just send money blindly, do research and see that the horse truly is in a bad place and then ensure its safety,” Strauss said.

Sanfratello detailed the PHBA's stance on aftercare and its creation of a code of ethics that will sanction those who knowingly send horses registered with the PHBA to slaughter.

“Our board understands that aftercare is just as important as making sure that we increase the numbers of mares bred,” Sanfratello said.

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Weiss focused on the work of the ASPCA's Right Horse Initiative, which assists with placing horses in transition. She noted that a problem seen with placing horses is that Thoroughbreds are often not located where the demand for them exists.

“There's some disconnect between the interest in the general public and getting these horses into their hands, and part of that is just getting those horses where those people are,” she said.

David O'Rourke, the president and chief executive officer of the New York Racing Association (NYRA), provided an update on that organization's efforts to promote safety, integrity, and the sport of racing. According to O'Rourke, NYRA has allotted 50% of its capital budget since 2013 to infrastructure improvements such as new track surfaces, barns, and dormitories. He also addressed the legalization of sports betting and NYRA's belief that this represents a critical opportunity for horse racing to expand its wagering options and boost handle

James L. Gagliano, president and chief operating officer of The Jockey Club, delivered a report on the activities of The Jockey Club.

Also in his closing remarks, Janney announced that Len Coleman and Dr. Nancy Cox, co-chairs of the nominating committee of the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority, have been awarded The Jockey Club Medal for exceptional contributions to the Thoroughbred industry.

A video replay of the conference will be available on jockeyclub.com this afternoon, and full transcripts will be available on the same site this week.

The Jockey Club Round Table Conference was first held on July 1, 1953, in The Jockey Club office in New York City. The following year, it was moved to Saratoga Springs, N.Y.

The Jockey Club, founded in 1894 and dedicated to the improvement of Thoroughbred breeding and racing, is the breed registry for North American Thoroughbreds. In fulfillment of its mission, The Jockey Club, directly or through subsidiaries, provides support and leadership on a wide range of important industry initiatives, and it serves the information and technology needs of owners, breeders, media, fans, and farms. It founded America's Best Racing (americasbestracing.net), the broad-based fan development initiative for Thoroughbred racing, and in partnership with the Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association, operates OwnerView (ownerview.com), the ownership resource. Additional information is available at jockeyclub.com.

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