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I DO not expect to be going back to Warwick again. It simply is not worth the risk. There is always a danger that comes with riding a thoroughbred at speed but for jockeys, and as we saw on Tuesday for horses, Warwick now has the potential at times to be too dangerous.
Work has long needed to be done at the track, with Friday’s announcement that a consultation has been launched being long overdue, but Warwick is far from alone in having deteriorated over recent years. In most instances, and I doubt you will be surprised to hear me say this, the problem has been an obsession with watering.
We are finally paying the price for year after year of excessive watering.
Full article can be read below.
It is not a well hidden secret clerks obsession with watering, but an interesting view point from Richard Hughes who of course is riding the tracks regularly.
Interesting article by Hughsie but as he says himself, contradictory. What he seems to be arguing for is good watering, we can all agree with that… In some cases they under-water and some cases they over-water.
"Fast" ground is fine, they should imo aim for good-firm. But if Hughsie thinks very firm ground does not do any damage… He should talk to his own jockeys Doctor, Dr Pritchard. Because he once told me injuries went up significantly on firm ground.
Value Is EverythingInteresting article by Hughsie but as he says himself, contradictory. What he seems to be arguing for is good watering, we can all agree with that… In some cases they under-water and some cases they over-water.
"Fast" ground is fine, they should imo aim for good-firm. But if Hughsie thinks very firm ground does not do any damage… He should talk to his own jockeys Doctor, Dr Pritchard. Because he once told me injuries went up significantly on firm ground.
Can you be a bit more specific. Flat racing? Jump racing? Jockey injuries? Horse injuries?
How odd to bring Dr Pritchard into it, is he a vet or a human doctor? How would he know if firm ground produces more injuries? As we rarely have firm ground these days on what evidence could he base his opinion?
A more up to date opinion from a qualified vet rather than a doctor is from Mark Johnston today who said "Firm ground is a perfectly acceptable fast racing surface if the track is level and has good grass cover".
Hughes was talking about horse injuries so it would seem more sensible to consult a Vet, rather than his Doctor.
Perhaps Doctor Prichard was referring to jockey injuries, which would make sense to be more likely when landing on firm ground.
Thanks for the good crack. Time for me to move on. Be lucky.
Interesting article by Hughsie but as he says himself, contradictory. What he seems to be arguing for is good watering, we can all agree with that… In some cases they under-water and some cases they over-water.
"Fast" ground is fine, they should imo aim for good-firm. But if Hughsie thinks very firm ground does not do any damage… He should talk to his own jockeys Doctor, Dr Pritchard. Because he once told me injuries went up significantly on firm ground.
Can you be a bit more specific. Flat racing? Jump racing? Jockey injuries? Horse injuries?
How odd to bring Dr Pritchard into it, is he a vet or a human doctor? How would he know if firm ground produces more injuries? As we rarely have firm ground these days on what evidence could he base his opinion?
How do you think the "Jockey’s Doctor" would "know" there were more injuries on firm ground?
Doh!This was back when we
did
have "Firm" ground Eddie. He was referring to ALL racing. Obviously jump racing has more injuries than Flat; but Flat
Firm
ground has more injuries than Flat ground that is
softer
than Firm. He had little doubt it would be the same for horses as humans. Just comman sense the harder the surface the more chance of injury…
…As long as watering is not done too late, risking horses slipping. And, courses do not over-race, giving sufficient time for turf/grass to recover.
Yes, there has been over-watering at times, and this should be discouraged. But in the past, very few horses turned up for Top races run on firm ground. Much better to have good-firm, a surface "firm" ground horses are equally effective on without being so dangerous.
Value Is EverythingIn the 70’s 80s before tracks had anything but crude bowser watering systems top races were often run on firm – it depended solely on how good the summer was. I vaguely remember Carlisle racing on Hard which is faster than Firm.
Then there was a full season of racing for 2 year olds with one of them winning 16 times.Of course horses galloped far more in distance each season on un-watered fast turf gallops at home before the luxury of polytrack etc arrived.
Yes, the type of article that should be getting regularly posted in RP but won’t be if it starts to inform people properly.
As we have the Warwick Clerk Of The Course as a TRF member, am sure Lekha’s views on Hughsie’s article would be very interesting.
Value Is EverythingInteresting point about the ridges forming , only a jockey would know that , particularly at newmarket….
I would take hughes’s version as true , whilst not being an expert on erosion or the affect of a high water table , his description does seem to be sensible
I dont think these course guys (clerks ) give a darn about the long term effect , their remit is to race…and produce good ground wherever possible
imo
Taken from Kim Bailey’s blog.
http://www.kimbaileyracing.com/baileys-blog/
Watering is a big issue in racing and if you have a copy of todays Racing Post you must read Richard Hughes’s article on page 14.
Richard is so right when accusing our courses over their current obsession with watering.
You would have heard me mention, all too many times, that watering creates problems and more horses break down and have leg problems as a result of watering.
None of our racecourse can water properly as their systems need moving, and when you move, you water in different places at different times, making the ground patchy and false.
A racehorse will never break down or have a problem if it gallops down a road
A horses brain registers the fact that the ground is firm so it will not let itself down or in layman’s terms it will shorten stride so to protect itself.
When you water the horse believes it is safe, so lets himself down and increases his stride; sadly the false patches or areas, where it is inconsistent, will then cause the problem.
Worcester was the worst in jump racing terms, but it is is interesting to note that all the jockeys have noticed a difference now that Keith Ottesen has taken over as his water is consistent and done the day before so it has time to settle in.
Worcester’s ground now is constant and not patchy i.e softer in some places and firmer in others.
Enough said as I could go on for ages on this subject!
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….As far as I can tell there is no correlation between fast ground and horses getting injured.Whenever I go to ride in Mumbai the Mahalaxmi track is firm but there are no problems. The same horses keep going back time and time again without any issues whatsoever.
The same is true in Hong Kong, where you seldom get anything other than what we would call firm ground.
=====================HK uses Verti-drain to alleviate surface hardness:
http://redexim.com/product/verti-drain-7120/
What happens on GB tracks ?
He had little doubt it would be the same for horses as humans. Just comman sense the harder the surface the more chance of injury…
You and him if you are quoting him right have got to be having a laugh
Just to clear here, Hughes is talking about flat racing and as jockeys remain on horseback over 99% of the time the ground is largely immaterial to them unless on the rare occasion when they happen to fall off and even then if they’re unlucky.
It’s the horses that run on the ground not the jockeys, so you are incorrect when you say it is the same for horse and jockey aren’t you?
You denied Prosser overwatered at Newmarket but Hughes confirmed that this does happen there when it didn’t used to.
As Mark Johnston said watering should be done to promote grass growth not to alter the going. Nothing wrong with a fast racing surface if the track is level and has good grass cover.
Richard Hughes and Mark Johnston are two people worth listening to in the horse racing industry. They are both articulate, knowledgeable horseman who make the health of the thoroughbred a top priority.
I have followed this sport for the past twenty-three years and have noticed recently just how fragile the breed has become. Increased coverage and the introduction of social media has perhaps exaggerated this conception but, without accessing any statistics, I see more racehorses breaking down on the course and an increase in reported injuries / fatalities at home on the gallops.
In America, a combination of therapeutic and performance-enhancing drugs, coupled with an ever increasing ’need for speed’, has apparently weakened the breed. There is no schedule for stamina in a country where fourteen furlongs is considered a marathon. Consequently, fast, fragile stallions are producing fast, fragile offspring. It doesn’t take a genius to understand that fast and fragile is certainly not a good combination.
Conversely, European-bred stock has been in such high demand throughout the world in more recent years, with home-grown talent being acquired to race in America, Australia and the Far East. One need only look at the card and subsequent result of last year’s Melbourne Cup to fully appreciate the regard in which our thoroughbreds are held.
European stock is widely respected because it is versatile, durable and generally has a fantastic constitution. However, it should also be noted that in the aforementioned event, one of our own lost its life.
Richard Hughes is correct about his concerns regarding the future of the thoroughbred:
That’s because horses nowadays never learn how to race on firm ground and, as a result, they are not hardened to it. That’s desperately sad.
Yes, racing on very fast ground can cause a horse to get jarred up, but it just means you have to wait with the horse for a while. Jarring is not an injury and soon comes out of a horse.
Increasingly, then, watering is not just damaging racecourses but also racehorses. I am not exaggerating when I say it is weakening the thoroughbred breed. As we increasingly race horses on softer ground than was for centuries the case, we are softening up horses at the same time.
This is alarmingly true, and our widely-respected breed is now becoming increasingly fragile. Statistics may indicate that firm ground is unsafe, but greater research and common sense must ask the question
’Is it a cause, or the consequence of a weaker thoroughbred?’
=====================
….As far as I can tell there is no correlation between fast ground and horses getting injured.Whenever I go to ride in Mumbai the Mahalaxmi track is firm but there are no problems. The same horses keep going back time and time again without any issues whatsoever.
The same is true in Hong Kong, where you seldom get anything other than what we would call firm ground.
=====================HK uses Verti-drain to alleviate surface hardness:
http://redexim.com/product/verti-drain-7120/
What happens on GB tracks ?
Wit,
Similar in Australia.
Many courses do not have access to vast amounts of water and certainly would not waste it by evaporating in the sun. Horses train on firm and run on firm when they are fit.
Artificial watering would cause false ground and then cause far more injuries.UK has adopted regular verti-draining to ease top of ground compaction and aid drainage as well to get air into the ground for sound root growth. They then ruin it all with constant artificial watering drowning out the essential soil air so that roots growth weakens and tends upwards and increasingly badly anchored turf divots fly. The leaf growth becomes coarse and soft so instead of forming a natural springy cushion, the grass crushes and forms a slippage layer with the horses’ aluminium plates. Essentially the ground becomes far less safe to race on particularly around bends.
The evidence for firmer ground being more dangerous is sketchy. The evidence that the BHA produce to support their claims is far less conclusive than they would like you to believe.
The higher incidence of injuries on faster going is of such a low magnitude (if it exists at all) that it is cited in the academic literature relatively rarely. We are talking here in terms of an increased incidence of maybe one extra firm ground injury every other year in the UK across all fixtures! It is essentially indiscernible from random noise.
The following are more commonly cited in the academic literature as being correlated with injuries and have risk factors of a magnitude up to 50 times higher than faster turf ground:
The race in question being over jumps
The race in question being on dirt
Intensive training of the horse
Intensive racing of the horse
Drugs
Colder temperaturesIf the BHA put safety first why are they tinkering at the edges with turf going at the same time they are asking horses to race more often and putting on more races at colder times of day/year? How can they defend jump racing’s existence when they claim that racing needs to completely alter its product to combat one injury per 10000 runs on the flat?
On Sunday in the Racing Post, Robin Mounsey produced two pieces of evidence to support his claim that faster turf going is more dangerous:
1) He claimed that the statistics showed that there was a higher incidence of injuries on faster ground in flat races. His own evidence doesn’t support this. The injury rate is the same (0.12%) for good to firm or faster as good or softer. No going type differs significantly from 0.12%.
2) He claimed that "the fatality rate in British racing has fallen by around a third in the last 15 years, from 0.3% to 0.2% for all runners, and the most critical factor in this decline can be attributed to racecourses producing better, safer racing ground."
This is quite simply incorrect. The fatality rate has never reached as high as 0.3% in any single year in the last 15 years and there is no clear trend in either direction during this period. What has happened was a change in the mix of fixtures, with the expansion of the all-weather, such that the number of jumps fixtures declined as a proportion of the overall total. If you combine flat and jumps together and the former has a fatality rate of circa 0.05% and the later circa 0.5%, your aggregate fatality rate will fall sharply if a lower proportion of jumps races are included in the mix. This, rather than the going, was the critical factor accounting for the sharp falls in overall fatality rate experienced in the 1990s.I always think it’s unfair that we just don’t let nature decide what the going is. Watching dayjur blitz the field at york on pretty firm going was fabulous. Last year declaration of war was obviously a much better horse on good to firm ground as he showed at York in the international. Or mr frisks superb performance in the whit bread on firm going. Each horse is different and I agree wholeheartedly with Hughes that it is weakening the breed and depriving us the sight of horses who thrive on good to firm going. All about opinions of course.
I always think it’s unfair that we just don’t let nature decide what the going is.
..And three runner races for the supposed championship events. With all our top non-firm/hard ground horses racing abroad instead.
Value Is EverythingI always think it’s unfair that we just don’t let nature decide what the going is.
..And three runner races for the supposed championship events. With all our top non-firm/hard ground horses racing abroad instead.
GT,
That’s your view but is there any historical data to back it up?
There’s nothing better than watching a top class racehorse quicken and lengthen on a genuinely fast surface. Unfortunately those occasions are becoming rarer these days due to the watering policy of many racecourses.
There was a 3 runner race at Leicester yesterday on heavy ground. Should we cancel as it wasn’t good ground? No we get on with it and soft ground horses get their opportunity.
Once racecourses work out how to turn soft/heavy ground back to good ground I’ll have a bit more sympathy for those connections that don’t want it firm for their horses.
Doh!
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