Patti Miller: Letter to the Industry

PATTI MILLER: 
To whom it may concern, 
    I have just returned home from the Keeneland April 
   2-year-olds-in-training sale. And I am, at the moment, very disturbed about the trends going forward in the 2-year-old sale venue. 
    My business partner, Jeff Seder, and myself have long been a fan of the 2-year-old sales, since 2-year-old sales started. We feel that it provides our clients with the opportunity to see a horse in training, see how they move, how they behave under stress and look at a pre-selected group of horses selected by some of the most gifted horse people in our business. 
    We have many clients who prefer to purchase 2-year-olds for the reasons I listed above. As most of you are aware, we observe the breeze show using a high-speed, high-definition camera at up to 500 pictures per second. 
    We take very precise measurements ranging from stride lengths, stance time, limb segment velocities, center of gravity deviation, step lengths, etc. Our technique affords us the luxury of understanding how the horse interfaces with the track, and, what happens to a horse’s gait as he goes fast. For us, it is not how fast the horses goes, it’s how each individual goes fast. 
    The trend in the last few years in the 2-year-olds under tack shows has been to pit each horse against the clock. Historically, the fastest horses have sold for the most money. A few years ago OBS and Keeneland installed artificial surfaces with the idea of becoming a bit less dependent on weather conditions, and in hopes that the new artificial tracks would be safer for the horses training on them. Perhaps they thought that for auctions tracks could be groomed so perhaps a horse that had less speed would gain a few ticks and be easier to sell. 
    None of us want catastrophic injuries to happen to our horses and every seller out there wants to make money. It certainly seems that these tracks are maintained so that on the breeze show day even a not so fast horse can break the 10-second time barrier or get near it. 
    My business partner Jeff Seder is the brains of our approach, and understands the physics involved in creating a surface that is safer to the horse. However, Jeff will tell you that one of the most dangerous things for a horse to do is go fast. And, when a bad-moving horse is given a surface that catapults him along faster than that horse can actually go, bad things can happen. 
    He explains it by saying that the forces exerted on a horses legs are explained by an equation. That is, the forces that CAN be experienced by the horse are a product of the mass of the horse (his weight) times the SQUARE of the velocity. 
    Hence, as the horse goes faster, forces on his legs can be increased EXPONENTIALLY. 
    So, with the risk of over simplifying it, let’s say, for example, that one has a 1,000-pound horse going 40mph (about 11 1/5th sec/furlong). His legs are an engineering miracle, with flight patterns (foreleg retraction before stance phase), and a series of anatomical fulcrums and pulleys that reduce the strain on his system going fast. BUT should something go wrong during that breeze, (a stumble, an uneven training surface,the horse shies, etc. ) there is the POTENTIAL of the horse experiencing many tons in ft-lbs/secof force (1000 pounds x (58.4 ft/sec X 58.4 ft/sec) ). 
    Increase that speed to 45 mph (increase 7.3 ft/sec or about 12.5% increase, i.e 1.4 sec a furlong from say 11 1/5th to 9 4/5ths), and there is an exponentially increased risk of an extra 53.3 times (7.4 squared) ft-lbs/sec force from the traveling inertial mass of 1,000 lbs. 
    That exponential increase in the forces experienced by these young 2-year-olds may bewhat is creating “outs” and RNAs via X-ray issues for so many of the consignors, since horses risk injury, and are injured during the breeze show. If consignors can’t sell their horses because agents cannot get veterinary approval, no one is happy. The consignor can’t sell the horse, the customers can’t buy the horse, and the veterinarians, while being the ONLY ones making money out of this process, get blamed for being honest. 
    At this last sale in Kentucky, there was a damp cool poly track that had tail wind gusts up to 20 mph. The workout times were literally off the chart. One horse worked an 1/8th in 9 and 2/5ths, and there was a 1/4 mile work that shaded 20 seconds. The Keeneland breeze show was one that broke many records and, in the process, probably broke many horses. Our clients vetted a total of a dozen horses, and two managed to pass X-rays, and both of those horses worked with a diminished tail wind, and/or worked slower than 10 flat, hence going just a tad slower than so many. 
    The 2-year-old sales’ dependence on the stop watch, quite simply, seems to have gotten totally out of hand. Tell me please, WHEN will a racehorse EVER have to go an 1/8th of a mile in 10 flat or less in the rest of that horse’s career? 
    The answer to this problem, may be simple. We need to slow these horses down. 
    And, it can most simply be done by slowing the training surface. 
    A good track superintendent who knows about training surfaces may know how to accomplish this safely, and on big race days perhaps racetracks should do the same thing. SLOW the racetrack down. DON’T spend hours compacting surfaces, etc. Simply just SLOW the surface down. 
    If the fastest horse goes 11 seconds a furlong, then the buyers will look at that horse. We did when we bought champion sprinter Informed Decision from an 11-second breeze at a 2-year-old sale. Because, when the dust settles, it’s not the horse that can barely walk after going an 1/8th of a mile in less than 10 seconds that wins the big races. It’s the horse that can put together 8 to 10 furlongs at an average near 12 seconds a furlong. 
    A good horse at that speed is also a good horse at 11 seconds a furlong. A bad-moving horse who is moved forward by a fast training surface is at a lot more risk physically and at a lot more risk of also not selling at all at any price due to injury. 
    Over-emphasis on the stop watch is over-simplification and may be destroying the welfare of the horses showcased, hurting the livelihood of the consignors, and ultimately, putting our venue at great risk from the PETA-type groups. 
    And just perhaps it isn’t that hard of a problem to fix. Perhaps it is something we could do TODAY. 
    Every horseman in the 2-year-old market needs to stop battling the stopwatch in these breeze shows. And we are fast running out of time to have any control over our destiny. 
–Patti Miller, V.P., EQB Inc.