Welfare Summit Preview: Big Data Yields Practical Solutions

Tuesday's seventh Welfare and Safety of the Racehorse Summit at Keeneland Race Course is in the midst of a progressive metamorphosis. But that really shouldn't be a surprise, because the Thoroughbred racing industry itself has changed markedly since the Grayson-Jockey Club Research Foundation and The Jockey Club first began the event as an every-other-year symposium back in 2006.

Jamie Haydon, the manager of industry initiatives for The Jockey Club, is a lead organizer of what has evolved into an annual gathering of industry stakeholders to discuss key health, well-being, and ethics issues that pertain to the sport's equine and human participants. And in the years he's spent trying to shape compelling agendas, Haydon has seen the summit move through several distinct phases.

“Like all businesses that are dealing with animals in their business model, [stakeholders] are making decisions that will benefit the animal, and that's what our industry is doing as well,” Haydon said. “The safety, integrity, and welfare issues are now more firmly a priority at the top of people's minds in our sport, especially if they're involved in the decision tree for various industry outfits. And it's not just one segment of the industry that feels this way–it's a lot of different segments coming together.”

When the summit first debuted, there was a sense that some corners of the racing industry had to be sold on the need for a proactive, public-facing approach to equine welfare and safety. Later on, the industry had to come to grips with putting up money to fund various initiatives that veterinarians, researchers, and engineers proposed. In the past couple of years, the focus has been on embracing “big data” as a means to finding patterns where improvements could be made. But it takes lots of time to cull through the numbers before meaningful statistics begin to emerge.

This year, the industry's collective patience will be rewarded with a summit agenda that features a number of practical (and in some cases) low-cost actions that have been derived from the reams of data the industry has been collecting.

As The Jockey Club's Equine Injury Database approaches eight years' worth of data, Dr. Michael “Mick” Peterson Jr., the executive director of the Racing Surfaces Testing Laboratory, gave TDN one such example of something profound he has learned by sifting through statistics.

Peterson has been able to pinpoint via data collection the location on racetracks at which injuries are most likely to occur. He can discern not only the types of injuries, but to which limb on the horse they occur, and can drill down his research even further, by noting the track surface (dirt, synthetic or turf).

“So when you look at that, we see some really interesting effects,” Peterson said in a phone interview, previewing the presentation he will give on Tuesday. “And one of them is the classic 'left front foreleg, leading forelimb on the far turn' fracture. That's the classic fracture, typically in the [final] turn, or going into the stretch changing leads.

“And what's amazing is, when you look at the years of data, yes it's true, on dirt, that the left front and right rear fracture more often. But here's the cool part: Those differences disappear when you go to synthetic or turf.”

Peterson, a self-admitted “research geek,” continued: “For me, this is like as good as it gets, right? We've got this big data set, and now we can start questioning assumptions” about why those kinds of fractures had previously been considered universal across all surfaces.

Peterson will discuss a few ideas about what could be done to prevent those types of dirt-track injuries. But without giving away his presentation, he did note that “it really suggests there's some sort of a mechanism there that's an 'exposure variable' as opposed to something else.”

In short, Peterson said maybe the solution isn't investing in expensive dirt-track banking or ways to improve biomechanical traction on turns. The answer could be as simple as not exposing horses to that trouble spot on the track as often, ideally by not subjecting them to being breezed on turns during training.

“People have talked about things like training and racing in the opposite direction,” Peterson said. “Well for turf and synthetics, it probably doesn't matter in terms of risk to the horse. For dirt, what if we just breezed them on a straight?”

Peterson–whose background is in mechanical engineering, not equine physiology–fully admitted he's “not about to start giving people advice about horsemanship.” But, he added, “by the same token, when you start seeing this coming out of the data, you get this discussion going, and we if we can begin to whittle away at the [catastrophic injury] number, we're talking a big impact to the industry here.”

He continued: “You can get some really cool insights into what's happening to horses by looking closely at the numbers. I'm pretty excited about that. I love anything that looks like basic science, and then 10 minutes into the discussion, you're talking about how you can immediately have a positive impact on the health of the horse.”

Haydon agreed that it is gratifying to see some of the industry's big-data projects yielding tangible ideas. He gave the example of a conversation he recently had with another of Tuesday's presenters, Dr. Tim Parkin, a senior lecturer in Equine Clinical Sciences at the University of Glasgow. Parkin works closely with the Equine Injury Database, and the two were discussing how eight years ago, “North American racing was kind of chastised, both internally and by the rest of world, for being behind the times” when it came to data-driven research.

“And [Parkin] said to me 'You've gone from standstill to 3,000 miles an hour now,” Haydon recalled. “'You're quite frankly the only [racing] jurisdiction in the world working on predictive modeling and using big data like this.'”

An update on another big-data initiative, the Jockey Injury Database, will be presented by Dr. Carl Mattacola, a professor of Athletic Training Rehabilitation Sciences at the University of Kentucky. His talk will focus on “return to ride protocols” that are evolving as industry standards to determine when it is safe for jockeys to get back in the saddle after accidents.

A presentation on equine respiratory and airway health will feature both academic and hands-on perspectives on “clean barn” protocols. Dr. Susan Holcombe, a professor of Large Animal Clinical Sciences at Michigan State University, will discuss research she's done on that subject. Longtime horseman Bill Casner will talk about the practicalities of incorporating those standards into stable routines on a day-to-day basis.

“That's on a lot of people's minds. It's a major issue affecting the safety of our racehorses–just the way we condition our stalls in this country,” Haydon said.

The juxtaposition of three different veterinary viewpoints will anchor a topic titled “Lameness Diagnosis–The Importance of the Physical Inspection.” This panel will feature a surgeon (Dr. Larry Bramlage), a racetrack practitioner (Dr. Kevin Dunlavy), and a state equine medical director (Dr. Mary Scollay).

According to Haydon, all three vets agree that a physical inspection is paramount in determining lameness. “Yet they all use it in a different way, so we thought that would be a really eye-opening interaction. We hear 'physical inspection' and we all think it's the same. But it's vastly different depending on what kind of veterinarian you are.”

Other panels will cover biosecurity, biomarker research, “nutraceutical” oral joint supplementation, balanced feed programs, compounded medications, and regulated use of the whip. The American Association of Equine Practitioners will also provide an update on that organization's “10-point prescription for racing.”

For those in the Lexington area, the summit is free and open to the public in the Keeneland sales pavilion. It will also be streamed live starting at 8:15 a.m. ET. Audience members are encouraged to ask questions of the panelists, either via email (horsesummit@jockeyclub.com) or via the Twitter hashtag #horsesummit.