Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies entrant Donna Veloce, trained by Simon Callaghan, exercises in preparation for the Breeders’ Cup World Championships at Santa Anita Park in Arcadia, California on October 28, 2019.
Dr. Tim Parkin, veterinary epidemiologist at the University of Glasgow, said in a presentation earlier this week that equine injury data shows horses who race as 2-year-olds are at a decreased risk of career-ending injury compared to those who did not.
Parkin has pointed out this correlation before in his study of data from the Equine Injury Database. The Racing Post’s Ollie O’Donoghue wrote that Parkin attributed this difference to a possibly increased skeletal strength in horses who raced at two.
Bone strengthens in response to the forces applied to it, according to equine orthopedic experts. The prevailing thought is that a 3-year-old horse who starts racing at three will not have built up the skeletal response to the forces of racing as compared to a 3-year-old who campaigned the previous season. The difficulty for researchers and veterinarians is in finding the ideal amount of time between a more intense bout of exercise and the completion of the skeleton’s response to that exercise.
Parkin also reiterated the other trends isolated from EID data — that hoses are at increased risk of career-ending injury if they have recently switched trainers, are running on an ‘off’ surface, or are intact males.
Read more at The Blood-Horse
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