View From the Owner's Box: Sensor and Stride Technology

At the heart of the Thoroughbred racing industry, OwnerView hosts monthly conferences connecting owners and trainers with industry experts. This month's April 7 panel, moderated by OwnerView project manager Gary Falter, discussed stride and gait technology. Panelists included Fabienne De Geer from Sleip, which uses tools to collaborate and address lameness issues; Ben Bernhard with Stable Analytics, which focuses on a biometric sensor system designed to revolutionize how the Thoroughbred industry monitors and protects the musculoskeletal health of racehorses; and Dr. David Lambert, who created StrideSafe to analyze the gait of horses in-race to identify musculoskeletal injuries and/or abnormalities before they lead to a serious injury. The panelists presented to the audience the need for racing to embrace new technology. When presenting Sleip's gait analysis technology, De Geer explained the movement of a stride, focusing on symmetry and key motion points. In the front legs, attention is given to the moment of impact when the foot hits the ground and how high the head rises during push-off. For the hind legs, pelvis movement is analyzed. A full stride cycle is described as progressing from push-off to impact and then repeating on the opposite side. Symmetrical movement occurs when both sides are moving evenly and consistently. Her product's goal is to focus on how horses are moving while they are training and their strides. "When so, for example, for the front legs, when we're looking at the head movement, we're looking at how far down did the head go when the left hoof hit the ground, so at the impact left," De Geer said. "Then the next step is we look on how high the head went when it's pushing off from the left. Next, we look at the impact of the right front and how low did the head go in that movement." Bernhard presented Equigraph, a sensor that goes on the girth of the horse. The system is designed to be used every day, no matter the training the horse is doing for the day, and the goal is to find out if the movement of the horse is changing. Lambert presented slides to the audience about StrideSafe sensors for the horses. They go in the saddlecloth, measuring movement while horses are running and providing data from their strides. "Particularly focused on catastrophic injury because that's the big challenge that racing was facing," Lambert said. "But before you can study catastrophic injury, you have to have data from horses that have suffered a catastrophic injury, and that's hard to get with one race." Overall, the panel believes that the future and longevity of horse racing will depend on emerging technologies that can improve horse health and assist trainers and owners.