24/10/2026
I spent some time in Kentucky this month. I wasn't there to watch the racing. I was watching horses. That distinction matters, because what you see depends on what you're looking for.
Keeneland is extraordinary: the infrastructure, the attention to the surface, the veterinary presence and the care taken at every level of the operation. It is a facility built by people who take horses seriously. That was obvious.
What Keeneland is doing for equine safety is genuinely impressive. Under Dr. Stuart Brown, the VetCam network monitors horses across the track surfaces. Every horse entering a race passes through a four-point paddock check before reaching the gate. The veterinary assessment window opens seven days out. Dr. Mick Peterson's lab at the University of Kentucky is doing serious work on how a horse's hoof interacts with the ground beneath it. The industry is investing in this. That matters, and it deserves to be said.
What was also obvious to me, with my training, was something harder to talk about. I saw horses stabled around the clock, with little opportunity for regular movement and varied loading. I also heard how some follow the racing circuit for much of the year, with very little or no time off.
I heard of horses exhibiting signs of EIPH being held back from racing as two-year-olds, so they could race on Lasix at three in races where its use is permitted. They don't prove that every horse has the same experience. But they make me ask whether the system gives young horses enough time and the right conditions to develop before racing asks so much of them.
I also had access to something most people at a racetrack don't: a dissection of a four-year-old Thoroughbred. What I saw in that spine raised a question I haven't been able to set aside since. This video shows it.
In that specimen, the growth plates on both sides of the joints in this section of the spine were still open. The video shows what happens under load: the growth plate breaks away before the intervertebral disc. The caption on that video makes a point I want to repeat here: this is not the exception. It is the rule. Growth plates are treated as vulnerable points in human medicine, in cattle research, in primate science. In equestrian sport, that understanding doesn't seem to apply. A study of 36 Thoroughbreds found that growth plate closure in the lower spine ranged from 4.9 to 6.7 years of age. We are asking two-year-olds to race.
We are asking two-year-olds to race while some parts of the spine may still be developing. That does not, by itself, prove that racing at two is unsafe. It does raise a serious question about whether the loads placed on young horses are being matched to their development.
When horses break down, their bodies can leave evidence in dissection rooms, veterinary reports and careers that end before they should. We need to understand what that evidence tells us, what it doesn't and what we can see when we visually assess horses.
Racing wants to protect horses. The infrastructure at Keeneland shows that. But protecting horses through checks and track safety is one part of welfare. Giving their bodies time and appropriate conditions to develop is another.
What might the sport look like if horses had more time for their spines and the rest of their bodies to mature before facing the demands of racing?
I'm not suggesting racing stops. I'm asking what it might gain if horses started later.
This welfare question needs to be at the centre of any review. Any new model would have to work for the owners, trainers, horses and be viable for the people who care for them. Riders and stable staff might be working with more mature and safer horses; owners might have horses better prepared to compete; and the industry might create meaningful roles in the years spent raising and preparing them. We need research to find out what is possible.
In Britain, yearling racing was banned in 1859, and two-year-olds were later restricted from racing before May in 1869. Those age-related rules are more than 150 years old. We know far more now about equine anatomy, development, training and injury. The timetable should be open to serious review in light of what we know today.
Kentucky’s aftercare work is extraordinary. But what if we put just as much thought into *before-care*—giving horses more time and better conditions before they enter the racing system?
The developmental question is not separate from what I was observing in those horses. If a spine is still forming under load, a dysfunctional thoracic sling compounds every stress placed on it. That is a problem we can address right now, without waiting for a rule change or a research programme
The similarities in how the horses carried themselves were striking. To my eye, very few showed signs of a functional thoracic sling. The sling is the muscular support that suspends the chest between the forelimbs and manages load through movement. In my work, a horse compensating through this structure can show that its nervous system has reorganised around a problem. Those changes may be visible before a breakdown.
That makes it relevant to the proposed impact-related mechanism of EIPH, although a direct link between sling function and EIPH has not been demonstrated. Yet the thoracic sling receives little attention in much conventional racehorse training. Its role in chest mechanics is clear; its possible contribution to EIPH needs further research.
I also noticed differences across race grades. In the higher-value races, the relationship between performance and thoracic sling function was clear. The horses that won were, in the main, the horses whose slings were working.
In the claiming races it was a different picture. Owners enter horses in claiming races when they are ready to move them on. The horses I saw in those races showed the most marked signs of reduced thoracic sling function across the two days. The condition of those horses' slings suggested none of them were bound for top level racing without significant postural intervention.
That is my observation from two days at one track. It is not a finding that tells us the condition or future of every horse in claiming races. But it is a pattern I could not ignore.
We can have all the theoretical conversations about age, but as it stands they race at two. The question worth asking is how we give them the most functional body possible, to allow them the best chance of a long and successful racing career.
I believe there are significant interventions available right now that can produce horses with a functioning thoracic sling that are not being utilised. This is not something difficult or slow to do. It is another layer of training, arguably one of the most important, that can be added to what is already being done.
If you're working with horses in active training and you want to understand what their movement patterns might be telling you before a problem becomes a crisis, I'd like to have a conversation about what you're seeing and, where it's useful, arrange an assessment.
The video accompanying this post was made by Becks Nairn, who has kindly given me permission to share it. See her original post and support her work here: https://www.facebook.com/reel/1625529755718863
