Equestrian Performance

Congrats Tom and Pocket Watch!!! Super little
Horse 🇿🇼👌🏼

WE DID IT AGAIN

Pocket Watch wins the 2026 Castle Tankard making it 3 out of 3 for Tomcat Racing. Big congratulations to Colleen De Jong, Rob and Avalon Follett Smith, Sheldene Chant, Edith Maziofa-Tapfuma, Sonja Hense and Anna Mason. Brilliantly ridden by Malesela Katjedi. Well done to my team back at the yard.

It’s been a privilege to work with Terry’s horses recently! They’re managed so carefully and considerately and I’m so thrilled to see his and his team’s hard work paying off!! All the Best at YOG 🇿🇼

Spot on 👌🏼 treatment without diagnosis is oftentimes harmful!!!!

“Just inject the hocks.” That used to be enough. Not anymore.

Early in his career, Dr. Chris White accepted appointments booked simply for joint injections, no full workup, no imaging. Today, his approach is different.

Every lameness case starts with one objective: to define the diagnosis before defining the treatment. Injecting a joint without understanding the true source of pain, such as proximal suspensory disease, can delay recovery or even worsen the outcome.

That progression from procedural habit to diagnostic discipline is what separates good sports medicine from great sports medicine.

👉 Read Dr. White’s full clinical perspective and evolution in practice in the comments.

Prof Alan Wilson of the Royal Veterinary College UK Killed in Light Aircraft Crash In Namibia

Prof Alan Wilson (62) and his pilot Neil Oakman (63) were both killed on Wednesday after the light aircraft they were in crashed shortly after takeoff.

Prof Wilson, who has conducted extensive equine biomechanics research, was in Namibia on an RVC project to study the Oryx.

The pair had been researching Namibia's national animal, the Oryx antelope, and had spent more than a week at the remote Gobabeb Research Station in the Namib-Naukluft National Park, along with fellow British researcher John Lowe who was not on the flight and raised the alarm.

The trio had been in Namibia since 25th February.

This is a great paper on balance pads and answers some questions about the movement of the horse on different 'squishiness' levels of them. These pads are used to challenge postural stability with the theory that the effects train proprioception, aiming to reduce the risk of injury.

From their results:
🐴Four pads cause more sway, than pads two under the fronts or the hinds
🐴 Medium-density pads in all four limbs induced the greatest sway of the forse forwards and backwards, and the faster rate of sway.
🐴 Soft-density pads in all four limbs resulted in the greatest mediolateral sway.
🐴 All four limbs placed on medium, soft, and firm-density pads, and forelimbs placed on medium and firm-density pads were statistically different from baseline (no pads).

We know that standing on the pads over a series of sessions, reduces the amount of sway . We also know that their use is associated with changes in the deep stabiliser muscle multifidus (Cathcart et al., 2024; Ellis and King, 2020).

Now what would be amazing would be to link to gait and performance, and injury in horses. Tricky but I suspect a few research groups are on this already!
It is so exciting to see the development of this research area 💪

Colla, S. and King, M., 2025. Evaluation of Postural Sway in Horses Standing on Balance Pads of Varying Densities and Limb Placement. Journal of Equine Rehabilitation, p.100042.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2949905425000246