The management of racehorses remains amateurish in Sri Lanka although the sport has been prevailing in the country for over a century. This study aimed to gain basic knowledge on the local management practices, identify related problems and make suggestions for improvement. Nuwara Eliya district was selected as the study area since rearing horses and racing is done mainly in this area. Data wer...

One hundred and eighty-nine Thoroughbred horses that had won Graded Stakes races in North America were genotyped with the Illumina Equine SNP50 bead chip. Association tests using PLINK to determine whether any SNPs were associated with optimum racing distance (7 furlongs and under compared to 8-10 furlongs) identified a locus on ECA18 that was statistically significant (-log 10 EMP2=1.63) at th...

Wastage is the term used to describe the phenomenon of the loss of racehorses from conception to adulthood due to death or injuries (i.e. they never reach a race-track), or the days lost by racehorses due to not training or being withdrawn from a race. This epizoological study was conducted to investigate wastage in Thoroughbred horses used for flat racing in the Gauteng Province of South Afric...

BACKGROUND Exertional rhabdomyolysis syndrome is recognised in many athletic horse breeds and in recent years specific forms of the syndrome have been identified. However, although Standardbred horses are used worldwide for racing, there is a paucity of information about the epidemiological and performance-related aspects of the syndrome in this breed. The objectives of this study therefore wer...

Clonidine is classified as a class 3 performance-enhancing agent by the Association of Racing Commissioners International and thus has the potential to influence the outcome of a race. In this study, the authors developed and validated a sensitive gas chromatograph and mass spectrometer method to determine the pharmacokinetic parameters of clonidine in equine plasma samples after IV administrat...

Infectious upper respiratory disease (IURD) of Thoroughbred racehorses has been a frequent problem (29.6% of incidence) at the Seoul Race Park (Korea). Risk factors for IURD include the season with a high transfer rate (summer and fall), the stabling period (≤ 3 months), and age (2 to 3 years old), suggesting that the movement and new environment may have depressed the immune system of the hors...

The purpose of this study was to find out whether abilities to win races of different distances are different traits. Data included information on 14 665 starts of 1 646 Thoroughbreds, aged 2 to 9 years and on 10 862 starts of 1 145 Arab horses, aged 3 to 10 years. The data comprised seven racing distances for Thoroughbred horses, i.e. 1 000, 1 200, 1 300, 1 400, 1 600, 1 800, >1 800 m, and fiv...

Cardiac troponin I is a potentially useful test to identify cardiac muscle damage in the horse. Measurements of cardiac troponin I from serum or heparinised plasma samples from 23 clinically normal Thoroughbred horses in race training were analysed through a standard Australian commercial laboratory using the ADVIA Centaur Assay. The cardiac troponin I concentrations were < 0.15 microg/L from a...