Toe grabs look innocuous, a small 2-inch long and quarter-inch high rectangle of steel attached to the anterior underside of a hind leg Thoroughbred horseshoe.
Used exclusively in dirt races in North and South America, they are banned in all other nations that race on dirt for safety reasons.
I was part of an American contingent around 6-strong a couple of years ago invited over for South Korea’s international Korea Cup, comprising a sprint and a route race, both on dirt, both offering the best part of a million dollars in purse money.
The American horses were shod for dirt, which meant they had hind toe grabs on their back shoes. 24 hours before the race, we were told the toe grabs had to go. Fine, said Kentucky trainer James Chapman, the farrier can grind them off.
The Korean authority’s farrier, a New Zealander, had never heard of such a thing and said ‘no way’. Yes way, said Chapman. Get me a grinder, he said with steely eyes and set jaw.
An angle grinder was somehow found and Chapman went from stall to stall scything the grabs off, the grinder whining, arcs of orange and red sparks flying around the stalls, and the horses stood completely unconcerned, which was more than could be said for the sizable crowd of South Korean officials, plus their farrier, who all looked on in astonishment.
The primary reason these grabs are considered dangerous is that, in a race if horses
clip heels (the front leg of a following horse gets too close to the animal in front and strikes the hind shoe of that horse), then, because the grab protrudes from the underside of the shoe, and because it is square, the front shoe of the horse following can catch on the grab and the horse can then trip.
This can bring the horse down in the fastest and most ugly and brutal way. The horse often performs a full somersault, at 40 mph, and lands on its back, sometimes with the rider underneath it.
That is what happened to young jockey Devin Magnon at Delta Downs racetrack in Louisiana on January 14.
Rider’s brutal catalogue of injuries
I don’t know if the horse Magnon (pictured) clipped heels with had hind toe grabs on, but nearly every horse in nearly every dirt race there does, and they have been responsible for numerous horrific falls, maiming riders, paralyzing them and worse for decades now. I haven’t been able to find out how long they have been used.
The filly involved walked away, apparently unscathed, but It was a day or two before word got out of how badly the rider had been hurt. He was lucky, relatively speaking. It looked like he was going to be okay, but he had sustained multiple injuries. After a few more days, there seemed to be nothing reported in the racing press, so I called his agent to ask how the 24-year-old was getting on.
He sustained a fractured skull and had bleeding on the brain. He fractured three cervical vertebrae. Collarbone/bones broken. His broken ribs punctured his lung. And he sustained a fractured pelvis. He underwent an operation to have two steel rods inserted into his back.
He was crushed. It could only have been a mother’s prayers that saved him.
A brutal catalogue of injuries, but unbelievably he has movement in all his limbs, is conscious and apparently in good form, said his agent, Wesley Landry, and already he is bothering the doctors with questions about when he can resume riding.
Horses can still come down after clipping heels on synthetic or turf tracks, where toe grabs are not allowed, but it is much less likely.
Nasty shock
It must be borne in mind that, when the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority (HISA) is formed, one of its mandates will likely be that all tracks report catastrophic accidents to horses in both training and racing to the Equine Injury Database (EID) - and rider injuries also, surely - and these statistics probably will need to be made public, for transparency and in order that progress can be monitored year on year.
Since it is likely that the 91 of the 126 tracks In North America that do not currently voluntarily offer their statistics for publication to the EID are not among the safest, then the racing world could be in for a very nasty shock if accurate statistics are rigorously collated. And the general public may be very negative when they see the actual number of horses killed training and racing each year.
It seems difficult sometimes to escape the conclusion that synthetic tracks are perhaps the only thing that can save U.S. racing in the long run. But maybe they don’t need them everywhere. And maybe U.S. racing can have the best of both worlds.
There was an excellent Thoroughbred Daily News article published in 2014, written by Lucas Marquardt, with extensive and very lucid contributions from Bill Casner. It was titled Is this the death of synthetic racing - and if so why?
Blistering speed in California
It was published at the time premier racetracks across the United States were ripping out the synthetic surfaces they had installed and re-establishing dirt. Synthetic tracks in Southern California seemed to have issues with drainage, therefore some mistakes seemingly in their installation and maintenance were blamed as the reason for the majority of horsepeople there seemingly never really embracing them.
Perhaps the horsepeople were right, though. Californian racing is known for blistering speed, which they were never going to get on a synthetic surface in the summer Californian heat.
Santa Anita and Del Mar became something else, something unfamiliar to California racing. It didn’t bother the Europeans, who found more success at the Breeders’ Cups on these surfaces.
It bothered Californian horsepeople, though. The synthetic tracks had fundamentally changed the nature of California racing. The sheer speed that gave me shivers, looking on, was what, to Californians, was horseracing. And perhaps the rest of the world looking on didn’t understand that enough either.
Presque Isle Downs races in northern Pennsylvania: It races on an older generation of Tapeta.
The most dangerous races
The statistically most dangerous races for both horse and rider are low-grade, one-turn claimers.
A horse is a low-grade, one-turn claimer because it is not a great physical athlete. It probably has conformational issues, some minor physical issues, maybe its lungs and heart are not large enough in relation to its physical size. There can be many reasons, and training and racing on dirt, day-in, day-out, is often too much for these inferior athletes, and whether through career-ending injury in the morning, or catastrophic accident in the afternoon, one way or another, they often become another grim statistic for horseracing.
Presque Isle Downs race program is full of such contests, full of such horses. It is their staple fare. But it is one of the safest racetracks in North America year-in, year-out. The track is Tapeta.
Training and racing on the more consistent, more forgiving, less testing synthetic surface means these modest animals can ply their trade safely, win some purse money for the horsepeople there, provide entertainment for the racegoers watching from the apron, or from one of the very nice bars or restaurants overlooking the track. The horses and jockeys nearly always return safely after their races and negative headlines for the sport are seldom created there.
All across North America are little tracks like that, tracks racing modest horses with a variety of issues, horses that were unsold for $1,000, not million-dollar sale toppers. They can still race, but their lack of true athletic ability and conformational faults are regularly and ruthlessly exposed on dirt.
Tracks who would benefit by going synthetic
Perhaps all these lesser tracks could consider switching to synthetics. They have no boast to greatness, these more modest places, no real claim for historic preservation. But they still provide employment for horsepeople and can still be good fun to visit, to have a beer, have a bet, hang with friends - as long as horses aren’t being killed and riders being maimed on a regular basis.
Horses are precious at these tracks, fields hard to fill. Keeping the horses at these tracks safe is in riders’ interests, the horsepeople’s interests, the track’s interests, and the sport’s interests and the horses’ interests, of course.
And, if these tracks raced only on synthetic, or turf and synthetic, they wouldn’t be wearing toe grabs.
There are bigger tracks also, I believe, that could gain much from switching to synthetic main tracks. Fair Grounds, I think, could be one of them.
Fair Grounds races down in New Orleans, November through March. It hosts a lot of turf racing, which attracts big fields. Or at least it does until it rains, which it does regularly, and then the three or four turf races carded for that day are switched to the dirt to save the turf, and half the field in each race scratches. That is disappointing for connections, offputting for bettors and bad for business for the track.
Synthetics are arguably at their best when the weather is cool and it has rained. They ride then tight, fast, and still safe. Races called off the turf and switched to synthetic should experience no scratches, meaning a card of full fields on a safe racing surface.
I like Fair Grounds, but they seem to get more than their fair share of injuries and incidents in the mornings and afternoons. Again, for many obvious reasons, that is bad for business and needs to change. Their injury statistics are not publicly disclosed now, but they may have to be in the future.
And perhaps a state-of-the-art synthetic track installed at Fair Grounds could be a coup.
The Thoroughbred is a precocious breed, and the superior dirt horses are often physically big, imposing animals. They are surprisingly fragile, though, a 1,000lb animal supported by fine, still immature bones at two and three, and the best of them, the Kentucky Derby and Oaks contenders, have to train and race during their transition from two to three in order to try to gain sufficient points to qualify for the big races.
All at a time when they are still prone to injuries caused by immaturity and that risk greatly exacerbated by training and racing on dirt.
Nadal and Charlatan, missed the Derby in 2020. Maxfield missed it too, a big, beautiful, late-developing specimen who suffered two, if not three, setbacks. Every year it seems many very exciting contenders get injured. It is such a shame. If Authentic, Maxfield, Tiz The Law, Nadal and Charlatan had all shown up, what a Derby that might have been.
Ideal to prep a Derby horse
If I was training a Kentucky Derby or Oaks contender and Fair Grounds had a state-of-the-art synthetic tack, that is where I would be heading with them for the winter.
Training on a safe, kind, consistent surface all winter, one that rides as excellently when it is raining as when it isn’t. That is where I would prep my Derby horse, breeze my Oaks contender. My dream machine would head for the Louisiana Derby, and then for Kentucky with points, race-fit and with fresh, unjarred, tight, clean, limbs and joints.
Perhaps a synthetic track at Fair Grounds could attract more potential Derby and Oaks contenders. That would be exciting and draw more attention, racegoers, and betting money to the track.
Keeneland racetrack is another that maybe could prove more valuable with a state-the-art synthetic track. Keeneland races April and October, often in very changeable conditions. Dr Mick Peterson, the racetrack surface expert, says consistency of a track is the key to safety of the track, and that dirt tracks are very difficult to keep consistent in changeable weather.
A new niche for Keeneland?
A synthetic track at Keeneland would provide a superior training surface in the mornings for galloping and especially for breezing on. Maybe, most intriguingly though, with the emergence of more and more high-class turf races and horses since the last time there were synthetic tracks at the major venues, Keeneland could find its niche as the place where top-class dirt horses could line up against the top-class turf horses, in the same races.
Three or four of the best on dirt against three or four of the best on turf! The big, strong dirt horses breaking fast to set punishing fractions, the slighter finer turf horses sat stalking, ready to pounce late. That would be fascinating to watch, exciting. The dirt specialists and the turf specialists meeting on maybe close-to-neutral ground.
In that 2014 article, trainer Wesley Ward rued the ripping out of the Keeneland synthetic. He said how, after all the horses he had breezed there, hardly a single handful had ever returned with a problem, and he said he had sent them out from there to win at tracks everywhere.
Mark Casse, leading trainer at Woodbine’s Tapeta track, and who trains and races on dirt in the U.S., says unequivocally that horses are much more likely to bow tendons training on dirt, and much more likely to bleed on dirt.
Don’t tamper with Saratoga …
But what of Saratoga? For the lovers of North American horseracing, for historically what it is, then I would vote that it must stay dirt. It is too iconic, too historic, too beautiful, too storied.
The Travers, the Alabama, they are dirt races and must stay dirt races. If they are not dirt races, then they are they are not the Travers and the Alabama Stakes any longer. They become something else.
Everyone can see the thundering drama and romance of dirt racing there at Saratoga, see the beautiful dirt horses at that track.
So now Bute has gone, Lasix is gone in more classes, and the new monitoring protocols are introduced. Santa Anita and Del Mar have shown remarkable progress this year in safety. If they maintain that record, then maybe the elite tracks that host the elite races for the elite athletes on dirt could and should remain and race relatively safely.
The elite performers are more physically fit to perform on these more demanding tracks. They are trained by the more experienced trainers, monitored by the most experienced vets, ridden by the best jockeys.
… or the Kentucky Derby
The Kentucky Derby is the most iconic dirt race, the most iconic horserace, in North America. One of the most iconic horse races in the world. It is a mile-and-a-quarter dirt race at Churchill Downs run under the Twin Spires. Anything else and it isn’t the Kentucky Derby. Sometimes a bit of extra risk is justified.
So, after much consideration, and of course my thoughts are just my thoughts (but I have had a lot of exposure to North American racing over the past six years, as a visitor from Europe spectating, as a parent of a rider here, as a European horseman, and as a backstretch worker in the industry here, and as a student of horseracing history on both sides of the Atlantic), I find that not all battles are equal, and neither are all races.
The jewels of North American racing, both the racetracks and the celebrated historic races held at them, are predominately run on dirt. The history of dirt racing is uniquely American and tied inextricably with the evolution not only of the American dirt horse, but with the actual birth and values of the United States of America.
The Triple Crown runs through the history of North America. It is well worth fighting to preserve and protect that. Maybe these races and these racetracks must always remain dirt races. It is what they are.
Epsom or Royal Ascot on synthetics? No way
It was not until I flipped the tables and thought about Epsom Downs turned into a synthetic track that I have really come to understand the American devotion to dirt. We don’t mind in Europe having a lot of synthetic racing day to day. We like it. It is safe and consistent and the vagaries of the weather are rarely of concern.
But, if someone suggested we should change Epsom Downs to synthetic, that Royal Ascot should be held on a synthetic track, that Newmarket be converted, there would be a call to arms, an uprising from the horsepeople, and quite rightly.
Some things are worth fighting for. Some things just should be. Some things are worth the extra risk, sometimes the extra price. Some things are so great, so intrinsic, so precious and embedded in a nation’s values and notions and emotions of who and what they are that they must be protected at nearly any cost.
But a nickel claimer on dirt at a minor, remote track, is that worth hurting horses and riders for? And tarnishing the name of the sport?
Don’t see synthetic surfaces as a threat
I am currently working with a major U.S. Thoroughbred horseshoe manufacturer to try to develop a safer toe grab. If it works, then hopefully that can help a bit to keep dirt racing safer. But most racing in the USA would absolutely, inarguably, be safer on synthetic tracks, and the sport really does not need bad publicity, bad injury statistics from these tracks.
And the mighty titans of the dirt, the upcoming gladiators of the next generation of Triple Crown contenders? I think many of them would benefit from being prepared on synthetic also.
But, after the best North American horses enter the stalls, the riders’ silks blowing colorful above them, when the bell rings and the stalls fly open and the mighty dirt horse lunges forward, stretches forward, launching itself to flight, its first foot striking the ground should spray the dirt of Churchill Downs, of Saratoga, of Santa Anita, of Belmont Park defiantly into the sky, telling the world: This is what we are.
Perhaps, surprisingly, somehow, synthetics could prove to be not a threat to dirt racing, but its savior.