Wearable Technology in Horse Racing: Gaining an Edge on the Competition

In modern sports, the use of wearable technology to help optimize athlete performance has become almost commonplace. In September of 2014, The Dallas Morning News reported that the NBA's Dallas Mavericks had begun not only wearing Readiband sleep-monitoring watches at night, but also wearing Catapult Optimeye tracking devices between their shoulder blades during trainings. Referred to as a bio-analytics platform, the Optimeye technology is designed to monitor the so-called “training loads” placed on player’s bodies by emitting “real-time data on accelerations, decelerations, changes of direction and jumping (height and frequency).”

Wearable devices have been also used by runners for years to track distance, steps, calories, and other basic metrics. However, increasingly more sophisticated devices are now oming to market at an impressive pace. Tech Cocktail recently reported on a new product from Kinematix known as Tune, which purportedly can analyze running technique and then recommend a customized exercise plan that is designed to improve exactly the movements and muscles necessary to improve upon technical flaws.

Looking at both the Optimeye and Tune devices, these products reflect the growing consensus that greater insight into heart rate, stride length, muscle strain, and other bio-metrics during exercise allows both professional and recreational athletes to train more efficiently and can help prevent injuries.

The information gap in horse racing

In thoroughbred racing, horses' bodies are pushed to the limit, and unfortunately injuries still occur too often as a result. According to The Jockey Club’s Equine Injury Database, although the rate of fatalities has declined since 2009, the incidence of fatal injury in 2014 was still 1.89 per 1,000 starts. Additionally, occurrences of tendonitis, strained ligaments, splints, osselets, fractures, or bone chips can derail entire seasons or even careers for aspiring thoroughbreds. With such high stakes, jockeys and trainers are placed in the difficult position of balancing the desire to maximize speed with the need to avoid injury. With limited or imperfect data available, racing professionals are left to rely on their instincts to gauge when they can push harder on their thoroughbred versus when they need to ease off.

Thankfully, a former jockey and current horse trainer in Australia by the name of Andrew Stuart is working to bridge this information gap in horse racing. After partnering with world-renowned equine researchers, and spending several years doing testing and product development, he launched the E-Trakka® system for equine fitness monitoring. We caught up with Mr. Stuart to discuss his innovation, and got his insights into an exciting product that has the potential to change the face of thoroughbred training as we know it:

Interview with horse racing wearable technology innovator Andrew Stuart

What kind of feedback have you received from trainer’s with respect to how your product has helped them to improve the training regimens for their thoroughbreds?

We have received exceptional feedback from E-Trakka users, E-Trakka has now recorded about 30,000 readings and amongst them are many case studies that show the value of monitoring the equine athlete “closer” than would usually be possible. Trainers are able to identify ability, fitness, lameness and suitable race distances via the E-Trakka system. Currently the industry in general is not aware of the results a relative few have had but the knowledge is advancing. Scenic Blast became the Australian horse of the year in 2009 because the trainer used the E-Trakka information. Scenic Blast was bred to be a stayer but his E-Trakka readings showed otherwise. Not only that the E-Trakka was used to specifically adjust his training routine to ensure a higher level of fitness.

Do you anticipate that increased adoption of wearable technology such as yours will improve safety in horse racing?

It most definitely will and already has on many occasions. It helps the safety of racing by firstly reducing the amount of lame, sick and diseased horses going to the races, and then helps to ensure the racehorse is better conditioned and more likely in a suitable class and distance. Better prepared horses mean less chance of severe fatigue which can cause interference or at worst collapse of the equine athlete.