The developer of a wearable technology designed to monitor stride abnormalities in horses on Monday urged Kentucky trainers to view the device as a tool to identify at-risk horses, one week after he upset many horsemen in the state with comments related to the rash of horses that died at Churchill Downs in May. Dr. David Lambert, the developer of the StrideSafe device, explained during a 2 1/2-hour meeting organized by the Kentucky Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Association on Monday morning that his device could be a useful tool if trainers embraced its ability to register stride changes that are he said are highly correlated with injuries. The device has gotten high marks from many scientists who study equine injuries and bone pathology, and it is currently being used in Kentucky to gather data from horses during workouts and races, in a study funded by the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission. But the meeting started on an apologetic tone as Lambert acknowledged that a release sent out last week from StrideSafe had inadvertently upset horsemen by suggesting that seven of the eight horses who died due to musculoskeletal injuries earlier this spring at Churchill Downs had “pre-existing conditions” that led to their breakdowns. Lambert explained that he never intended to suggest that trainers had started unsound horses, and he acknowledged that the release was poorly worded. “Quite reasonably you’ve taken offense at that,” Lambert said. He said that he believed that the recordings showing changes in the injured horse’s strides during their performances was a reason for “optimism” for demonstrating that the devices had a real-world value as a “tool” that could alert horsemen to underlying problems that are not detectable by other means. The StrideSafe device weighs three ounces and is inserted into a horse’s saddlecloth. It collects 2,400 data points every second by measuring changes to a horse’s acceleration along three axes, generating graphs of the changes taking place during a horse’s stride. The devices were carried by horses working out and racing at Churchill throughout the track’s spring meet, and they have continued to be carried by horses at Ellis Park after Churchill decided to suspend its live racing operations and move racing to Ellis following the rash of breakdowns. Under the parameters of the study, horsemen have been receiving notifications if a horse’s performance in a race or workout generates a “red alert,” meaning that the horse’s stride changed so significantly during its exercise that it fell in line statistically with other horses who have subsequently suffered a major injury. Under data collected during several studies with the device, including a nine-month study in New York, horses that generate a “high” red alert are 300 times more likely to suffer a major injury than horses whose strides do not register major changes from the baseline norm, according to Lambert. The data collected by StrideSafe has generated considerable optimism among researchers and regulators searching for early-warning signs of a horse showing bone pathologies that are hard to detect by traditional means, such as physical or visual examination. Lambert said that the device is akin to the development of other technologies that have allowed medical personnel to more accurately detect pathologies, and he repeatedly stressed that he was not casting aspersions on trainers’ horsemanship. Citing research going back 25 years, Lambert said that necropsies of horses that suffer catastrophic injuries invariably find “pre-existing conditions,” or micro-fractures in bone that eventually catastrophically fail when a horse undergoes strenuous exercise. But those micro-fractures remain hidden to nearly all means of detection other than expensive diagnostic imaging tests. “The thing is, you can’t find it,” Dr. Lambert said. “You can’t see it. That’s the nature of this whole problem. There’s no swelling, there’s no heat, there’s no pain.” But a problem for horsemen with the StrideSafe technology is that it generates a “red alert” on “5 to 6 percent” of all performances, according to Dr. Denise McSweeney, who is assisting with the study and who also appeared at the Kentucky HBPA seminar on Monday. In contrast, horses suffer catastrophic injuries approximately once out of every 1,000 starts, so the red alert is not a guarantee that a horse is going to break down, only a potential indicator that there could be trouble on the horizon. “We’re looking for a needle in the haystack,” Dr. Lambert said, in reference to finding a sure-fire indication of the 1-in-1,000 event. "At least this says that that needle is going to be in that 5 percent. I’m sorry we can’t go any better than that right now.” Dr. Will Farmer, the equine medical director of Churchill Downs Inc., also appeared at the seminar and tried to reassure horsemen that the device was not replacing their ability to detect lameness or unsoundness in horses. He said the technology allows horsemen to get a reading on potential problems with a horse by generating data that humans are not capable of noticing. “If there’s a slight change that alters their stride by a half-inch, no one has previously been able to see that or record it,” Dr. Farmer said. “The human eye and the human brain are just not fast enough to process that.” The StrideSafe device has not been launched commercially. Its data is being studied by researchers at Washington State University, and Lambert has said that he anticipates that the data will be far more predictive in the future, when more studies can be done that might help identify which limb is displaying pathologies and whether conditions in a race created the abnormalities in the stride, rather than bone pathology. Ideally, Lambert said a commercial application of the device would give trainers confidential access to the data reports, which the trainers could then share with their veterinarians to decide on potential courses of action and diagnostics. Already, trainers who have agreed to receive reports about their horses’ performances have been advised on the availability of PET scans at Churchill Downs, with some costs defrayed by the track, according to Farmer. Currently, the KHRC has only funded the study through the end of the Churchill spring meet, which would have ended on July 3 if the meet had not been moved. It is continuing through the Ellis Park meet, which wraps up on Sunday. Farmer said that he supported additional funding for the study to continue. “Conversations are being had” among racing constituents in the state about the funding being extended, Farmer said. “I can’t comment either way.” :: Want to learn more about handicapping and wagering? 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