IN ITSELF, the racing industry is a perilous one for the athlete – the horse and the requirement of exceedingly unyielding solicitation of unsurpassed performance excellence. After all, the expenditure is not trivial and monetary losses incurred can be devastating even to the wealthiest of those who endeavor to invest in this business enterprise.
Most notably, horse racing’s most unenviable anathema is the significant incidence of injuries that beleaguer the industry, particularly given that the career of the average racehorse, at best, spans a mere five to six years.
Simply put, the subsistence of a racehorse is a world apart from his expected lifespan.
Moreover, statistics repeatedly reinforce the fact that musculoskeletal injury is by far the most prevalent derivation of what the racing industry terms “wastage” – an idiom used to characterize losses that occur as a result of the training and racing of a horse.
“A number of studies have shown that musculoskeletal injury is by far the most common reason for wastage. In fact, the statistics are staggering -- for example, a study of 314 Thoroughbreds in Newmarket, England, found that lameness was the single most important reason for wastage in young horses in training. More than half of those horses experienced a period of lameness, and in about 20% of affected horses, lameness was severe enough to prevent racing during the period of investigation.” [1]
While there are a host of reasons that can and do contribute to lameness in the Thoroughbred, predominantly as a result of the inherent rigors of such a demanding sport, there is undeniably the question of whether this arises from the unrelenting demands foist upon the young horse and the potentially harmful effects of intensive training on an immature skeletal structure.
One of the most widely-read factual articles regarding the timing and rate of skeletal maturation in horses is referred to as “The Ranger Piece”, courtesy of the Equine Studies Institute (ESI) which can be found here. [2] What this article clearly communicates is the fact that the vast majority of horses, particularly in North America, begin their racing careers well before they have physically matured.
“…..bottom line – is that no horse, of any breed, in any country, at any time in history, either now or in the past, has ever been physically mature before it is five and a half years old; and that would be small scrubby mares living on rough tucker. Healthy domestically-raised males, and many females, do not mature until they are six. Tall, long-necked horses may take even longer than that.” [3]
The long bones of a horse develop from cartilage by a process known as ossification or simply “bone formation” both at the center (diaphysis) and ends (epiphysis) of the future bone.
Situated between these two regions is a (metaphyseal) growth plate which permits the lengthening of the long bones as the foal grows. Additionally there is a second growth plate (epiphyseal) that forms as the ossification at the ends of the bone (epiphysis) advances outward effectively becoming the articular surface of the joint. [4]
