February 2001 California Thoroughbred

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February 2001

The Japan Racing Association and UC Davis:
Working Together to Improve Equine Athletic Management
by Laurie Fio and Dr. James H. Jones

For the past five years, researchers from the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine have been involved in a unique and tremendously productive series of collaborations with their counterparts in the Japan Racing Association (JRA).
UC Davis and JRA researchers have worked together in each other's facilities studying problems of mutual interest, e.g., the physiological basis of exercise-induced pulmonary hemorrhage (EIPH or bleeding), tendinitis and transport stress. These studies have allowed both groups of researchers to benefit from the other's unique resources and expertise. (See the Center for Equine Health's January 2001 The Horse Report for more details.)

Members of the Japan Racing Association are working with UC Davis researchers to improve equine athletic management.

Established in 1957, the JRA operates the 10 largest racetracks in Japan and oversees approximately 40,000 racing starts per year. JRA races have the highest average handles in the world and they pay out almost $1 billion in prize money per year. In addition, the JRA operates two 3,000-horse training centers (Ritto and Miho Training Centers), the Hidaka Yearling Training Farm, and a rehabilitation facility at a Hot Springs where the horses soak in therapeutic waters. Soaking in a hot bath is a very traditional part of Japanese culture that they share with their horses.

Japan is the third largest Thoroughbred breeder behind the U.S. and Australia. Its imported stallions include Sunday Silence, Forty Niner, Dancing Brave, Generous and the California-bred, King Glorious. The JRA primarily oversees Thoroughbred flat races along with a small percentage (3%) of steeplechase racing. The JRA employs between 180 and 200 veterinarians among its members. Veterinarians play key roles in the association, not only as clinicians at the tracks and training centers, but also as researchers and administrators in the organization.

Japanese veterinary students receive most of their training in small animal medicine with a small amount of training in food animals. They receive only a few lectures on horses throughout their six year course of study. When young graduates are hired by the JRA, they are given a six month to one year intensive training course in all matters equine. The very first thing they all learn to do is to ride a horse!

The Equine Research Institute in Utsunomiya, Japan.

The JRA recognizes that scientific advancement is essential for the health, welfare and performance of their horses. Therefore, it operates an Equine Research Institute that is without parallel throughout the world for the quality of the facilities, equipment and resources it brings to bear on equine research. For many years, the Institute was located within Tokyo, adjacent to the Equestrian Park that was built for the 1960 Olympic Games. However, in 1997, the new Institute was built in Utsunomiya, a small city about one hour, by bullet train, from Tokyo.
The Institute is divided into four research divisions: 1) Life Science (molecular biology), a group that, among other things, is heavily involved in deciphering the equine genome; 2) Clinical Sciences and Pathobiology, including biochemistry and reproduction; 3) Sport Sciences, focusing on exercise physiology and sports medicine including cardiovascular, biomechanics, and epidemiological studies based on the JRA's exceptional computerized database of racehorse information and; 4) Facility Engineering, conducting studies on track engineering and maintenance.

The JRA has collected the most extensive computerized database in the world, relating to information on racehorse performance and injuries. The database contains information from JRA veterinarians who inspect each horse before and after every race, thus accumulating information on hundreds of thousands of racing starts over the years. The JRA also operates an Epizootic Research Center that specializes in microbiology and infectious diseases of the horse.

The new Research Institute is located on the grounds of a former training farm. It has a training track, barns, laboratories with two treadmills, metabolic rooms, a small surgical clinic, a pathology/necropsy room, a number of research laboratories, as well as a dormitory for the researchers. The Institute is adjacent to the Education Center of the Japan Farrier's Association School, where farriers come for their training and indoctrination. The chief of the research division of the farrier's school is Dr. Osamu Aoki, a DVM/PhD who carries out a research program on biomechanics and shoeing.

Because the JRA owns and manages the tracks, the Institute also conducts research on how different types of grass affect track surface - they literally grow plots of grass to assess for track use. The Facility Engineering group conducts these studies of racetrack surfaces. The JRA built a specialized van that travels around the track and measures ground hardness (at five meter intervals) and maps out the surface characteristics of the entire track. This van has been sent around the world to all the major tracks and the JRA has a comparative database of track surfaces, for both hardness and variability.
The JRA builds its own equine transport vehicles and has extensive data on transport experiences.

The JRA has conducted more studies on equine transport stress than anyone in the world. Because all horses are hauled from training centers to tracks for weekend races, the JRA builds its own transport vehicles (vans and trucks for four to six horses). They have data on hundreds of thousands of transport experiences.

The JRA's Hidaka Yearling Training Farm on the northern island of Hokkaido also has a research laboratory with areas of emphasis on nutrition and exercise physiology. Yearlings receive their initial training and conditioning at Hidaka. Facilities include several open and covered training tracks (it rains and snows) including uphill and circular courses, one kilometer (five-eights of a mile) straight gallops, two treadmills, motorized walkers, and many kilometers of grassy galloping areas.

At the JRA's two training centers, Ritto and Miho, horses receive their complete race training. Extensive information is kept in the JRA's computer database for record keeping of the horses' racing and training histories. Horses in training wear saddle blankets with bar-codes on them, and bar-code readers placed across the tracks record time splits during their workouts.

Training areas and tracks at Ritto and Miho are monitored with hundreds of video cameras, and numerous patrol video cameras record every race. If a horse has a breakdown, researchers can often retrieve data from the tape to determine what lead it was on, where it was on the track, and how hard the track was in that area. The computer data can also be used to indicate how much weight it was carrying, what its training history had been, etc.

At Ritto and Miho, the training tracks include dirt, turf and wood chip surfaces, as well as uphill courses. Horses travel in both directions at the training centers. They also have swimming pools, underwater treadmills and ground treadmills. There is a "nature relaxation course" of wooded trails so the horses can "unwind" after a workout. There are complete clinics at both centers including numerous acupuncture suites.

The collaborative research between UC Davis and the JRA has proved so mutually beneficial and productive, that both groups hope to continue these exchanges of personnel between their two programs in the future. UC Davis looks forward to the possibility of having some of the young JRA veterinarians obtain their PhDs at UC Davis and the JRA hopes to help UC Davis researchers institute some of the new monitoring techniques at California racetracks.

The interchange of people and ideas between UC Davis and the JRA offers many exciting prospects for the future, including opportunities to learn more about the basis for some of the uniquely Oriental veterinary medical techniques and scientific approaches to equine athletic care and management.