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There is alot of misunderstanding in the non-racing world about how racehorses are looked after and trained!

The truth is that horses this valuable are professionally cared for, to the highest standard, from the minute they are conceived.

Visit any training centre open day, or race meeting, and you will see only contented horses, behaving normally. In fact many problems that bedevil the pleasure horse world - horses who won't load, won't stand for the blacksmith, won't behave in traffic - are virtually unheard of in racing. This is all down to professional management.

You may wonder, then, why racehorses have such a reputation for being volatile.

Because they speak a different language, that's why! Learning to ride "race style" is all about learning to "speak racehorse" - riding short leaves you no leg to use, so you communicate by rein contact and subtlety. Why ride short at all, then? Because nature made the horse perfectly balanced for galloping; in racing, rather than adjust the balance of the horse, you place the rider over the horse's own centre of balance. It's not the safest position, but it allows the horse to move at greater speed. A classical rider who gets on and tries to use legs to go and reins to stop is likely to get an unexpected response!!

Training racehorses is not about forcing a young horse to charge from A to B as fast as possible.

It is a careful fittening and development programme that starts when the horse is first broken in. Whilst the racehorse trainer is the man in charge, he (or she) depends on the stable staff to actually ride and train the horses, to report setbacks and provide feedback information about the horse's progress. It is all carefully monitored and modified to each individual animal, so the input from the "work riders" is crucial, and they have a very responsible role to play in preparing horses for competition.

Ever wondered why racehorses are trained at just two years of age?

For the same reason that an Olympic gymnast trains when still a child - starting later results in higher rates of injury. Bones, muscles and tendons need to be conditioned in the development stage. Much veterinary research, which benefits horses of all disciplines, is done on the behalf of the racing industry, which leads the field in implementing new findings.