Equine Wearable Technology

• Moderator - Joe Appelbaum, President NYTHA
• Will Duff Gordan, Chief Executive Officer Total Performance Data
• Dr. Scott Palmer, Equine Medical Director New York State Gaming Commission
• Valentin Rapin, Managing Director & Co-Founder Arioneo
Joseph Appelbaum, president of the New York Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association, moderated a panel on wearable technologies for horses. Valentin Rapin, managing director and co-founder of Arioneo, described his company’s sensors that horses can wear during training that track metrics such as heart rate.
Will Duff Gordon, the chief executive officer of Total Performance Data (TPD), talked about his company’s tracking technology and the potential benefits to gamblers. Equibase is currently working with TPD to harness this data and acknowledged the challenge of making this technology scalable.
“You’re looking for a technology that is attainable, that tradeoff, can every horse produce the same information to help with the welfare and the wagering, but not such that only a few racecourses can adopt it,” said Gordon.
“The last few years have been about acquiring the data, getting onto as many racecourses as possible, having a big enough data set. The present and the future is about mining that data.”
Dr. Scott Palmer, equine medical director of the New York State Gaming Commission, reviewed findings from a case study using StrideSAFE, a device that detects abnormalities in a horse’s gait and may have use in the future for detecting injuries before visible lameness develops. He sees great potential in the data from these technologies, especially with the imminent implementation of the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act (HISA), which goes into effect July 1.
“I think that the introduction of HISA is going to make a huge change. They’re already requiring a lot of data, and it seems to me that right now the challenge is going to be to prioritize,” he said. “Having sensors on horses while they train and while they race is going to be important.”