On Wednesday, the Equate seminar, organized by passionate breeder and owner of Breedr Tom Seymour, took place in Scone. The event was well-attended by various industry participants who came to listen to the insights of well-credentialed speakers. Tom spoke with The Thoroughbred Report about the event on his way home.

“That was a heady day!” Tom Seymour enthused, delighted with how the Equate seminar speakers were received by the audience and excited about the possibilities of the use of technology in the racing and breeding industry.

“Everything went extremely well, it was great to have such a broad cross section of people listening to a broad section of experts and it was so rewarding to see them engage with the topics.

“The objective of the day was to show racing’s regulatory bodies that there is so much talent out there, people working on new technology that can leap frog what we are currently able to do in terms of horse welfare and health.

“There is no reason,” he continued, “that Australia can not lead the way with the welfare story – we don’t need to just dance around the edge of things, we need to create a story we can be proud of and address the problems raised by animal welfare people.

“The objective of the day was to show racing’s regulatory bodies that there is so much talent out there, people working on new technology that can leap frog what we are currently able to do in terms of horse welfare and health.” – Tom Seymour

“In that regard we need to be proactive rather than reactive,” he said.

Generative AI and horses

With that in mind Seymour engaged eight speakers from different areas of technology including Neal French from Google who spoke about generative AI.

The definition of which is (courtesy of Wikipedia): generative AI models learn the patterns and structure of their input training data and then generate new data that has similar characteristics.

In regards to horses, generative AI can learn the regular patterns of a horse – such as the way it acts in a box or how it moves, and note any changes – enabling trainers to hone in on problems before they come apparant to the human eye.

A packed house at the seminar

Coline Labadie de Faÿ from Arioneo, makers of the Equimetre wearable technology, was also interesting – discussing how their product can monitor such things as how a horse puts his or her feet down and whether they are symmetrical in doing so… another way of predicting problems before they become more serious.

Andrew Smith, Chair of Dairy Australia, spoke about the future of micro-chipping as did VetChip’s Garnett Hall.

“At the moment all thoroughbreds are microchipped with just simple identification information,” Seymour said, “but there are microchips that can monitor heart rate and take note of temperature changes – key indicators in regards to performance and illness.”

“At the moment all thoroughbreds are microchipped with just simple identification information… There are microchips that can monitor heart rate and take note of temperature changes – key indicators in regards to performance and illness.” – Tom Seymour

One stable that has been proactive in regards to technology has been Maher Racing who employ Joshua Kadlec‑Cavanagh​​​​ as their Head Of Data And Performance.

“He gave insight into how data can be used in regards to performance and welfare, the early identification of illness and made us realise that we should be doing so much more in this sphere – in fact the mind boggles that we are not doing more!” Seymour said.

Industry support needed

That is something that frustrates Seymour who is keen to hold more such conferences, and not just in Sydney.

“I’d love to do more but we do need industry support,” he said, his passion being to increase knowledge and awareness rather than to point the finger at those we think are doing the wrong thing.

“We need solution based ideas,” he said, not happy to see the industry rest on its laurels. “We need to get this all right for the future and just need our regulatory bodies to show some intent in this regard.”

“I’d love to do more but we do need industry support… We need solution based ideas… We need to get this all right for the future and just need our regulatory bodies to show some intent in this regard.” – Tom Seymour

One impressed conference attendee was trainer Brett Cavanough who said “there are probably not enough seminars like this – we are never too old to learn!

“It was amazing to sit there today and listen to Andrew from the dairy industry and the technology they have – technology that could cross over into racing and save us money and make us better.

“All the speakers were really motivational; we were able to come here today and listened to professionals who have had real life experience whereas often in racing we just go to the pub and talk about things!”

Brett Cavanough | Image courtesy of Cavanough Racing

Cavanough was particularly interested in the microchip technology, noting that “rather than using a thermometer 40 times in a morning, you could just walk in with your phone and have all that information downloaded – that is going to make things a hell of a lot easier.”

This article was written by Kristen Manning for TTR AusNZ.