Underwater treadmills, vibrating floors: welcome to R&R heaven for racehorses
A state-of-the art equine centre near Newmarket offers rehabilitation from injury – or just a holiday By Marie Parker, head girl
Owning or training a winner at any major meeting is an accomplishment, but sometimes even getting the horse to the starting line has been an achievement in itself. Bless Him, a David Simcocktrained three-year-old with Group Three entries in both Friday’s City Of York Stakes and Saturday’s Strensall Stakes, had a colic operation and needed extensive recovery. Lucky for him, his owner, Sheikh Fahad, is the proprietor of a state-of-the-art equine rehabilitation centre, Longholes, just outside Newmarket.
There are 65 horses there, some from Fahad’s own Qatar Racing, some from other owners. The facility provides pre-training for yearlings, rehabilitation for horses coming back from injuries, and sometimes just a change of scene for horses who need a break.
Louise Cornwell, Longholes manager, takes up the story.
“Bless Him was a real problem child,” she said. “He was like a kid with a permanent tummy ache. It was a really long journey with him. He came to us after colic surgery and there were a few nightmare times. He had constant stomach rumbles, sometimes we would have to drive him around in the horse box at night to calm him down. He nearly died from the colic; three times we nearly lost him. But eventually we got him right, and then back into training.”
All that hard work paid off last month at Royal Ascot when Bless Him landed the Britannia Stakes at 25-1.
“Each horse gets a tailored programme,” she explained. “We have a lot who have had lower-limb injuries, pelvic trouble, fractures.”
The horses work out on a variety of hi-tech equipment, including a vibrating floor plate that was initially designed by NASA to help astronauts returning from space with brittle-bone problems.
With the machines costing hundreds of thousands, it is not realistic for even the big individual training yards to have them, so Longholes has become a destination for horses trained by the likes of Sir Michael Stoute, William Haggas, Luca Cumani and Highclere.
You would need deep pockets to set it up, and that is what Qatar’s Sheikh Fahad certainly has, Longholes being just one part of an operation that is also title sponsor of the QIPCO British Champions Series. He also has a passion for riding.
“He’s the ideal boss,” said Cornwell. “He comes in several days a week and rides out, and he lets us get on with it. He’s hooked on the buzz, but he is smart and competitive as well: he’s not just going to have all this sitting here for the occasional use of his own horses. He wants this to run as a commercial entity, and while it has taken a while to see a return after the set-up costs, it’s now doing that.”
The Sheikh rode in last month’s Newmarket Town Plate but fell, much to the delight of the staff, and fair enough: who among us would not like to see their boss thrown – unharmed – off a horse?
“He has a sense of humour, he took the abuse well,” said Cornwell. “We have a rule here that if you get chucked off, you have to bring in a cake the next day. And he did. He claimed he made it himself but I’m not so sure about that.”
Most of the injured horses here picked up niggles in training rather than racing, but some are just here for a holiday.
One of the current residents is a lovely filly owned by the Queen. “She really likes training, she is such a hard worker,” said Cornwell of the four-year-old. “She pushes herself too hard, if anything. If she was a person, she’d be a workaholic.
“We’ve had her here for some R&R as much as anything else,” she adds, as the well-connected filly is given a shower while posing for photos.
She will go back to Stoute over the next week or two refreshed and rejuvenated. “Sometimes, the best doctor is grass and sunshine,” said Cornwell.
The place, on a beautiful August morning, is the horse equivalent of a five-star Caribbean retreat: huge fields for galloping, tailored diets, the right amount of exercise, companionship.
“They’re herd animals, they can get depressed if they’re injured and just stuck in a box at home on their own,” said Cornwell.
“Sometimes, trainers don’t get the balance right between pushing them and TLC. Horses cannot tell you what hurts, what they don’t like. It needs a lot of patience. If you don’t have a high tolerance for frustration you are in the wrong job.
“Some of them are born athletes that just love to compete. And some are just not trainable. If they were human athletes, you would give up.
“And also like human athletes, a lot of the time it is about managing
‘Horses are herd animals, they get depressed if they’re injured or stuck in a box on their own’
injury, competing through niggles, performing even when you are at 90 per cent.”
Cornwell and her team of 18 have many more successes than failures. Almost all of the convalescents here go back to the track.
“You don’t get failures too often,” said Cornwell. “You sometimes get to a stage and they don’t make progress no matter what you do. In that instance, we try to rehome them if racing isn’t for them.”
Marie Parker, head girl, said: “We work with them, get them better, and then they go back to their trainers for the fun bit. But we always keep an eye out for them in the future.”
Perhaps Bless Him can score one for the Longholes former patients this week.