Quarter cracks in Thoroughbred racehorses trained in Hong Kong over a 9‐year period (2007–2015): incidence, clinical presentation, and future racing performance
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Summary A quarter crack is a defect of the hoof wall that is caused by a combination of factors that affect the quality of the hoof horn. To date, no peer‐reviewed studies have described the incidence of quarter cracks in Thoroughbred racehorses during training. Further, there is limited information regarding the clinical presentation and racing performance following a quarter crack. Therefore, the objectives of the current study were to describe the incidence, clinical presentation and outcome of quarter cracks sustained by horses in racing and training at the Hong Kong Jockey Club. Horses with quarter cracks that required attention from a farrier and/or veterinarian were identified using farrier and veterinary clinical records. Data were described, including the affected foot, presence of lameness, treatment, reoccurrence and racing data for case and control horses. There was no significant difference between case and control horses for total career length, and the total number of starts, wins and places. Seventy‐four horses experienced at least one quarter crack during the study period, for a total of 114 quarter cracks. Half of the horses experiencing a quarter crack were not lame on presentation. Most quarter cracks occurred in the right fore (n = 56/102; 54.9%) and in a medial position (n = 90/102; 88.2%). Horses returned to racing a median of 50 days after the first treatment, for a median of 18 starts. Six horses retired due to the occurrence of a quarter crack. Although the incidence of quarter cracks in racehorses is low and the majority of horses returned to a racing career comparable to unaffected horses, the reoccurrence rate is high, putting an emphasis on ongoing hoof management and farrier care to help prevent the reoccurrence.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".