Musculoskeletal, cardiac, and respiratory disorders are the leading causes of morbidity, mortality, and lost training days in Thoroughbred racehorses. While advances in diagnostic imaging and epidemiology have expanded our understanding of injury aetiology, the ability to identify horses at risk before clinical presentation remains limited. Wearable technology offers a new opportunity to capture objective data during training and official trials, providing insight into physiological and biomechanical responses that were previously inaccessible.
Commercially available devices, including GPS-enabled sensors, accelerometers, and heart rate monitors, now allow close monitoring of stride parameters, workload, and cardiovascular function. The integration of such data enables the development of longitudinal biometric profiles for individual horses, facilitating the early detection of subclinical changes that may precede musculoskeletal injury. Subtle reductions in stride length and speed, for example, have been associated with increased injury risk, while variations in workload distribution may predispose to both bony and soft tissue injuries.
Cardiac monitoring through wearable devices, including those capable of recording single-lead ECGs, allows assessment of heart rate recovery, variability, and the identification of horses that may require further investigation for arrhythmias. Given that a significant proportion of sudden cardiac deaths occur during training and at sub-maximal exercise intensity, these tools have an important role in screening and ongoing monitoring.
The respiratory system remains comparatively underexplored in this context, despite being a primary limiting factor to equine athletic performance. Current wearable technologies provide little direct assessment of respiratory function. Inspiratory muscle training (IMT) has emerged as a novel intervention, with preliminary studies demonstrating improvements in inspiratory muscle strength, diaphragm thickness, and reductions in dynamic upper airway collapse.
Collectively, these technologies represent an exciting in equine sports medicine, allowing veterinarians and analysts to integrate data into evidence-based strategies that enhance performance, inform training decisions, and reduce the incidence of catastrophic injury.