Jockey Club announces microchip program for new foals

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – The Jockey Club will require every foal born in 2017 to be implanted with a microchip for the purposes of identification, the organization said Sunday at its Round Table Conference on Matters Pertaining to Racing.

The requirement was approved by the Jockey Club’s board of stewards at a meeting Saturday and announced the next day. Rick Bailey, the chief registrar of the Jockey Club, said during a presentation at the Round Table that microchipping has “become standard” in most major Thoroughbred breeding countries, listing England, Ireland, France, South Africa, and Australia as the jurisdictions that already require the technology.

The Jockey Club said it would pay for the microchips, and registration fees for foals will not be increased as a result of the new policy. The microchips will be included with the genetic sampling kits that already are part of the registration process.

Microchips can be read to positively determine a horse’s identity. The microchips also could be linked to records regarding the horse’s pedigree, veterinary records, and other data, Bailey said.

Also at the Round Table, the Jockey Club announced its Thoroughbred Safety Committee has approved two new recommendations.

The first recommendation is to require horses to test clean for illegal substances and illegal concentrations of regulated medications prior to being taken off the vet’s list. The test would be the same applied to horses that have just raced, Jockey Club officials said.

The second is the creation of a database containing the results of post-mortem examinations of horses that have suffered catastrophic injuries. The database would be linked to an existing database tracking equine injuries that racing officials said has been instrumental in identifying risk factors for horses.

Counting the two recommendations released Sunday, the Jockey Club’s Thoroughbred Safety Committee has issued a total of 22 recommendations on health and welfare. Most have been adopted by racing states or developed into initiatives pursued by various racing organizations.

** The Jockey Club also announced at the Round Table that Equibase, a breeding and racing data company co-owned by the Jockey Club and the Thoroughbred Racing Associations, has reached a partnership with STATS, a sports-data company, for the development of handicapping products. Bill Squadron, the executive vice president of STATS, said during a Round Table presentation one of the products would be a program allowing bettors to mine racing data to test hypotheses about factors predicting racing performance.