‘We are at a slow canter in a fast moving world’: Equate making strides in 2025

Cover image courtesy of Equate

The 2025 edition of Equate, Australia’s leading forum for innovation and entrepreneurship in the thoroughbred industry, took place on Thursday at Flemington Racecourse. Over 100 participants from across all sectors of the industry gathered together for seminar sessions on everything from utilising artificial intelligence to streamline tasks, to the future of technology in the field of injury prevention.

“We couldn't have been more pleased with the turnout,” Tom Seymour, Equate’s convener and the director of Breedr, said. “And what was so satisfying was seeing such a diverse audience in the room. There was representation from every corner of the industry, we even had representatives from the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Hong Kong.”

“We had more people in the room than we thought we would,” said Tai Ryan, event coordinator for Equate and the project manager of National Thoroughbred Week. “Everyone was really engaged in the conversations that were happening, and learning about all the new technologies that show not only what the potential is, but what's already out there.”

“I have three objectives for Equate,” Seymour said. “One is to showcase the amazing people and products that are transforming the landscape, mostly self-funded and all working tirelessly for the betterment of the industry. The second is to build awareness around the need to modernise and adopt new technologies, and the third is to build a movement of change through the industry.”

Seymour is pleased to see the event’s continual growth over its first three years, and at the same time foresees a growing urgency for the industry at large to engage more with the technological advancements being made across the board.

“We are at a slow canter in a fast moving world,” he said.

The forward march of innovation

“My desire is to convince the regulators that innovation requires a seat at the table, and it needs to be at the forefront of strategic thinking,” Seymour said. “As we heard firsthand on Thursday, the speed of technological advancement is moving at such a rapid rate that even the big tech companies are blown away at its trajectory. One of the speakers was Neal French from Google, and even Google is amazed at just how quickly things are advancing, even in the last six months.”

Kick Collective’s Nathan Skrivanic, who moderated an open forum on the state of thoroughbred welfare, found French’s sessions on the rapid advancements with artificial intelligence particularly interesting.

“I’ve been lucky enough to attend Equate all three years,” he said. “Neal French has spoken at all three events, and each year the progression of artificial intelligence has gotten stronger and stronger. The fact that he can do the same talk every year and it will be completely different because of the advancements in just 12 months is pretty cool to hear.”

Streamlining processes, particularly in administration and marketing, is where Ryan can see innovation with artificial intelligence having a huge impact.

“In the industry, there's so many people that are horse trainers or breeders, and that's what they do,” she said. “They need to do the marketing to keep their business and get clients, but that’s not necessarily their interest. You’ve got the technologies now to help you with all of this.”

One of the sessions focused around how technology has advanced in other agricultural industries, and how these practices could be applied to the thoroughbred industry. Ryan noted one of the most exciting discoveries was how the dairy industry has willingly taken advantage of available innovations.

“A lot of industry participants just started using it, and then the regulators realised it was happening and thought, ‘everyone’s doing this, we better step in and help’,” she said. Participant enthusiasm has been recognised and uplifted by support from dairy’s governing bodies.

“The amount of data they can get on their cows is incredible,” Skrivanic said. “The dairy industry pays into a research and development fund - which the thoroughbred industry does as well with AgriFutures - but they actively support trying to bring new products in to improve everyone. They really have had this change in mindset where they seem to really embrace it.”

Seymour would especially like to see innovation embraced at the heart of racing in the same manner, particularly when it comes to handling and recording data.

“It has been made very clear how important data will be in all facets of the industry,” he said. “And it just reinforced how critical it is that principal racing authorities build future proof systems that are able to cope and process all this data in a manner that we are all able to benefit from.”

Transparency at the heart of welfare

“The main thing I wanted to talk about was transparency,” Skrivanic said. The welfare forum concluded the day’s program, and Skrivanic put the emphasis on how industry participants could be the drivers of change around transparency.

“I think that as an industry we're quite afraid of talking about the uncomfortable stuff, and then to the public, that makes us look like we've got something to hide. So I was just encouraging everyone to try and be as transparent as they can.

"Obviously, we struggle to get a bit of transparency out of some higher ups, which is the challenge. I thought I'd bring it back down to the individual level, because it can be quite demoralising when you try to source data and you keep hitting roadblocks.

"So instead, I encourage everyone to try and be transparent as much as they can within their own environment, within their own workplace. Because if you start doing it within your own environment, it puts pressure on everyone else to start doing it.”

An example Skrivanic drew on is how tracks and trainers can be transparent about when a horse has to be euthanised due to catastrophic injury; by closing ranks and not releasing any information, the industry looks, to an outsider, like they don’t care. Being transparent means demonstrating how the reality is quite the opposite.

A desire for transparency is also what has given birth to National Thoroughbred Week, which takes place from November, 20-24 2025.

“I brought that up (in the forum) and said, ‘here's a great chance to be quite transparent and literally open our doors to the public to come and see’,” Skrivanic said. “Anthony Mithen from Rosemont Stud heard about it for the first time, and he signed up on the spot to be a host.”

Skrivanic hopes that the discussions had at Equate can send a ripple through the industry and make those at all levels reconsider how transparent they are, which will hopefully lead to the collection and release of welfare data, such as the number of horses rehomed or the outcomes of horses that fail to finish in a race.

“One thing I referenced is greyhound racing,” Skrivanic said. “They were going to be shut down several years ago, and they were able to make a comeback by protesting, but they realised that something had to change.

“Now, they post a quarterly report on injuries, euthanasia, and rehoming of all dogs, and just by posting that every quarter, you can actually see the number of injuries reducing, because there's a bit of accountability there.”

A simple transformation, brought about by transparency.

Data is the way of the future

A recurring theme was the need to accrue more data, industry-wide.

“If we start collecting data on what happens to horses that get injured on the track, we can start improving the breed,” Skrivanic said. “You can start to see recurring themes and diagnoses. If we notice that a horse’s mother had the same injury, and her mother before was the same, it will become more common to breed those traits out.”

The year-long trial of trainer monitoring devices taking place in the United States is one such example of ways the industry can harvest and analyse data for the greater benefit; six monitoring device companies, including StrideSafe and Arioneo, have committed to the trial where horses’ stride patterns will be recorded during every piece of fast work to assess and refine how well existing technology can pinpoint a problem.

“It’s something that you hope comes in sooner rather than later,” Skrivanic said.

Alexander So’s session on the technology being developed to assess sales horses touched on the same topics; being able to identify your personal optimal athlete goes hand in hand with fault detection.

“He’s got the backing of the Hong Kong Jockey Club and Hong Kong University to try this out and see where it goes, and I think that’s going to be a major advancement for buyers of the future,” said Skrivanic.

“People like Alexander are the future of our industry, and we need to provide the pathways for them, by opening up and sharing our data, and giving them the resources they need to do this research,” Seymour said.

Seymour’s hope is that Equate will continue to grow year on year, and that these kinds of discussions can permeate upwards through the industry.

“There should be an Equate in every state every year, and it should be industry-funded where they talk about the great things that they're doing in the industry, that’s my vision,” he said.

“I think from the conversations on Thursday, everyone has a tangible idea of actions they can take,” Ryan said. “They don’t need to do everything at once, they can just start with one particular device or concept. But the conversations are happening.”

“Events like Equate are exactly what people need,” Skrivanic said. “You can see the gears turning in these people’s heads, they’re thinking, ‘maybe I can give this a crack. This is the future, and maybe I don’t want to get left behind’.”