Scoping a yearling’s throat is just one piece of the puzzle that goes onto selecting your next champion at the sales, but until late 2024, it has been difficult for buyers to concretely quantify the risk posed by what a vet sees on the scope.
The efforts of Professor Samantha Franklin, Professor Benjamin Ahern, and Dr Josie Hardwick, in a project supported by the AgriFutures Thoroughbred Horses Program, sought to demystify the connection between the sale ring and racetrack performance.
One year on from the project’s completion and as the 2026 yearling sale season draws near, we can reflect on the impact of this work and how it has made one vital part of the buying process much easier to understand.
What can we do better?
Endoscopy of the upper respiratory tract is a sales staple; a video of a yearling’s throat is taken pre-sale and a vet evaluates the yearling’s laryngeal function, before assigning it a grade on how well it can abduct the arytenoid cartilage.
Poor function typically indicates a yearling will suffer from recurrent laryngeal neuropathy in the future and will become a roarer - highly undesirable for most buyers, as it almost always means an impact on performance, surgery, and time out of training to correct the problem.
When kicking off the project on yearling endoscopy in 2022, the AgriFutures Thoroughbred Horses Program and the research team had one question in mind above all others; what can we do better? Is there a way to improve how we incorporate yearling endoscopy into our buying process?
“AgriFutures funded a two-part project between 2022 and 2024,” said Dr Hardwick, a Specialist Equine Surgeon and senior lecturer at Murdoch University. “The first part of the project was stakeholder engagement with thoroughbred breeders, purchasers of thoroughbred yearlings, and equine vets who perform and interpret a lot of these upper airway exams that are done on yearlings of sales.”
The main sticking point for all involved was on how what vets saw down an endoscope at the sales complex correlated to how horses performed on the track. Using the original five-point Lane grading scale, yearlings with a Grade 4 or 5 scope would immediately fail the conditions of sale, and those with a Grade 1 would be considered low risk. However, for the middle grades, what to expect becomes less clear.
Dr Josie Hardwick | Image courtesy of Adelaide University
“Off the back of that feedback, we looked at the sales endoscopic videos of over 5000 yearlings and they were graded in an objective and robust manner, and then we followed their race performance for their entire racing career,” said Dr Hardwick.
For this, Dr Hardwick and her colleagues turned to the Havemeyer grading scale, which breaks down the laryngeal function into seven grades as opposed to five and allows for more specificity in assessment. And with more specificity, the team could better determine what the career prospects could be for each yearling assessed.
| 1 | I |
| 2 | II.1 |
| 3 | II.2 |
| 3 | III.1 |
| 4 | III.2 |
| 4 | III.3 |
| 5 | IV |
Table: How the Havemeyer grading system compares to the Lane grading system for endoscopy
“We were able to show that the laryngeal function grade that they were assigned at time of sale could indicate the risk of reduced future performance when they got to the racetrack,” Dr Hardwick said. And critically, the results were more nuanced than the Lane system could demonstrate.
“We were able to show that the laryngeal function grade that they were assigned at time of sale could indicate the risk of reduced future performance when they got to the racetrack.” - Dr Josie Hardwick
“Looking at the data, we could show that there was a difference in race performance between yearlings that were II.2 versus yearlings which were III.1 in the Havemeyer system, whereas those two grades in the old Lane system were both called a Grade 3.”
This was good news for many horses previously identified as being a Grade 3; if they fell into the upper part of that classification, they now were labelled a Grade II.2, and it was clear that the potential impact on their performance on the track was lower.
Bringing the sales companies on board
Once it was clear that the Havemeyer grading system would be more informative to buyers, the emphasis moved to rolling it out.
A member of the AgriFutures Australia Thoroughbred Horses Advisory Panel who has committed the best part of four decades to auction house Inglis, Jonathan D’Arcy was on the ground floor when the project’s results arrived.
“Dr Hardwick and her team did a great job on the research, and AgriFutures were very happy to invest in that research, because it's such an important issue for everyone within the industry,” D’Arcy said. “Under the old grading system, you had horses graded as a three which was causing some disagreement between vets, and those horses are seen in a much better light in the new system.
“When buyers - be they trainers, agents, or individual owners - pick out a horse at a sale, they really want to buy that horse. They're not looking for reasons not to buy it, they're looking for reasons to buy it. To have a horse come up with a questionable presale scope using the old system, that could really affect the chances of the breeders selling the horse and buyers purchasing the horse.
“When buyers pick out a horse at a sale, they really want to buy that horse.” - Jonathan D'Arcy
“Dr Hardwick and her team being able to define a horse’s likely outcome in a much clearer way allows buyers to be confident in their purchases. There’s no reason not to purchase them. I think it's been a big step forward in getting horses sold at sales and a big step forward for the industry to have confidence in the scoping system as it now stands.”
Jonathan D'Arcy | Image courtesy AgriFutures Australia
In late 2024, Inglis, Magic Millions, and New Zealand Bloodstock came together along with their consulting vets to view the research, and it was an easy decision to accept the proposed new grading system.
“I think it's very important for the industry, the sales industry, to work in unison,” D’Arcy said. “We came to the conclusion that the research was very compelling and that we needed to get this system implemented at the Australasian sales. We rolled it out in the 2025 sales season, and I think everyone is very happy with the results. It has been accepted with very little issue at all.”
“We came to the conclusion that the research was very compelling and that we needed to get this system implemented at the Australasian sales.” - Jonathan D'Arcy
The first Australasian yearlings graded on the Havemeyer system have hit the track this spring, and D’Arcy can see the proof is in the pudding.
“Everyone knows how it works, and the horses are getting out there and running successfully,” he said. “I think everyone now understands the benefits of the new system, and I think we all owe a debt of gratitude to Josie Hardwick and the team for doing the research and being able to give us confidence to implement this new system, because it's a win-win for everyone.
“The buyers are buying the horses they want to buy and the breeders are selling more of their yearlings because of this new grading system.”
Rating the risk
While the Havemeyer system makes it clearer how a yearling’s throat actually functions, the next step that Dr Hardwick wanted to address was how to make this easier to understand for the industry. Based on the foundations laid by Dr Hardwick's previous projects, a Delphi study was conducted utilising 40 expert vets, and participants came to the consensus that the system could be simplified further to better communicate meaning to the industry.
“There was agreement that we should use a risk-based system when communicating yearling laryngeal function to the industry, and the reason for this is that, from the outcomes of the AgriFutures-funded projects, together with those from our other studiesour studies, we could actually divide the different risk levels into four categories,” Dr Hardwick said.
“From the outcomes of our studies, we could actually divide the different risk levels into four categories.” - Dr Josie Hardwick
“Our studies showed there was no difference in future performance, or the risk of a horse developing laryngeal dysfunction requiring surgery, for horses who were a Grade I or Grade II.1, so the consensus was that these categories were both low risk, and so on.”
Rating by risk was already familiar to the industry as it already applies to assessing sales radiography. Dr Hardwick and her team currently have a paper under peer review that formalises the rating system, with the intention to roll it out to the industry in 2026. A traffic light-style system could make it even easier for buyers of all stripes to understand the risk posed by a scope, without having to understand the finer details.
| 1 | I | Low |
| 2 | II.1 | Low |
| 3 | II.2 | Low-moderate |
| 3 | III.1 | Moderate |
| 4 | III.2 | High |
| 4 | III.3 | High |
| 5 | IV | High |
Table: How the proposed risk rating system lines up with the Havemeyer and Lane grading systems for yearling endoscopy
“Hopefully from the start of this next sale season, it will be more about a communication of risk, very much like yearling sales x-rays are,” she said. “I think as humans, we like to put grading scales on things and they might be numerical scales, they might be ABCs, whatever they are - but we need to have data to back up that the system is appropriate.
“Our data has shown that, particularly when we're looking at yearlings, we can only really divide them into four different categories in terms of risk of reduced future race performance and/or the risk of developing laryngeal dysfunction requiring surgical intervention (such as tieback surgery). That was the veterinary consensus.”
Once formalised, Dr Hardwick intends to roll out the risk system to the industry, and turn her focus on enhancing the technique with which vets perform the scope.
“The more we can communicate these findings, particularly now in December, the more everyone's on the same page.” - Dr Josie Hardwick
“I feel like we're really happy with the outcomes of the project, and I think the industry is happy with it too,” she said.” And I think the more we can communicate these findings, particularly now in December, the more everyone's on the same page. I think that's the way forward for us, everybody.”
