Race Horses At Newbury Die Mysteriously

Racing at Newbury was abandoned in extraordinary circumstances after Fenix Two and Marching Song collapsed and died in the parade ring before the first race.

An inquiry and immediate post-mortems were announced, with the reasons for the deaths unknown amid speculation the horses died from some form of electric shock emanating from underneath the paddock.

Some horses had already made it down to the start and there were reports that others had "wobbled" on entering the paddock.

Despite running the first race, a decision was taking to call the rest of the big meeting off.

All sounds a bit X files to me.

Phil

From what I read on another site. Horses are are very sensitive. Maybe Volty can enlighten us.

Poor horses

Yep sad shame Den nobody could have predicted that.

Don't wait too long for enlightenment I think Volty is back up on St Edburgha's roof again after the lead.

Phil

Animals in general are vunerable to electric shock anything over 50 volts can prove fatal to them

There are some people with strange ideas round Newbury (for those who have not had the misfortune to visit , it is near me). For example the garages (from my one experience of their garages) think you don't have to put oil in a gearbox after repairing it. So maybe they thought a touch of electricity would speed the horses up

Hey mike,

They have a few garages like that around here as well.

Phil

The owner was on the radio last night he seems to think it was electric not heard todays news yet.

I know nothing of horses, and I haven't seen any new coverage of this yet, but I do know that to get an electric shock off the gound there has to be a current path across the ground. Anything that touches the ground in more than one place whilst standing in this path will provide an alternate path or paths for current flow and will have a voltage across it. The lower the resistance of these alternate paths then the greater the current and voltage across this path.
So in theory a Horse could provide a number a different current paths. The voltage across the horse would depend on the source voltage and the length of the current path that this voltage is distributed across.
i.e. If you drop 100 volts across 100 yards, then a person standing with their feet 1 yard apart anywhere along the path will drop a maximum of 1 volt across their body.
Or a more realistic example, If you drop 33,000 volts across 100 yards, then a person standing with their feet 1 yard apart anywhere along the path will drop a maximum of 330 volts across their body, assuming barefeet on wet gress this would kill the person so they would be better advised to take very very small steps.

Against this being the cause of injury to the horses are my following thoughts,
The horses would show signs of involuntary muscle spasms.
People in the same place would also be be at risk and may have felt something, from the horse if not from the ground.
The current path is being earthed by the ground all along it's length thus further reducing the available voltage.
Any cable that runs underground could reasonably be expected to be steel wired armoured. If one of these cables suffered damage, such that a voltage leak could occur, then it would be conducted away by the excellent earth path provided by the steel wire. It would take a number of other faults to prevent this from happening.

I'm probably wrong but I can't see it being electric shock.
My guess is poisoning, gas inhalation or co-incidence.

It was two racehorses and you can read about it here,

http://www.people.co.uk/news/uk-world-ne...02039-22919298/

Phil

It does appear a strange fault Volty but if an earthrods resistance increases then the leakage Voltage also increases . There was originally a formula not to excede 50v but , depending on the tripping current of the RCD if it was 30ma as opposed to the s tandard 100ma then the resistance was accepable at over 1000 ohms , 30ma RCDs as a main trip are prone to nuisence tripping and if they have been changed without being properly tested or the ground conditions changed the reading and the voltage could easily excede 50v . The regs were ammended about 8 years ago so that the maximum resistance should be less than 200ohms whatever type of RCD is used
Bernie

I would not like to have signed the last inspection report on the paddock there
Bernie

Posted by berniew

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It does appear a strange fault Volty but if an earthrods resistance increases then the leakage Voltage also increases . There was originally a formula not to excede 50v but , depending on the tripping current of the RCD if it was 30ma as opposed to the s tandard 100ma then the resistance was accepable at over 1000 ohms , 30ma RCDs as a main trip are prone to nuisence tripping and if they have been changed without being properly tested or the ground conditions changed the reading and the voltage could easily excede 50v . The regs were ammended about 8 years ago so that the maximum resistance should be less than 200ohms whatever type of RCD is used
Bernie

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Again in English please

Phil