Video: The Future of Racehorse Training?

This video has been going viral in the past 24 hours: is this the future of young racehorse training?

This video of a brand-new training system in Great Britain has been blowing up the internet to mixed reviews in the past 24 hours: inspired by roller coasters — and in fact designed by roller coaster engineers — the Kurtsystem claims to better prepare young horses for the racetrack and hopes to create a higher rate of success for horses making it into full training.

In reality, it really does look like some kind of amusement park ride:

While ITV does not explicitly state how the Kurtsystem works, we’re fairly confident that there is some sort of emergency shut-off that would prevent a horse from being dragged should it trip or stumble. While we’d also speculate that there’s a breaking-in phase to get a horse acclimated to the machine, these horses in the video don’t appear to be upset, anxious or nervous about their unusual-to-us training system. Even Monty Roberts approves, according to testimonial on the Kurtsystem website.

The system is designed to remove human error as a rider from the equation of training a young horse and improve the strength of joints, muscles and bones prior to starting on the track. The goal of the system to get more young horses to the point of entering training; a sizeable population of horses bred to be runners, after all, never make it to the track for a variety of reasons.

Whether this £20 million investment will actually accomplish that goal remains to be seen, but it’s certainly an intriguing means to achieving that end. It kind of reminds us of the monorail FurlongStead system that got the internet all hot and bothered last year.

Go riding!