Imagine flying with never-ending food served by your own individual flight attendant, a chauffeur to drive you right up to your jet, and even a doctor on board for any medical emergency. This scene from lifestyles of the rich and famous is actually the experience of horses coming in from overseas for this year’s Breeders’ Cup Nov. 2-3 at Churchill Downs in Louisville.
Air travel, indeed, is different for a 1,200-pound animal than for humans. Food and drink are hay and water (possibly “home water”—more on that later)—and the doctor is a veterinarian. These are necessities for horses shipping in, particularly for the quality and value of those eligible to run in the Breeders’ Cup World Championships, a two-day series of Thoroughbred races at the highest level that attracts competitors from all over the world.
There are certain precautions necessary for flying Thoroughbreds. For starters, there’s a bit of subterfuge in loading horses onto cargo jets. Horses travel to airports in a horse van and walk into a pen the size of a racetrack stall. This leads to the air stall in which they will fly, which is similar in appearance to a two-horse van. For all the horses know, they’ve just left one horse van for another.
The primary difference is that grooms stand in a compartment in front of the stall to hold the horses’ halters and movable flaps that prevent the horses from seeing outside. From there, the trip is vertical into the cargo hold, as the air stall sits on a scissors lift.
“It vibrates a little,” said Kent Barnes, stallion manager at Shadwell Farms in Lexington. “You try to keep them as calm as possible when they’re loading.” Once inside the hold, the air stall is slid into position, and the flight can begin.
Barnes doubles as a “flying groom” for six to eight flights a year, flying horses to and from Shadwell’s operations in Kentucky, the United Kingdom and Dubai as well as for the Breeders’ Cup.
According to Barnes, if horses have been on a regular horse van, they generally will load easily into an air stall. Of course, not all horses are keen on horse vans, period, be they on wheels or on a scissors lift. In those cases, a small dose of a mild tranquilizer will be administered, though Barnes said that the tranquilizers sometimes wear off by the time of takeoff.
Takeoffs, as you might expect, are the most anxiety-producing time for the horses, as they can be for many humans. The air stalls and chains securing them rattle with vibration, and there’s noise from the engines.
“You get a lot of whinnying,” Barnes said. “Some of the horses will get a little bit unsteady on their feet. That’s definitely the worst part of it.”
Unlike earlier times, when cargo transport rules were more lax, grooms cannot stand holding the halters of horses on takeoffs and landings. “You have to be in your seats and buckled till they level off,” Barnes said. Seats are of the jump-seat variety, without the comfort of first-class seating but not uncomfortable.
“Some flights offer maybe a bed because there’s one for the crew. There’s also catering on the flight,” said Chris Santarelli, treasurer and partner of Mersant International, the official airline of the Breeders’ Cup. His company has served as an agent for horses flying in for the Breeders’ Cup since it was first held in 1984.
Post-takeoff, flights are like any other: largely uneventful. Horses likely will fly three to a stall, with dividers separating them, according to Santarelli. Mersant and other air shippers call it “tourist class.” However, Breeders’ Cup starters fly either business class (two horses to an air stall) or first class (one horse in its own stall).
“Once you take off, if you have more space, the horse can lie down and sleep on a long flight,” Santarelli said.
As with regular flight attendants, the work of a flying groom begins once the jet has reached desired altitude. “We hang hay nets for them in the stalls, and we offer them water during the flight,” Barnes said. “Most of them will drink, on an eight-hour flight, a 5-gallon bucket of water. That’s about what they’d drink normally in a day.
“I prefer just to let them eat their hay and go to sleep and be quiet. Then, I’ll go back and water them about an hour before we land. If you give them too much water and you’re constantly back there checking on them, the horses tend to get a little more agitated and upset.”
About the “home water”: Trainers of overseas shippers will fill jugs with water the horses are accustomed to drinking and use it exclusively or progressively mix it with local water on arrival in the U.S. to help horses adjust to the new water. According to Barnes, unfamiliar water can throw off a horse’s thirst—not a good thing for a racehorse.
If you’re ready to sign on as a flying groom, it takes more than experience with horses. Each airline has different requirements for the flying grooms, and a couple are strict. “British Air used to be the strictest,” Barnes said. “You had to take a course in safety of the aircraft and evacuation in case of emergencies. You actually had to go to England and take that course.”
Barnes takes an annual update for his certification (“like a TSA thing,” he said) and must pass a test every year. Emirates Air, headquartered in Dubai, requires an FBI background check if more than a year has passed since a flying groom’s last flight aboard one of its cargo jets.
Most horses, once aboard and aloft, adjust to the environment, but there can be instances of a horse becoming unsettled. Even with a veterinarian on board, tranquilizers are a last resort. “If you tranquilize a horse before takeoff, he’s going to be a little bit wobbly, and there’s a better chance of falling down,” Barnes explained. “Plus, they’re also not going to eat and drink normally if they’re sedated. You want them drinking normally to keep their gut moving.”
It’s difficult to gauge the extent, if any, to which a horse experiences jet lag. “They could have a slight [elevated] temperature on arrival, and then it goes down very quickly,” Santarelli said. Weight loss, too, is temporary, and horses off their feed during a flight will gain it back quickly.
Unlike at the racetrack on non-race days, wraps around the horse’s legs are discouraged on flights by some cargo air handlers, as are horseshoes. If the ankles of humans swell on long flights, then it stands to reason that swelling might occur in a horse in wraps. It is, though, up to the preference of the trainer. “I’ve seen horses travel with nothing; I’ve seen horses travel with everything,” Santarelli said.
For this year’s Breeders’ Cup, all flights are chartered, as there are no regularly scheduled freighters, besides UPS, that land in Louisville. Only airports in Miami, New York, Los Angeles and Chicago can, on a regular basis, receive horses flown to the U.S. from overseas. At the time of this writing, Santarelli was in talks with a carrier to fly out of Tokyo’s Narita Airport directly to Louisville rather than to Chicago, where horses would clear quarantine and then be vanned to Louisville after release. Flights across the Atlantic will originate from Ireland, from Stansted Airport in London, and from Paris. Starters based in Dubai also will fly directly to Louisville.
Horses may handle long-distance flying better than humans. Barnes recalled flying with horses from Chicago to Frankfurt, Germany—about an eight- to nine-hour flight—stopping for two hours for refueling, and then flying five more hours to Dubai. “It didn’t seem too hard on them,” he said.
Once on the ground in Louisville, Mersant personnel and flying grooms will lead horses onto vans for the short ride to Churchill Downs and the barns of the quarantine area. Overseas shippers are stall-bound in quarantine for a period of time, before being able to go out on the racetrack—with a surprising restriction. “They have special training hours, so they’re not on the track the same time as the American horses. Until the actual race day itself, that’s the first time they’ll be exposed to the American horses,” Barnes said.
For the Friday-Saturday Breeders’ Cup races, overseas shippers will arrive anywhere from the Saturday to the Monday before the Breeders’ Cup. Transport back to home countries is usually the following day.
A major difference between overseas flights for humans and horses won’t surprise you: the fare. “It’ll cost between $50,000 to $75,000 round-trip to fly a horse from Europe to Louisville,” said Santarelli. That’s no small sum, but it’s a pittance when the smallest purse for the Breeders’ Cup is $1 million and the largest is $6 million.