Fifty-three-year-old Dr Roman Vítek comes from a family that has enjoyed plenty of success in Czech horseracing. As one of the two sons of František Vítek, two-time winning jockey of the Velka Pardubicka, who went on to be a top trainer, he has moved in racing circles ever since he was born. Roman Vítek was a racehorse trainer for 20 years.

He graduated in veterinary medicine, and is nowadays in demand as a specialist in equine physiotherapy and also equine dentistry. In physiotherapy, he works mainly on muscle pains. He does not conceal the fact that his great inspiration is Professor Pavel Kolář, head of the Rehabilitation and Physical Education Clinic at Motol Hospital in Prague. Human medicine is a major source of information for equine physiotherapy, which is not a very widely spread specialization. Dr Vítek and I had quite a long, pleasant and relaxed talk about this field of work, and also about equine dentistry.

Can you begin by explaining what equine physiotherapy is?

It’s a new method with horses, and the terminology is only beginning to establish itself. There are various methods, and each of my colleagues takes a different approach. But there are good reasons why we all follow on from human medicine. Human physiotherapy has the leading methods and instruments, and we try to adapt them to horses. Personally, I work with a hands-on method. I use my hands, unlike methods in which cold water or an electric current are used. I started to like this method when I was a client of other physiotherapists, and now I like to use it myself. It’s a minimally invasive method. We call it nerve and muscle manipulation. I’d almost compare it with Thai massage.

So it should be a pleasant massage?

Not always! Have you ever had a Thai massage? It can be painful sometimes. Alongside this method, there are others that concentrate on the skeleton or on the joints, such as chiropractic, osteopathy, etc.

When is physiotherapy applied? Is it preventive, or do you only intervene when a horse has a problem?

Ideally, there should be ongoing care. Because when you pay attention to a horse constantly and take preventive measures, we can assume that there won’t be any major problems. In the world of human athletes, it is simply standard practice to have a range of services. The athletes have orthopedic services, physiotherapists, dieticians, trainers, psychologists, etc. Human sport is a scientific discipline. That’s not yet the case with horses, and it may even be a good thing that it isn’t. Horse racing’s still part of the normal world. (laughter).

I assume that you have mainly top racehorses in your care, and that family pets and favourites are not brought to you so much.

I’ve been surprised myself, but that is not the case. Really it isn’t. They’re from all sports, all breeds, all kinds of owners. The situation isn’t what you’ve just implied. At first I’d expected it to be like that. But the real state of affairs is all the more interesting.

All the same, I’ll stay with racehorses. Riders may have a masseur available before a race. Are you also called in to prepare a horse for a race?

Not often. It’s not customary in the Czech Republic. We do more in the UK and in Ireland. One reason is that horseracing is a kind of secretive society.

A secretive society?

Information from a stable and about horses is confidential – because of the competition, because of the betting, and for other reasons. Horses that are going out to run and are ready to race are all together in a big stable area. As soon as someone sees a vet, the word goes round and there’s speculation that there’s something wrong going on.

People don’t yet think of it as a higher level of care for a horse. They take it as a sign that something is not in order?

Yes, and this is true not only for racehorses, but also for show jumpers. People who use the services of physiotherapists mainly don’t want it to be spoken about or seen. In their own way, they consider it as a secret weapon that they have. And why should you declare to the competition that you have something extra?

How did you get into physiotherapy?

It was something that came about in the normal course of events. I’m from a horseracing family [in fact, from the Czech horseracing aristocracy]. When it became clear that I was too big, and wouldn’t be a jockey, I went to study veterinary medicine. But I didn’t become a veterinary practitioner. I spent most of my life as a trainer of racehorses on the flat, though a few jumpers also passed through my hands. I even had a horse that was placed in the Velka Pardubicka, but that was more or less by chance [The outsider Icare du Renom was 4th of 8 finishers in VP 2006]. Horseracing is simply my sport. I was quite lucky and had good stables and good owners, who not only had money, but were rather enlightened and were open to new things. As new methods came along, I was able to call physiotherapists to my horses. These things have been practised seriously in Europe for more than 20 years. It all began in America and Australia, and then it approached us little-by-little. The first thing I heard about horse physiotherapy here was from my Swiss clients just before year 2000. I still understand the distrust of some of my colleagues for this method, because that’s how I felt about it too at that time. When they offered it to me as a service for horses in training with me, I told them, if you want to pay for some kind of magic, it’s up to you, I don’t mind (laughter). But then I started to like it. One reason was that the first physiotherapists who came here were pretty girls, and I was happy to be able to see them again.

Aha! Cherchez la femme – behind everything there stands a woman!

(laughter) I tried to keep changing the people that practised physiotherapy, so that I could see various methods. The first people that came here were Germans and Swiss. They were mainly chiropractors and osteopaths, or various combinations of these methods. You can’t really put these things into pigeonholes. Everything depends on everything else. Then someone we know offered to bring an Australian with him on his visits to the Czech Republic. I had a predisposition for physiotherapy, and I had an owner who listened to me. In 2003, we brought a man to the Czech Republic who inspired me to take up this field of work. At that time it was all mixed in with my work as a trainer, and I saw the effect on my horses. They were at their peak for longer, and they were healthier. First, you have to give your physiotherapist the case history, and he‘ll give your his opinion and take action, and the outcome is some recommendation or some measures to be taken. So he gave me some homework to do at that time.

He said you should exercise this horse in such and such a way, and do something else with that one?

Or maybe this material is suitable and that isn’t, so let’s change it. Or, this muscle is weaker, and we’ll massage it. Or there’s some stiffness here behind the neck. We’ll massage it, or you can do it between my visits.

Like when a mother exercises her child at home under instructions from an orthopedic doctor.

Exactly. We’ve already spoken about the similarities with human medicine. As it happens, I once had a client who was a senior consultant at the rehabilitation clinic at Vinohradská Hospital in Prague. She observed my work, and asked me if I was aware what I was doing. Because when she saw it and when she saw the principle and the method, it reminded her of Vojta therapy [Václav Vojta was a Czech physiotherapist who went to Germany in 1968 and developed a methodology that continues to be quite widely used, particularly for children with conditions like cerebral palsy]  

When did you change from being a client to being an apprentice?

I was a physiotherapy client for seven years, and then I became an apprentice. When I lost my position as a trainer, I didn’t want to start again somewhere else. I knew I wanted to be a physiotherapist.

Where can equine physiotherapy be studied? I assume there are no study programmes in it at a university.

This field of study has already broken through in human medicine. There’s a professor of human physiotherapy and it’s a recognized specialization. It hasn’t yet happened for horses. In equine physiotherapy we all learn from each other. You need to have a top physiotherapist who lets you go everywhere with him, lets you watch, and sometimes lets you make an intervention.

Is it a field of study with a future?

Definitely. Currently dozens of people are doing physiotherapy in the Czech Republic. There are hundreds in Europe and thousands in the world. Physiotherapy is just waiting for someone sufficiently scientifically skilled, who will give some kind of shape to the field of study, and will take the lead. It’s a matter of some research emerging that somehow establishes equine physiotherapy as a field of study.

How did you get from physiotherapy to dentistry? Or which came first?

Being a trainer requires a wide range of skills. As a trainer you look after the horses, you drive a horse-box, you are a bit of a vet and a bit of a dentist, all at the same time. You need a bit of basic knowledge about everything. You need to be able to nail down a plate and give an injection. Horses’ teeth have accompanied me all my life, at least somewhere in the background. All the time when I was a trainer, my vet was Dr Krupil. And when I stopped training, it made sense to go under his wing. But because Dr Krupil is very conservative, and regards physiotherapy as some kind of quack medicine, I had in addition to choose some “solid part of the trade” (laughter). He offered me three options, and dentisry won out. Perhaps because we had contacts with a top dental clinic in Germany, and I knew that I could go there and learn more.

What does dental care for horses involve? Plenty of people are not aware that a horse needs its dentist.

First of all, we must be aware that horse teeth are different from people’s teeth. People’s teeth grow and then remain the same. Horses’ teeth keep on growing. They are more like a hoof than like human teeth. Everyone is aware that a hoof, like human fingernails, grows and needs to be filed off from time to time. It is the same thing with their teeth. However, it isn’t visible, so people don’t get involved much.

A horse wears its teeth down by eating …

Yes, if it eats and lives in a natural manner. But that kind of horse also dies earlier than a domesticated horse, and it lives its life under different conditions. The lifetime of a horse in the wild is quite different from the lifetime of our horses. Domesticated horses receive all kinds of care – their feed, vaccinations, dentistry, physiotherapy. We bring them dry straw and ground hazel nuts, and they live in their little houses (laughter). A horse that lives outside needs to eat green grass in spring, dry grass in summer, and looks for frozen bark in winter. He spends more time eating, because he spends all his time looking for food. And he eats all kinds of things, including mud and sand, which he polishes his teeth on. And if his teeth are too bad, he’ll die - of various causes. With our care, we improve and extend his life. But the fact is that we take it to extremes. At a dentistry event in Germany, a certain German presenter informed us that they now have a new specialization called equine geriatrics, which helps old horses to live a healthy life. One of their clients is 40 years old! And he still has all his teeth. Of course, he no longer works, and his only task is to come and eat and drink. The clients sent the horse to them at the age of 32, when he was expected to live for just a few more weeks. Now, all these years later, he’s still fit, and the owners are getting a bit edgy. (laughter)

By the way, what age do horses live to?

I think the oldest is about 50, but that’s an extreme case. The older horses are, the harder their lives become. Small breeds live longer than bigger horses. At lectures we are sometimes reminded that the biggest horses that we care for, weighing 700 kilos, wouldn’t survive in the wild. They simply wouldn’t be able to run away from dangers.

Can we go back to dental care? How is it done?

Above all, it has to be systematic, regular, and carried out by a specialist. Right from birth, the horse’s set of teeth should be checked, to see if it is developing well, if the teeth are growing in the right places, whether the milk teeth are being properly replaced by permanent teeth, etc. Then it’s important to polish the teeth regularly. In old age, the teeth are polished less, because tooth growth has its own dynamics – the most dynamic growth is when the horse is around 10 years old. Like with us humans, when we are around 50 the gaps between our teeth get bigger, food gets stuck in them, and gum diseases have to be dealt with. Mouth douches are now on the market for horses too.

But you don’t go and clean their teeth with toothpaste and a brush …

We do! Not with paste, but with a brush. And not every morning. But if a horse has gaps between its teeth, the owner must clean its teeth regularly.

Can a horse have tooth decay?

Yes, it can, but we aren’t yet able to deal with it. Again, it is linked with the development of civilization. The more we look after horses, and they live into old age, the more we need to deal with problems that would have killed them in the wild. It’s also a matter of what they eat. The more sugar, the more decay.

So it depends on what they eat, like with people?

Yes, more or less.

What are you mainly – a dentist or a physiotherapist?

I’m glad to be both. The one gives me a rest from the other. And when I’ve had enough of the second one, I look forward to going back to the first one. The two types of work are completely different. One of them is about feeling, concentration and touch. The other is about instruments and materials. Dentistry is a trade. It’s about using tools.

Does that mean that dentistry is harder work?

They are both about the same. Perhaps dentistry is less suited to the human body, because you have to keep twisting your own body to suit the horse’s body.

And then you need a physiotherapist!

Exactly! That’s why I have to go for Thai massages (laughter). When you’re a physiotherapist, the horse sometimes gives you a kick. Something is hurting, and you have to find it. You look for it by touching him to see where it hurts. Just imagine someone squeezing you where it hurts. Of course you fight back. If everything goes well, it is much better after a few minutes, and after half an hour the horse is on your side. But that first minute is painful for both of us.

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This interview first appeared in October 2016 on the Pardubice racecourse website. No author was attributed. Translation by Robin Healey.