The 2025 running of the Kentucky Derby that saw Sovereignty win on a muddy track brought up some thoughts on the use of toe grabs.

Trained by Bill Mott and ridden by jockey Junior Alvarado, the shoeing was done by JT Bayes, a third-generation racetrack farrier who works with his dad Jim Bayes.

About a week before the race, Bayes nailed Kerckhaert Tradition series shoes on all four feet, with the hind shoes having 2 mm toe grabs. As it turned out, toe grabs were of special value on the muddy Churchill Downs track on Derby day.

This reminded me of a “Frankly Speaking” column I’d authored in the September 2000 issue of American Farriers Journal, which including a conversation at a wedding reception with trainer Neil Drysdale on the value of using toe grabs on a muddy track, such as was the case with this year’s Kentucky Derby.

This Kerckhaert Tradition shoe is similar to the four shoes worn by Sovereignty in the 2025 Kentucky Derby.

You Never Know Who You'll Meet At A Wedding Reception

By Frank Lessiter, September 2000

Earlier this summer, Pam and I attended the Mark and Stephanie Merz wedding in downtown Milwaukee, Wis.

Among the 350 guests at the wedding reception was Neil Drysdale, the southern California-based trainer of Fusaichi Pegasus. This is the horse that won the Kentucky Derby, is set to run in the November Breeder’s Cup and had his breeding rights sold for $70 million.

A good friend of Shawn Dugan who is one of the groom’s cousins, Drysdale hardly knew any of the 350 guests at the wedding except for a few family members. So he was delighted to talk with me for 15 minutes about track shoeing.

Inducted this summer into the Racing Hall of Fame, Drysdale is based at Hollywood Park. The farrier he works closely with, Wes Champagne, headquartered in the stables and has shared his ideas in the past on glue-on shoeing with American Farriers Journal readers.

Checking the horses on a daily basis, Champagne comes to Drysdale with potential hoof problems and together they come up with the needed solutions.

Likes Glue-On Shoes, Pads

During our wedding reception conversation, Drysdale told me that while he really likes glue-on shoes, he doesn’t see glue-ons replacing nailed shoes. Yet the trainer is convinced that glue-ons definitely have an important place where proper nailing is a problem due to damaged hoof walls.

Drysdale has also had good luck with Luwex AirRide hoof cushions. However, he removes these pads from horses when they are actually racing.

During the actual races, many of his horses wear No-Vibe shoes to reduce potential concussion problems. While the research on these shoes is limited at this point, Drysdale doesn’t want to take any chances by not following what trainers and researchers have already learned from research and actual use about these unusual shoes.

Third-generation horseshoer JT Bayes is the third generation in a family of track shoers. He shod Sovereignty, winner of the 2025 Kentucky Derby.

Check Hoof Care Research

Drysdale believes both farriers and trainers should pay close attention to the results coming out of hoof care research studies. Even when the research data is somewhat limited in scope, he’s convinced that you should do whatever you believe is good for the horse in order to keep the animal sound and running.

Always willing to try new hoof care ideas, Drysdale prefers to adapt early data and not sit back and wait until later studies are done that prove or disprove the preliminary research results.

Along the same lines, he thinks more Thoroughbred trainers should follow the University of California-Davis research results that indicate toe grabs are not a good thing with race horses. Since toe grabs are banned at Hollywood Park, this is not a concern when he’s running horses at home.

Even so, Drysdale believes there are some muddy track conditions where toe grabs greatly benefit horses. The grabs keep shoes from sucking the feet into the track mud, which can result in serious leg injury.

While the wedding reception was very enjoyable, it was a bonus to spend a few minutes talking about shoes, pads and toe grabs with one of America’s leading Thoroughbred trainers who definitely sees the value of good shoeing work.

Are Toe Grabs Still Legal?

There have also been some questions being asked in conjunction with the 2025 Derby regarding toe grab use with racehorses. Toe grabs of up to 4 mm are legal on dirt track horses. The ones Sovereignty had on her hind shoes were 2 mm.

For more on the toe grab situation, check out this July 2005 AFJ article penned by now retired AFJ Managing Editor Pat Tearney.

Toe Grabs Still Used, Still Controversial

By Pat Tearney, July 2005

Traction device has been linked to horse injuries, but many trainers believe they also give more speed

At first glance, a toe grab seems like a very little thing. Even the toe grab on a Quarter Horse racing plate (the highest type of toe grab) is less than 1/3-inch high. But toe grabs often leave racetrack farriers between a rock and a hard place.

More accurately, they’re caught between the long-range health of a horse and a trainer’s need for just a little more speed.

Toe grabs — very small toe calks — are frequently used on racing plates as a traction device. At one time, they were used on almost all racehorses. But research done in California during the 1990s also linked their use to catastrophic front-leg injuries suffered by racehorses.

Research Findings

G.W. Pratt, a researcher at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in a study published in the Equine Veterinary Journal, concluded that toe grabs, fatigue and racetrack surfaces were the primary cause of racehorses breaking down. In a 1996 California study, Al Kane, an equine veterinarian, concluded that racehorses shod with high toe grabs were more likely to suffer injuries than horses shod with rim shoes. In essence, they found that while toe grabs might give more traction, they also put much more stress on forelegs.

But that doesn’t mean toe grabs have disappeared from racetracks. Joe Trhlik, who recently moved to Rio Verde, Ariz., after a long career shoeing at Arlington Park and other tracks near Chicago, says there is a simple reason trainers continue to use toe grabs.

“If they don’t have the traction they need, they don’t win,” he says. “You can have Olympic horses and if you don’t use toe grabs, their legs may last longer, but they won’t be giving you Olympic times.”

Trhlik says on dirt track, he usually shoes racehorses with a low toe (4 mm toe grab) on the front shoes and a regular toe (6 mm) on the back.

“That’s the norm,” he says. “But what I really do is shoe the horse to what that particular horse needs.”

GRABBING ATTENTION. At top is a flat shoe. In the middle is a shoe with a low toe grab and at bottom is one with regular toe grabs. Toe grabs act like a cleat, giving horses added traction.

Trhlik does believe that some of the research fails to take in all the factors.

“Some of these studies were done on horses that are older and cheaper,” he says. “They have to run in worse conditions. There is also a lot more involved than just toe grabs. If someone backs the toe up too much, or doesn’t shoe the horse as often as it should be, that’s a much bigger factor than a toe grab.”

Trhlik also thinks racehorses would be better off if shoeing was left in the hands of farriers.

“There are too many people telling the farrier how to shoe the horse without understanding everything that’s involved,” he says.

Protect The Fronts

Joe Ludford, a long-time racetrack farrier from Baltimore, Md., says in general, he doesn’t like to use toe grabs on the front feet.

“I don’t think they’re good for the front feet,” he says. “As a rule, I’ll use a Queens Plate XT up front and as big a toe grab as I can get away with in the back.”

Ludford says the hind legs are where a horse’s speed and power come from. “The front end is really just a landing gear,” he says. “The last part of the horse that leaves the ground are the toes of the hinds and that’s where the power comes from. But there are still people out there who think horses pull themselves with the front feet.”

Ludford says he limits his use of toe grabs as much as possible in the belief that it’s better for the horses’ legs. But he also says that farriers don’t have the last say about how a racehorse is shod.

“My finding is that a lot of trainers don’t care if they break their horses down as long as they get a little more speed,” he says. “It may not be true at the A level tracks on the East Coast, but it seems true in most other places.”

Ludford believes that if the use of toe grabs has decreased at all, it has more to do with economy and convenience than with a desire to avoid injuries.

“A lot of turf courses limit toe grabs and other traction devices,” he says. “If the horse is going to be used on both, a lot of trainers won’t use larger toe grabs. But it’s because of the turf tracks, not trying to save the legs.”

And while he personally doesn’t like the use of toe grabs, Ludford doesn’t see them going away in the future.

“Trainers always want an edge,” he says.

Too Much Stress

Chris Gregory, owner of the Heartland Horseshoeing School in Lamar, Mo., shoes a lot of rodeo horses. He’s heard of toe grabs being used for some barrel racing horses, but says he wouldn’t use them himself.

“The added benefit and traction is not enough to justify having a horse in them all the time,” Gregory says. “We shoe the horse for how he has to live. He’s going to be wearing those shoes 24 hours a day, and he’s going to be barrel racing for what, maybe an hour a week?”

Gregory says toe grabs could be used for a calf roping or steer wrestling horse in a case where a shoer was trying to get fast acceleration but says most often an outside rim shoe would work just as well.

“Too much traction can be just as dangerous as not enough,” he says. “The horse has a huge mass and the force involved can be considerable.”

Gregory says if he were to use a toe grab, he would forge it himself and braze it on the shoe.

“If you make it yourself, you can make it appropriate to the horse,” he says.