ABOUT STRIDESAFE
Built by the people who
couldn't ignore what the
data was saying.
Veterinarians, engineers and bio mechanic researchers on three continents — brought together by one shared conviction: that the warning signs of career-ending or catastrophic injury were there all along, just too fast for anyone to see.
OUR TEAM
Diverse expertise serving one mission.
David Lambert, B.V.Sc.(Hons.),M.R.C.V.S.
Chief Executive Officer
Considered a leader in equine sports physiology, Dr. Lambert began his career studying the Herring-Brauer reflex at Cornell University. He then went into private practice and worked with the United States Equestrian team. He went on to found Equine Analysis Systems in 1987, focusing the company on thoroughbred performance evaluation and consultancy, and in 2019 founded StrideSAFE. Dr. Lambert holds a Bachelors Degree with Honors in Veterinary Science from Liverpool University and is a Member of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgery. He is also a Member of the American Association of Equine Practitioners.
Dr. Mikael Holmstrom, DVM PhD
Research and Analysis
A veterinarian in Sweden and long-term partner in Equine Analysis, Dr. Holmstrom holds a Ph.D. in equine biomechanics from the University of Uppsala. He has been a frequent speaker at international conferences on horse physiology and locomotion since 1996, has published multiple papers on the subject, and was recently featured in Equine Locomotion. He is also the chief developer of Fotoselect®, with current research focused on phenotypic heritability. An accomplished mathematician and programmer, Dr. Holmstrom compiles and analyzes the data from StrideSAFE sensors to identify abnormalities of movement and changes in stride, and heads up the research effort uncovering new ways to identify early pathology in the stride of racing Thoroughbreds.
Denise Mc Sweeney, DVM, MS
Equine Surgeon / Research / General Manager
Dr. Denise Mc Sweeney is an equine surgeon and researcher whose work focuses on applying biomechanics, wearable sensor technology, and data analytics to improve racehorse welfare and injury prevention. Originally from County Cork, Ireland, she graduated from the University of Veterinary Medicine Budapest with a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree, including an integrated Master of Science in Veterinary Medicine, and completed an Equine Surgical Internship at Hagyard Equine Medical Institute before a hospital internship and Equine Surgery Residency at Washington State University, where she also earned an M.S. in Veterinary Medicine. During her residency, she joined the StrideSAFE research team, where her master's research focused on developing and investigating accelerometer-based IMU technology for early identification of Thoroughbreds at increased risk of catastrophic musculoskeletal injury — work that has resulted in peer-reviewed publications in JAVMA and other veterinary journals. Today, she works for StrideSAFE advancing research, validating emerging technologies, and translating complex biomechanical data into practical information for veterinarians, trainers, and racing officials.
Professor Emeritus Kevin Donohue
Signal Analysis / University of Kentucky, Electrical and Computer Engineering Department
Professor Donohue graduated from Northeastern Illinois University with a degree in Mathematics, then earned a B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology, and served as a faculty member at the University of Kentucky for over 30 years. He has extensive experience with signal analysis and the design of classification and detection of complex phenomena — in applications from medical ultrasound to radar to behavior and motion tracking — with a focus on sensor and information systems for monitoring applications in science, healthcare, agriculture, and defense. A long-time consultant to Equine Analysis, he developed the method used to analyze signal from the Equine Analysis sensors, work that proved critical to the engineering and signal analysis behind the technology StrideSAFE uses today.
Carson Gregory
Track Sensor Technician
Born and raised in Lexington, KY, Carson's life long love of horses started from an early age. What began as riding and retraining off-track Thoroughbreds, developed into a passion for racing and pedigree. After spending years managing and caring for breeding stock, Carson has joined the StrideSAFE team as the Kentucky tracks sensor technician.
From a stride fingerprint to a safety standard.
OUR STORY
How decades of equine performance science became a welfare screening tool, now used at every track racing in Kentucky.
1987
Equine Analysis Systems is founded
Dr. David Lambert launches the Kentucky-based company to bring objective, data-driven evaluation to Thoroughbred performance.
2005
The racing 'fingerprint' emerges
Equine Analysis sensors reveal that at high speed every horse moves in its own distinctive way — and that when the fingerprint changes, something is going wrong.
2019
StrideSAFE is founded
Equine Analysis Systems and Australia’s StrideMaster combine their technologies, with Professor Kevin Donohue and Dr. Mikael Holmstrom joining as equity partners.
2023
Every race in Kentucky
As of May 2023, StrideSAFE sensors are used on every horse in every race in the state.
2024-2025
Peer-reviewed and sharper than ever.
Three papers in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association validate the approach, and Version 4.2 (April 2025) pinpoints the specific leg and the specific condylar or sesamoid concern.
2026
Growth in New York
StrideSAFE sensors are worn in every race at Belmont Park and Saratoga as part of a three-year Cornell University study of fatal racehorse injury, funded with $18 million from New York State.
StrideSAFE came into being in 2019, when Equine Analysis Systems of Kentucky and StrideMaster of Australia combined their technologies in the hope of helping the racing industry eliminate catastrophic injuries. StrideMaster, led by CEO David Hawke, had developed a sophisticated sensor and GPS system that could be carried safely in races; by then it had been used for nine years with the Tasmania Racing Club, with 35,000 race day recordings collected without incident.
Equine Analysis, led by Dr. David Lambert, had built a performance-prediction model grounded in physiological and anatomical measurements from 50,000 horses. The two CEOs met in 2018, when Dr. Lambert was a keynote speaker at the International Conference on Equine Exercise Physiology in Australia.
Equine Analysis’s side of the story goes back to 1987, when Dr. Lambert founded the company in Kentucky. Its veterinarians and scientists spent years measuring the Thoroughbred in motion — and in 2005 they built a sensor system whose signal revealed something they hadn’t set out to find.
At high speed, every horse has its own unique way of moving — a racing “fingerprint.” The team wasn’t in the business of diagnosing lameness, but they kept seeing the same pattern: when the fingerprint changed, something was going wrong for the horse. The signals were too fast for a trainer to see or a jockey to feel. In effect, the sensors were handing caregivers a very early warning.
The question became how to turn that warning into a welfare tool. The combination answered it: Equine Analysis’s understanding of racehorse physiology, paired with StrideMaster’s race-proven sensor and GPS system. The goal from day one was to collect data from the horse itself at full racing speed and use it to build a screening test that could flag problems at the earliest possible moment.
Two longtime collaborators joined as equity partners to make it work. Professor Kevin Donohue, who had spent years analyzing Equine Analysis sensor signals, led the signal analysis and engineering. Dr. Mikael Holmstrom, an equine biomechanics researcher, began identifying the critical moments in a stride most likely to change when a horse starts to struggle — and today heads up StrideSAFE’s research effort.
The need was clear. Veterinarians have many advanced imaging tools, but no way to know which single horse to look at, or where on the horse to focus. The profession needed a fast, reliable, inexpensive screening test that could run on every horse in every race, so resources could go where they matter most.
With the April 2025 release of Version 4.2, years of racing data have refined StrideSAFE’s algorithms to the point where they can zero in on a specific leg and on specific condylar or sesamoid concerns well in advance of a problem on the track. Some spontaneous, one-off injuries will still be missed — but StrideSAFE offers a 21st-century approach to finding the majority of the rest.
Today, StrideSAFE is used at every track racing in Kentucky, and its sensors are now worn in every race at Belmont Park and Saratoga in New York. There they support a three-year Cornell University study of fatal racehorse injury, funded by New York State. Education is becoming as central to the mission as the technology itself: courses are being developed with Professor Warwick Bayly, a world-renowned equine physiologist and educator, to teach veterinarians at the track how to interpret StrideSAFE data and bridge the gap between sensor technology and standard diagnostic procedures. For StrideSAFE, this is just the beginning.