Stretching Harms Horses?

In a recent study carried out in Britain and reported in the Veterinary Journal, horses can actually be harmed by too much stretching. I've written about my thoughts that stretching could injure a horse and my concern that there are so many books and videos on the market that show a rote routine for stretching that doesn't involve the animal. I wrote a chapter on "myofascial stretching" in my book because of this concern.
The study that was conducted used 30 horses in 3 groups: a control group no stretching, a group that received periodic stretching and a group that was aggressively stretched each day. It would be unfair to suggest that there is some universally accepted discription of stretching with controls on the range the leg is taken through, etc. that were used in this study, but there aren't and therefore we don't really know what the study's authors thought was acceptable.
The study concluded that horses that are stretched every day will actually begin to lose joint ROM, as exhibited in movement. Horses that are not stretched do not improve their ROM or lose it. Those that are not stretched every day will have a ROM improvement.
The authors of the study attributed the decrease in ROM in the everyday group to delayed onset muscle soreness or DOMS, which makes no sense to me. DOMS is what you feel a day or so after vigorous exercise which was once attributed to lactic acid--this is wrong--but is probably more likely attributable to muscle cell rupture and the release of histamines and calcium into the intra-cellular space.
What I worry about in the case of aggressive stretching is the violation of anatomical barriers both hard and soft. I'll put an article up on the website on this in the next few days.