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Re:



>
> Does anybody else remember a study, done in Australia I think, where they
> put a light rider on one horse and a heavyweight on the other.  In the
> beginning the horse with the heavy rider ran higher heart rates, but
> after training with that rider for awhile they evened back up.  They
> found the only way to get an advantage was to train with a heavyweight,
> then have a lightweight ride in competition.  So...adaptation comes into
> play.  I'm sure if one rider is 100 lb. and the other 220 it didn't work
> quite so evenly, but the difference between 150 and 175 might even out
> with training.

I have the feeling that this is a big part why I got the results that I did
at Tevis---I wasn't able to find out from individual riders, but I would
assume that of all the horses carrying heavy riders, those horses had
conditioned to at least some extent carrying the extra weight, and so were
able to carry it without metabolic breakdown.

So I'd agree that there would probably be a metabolic advantage to
conditioning with a hwt and racing with a fwt onboard.  OTOH, there is
probably also a biomechanical disadvantage if the horse had more stress to
the legs while conditioning with a hwt---maybe more likely to start some
chronic lameness problems during training?  However, if the horse was
brought along carefully during conditioning so that lameness didn't occur,
then I would agree that doing the fwt rider thing during racing would
probably be a significant advantage.

Susan G



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