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Bruce Weary said:

> "So any body who says "More weight equals more work
> as an object is moved. Just Physics, just the facts."
> doesn't have a very good understanding of physics."
> That's really odd. I have heard professional physicists
> and biomechanics experts say essentially those very words.
You will only hear them say these words (or at least they will only be accurate 
saying them) if they also qualify them with "all other things being equal."  If 
they don't qualify the statement with that, they, yes, I do suggest they dust 
off their resumes and find a different job.

My example with the dolly was to give an example that virtually everybody could 
understand in which increasing the load reduced the amount of work required to 
move it, and that physics could explain this very well, it wasn't magic, and 
one doesn't have to believe in magic to believe that heavier objects can be 
moved with less work if you vary some of the other parameters that have an 
impact on the amount of work required.

Since, when talking about the performance of endurance horses, all other things 
aren't equal and cannot be made equal, it is downright silly (and grossly 
unfair???) to handicap only for the one variable that the loudest complainers 
whine about.

It seems quite obvious to me that people who have more disposable income and/or 
more free time have an advantage over competitors who have to carefully make 
decisions and sacrifices and exercise careful time and/or money management in 
order to condition and compete, but I don't hear anybody suggesting (although a 
few people do occasionally whine a little about it) that the AERC should divide 
up its award structure based on annual disposable income.

However, while income has an effect on the ability to compete (in fact, I am 
willing to bet it has a bigger effect than rider weight, especially in the year 
end awards), it IS possible to compete successfully on a limited budget.

Additionally, people are even touchier about revealing their income level than 
they are about revealing their body weight...and you can't tap into IRS records 
at the finish line to check up and make sure they have accurately self-reported 
their income.

The only reasons the AERC handicaps for static rider weight and not any of the 
other variables that contribute to level of performance is that heavy people 
are the biggest whiners and it is an easy variable to quantify.

Incidentally, though I did the analysis on only the few years worth of data 
that was available on the Tevis website, there IS a correlation between success 
at Tevis (in finishing, winning, and winning BC) and horse color; like TB 
racing you have your best chances on a chestnut and the worst chances on a 
gray.  I asked Mike Maul and Bob Morris if I could have access to the AERC's 
data with respect to finishing order, BC, and horse color so I could see if 
this was an anomaly at Tevis or if it applied across all AERC rides, but 
nothing came of it.

However, even if an analysis of the data were to show that chestnuts perform 
better in endurance and grays have a measurable disadvantage (which nobody has 
done with respect to rider weight), I would never dream of suggesting that the 
AERC divide up its awards based on horse color.  Even though the analyses of 
data from Tevis (the only controlled rider weight analysis or horse color 
analysis done) show that horse color has a bigger impact on outcome of the ride 
than rider weight does, and horse color is easy to check for in camp.

A number of years ago Truman asserted that he intended to do some analyses of 
the AERC's data to see if he could find a correlation between weight division 
and performance in the overall standings and to find out if the half point 
handicap that riders get in the BC scoring was "fair."  He never reported back 
on either of these analyses.  I don't know whether it was because he didn't do 
them (which I could understand, it would be time consuming), or because he 
didn't like the results so didn't report them (which I wouldn't put past him as 
clearly, he like Bruce Weary, has a bias about rider weight, that he doesn't 
want to have dislodged).

Any of these analyses, of course, would be meaningless to Bruce, since he 
believes that statistics doesn't apply to the data collected at endurance rides 
because endurance isn't a game of chance. :)

kat
Orange County, Calif.


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