Re: Digestion of grain/carbos

[fmechelh@c-s-k.de]

Hi Angie,

I fear this discussion is going personally.

If you read The Fit Racehorse II then you would agree that it's completely
insane to make Tom Ivers responsible for all failures that occur in horseracing.
In fact, this is HIS war he fought against "tradition" in the last 20 years. His
only weapon against all these traditionalists is horse physiology science.
I personally read his thoughts in some of his books (and Ridecamp) with big
interest, even if I'm not completely sure about it what is applicable to
endurance or not, or how. One day, I will find out. That's the way research (and
building athletes) goes. To tell you the truth, I found more new intelligent
thoughts there as in the last couple of books designated to endurance...

Like every horsesport, endurance IS a little bit conservative, as far as
conditioning research is concerned (and I fear, here in Europe it is a little
bit more!) Who cares which horsesport is *more* conservative... On the other
hand, the effect is: using your brain makes it easier to compete with right
trained and fed horses, even if they are cheaper. And I appreciate that because
you get real value for hard work. Makes the sport more interesting.

With feeding grain in big amounts, I think it's no mistake to be careful. THIS
depends very much on the special horse. For some otherwise good athletes, it
will ever be a limiting factor in lifetime that they don't eat enough, or in
time. With the other extremes, that tends to eat much or too much, there is a
lot of room for enhancement - as well as for failures with catastrophic results,
as founder or laminitis. Do carefully, but don't fight any new aspect.

... Tom and Joe, get on together ;-)

kind regards
Frank Mechelhoff (Germany)