Drafts are winning horse races

08 Thursday Mar 2012

Posted by in Racing

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I’m not talking about Shires or Percherons, Belgians or  Clydesdales, the Suffolk Punch or American Cream.

I’m talking about a different kind of draft.  The aerodynamic kind.  That’s the kind that wins horse races.

Did you know that when a horse is running approximately one horse length (2.5 meters) behind and 10 degrees to either side of another horse that it reduces aerodynamic drag to a significant degree?  Reduce that drag by 13 percent and a horse can increase its average speed by 2 percent.

It might not sound like a lot, but that 2 percent can mean the difference between fifth place and first place, according to a study conducted by Dr. Andrew Spence at The Royal Veterinary College at The University of London and published in the journal Biology Letters.

Jockeys and trainers have known about drafting for some time, but now it’s less savvy and more science.  Dr. Spence worked with colleagues at the Structure and Motion Laboratory and had access to a considerable body of data gathered by TurfTrax Racing.

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The drug-crazed stakes on Lego turf

07 Wednesday Mar 2012

Posted by in Humor, Racing

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The three bears of tempo

06 Tuesday Mar 2012

Posted by in Language, Training

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Remember Goldilocks and the three bears?

Porridge wasn’t the only issue.  There was also the chairs.  And the beds.  It was hard to get it right.  Too hot, too cold.  Too big, too small.  Too hard, too soft.  Burn your mouth or bruise your behind or strain your back until you find the one that’s just right.

Kind of like tempo.

Tempo is tricky.  It’s not that it’s a particularly complicated concept to understand, but it’s a word that’s often misused.  Transport it over the ocean, and the waters get even more muddied.

The USDF defines tempo as the “rate of repetition of the rhythm, the strides or of the emphasized beats — beats per minute, as may be measured by a metronome.”   Okay, that sounds relatively simple now, doesn’t it?  However…

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Inspiration from Hiroshi Hoketsu

05 Monday Mar 2012

Posted by in Inspiration

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Japanese rider Hiroshi Hoketsu, who turns 71 this month, has just qualified for the Olympics in Dressage.

For Hoketsu, who is now based in Germany, this is old hat.  He’s already competed in two prior Olympics.  His first was the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo, where he competed in showjumping and placed 40th.  The second was the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, where he competed in dressage and placed 35th in individual competition and 9th in team competition.

Had events unfolded differently (aye, there’s the rub for all of us), London might have been his fourth or fifth Olympics instead of his third.  He did not compete in the 1984 Games in Los Angeles although he was selected as a substitute.  He also ended up not competing in the 1988 Seoul Games, due to a quarantine issue with his horse.

But here he is, near the three-quarter century mark, ready to ride again at the Olympics.

Are you inspired yet?

Can you take even more Olympic inspiration?

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Milestone

04 Sunday Mar 2012

Posted by in Uncategorized

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This has been a busy month at reflectionsonriding.com.  It seems like just yesterday that I celebrated 5,000 hits…and now it’s over 10,000!  Some of that is due to George Ure picking up my blog post “When you’re down and out,” as an economic indicator on his own blog, www.urbansurvival.com.  I’m celebrating another milestone on a beautiful Sunday afternoon.  Time for another happy dance!

Things that make you wonder

04 Sunday Mar 2012

Posted by in Sunday Photos

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I wonder why my Sunday photo this week ended up posting on Saturday.  Now it’s Sunday.  So it’s double your Sunday photo fun this week.  Some things make me wonder…It looks like both horse and rider are wondering here.  And look at that girth!  Makes me wonder how comfortable that would be.

The Age of Vulgarity inspires My Little Pony to run at Aqueduct

03 Saturday Mar 2012

Posted by in Racing

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Here we go again.  It’s an infectious disease — vulgarity, that is — and it’s spreading.  All the way to Aqueduct.

Thank heavens it just got stopped in its tracks.  Jockey caps off to the racing stewards, who rejected the request of Kendall Hansen to dye his horse to match his silks.

Hansen owns a Derby hopeful named after himself (which in a world of bizarre names, isn’t bizarre at all, and certainly less bizarre than his current idea).  The horse named Hansen is the one who unseated Union Rags in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile.  Hansen (the horse) is gray, and Hansen (the owner) wanted to dye his horse’s mane and tail blue with a touch of yellow so he could be color-coordinated with the jockey on his back.  Bring me my smelling salts!  

Can it be long before fake tails and glitter nail — oh I mean, hoof — polish invade the backstretch?

Ready for the races -- best friends today, competitors tomorrow!

Hansen says, “…we want to get kids involved…”  Oh, now that’s a good idea. Let’s teach the little tykes all about off-track betting while they’re young and impressionable.  Maybe set up seminars in playgrounds and offer to serve yellow cupcakes with blue icing (to match the horse!) and teach children and their parents how to read the racing form!

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Way to go

02 Friday Mar 2012

Posted by in Uncategorized

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I just heard the news that Davy Jones, lead singer of The Monkees, died this week from a heart attack, in the company of his beloved horses, in his stable.

He held an amateur jump jockey’s license and rode as an apprentice jockey in Newmarket.  He won his first race as an amateur at Lingfield on Digpast.  He also owned several racehorses in England and in Pennsylvania.  His daughter Talia is a showjumper.

I grew up watching The Monkees on TV and I had a crush on Davy back in the day.  He was part of a sensation, and you can get a taste of it here, along with the chance to see Davy in a place where he was happy, on the back of a horse:

How to space your cavaletti

01 Thursday Mar 2012

Posted by in Training

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There is a best distance between cavaletti for every horse, at every gait. Those distances may get uniformly longer or shorter depending on the horse’s level of training, but this should be intentional, not random.  If you vary the distances between cavaletti or if you choose the wrong distance to begin with, you undermine the best use of these training aids.

If someone tells you that cavaletti are normally spaced “between four and five feet” or “around four and a half feet,”  remember that’s not a distance, it’s an estimate.

Lufkin Contractor's Measuring Wheel

When you’re ready to set out your cavaletti, get out a tape measure, the way course designers do when they’re building a course of jumps, and use it to measure a true distance.  If you’ve got a measuring wheel, that’s nice and easy and it’s handy for building courses later.  If not, a 30′ tape measure will do, and will see you through building gymnastics (when you’ll be varying the spacing quite a bit, but that’s down the road).

If you think you can measure a distance by striding yourself, just remember that when you see Anne Kursinski taking big long steps with her long legs to measure the distance between fences, all she’s doing is confirming whether it’s a short two strides…or a long three.  She doesn’t need to know the precise distance, but whoever built the course did.

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