The Anaerobic Conundrum
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Anaerobic Energy Part 1
The discussion now revolves around a horse's breathing, racing speed, horses for courses,
and the use of aerobic and anaerobic energy, amongst other things.
Take a deep breath through your nose or mouth and get ready for some stats and much much more.
Part 1
Horse Breathing
First off, horses only breathe through their nose and not through their mouth.
When galloping, a horse will take a breath every stride, again only via the nose. At this point the horse is using aerobic energy.
Second, horses are over 60% muscle while humans
are only about 40% and with a high heart rate like during a horse race, oxygen taken in usually doesn't have
enough time to be effectively used by all that muscle.
Imagine further at the finish of a race where a jockey's riding hard to make that worse.
Those horse muscles will be screaming for more air.
Imagine doing exercise as some people do with a mouthful of water making it only possible to breathe
through your nose and then running a fast 100m. Most lose the water after the first few seconds. You are just not going to perform at your best. Same for a racehorse.
Limited breathing will stop almost any athlete, human and horse alike but with less muscle, a human can battle on longer.
Race finish in the big races is where the horses need the most energy and those with the best lungs are likely to be the best
performers. Very few races have an accidental result. The race has to be won, it takes an abundance of energy and courage
for a horse to win any race. A top line victory needs more of everything.
At rest, a horse's heart rate is very low, from 25 to 40 beats per minute (BPM) -
maximum recorded horse heart rate range is from 204 to 241 BPM. This high diference range makes it possible for
a horse to work for short periods at very high levels of stress.
A blocked snozzer for a horse is tantamount to a person with a blocked nose
and a mouth full of water trying to run a fast 1,000m race. It's just not going to happen.
It is very difficult for a person to run fast with a mouthful of water. A horse with limited
respiration will clearly underperform.
Breathing is almost everything in racing.
From a punting viewpoint, any poor run associated with a horse having a respiratory issue should be discounted.
Racing Speed
Fast horses win races.
In the end, the fastest horse in a race is the winner.
The speed of that winner is usually calculated in metres per second or kilometres per hour or even time for a certain distance like the last 600m. These days, even sectional times
for every furlong are available for many meetings.
Ultimately, the speed of a horse is determined by its stride length and the number of strides taken
each second.
Generally, sprinters have a smaller stride and take more strides each second.
Middle distance steeds and stayers have a larger stride but less strides per second but the variation between the number of strides for sprinters and stayers is not that significant.
The late Black Caviar (BC) according to the literature when racing had one of the longest strides ever measured
for a racehorse - 8.42 metres (which would not have been for every stride of a race).
An average horse might only cover 6 metres.
Most racehorses do roughly 2.5 strides per second so for BC she could cover
more than an extra 6m more of turf every second (at times she was running more
like 2.8 strides per second and an extra 8m each second).
That six metres is more than two lengths, so for every stride BC was getting more than two lengths further in front of the other smaller striding runners.
Winx in races had a stride of around 6.5 metres but a high stride rate of 2.7 per second with the difference being that Winx could maintain this breakneck speed over significantly longer distances.
From a punting viewpoint, the average racing enthusiast cannot measure the stride length of any horse and to be of real value - the stride length of every horse in a race is needed.
It's like looking at the form of one horse in a race and ignoring all the other runners.
Unless you have some prior knowledge, this is a method that will likely only lead to disaster.
