I’ve been watching the Triple Crown races for years and have always wondered why the horses don’t have more endurance. They race for a 1.25 miles in about 2 minutes, and then can’t race again for 2 weeks. Additionally, the Belmont Stakes are 3 weeks after the Preakness, and trainers sometimes wonder whether the horse has enough for the 1.5 miles. Shouldn’t horses be able to run full speed every day? How the heck would they survive in the wild?
In the wild they might run every day, but would they run full-speed for over a mile?
I feel like this question is akin to “Haile Gebrselassie can run 26 miles in 2 hours and 4 minutes, but then he can’t do it again the next day. How does he expect to survive in the wild?”
If you don’t know the answer, but want to submit an analogy, at least try to make it appropriate or relevant. Your analogy didn’t contribute anything. Humans don’t ever need to run 26 miles. In fact, very rarely do they need to run at all. Presumably, horses run in order to avoid natural predators (prior to their domestication). So if you can show me that their natural predators would only attack them every 2-3 weeks, then it makes sense that they can only go full speed for a mile every 2 weeks. Or, maybe their natural predators can only run a half-mile before they get winded. Or, maybe these horses have been bred in such a way that their endurance is in no way related to their natural relatives.
Actually, a lot of evidence points to humans running massive distances “in the wild” sometime in our evolutionary past. Our anatomy is made for running long distances (cite).
So the analogy is apt.
Horses “in the wild” don’t have to run particularly long distances – any predators usually have less endurance than they do and stop after a hundred yards or less.
Also, the herd is a form of protection; the slower and older get caught, leaving the rest to escape.
It’s like the old joke: “Why are you putting on sneakers? That won’t help you outrun a bear.”
“I don’t have to outrun the bear; I just have to outrun you.”
I think a lot of what is in play here is the result of breeding and training. Thoroughbreds are bred to be light and fast, but not necessarily for endurance or for fast recovery. That is, they tend to have lighter and more fragile bones (a la, Eight Belles). They are also specifically trained for pure speed.
I think the marathon, while not a direct analogy, is still fair. The marathon runner doesn’t go home and lie around for a few weeks until his next run, in fact, he’s probably out running after just a day or two’s rest. But these are highly trained athletes who train hard, but 80-90% takes significantly less recovery time than 100%. This isn’t like a normal person going out and running as hard as they can. These are people who are pushing the physical limitations of human anatomy. Horseracing is much the same.
I suppose it’s for the same reason greyhounds run races every couple of weeks while blue heelers chase cows every day.
:rolleyes:
Or maybe it’s just not good for them to run a mile and a half at top speed every single day of the week.
Top class runners run more or less every single day. They run far and they do it at a brisk pace. Because of this training they are able to perform amazing feats in periodic competition. Just because Mr Gebrselassie can turn in 2:04 in a marathon doesn’t mean he can do it every day or even every week. But he certainly can run 10 or 15 miles a day, day in and day out at a pace that would cause normal men to keel over quite dead.
If you asked him to run another competative marathon two weeks after he set the world record he would most likely give the same answer as the horse trainer gives. “No, I can’t run that race.” It doesn’t mean that he can’t physicaly run 26 more miles two weeks later, it means that he can’t run 26 more miles at a world class level two weeks later. Or that he can’t do it without an elevated risk of injuring himself. When people injure themselves they have to take time off to recover and recuperate. When racehorses injure themselves they get shot.
In other words, I am positive that a racehorse could physically run the 1.5 miles at Belmont three weeks after Preakness. What the trainer worries about is that the three intervening weeks are not enough time to recuperate from the abnormal effort of racing at Preakness to be able to safely turn in a world class performance at Belmont. What’s the point of racing if you’re going to dog it in after 1.25 miles?
I guarantee that during the three weeks in between the races the horses are running. They’re training hard in that time. But that training does not include going balls out for a mile and a half.
I used to train horses, rode in the Junior Olympics, and I own a couple. Worked as a cowboy at a Dude ranch and was their Director of Horsemanship, so I know a thing or two about this subject.
There are a lot of reasons why a horse can’t run that kind of distance at speed every day. Basically, a race like the derby is pushing the limits of a what a horse is capable of. That kind of performance comes at a price, which is why there is a longer recovery.
Naturally a horse won’t run that kind of distance at top speed on its own. It has to be trained and coerced into doing so. What a horse has evolved for is short bursts of high speed (1/4 mile or so) and longer distances at a Much more moderate pace.
The first problem is heat. A horse has a lot of mass and generates a lot of heat and has very little relative surface area to bleed off that heat. They simply cannot run that long without overheating.
They have relatively narrow legs and they take a lot of stress, particularly a three year old’s who’s bones are still soft. Tendons and cartilage and muscle are all strained by the rigors of racing. Tendons and cartilage and bone have relatively lower blood flow and take a longer time to recover than muscle.
A horse has a couple of other adaptations, think of them as a supercharger and a nitrous button. There are four distinct gaits that a horse uses. Walk, trot, canter, gallup. These have 4,2,3,2 beats respectively. The gallop is a two beat gait that entails a stretching and contracting. To save on weight a horse was a relatively weak diaghram (ability to suck air.) A horse’s internal organs hang like a pendulum in its gut and swing back and forth at a gallop. As they push up against the diaghram they forcefully expel air. As they swing away, they suck it in. This occurs with tremendous force, and at full speed is right at the limits of failure (and sadly sometimes beyond) of what the lungs, esophogus and breathing passages can handle. This damage also takes a while to recover from.
To summarize, they can’t race every day because that’s not what they evolved to do. It’s a tremendous and strain, and many, even most horses are permanently damaged from a career at the track.
My take on what happened Saturday with that poor filly is this: She came through the finish exhausted but with a lot of inertia. A good jockey will force a horse to slow slowly so that it doesn’t take too much stress on the legs absorbing inertia. The real danger point is when a horse goes from the two beat gallup to the three beat canter with too much speed and too exhausted. The horse will have a tendency to want to break hard at this point as it’s a natural point absorb inertia. The transition from gallup to canter in terms of beats looks like this:
Gallup = front legs beat, back legs beat.
Canter= lead front leg beat, off front leg beat, bag leg beat.
So, where the horse had two front legs absorbing energy in a gallop it has one leg, initially as it moves from gallop to canter (later it rolls and gets more evenly distributed.) This is a huge stress by itself, but if the horse is also severely decelerating it can be unmanageable and the leg will just snap. The remaining front is then in bad position, takes the wait of the broken at the wrong time, plus all the weight it was supposed to take, PLUS the now severe deceleration. It’s snapping is inevitable.
It’s a classic racing breakdown.
Agreed - nor would a horse, or any prey animal, expect to run full-out at top speed and to exhaustion from a predator every day - it might be a once-in-a-lifetime event (especially if the horse loses).
Great post Scylla
Agreed, thanks Scylla.
O tempora o mores.
Trainers haven’t always worried about such matters. As an example, I offer the great filly Sceptre, about which extraordinary animal it is writ that, in 1902 at the age of three:
Tough filly.