"....The Kentucky Derby was won by a horse named Old Rosebud in 1914 in
2:03. Horses are still winning that race in about the same times (forget about
Secretariat... he really set a record of 1:59) and I imagine they also are being
trained and fed more scientifically than in 1914..."
There was an interesting article in the Scientific American about this very
thing a few years ago. I don't have my copy of the article, but there are
indexes to that magazine and you could quickly find a copy at almost any public
library. Most articles in Sci. Am. also have a good bibliography to the primary
literature, usually written by the same person.
If my memory serves the gist of the article was that human times in sporting
races have decreased dramatically in the last 100 years, but TB racing times
have not. The conclusion was that the TB gene pool was already quite optimized
for speed so little genetic improvement is possible, horses are better athletes,
and that training of short distance race horses was already pretty
good. All this implies that there was less room for
improved training to make a difference. Human athletes have benefited greatly
from better training partly because genetically we are not anywhere as good
athletes.
My unsupported conclusion is that horses are remarkable athletes. Evolution
appears to have optimized them for speed so that they could run from predators,
at the same time humans were being optimized for larger better brains. Larger
brains meant we would not have to run but could use the tools and language
we were inventing to increase the chances that we would live to have lots of
kids. If you then add to this ~4000 or so years of selective breeding by people
for speed you have the modern horse who is a great athlete, and the modern human
who seems to prefer to be an overweight couch potatoe.
Ed
Ed & Wendy Hauser 2994 Mittower
Road Victor, MT 59875
