Ok, here is my two cents. I have been thinking about this for a
couple years.I’ve talked
with several riders with a lot of miles – Joe Long, Crockett Dumas,
Jeremy and Heather Reynolds and got varying opinions from them all.I am generally of the opinion that
weight shouldn’t be that big of a consideration.I would consider that for the FEI type
flat races that it would have a bigger impact than the typical endurance ride
though, since I have no personal experience there.
First of all, the argument that we should take 2 cloned
horses, train them identical and then have one competed with a significantly
higher weight is silly.That’s
not the way it works!The horses
would be conditioned differently – one with the heavy rider all
along.That horse would build
more/different musculature and be more capable of dealing with that weight. I am quite confident of this because I’ve
seen it happen.
My husband and I have several horses we could compete on and
keep ending up switching things around. We monitor heart rates a lot on
conditioning rides, mostly just for fun, but partially to monitor the
conditioning of a horse one of us just started compared to the other. We’ve also done some conditioning
rides where we’ve switched horses in the middle of the ride just to
monitor heart rates due to the change in weight.I weigh 145, he weighs 215.We use the same saddle and mostly
similar gear so we didn’t have to switch saddles.
Anyhow, prior to switching our two horses had roughly
similar HR.One might vary a bit
going higher climbing, but came down a bit faster so they both plateaued or recovered at virtually the same time and to a
similar rate.When we switched,
there was about a 20bpm difference at the high points, but they still recovered
within 2-5 bpm of the same rate.
In one instance, my husband started riding a new horse that
wasn’t conditioned at all.Mine
had been conditioned for 50’s for 5 months or so.We started with a 30-50bpm difference on
the highs.Within 4-6 weeks the new
horse had high rates very similar to my horse although she didn’t recover
quite as fast – but then she didn’t recover any faster if I rode
her.
So I will agree that weight has an impact, but like someone
mentioned, I don’t think it’s that big a deal unless you have a
heavyweight condition your horse and then compete lighter – and we could
all do that if we wanted via weights or Kat’s camera equipment.But actually, I don’t think that
really makes sense, when my horse carried my husband’s weight, her HR
went up, but his horse didn’t decrease by the same magnitude.
I would believe that the horse carrying the extra weight
must expend more energy to do so (but it’s probably not a linear
function) and that horse may eat more on the ride.But that’s not unreasonable.The 1000 pound horse has to consume more
energy than the 800 pound horse anyhow.But I’m hoping we’re not going to try to create classes
based upon what horses ate more than others!
Regarding other riders.Crockett Dumas is a heavyweight –
and I don’t think many would claim that he looks “light” on a
horse.I think he was either 1st
or within the top 5 each day at last years Grand
Canyon ride.He’s done some pretty serious
miles at decent speeds.I think he’ll
tell you it’s the horse.
I’d love to hear the benefits Chris Knoch thinks his horse gets from him running along side for
Tevis. I’d
bet that there is as much or maybe more advantage in saving the horse’s
legs and feet from impact on downhill areas than worrying about energy
expenditure from being ridden.But
that’s just a guess – I’m a downhill wimp.I just got back from leading my horse
down the rockiest trail I will ever do – made Outlaw Trail and Grand
Canyon look like a walk on the beach!
So my theory is that yeah, an increase in weight has an impact - and I
do admit that I am not 100% confident in using the HR as the sole device to
measure this – but that there are so many other factors that go into what
a horse is capable of on a given day that I think if the horse is ridden by the
rider that conditioned him, then the rider’s actual weight is in the
noise.
Marlene
(And I apologize for the long post on a subject being beaten
to death like all the other subjects, but I’ve been
wanting to voice my opinion on this for a while to see if there was any
evidence to the contrary – I do still have an open mind on the
subject!I started thinking about
this thinking that as long as I conditioned and competed with my husband I had
no chance of ever getting BC!)
