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I think I have a pretty basic understanding of Physics.....However horses are not vaccums, dollys, levers, or.....there is no way that they can change their system to carry more weight. They are what they are...Their are some that probably are more efficient then others. We all know that people vary individually in regards to strength. size is no guarantee of strength. We all know that it doesn't benefit the endurance horse to be large or Percherons would be leading the pack.

It also might not benefit the endurance rider to be large. Who knows?...I am a small person and as I have said before on this post I haven't been whining for a special class of female sumo wrestling to accommodate me...neither have I been wondering why the heavyweights dominate in that sport..Maybe I am dull but I just don't understand the tenacity of the ridecamp members of proving or disproving the weight issue.../Lucinda

k s swigart <katswig@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Bruce Weary said:
>
> > "So any body who says "More weight equals more work
> > as an object is moved. Just Physics, just the facts."
> > doesn't have a very good understanding of physics."
> > That's really odd. I have heard professional physicists
> > and biomechanics experts say essentially those very words.
>
> You will only hear them say these words (or at least they will only be accurate saying them) if they also qualify them with "all other things being equal." If they don't qualify the statement with that, they, yes, I do suggest they dust off their resumes and find a different job.
>
> My example with the dolly was to give an example that virtually everybody could understand in which increasing the load reduced the amount of work required to move it, and that physics could explain this
>  very well, it wasn't magic, and one doesn't have to believe in magic to believe that heavier objects can be moved with less work if you vary some of the other parameters that have an impact on the amount of work required.
>
> Since, when talking about the performance of endurance horses, all other things aren't equal and cannot be made equal, it is downright silly (and grossly unfair???) to handicap only for the one variable that the loudest complainers whine about.
>
> It seems quite obvious to me that people who have more disposable income and/or more free time have an advantage over competitors who have to carefully make decisions and sacrifices and exercise careful time and/or money management in order to condition and compete, but I don't hear anybody suggesting (although a few people do occasionally whine a little about it) that the AERC should divide up its award structure based on annual disposable income.
>
> However, while income has an effect on the
>  ability to compete (in fact, I am willing to bet it has a bigger effect than rider weight, especially in the year end awards), it IS possible to compete successfully on a limited budget.
>
> Additionally, people are even touchier about revealing their income level than they are about revealing their body weight...and you can't tap into IRS records at the finish line to check up and make sure they have accurately self-reported their income.
>
> The only reasons the AERC handicaps for static rider weight and not any of the other variables that contribute to level of performance is that heavy people are the biggest whiners and it is an easy variable to quantify.
>
> Incidentally, though I did the analysis on only the few years worth of data that was available on the Tevis website, there IS a correlation between success at Tevis (in finishing, winning, and winning BC) and horse color; like TB racing you have your best chances on a chestnut and the worst chances on a
>  gray. I asked Mike Maul and Bob Morris if I could have access to the AERC's data with respect to finishing order, BC, and horse color so I could see if this was an anomaly at Tevis or if it applied across all AERC rides, but nothing came of it.
>
> However, even if an analysis of the data were to show that chestnuts perform better in endurance and grays have a measurable disadvantage (which nobody has done with respect to rider weight), I would never dream of suggesting that the AERC divide up its awards based on horse color. Even though the analyses of data from Tevis (the only controlled rider weight analysis or horse color analysis done) show that horse color has a bigger impact on outcome of the ride than rider weight does, and horse color is easy to check for in camp.
>
> A number of years ago Truman asserted that he intended to do some analyses of the AERC's data to see if he could find a correlation between weight division and performance in the overall
>  standings and to find out if the half point handicap that riders get in the BC scoring was "fair." He never reported back on either of these analyses. I don't know whether it was because he didn't do them (which I could understand, it would be time consuming), or because he didn't like the results so didn't report them (which I wouldn't put past him as clearly, he like Bruce Weary, has a bias about rider weight, that he doesn't want to have dislodged).
>
> Any of these analyses, of course, would be meaningless to Bruce, since he believes that statistics doesn't apply to the data collected at endurance rides because endurance isn't a game of chance. :)
>
> kat
> Orange County, Calif.
>
>
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