Re: [RC] rider weight studies, part 1 - Sisu West Ranch
When this thread was active the first time I was
severely chastised for expressing skepticism about some of the conclusions
reached when I had not read and digested the journal articles posted on http://shady-acres.com/
I have since read the articles. For a few of
the assertions on Ridecamp of which I was particularly skeptical I
could not find either data or anything in the conclusions about
them.
The findings about body condition score appear to
be very valid. I suspect that they are universally applicable. I
have notice that during the last 20 years endurance horses do appear, on the
average, to have a higher body condition score.
Statistically the weight
of the horse increased the chances of a lameness pull. This is significant
at the .1% level (As I understand this area of statistics, this means that 0.1%
of the time you would be wrong in concluding that heavier horses are more likely
to go lame) In general, I can readily accept this conclusion, with a
possible question or two about the universal
applicability.
I still have doubts about the universal
applicability of some of the horse+rider weight findings. The source of my
problems are:
1. Tevis is a different ride than many
rides. In general it has more elevation change, and is significantly down
hill. The usual ride times are quite high.
2. As stated in the article the cannon bone
circumference is practically unchanged with the weight of the horse. Does
this mean that it is impossible to find a suitable larger endurance horse
prospect with bigger bone or that the larger horses selected and trained for
Tevis were not selected for this trait?
3. I was not able to find in the published results
any conclusion supporting the conclusion that TRW (total ride weight) is
important. in the 1998 study the following appears "Table 2 shows
mean values of RW, BW, RW/BW and TRW..." Unfortunately, the table referred
to does not contain a row corresponding to TRW. I could not find the
results of the statistical analysis of TRW. It may be that one line in the
table, and the results of the statistical analysis has been inadvertently left
out of the article as published on the web. This is indeed unfortunate, as
it could be an important criteria for endurance prospect
selection.
ED
Ed & Wendy Hauser 2994 Mittower
Road Victor, MT 59875
