Precious Roy wrote:
Horses are very fragile and extremely expensive. It doesn't take much to seriously injure a horse by pushing it too hard. Horses are not made for sprinting all out. Their lower limbs are very fragile. So, the limits of what a horse can do in training are pretty well defined and well established over many years of trial and error. The other thing is that horses are animals. You can't get a horse to lift weights, do pilates/yoga or plyometrics. A horse can run at different speeds for different lengths of time and that is about it. People have been able to improve because they have been able to improve upon training techniques year after year. Yes, people have been doping and equipment has improved. But there is a huge difference in the quality of training today versus the 1970s. I ran jr high track and XC under a coach who was a Div I runner at UGA and made NCAA champs in 5k. She was about as good as you would find back then. The training kids do today is on a completely different level.
Horses "fragile"? You're joking. This is an animal of several hundred kilo that can run at 60-70kph for a significant distance (3-4kilometres), that can sprint at over 85kph for a 1/4mile (a quarter horse) and all the while carrying a human burden. They are an incredibly powerful animal. They survived against every kind of danger for millions of years before domestication. In the Middle Ages they carried knights into battle. The draught horse was the first version of a tractor.
The area where they can be vulnerable is internal infection - as any living creature can be - and sometimes tendon inflammation and stress fractures when pushed to their limits. But that isn't most horses. They are injured far less than we are. They are far better athletes. But breeding has produced a near unimprovable animal. That is the one area we have not employed to produce the best human athletes. So we rely more on training, technique and drugs.