Weight - Analogy / Devil's Advocate

[jimbo66]

JB (and others),

I am not disagreeing with your views on weight and the impact on horses.  I frankly don\'t have a strong opinion and have heard it argued well both ways in the past.

However, I don\'t agree with the argument that JB makes that says \"5 pounds is 1/2 of a percent of a horse\'s weight, what is 1/2 of a percent of a one mile race, 26 feet.\"

I have an analogy, which is a bit of a reach, but I think it points out a flaw in that logic.  

A 150 pound distance runner is running a 10k race.  As we all know, weight fluctuates (some of us more so than others).  The runner is a bit heavy the day of the race, weighing 151.5 (1% heavier than usual).  With this extra 1% body weight, running 10,000 meters, should I expect a 1% regression in his time (100 meters).  If he was running a marathon, would you deduct 1% of 26 miles?  

I know horses are not humans and obviously that makes my analogy far from perfect.  And weighing 5 pounds heavier and carrying five pounds are two different things.  However, horses obviously carry weight more efficiently than humans do.

I apologize for the slightly offbase analogy, but I don\'t think 1% more weight = 1% impact on distance.

[holybull95]

The flaw in your analogy is that the distance runner will not remain at the same weight for the entire 10k race.  The one constant with a racehorse is the weight they carry.  Thanks to JB for coming up with a number to use as a starting point.  Whether one agrees with that number or not the handicapper can either add to or subtract from that start or, of course, ignore it.

[TGJB]

As I said in my original post, we do NOT use a straight ratio-- we actually use less. What we use (which Ragozin was using before me) was based on working with the data, and seeing how tight the figures held up-- as I have said many times it\'s not perfectly accurate because they won\'t give us the weights of the horses.

Once a racehorse is fit, according to every trainer I\'ve ever worked with, weight = strength-- losing weight is a bad thing. Don\'t know squat about human runners, but with horses there is a big difference between body weight and weight carried-- again, it would be great (and add a lot to handicapping) if they would weigh the damn horses and publish the information.