Silly Little Country

Horses, Running, ... or Not

I started watching the Triple Crown races the year I started worrying a bit for my health and so started running - it kicked off many years of pleasure watching and thinking about the horses, animals I rarely have much exposure to. My own engagement in running has included a lot of it myself, never competitively except in a fun way, and some coaching, with the opportunity to work with some actually good runners.

The watching of the horses in a way has been a great pleasure, and I was watching The Belmont Stakes yesterday, hoping to see Big Brown dominate as he had in the Kentucky Derby, and also the Preakness. Those were fine races to watch; it is great to see a creature express itself so clearly.

Big Brown disappointed many of us yesterday, not least of all GrrlScientist, but what she did that was great was send me back to YouTube.

There is no question part of why I wanted to see the result I describe above was this memory:



Watching it again now 35 years later, it remains a joy. Here is an animal utterly in love with what it is doing, so full of the knowledge that he is dominant that he barely need work at the end, and does not want to stop - come on on, let's go around again! (And by the way - note the small field, it tells you what he had done in the earlier races of the Triple Crown.)

I grew up in the late phases of the Skinner orthodoxy, when those who 'knew' knew how ridiculous it was to compare what these animals feel with what we feel (and think!). Of course I had a dog and then cats so there was some pretty serious cognitive dissonance (the fish did not quite cause the same stress).

Watching the horses over the years makes it seem obvious to me those horses love what they are doing, and, as Big Brown showed, can explain when they don't love it.

Secretariat just loved it! The losses of Barbaro and Eight Belles are very sad, but horses and humans have been doing this for millenia, and I am not convinced the horses mind all that much. In fact one of the smartest athletes I coached, in a casual discussion on this point, once said that she envied the horses a bit, that they had someone riding on their backs ready to whack them one if they started to slow down unnecessarily; she was convinced she could have performed a lot better with that sort of external direction.

Go back and watch that race again and listen to the hyperbole again. Then go and look at the race results at the Belmont Stakes, by following the link above. And read a bit more about Secretariat. I find it hard to believe that in my life I will see the like of that athlete. I am a great fan of Roger Federer and Tiger Woods but this guy was ridiculous.

UPDATE: Watching that race, it is clear that Secretariat loves front-running; this is something any coach of human athletes will know about - some runners like tucking in behind a leader and passing that leader late in the race, and other runners just like leaving the field in the tracks. The second the jockey lets Secretariat go, he runs away from everyone. Suppose I am Big Brown, and I like running away too; twice this year I have let Desormeaux hold me back, and then DID get to run away when he let me go. Maybe I am getting fed up with this - why cannot I simply run all these clown horses into the ground? Just a possibility - the horse cannot talk, and even if he were human, he might well not tell us.

Labels: athletics animals greatness

posted by Alan Adamson @ 3:51 PM