The Smoking Gun

Question: which photo is the smoking gun?

Answer: both.

Here's our quandry, summarized. I've hypothesized that the quality of warm up affects the ability of the bone to hold together during the race. I've presumed that solid bone material is somehow affected differently by doing a couple minutes of slow canter beside a pony, a little trot, walk and jumping around compared to the way the Japs warm up by doing several short spurts of 2 min. lick. I've stated that with these two radically different manuevers that you have a difference in the bone at the end of the warm up, and I've gone even further that that and suggested that the American warm up is ludicrous and dangerous to the horse in terms of possible catastrophic fracture.

If this hypothesis is correct, then something must happen to the bone according to the way the warm up is conducted. The only way in which it can be determined what it is that happens to bone in the course of moving from a position of rest to a position of strenuous concussive exercise is to examine the bone material itself while under stress.

Just so that I am communicating, please picture the bone as a solid object held together by whatever. We may presume that at some point with enough force this material will fracture and come apart. BUT, does the material become more or less sturdy according to how the exercise is approached in warming up? Or, is there any change at all in the material from the onset of exercise to the end? Those are the questions.

And, would you know it, to find the answers we suddenly have the brand new science of "Bone Fracture Mechanics". I say new--they have been studying the forces which fracture bones since the late 19th century. But, the sophisticated scanning of bone material with various instruments including electron microscopes for the purpose of ascertaining exactly how bone holds together seems fairly new. I have stumbled onto the website of Paul Hansma, Physics Department UCSB, claiming the discovery of "bone glue" in just the year 2005.

Bone Fracture Mechanics, from what I can tell, is an ongoing scientific inquiry. You can read very little about it on the net because it seems that they are selling all the articles on the subject at fairly steep prices. But, think I have all I need to know from Hansma's superb and free website.

In the coming posts I'll specify exactly what I'm talking about and describe the manner in which the warm up does or does not affect bones.

But, for this post, back to our smoking guns above. There's extensive elaboration coming. If you want a clue now, note that the smoking gun on the right are high resolution scanning electron micrographs of two mineralized collagen fibers in bone. The top fiber is at rest, and the lower fiber is under stress. The clue to all this you find by looking at the difference between the top and bottom fiber.

Training:
Art conducted his third straight day of riderless paddock work last night. Got in some fairly fast spurts. Limping still there but better. Was going to Eureka tomorrow night till I recalled in the off season they work the track Friday evenings. So, we'll leave Sat. morning.