Warm Up Obstacles: Riders

Nice photo of the jock, and instructive! Perfect position on the horse directly over the center of gravity, aerodynamic silks, stirrups level instead of acee-doocy, beautiful horse without blinkers or shadow roll to obstruct her vision--this group "seems" to have it together. Or, do they?

Jerry Bailey's book provides insight as what we're up against with riders. Lots of stuff really.

They come in all shapes, sizes and backgrounds, of course, but you can summarize riders as a group fairly accurately--uneducated, frequently hung over (see Bailey's book on the amount of liquor consumed nightly--astonishing.), motivation diluted by continual overwork, rarely attached to your situation, chronically late if they show at all, a disappearing species, etc. In a sport that requires expert riding at all times, "jock issues" plague the sport.

I'll post about this in detail at some point, but for now elaborate only how our good pinheads affect our ability to warm up our horses.

For non-riders, set the tone by noting that I have four horses to gallop on many days and I consider that number enough. Four rides exhaust me mentally and physically, and though part of this is tacking up, doing hoofs, rounding up, etc., I'd suspect after their 5th or 6th ride of the day professional riders that do nothing but are like myself. They've just about had it.

Yet, here are our top riders expected to 5 or 6 breezes in the morning, conduct their business, take a short break and ride 7-10 times for the afternoon, keep their weight in check, recover from their nightly trysts, etc. etc. year upon year. One may imagine the mental response of an individual with this agenda regarding any requirements viewed as extra.

"By the way sir, would you also conduct my multiple heat warm up, accelerate into each heat, make sure you warm up both leads, the pony will be there to help you out if you get in trouble. We're doing this so that all physiological parameters will be ready for max performance out of the gate. And, we'd like your cooperation to avoid any nasty fracturing during the race."

It's like Bill Russel (yes that Bill Russell) once commented while broadcasting a Portland Trailblazer's basketball game: "There's Jack Ramsey in the huddle(white guy scholar and Hall of Fame coach surrounded by 10 black players) explaining strategy to his squad in professorial English. One problem. These guys don't understand English."

Work overload though is the big thing on these fragile small people. Imagine for yourself doing 12-13 rides/day with 12-13 intricate warm ups, and doing that every day on end. Is it any wonder that jocks take short cuts in the warm ups.

What's the solution to this? It's simple really. No one in the U.S.A ever considers warming up or recognizes it's importance. It's out of the culture and out of the routine. If, as in Japan, warming up were expected and part of the pre-race routine, it would be done, without question.

Additionally, there urgently needs to be rider education provided somewhere regarding rider responsibility and injury avoidance. Jocks needless to say for self-preservation have their concerns. And yet, rider errors that do or may cause injury--you see them everyday including absurd lack of warm ups for breezes.

Getting a little long here. Hopefully I made the point.

Training: 9/13/07. Wind gallops 1.5 miles in :17-:18s in prep for tonight's breeze. All other horses off after their fast works of Wednesday. Wind's shins show he's working, but, the heat problem seems to be gone. We'll see on this, especially after tonight.