Stride Conclusions

Rachel Alexandra exemplifies the importance of stride. Take a look a close look at her coming down the stretch here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_ZLZudXKMM

Rachel's stride is fluid, athletic, coordinated, head bobbing in sync with rhythm of the bounding. She has in a general sense a highly efficient, effective way of going. And, she's fast. Watch those fractions in her two year old races.

What we see specifically about Rachel's stride, she gets solid forward moving, straight ahead ground strikes with each landing. These perfect ground strikes likely result from a combo a superior shoeing and conformation. And, yes, that farrier taking the extra 10 minutes with each leg (for which we pay her) is getting us a better striding horse. Measuring the toe lengths, angles etc. Rachel gets very decent lift with her rear lead leg causing her front end to lift quite a little bit more than most horses. This extends her stride and combined with her decent size this filly has a very big and bounding stride compared to most.

The combo of what she does, and you're especially struck with the athletic head bobbing, makes Rachel's stride a poster board for "efficiency. Is this just Rachel's natural stride or was it "got" in some way by the training?

Let's first observe that certainly stride is among other things a function of strength. The more effective the training the more closely the horse will come to it's optimal stride. If the trainer knows what they do, then the training in terms of strength gains--and hence stride effectiveness--will be like a snow ball going down hill.

The Q here however, is there any rider contribution to the stride. If you click Rachel's races, watch Calvin Borel. Is there a rider that does less with his hands. Borel's hands are completely motionless and he just get's out of the way of the horse. It was other than Borel that got Rachel's stride although I'd think Borel likely was highly responsible for her training and hence her strength.

My experience--and I've gone through this whole exercise for this--is that the rider does little to improve the stride except to position and move perfectly on the horse, i.e. get out of the way and avoid interference with the horse's way of going. You'd have to show me a rider actually improving stride to make me believe it. Other than that it never happens. In my limited experience I am hardly the final authority. Would be interesting what Chris McCarron or Laffite Pincay might have to say.

Now this is other than to say that a rider is unable to affect the development of stride in a young horse. But this is got again by perfect riding in the Dominic Terry mode. The idea with youngsters is to get them to where they do what their natural ability allows. This sometimes happens slowly in terms of the ride, and then one day the light bulb goes off and whoof, the horse is striding across that field

Once the one natural stride is got, my opinion is that perfectly riding jocks can do little more to improve it. We're at the 4.5f pole with the mythical horse. On around the track next post. Here's Rachel's Woodward. Quite an impressive performance watching it closely.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysO_Fhc8Fpw