Nurture is really kicking ass these days....first the IQ thing and now this.
The offspring of expensive stallions owe their success more to how they are reared, trained and ridden than good genes, a study has found. Only 10% of a horse's lifetime winnings can be attributed to their bloodline, research in Biology Letters shows.
That suggests, a la Moneyball, that buying horses with so-so lineages and training them really well could make for a better return on investment.
The top 100 greatest beatdowns in history, most of them related to sports. #1 is Secretariat's 31-length victory at Belmont, the footage of which is well worth a look if you haven't seen it. That horse so totally pours it on down the stretch that it gives me goosebumps every time I watch it. (thx, david)
All Thoroughbred horses born in the Northern Hemisphere technically share the same birthday: January 1. Happy birthday, horsies!
Discussion of various animals' athletic abilities. Cheetahs can reach a speed of 45 mph in 2 seconds (3-4 strides)! Still no convincing answer for the man vs. horse question though.
Saturday was a sports viewing doubleheader in our household: the Kentucky Derby followed by a lackluster Lakers vs. Suns game 7. During the basketball game, the commentators referred to the speed of the Suns' Leandro Barbosa and that plus the similarity of his name to Derby winner Barbaro's led to a discussion about which of the two would win in a race the length of the basketball court. Three of us argued that the horse would win and one argued for the human winning.
So, how fast are horses and humans? In winning the Belmont Stakes in 1973, Secretariat averaged 37.5 miles/hr over a mile and a half. World record holder Asafa Powell averaged 22.9 miles/hr in the 100 meter dash. Jesse Owens raced horses over a 100 yard distance and beat them, but only because the horses reared at the sound of the starter's pistol, giving him a sizable head-start. In 2004, in an annual race held in Wales, a chap named Huw Lobb beat a field of horses and other humans over a distance of 22-miles.
But that doesn't do much in answering the question of which would win over the short distance of a basketball court (94 feet or 28.7 meters). I searched high and low online and found little about the acceleration of either horses or humans. No doubt horses are much faster than humans, but a man is probably quicker off the line. So I put the question to you in hopes that you can answer it:
In a 94-foot race between a human sprinter and a thoroughbred race horse, who would win? Assume a standing start for both, the horse races on dirt, the man runs on the court, and both horse and man are among the fastest at their respective distances.
The Kentucky Derby is "the weirdest two minutes in sports". "What we get, then, is a not-very-representative sample of thoroughbreds running a far-from-typical race under far-from-typical circumstances."
