In the equestrian world, “the best” efficiency isn’t at all times straightforward to outline. With various venues, completely different course designs, subjective assessments, and a spread of environmental elements, it may be troublesome to find out “a good performance,” stated a number one equine scientist.
David Marlin, PhD, an impartial science marketing consultant, stated regulatory our bodies will probably progress towards extra goal methods to measure efficiency in horse sport and embody measurements of excellent welfare. Meanwhile, house owners and riders can proceed to attempt towards efficiency objectives that respect every horse’s bodily and psychological limits.
“Performance is incredibly complex,” stated Marlin in the course of the 2022 International Society for Equitation Science (ISES) Conference, held Aug. 9-12 in Hartpury, U.Okay. “I think we still need to do a lot more work to understand what the factors are that determine performance in different disciplines and the welfare impact of that.”
Performance: Objective, Subjective, and Everywhere in Between
Machines, like automobiles and computer systems, often have clear efficiency indicators, equivalent to ranges of energy and velocity, Marlin stated. And in lots of human sports activities, efficiency is well-defined in constant, goal phrases.
“The thing about the 100 meters is it’s always the same 100 meters,” he stated. “The runners know what the track is going to be like; they know it’s going to be straight; they know how wide the lanes are going to be … It’s always pretty much the same wherever you run.”
In equine sports activities, nevertheless, that is hardly ever the case, he stated. Harness racing supplies pretty goal efficiency indicators, with the winner decided by velocity alone throughout set distances on standardized tracks. Flat racing, in the meantime, has some goal parameters, however efficiency nonetheless additionally will depend on many subjective parameters.
Show leaping efficiency can rely significantly heading in the right direction design and venue, stated Marlin. Objective efficiency indicators, equivalent to time faults and refusals, additionally come into play. However, “it’s almost always clear which horse and rider have won and why,” he stated.
Endurance initially seems goal, however efficiency additionally will depend on completely different programs and the surroundings, in addition to subjective veterinary opinions in the course of the course, he continued. Similarly, cross-country has a mixture of goal and subjective efficiency variables.
“So a horse that performs well over this one course isn’t necessarily going to perform consistently well over different types of courses,” Marlin stated. “There are patterns that we can see that some horses will perform better under certain types of presentation of courses than others.”
Dressage efficiency is extremely subjective, Marlin defined. “(There’s a) qualitative assessment of performance, so this means there’s a high potential for both positive and negative bias from the judges,” he stated.
The Makings of Good Performance
Not all horses can attain the identical degree of sports activities efficiency based mostly on bodily and psychological talents alone, stated Marlin. Much of that has to do with breeding—and, unsurprisingly, genetics analysis reveals the best heritability of efficiency is discovered within the disciplines with the very best ranges of goal efficiency indicators.
Because of the genetic part, in addition to different environmental elements, horses have bodily and psychological limitations to efficiency, he defined. “Probably the most common reason (for suboptimal performance) is simply, genetically, you (as the horse) don’t have the talent,” he stated.
In addition, rider and coach talent can considerably have an effect on efficiency, he added.
Welfare and Performance
Efforts to enhance a horse’s efficiency by unethical means not solely hinder welfare however harm the general public picture of equine sports activities, Marlin stated.
“We probably have the premise, or we should have the premise, that good performance is going to be associated with good welfare,” he defined. “So horses that are really well managed, are not in a stressed environment, are better than horses that have poor welfare.”
That isn’t at all times true, although, he stated. Some individuals use aversive strategies to attain sure efficiency objectives—to the detriment of equine welfare.
“Why do people do this?” he requested. “It could be that actually, unfortunately, (this method) is associated with better performance in some horses.”
However, such strategies haven’t any place in moral sport, he defined.
“If we want to maintain our social license to operate, we have to eliminate these sort of things which are visible and which are—well, they’re abuse; there’s no other word for it,” Marlin stated.
Fortunately, riders like Swedish present jumper Peder Fredricson are serving to present a constructive picture of equestrian sports activities by competing at excessive ranges with horses which have the pure capability to carry out effectively and have undergone welfare-friendly administration and coaching strategies with expert and educated riders and handlers, he stated.
Wanting Good Performance for the Right Reasons
Horse individuals ought to intention for good efficiency for a lot of causes, Marlin stated.
“If you’re an individual or a team, you want to be competitive,” he stated. “You want to understand how to achieve good performance. You should want to promote, preserve, and improve welfare, on the premise that good welfare should improve performance. And, also, you want to minimize the risk of injury.”
Promotion, preservation, and enchancment of welfare by good efficiency considerations organizers, course designers, and governing our bodies, along with house owners and riders, stated Marlin. “You want to ensure that if you’re running competitions, you’re setting an appropriate competitive demand … and that you’re not getting too many injuries during competition,” he stated.
Marlin stated scientists must attempt to search out hyperlinks between efficiency and welfare. “We should start with the assumption that high welfare should be a feature of good performance,” he stated, including it’s nonetheless unclear how to do this. “And I think we need to look at how to change practices to improve welfare.”
