3rd August 2012, 05:44 PM
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Member
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Join Date: Jan 1970
Posts: 4,437
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jose,
You were getting the horse's resting heart rate?
There are many ways of looking at a horse to know whether it's fit or not.
The coat, muscle development, rib visibility, eye clarity, tongue colour etc etc.
The problem comes when some horses strip fit in different ways, could be due to age, frame type, metabolism or anything else.
The only true and accurate measurement of a horse's fitness (apart from form), is resting heart rate. This will also tell you if the horse has trained off.
Blood count will tell you the the health of the horse, but not the fitness.
Unfortunately resting heart rate is not published anywhere, but when I was given this information by a friend who worked in a stable, it was 70% accurate.
Anyone close to a stable will know how effective this information is, often market movements from stables incorporate this information.
Now for the average punter, this information is simply unobtainable, but we are very close to Iphone applications which will read a horse's resting heart rate in it's holding stall. Obviously one has to be on course and fairly inconspicuous.
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