A Symbiotic Relationship

Each equestrian sport can benefit from the specialist expertise of another. Catherine Austen investigates the advantages of interaction between eventing and racing

- Catherine Austen

If you placed racing and eventing in a Venn diagram, there would be some obvious shared characteristics: adrenaline, physical risk, equine athleticism. But the sports, despite descending from a shared heritage, are often poles apart – and that distance is increasing. Sam Watson, the Irish international event rider and co-founder of data company EquiRatings, thinks they would both benefit from learning from the other.

He is in a position to judge; not only does his work with EquiRatings mean that he looks at equestrianism, in all its forms, in an analytical way, but he is also a big racing fan and has worked with horses – and riders – at some of the biggest yards in Ireland.

“Look at the improvement in performance in human athletics in the past few decades, and then at horse race times, which have stayed fairly static,” Sam says.

“Some people believe that racehorses have evolved as far as they can; I don’t think so. Human athletics has placed significant emphasis on strength and conditioning – racing hasn’t, really, and that’s where I think improvement in that sport could come from.”

Something racing does brilliantly, he says, is getting horses fit, maintaining that fitness and managing performance, using stress and rest – knowing when to push and when to back off– and eventing could learn a lot from the way trainers do that.