Harness racing shame

[racefair]

[VVV] Sorry Jett, you hit on a bit of a raw nerve there.
Many years ago Ivers was actually a member of the forerunner to the US Harnesslist, it was called Post Parade, and I was also member of that forum.
While being fortunate enough to have as it's members fellas such as Murray Brown, the late Kurt Greene, Ralph Succee etc. it also had a few real loonies in residence.
Valley Vic, a fella singularly obsessed with a beer by the name of Rolling Rock was one who springs to mind and for different reasons but not so far behind him was Tom Ivers.
Time & time again Tom would bang on about Interval Training & Carbo-loading...the latter being a theory that he had whereby he claimed that with the right type of diet & training a horseman could not just load but in fact 'overload' the cells of the body with carbohydrate energy & thus gain an edge over the competition.
This, he claimed, specifically when fed in conjunction with Interval Training, was just the bee's knees.
As fortune would have it he just so happened to also sell the mystical super carbohyrdate compounds with which you could 'overload' your horse and sail to victory. Of course it flew in the face of all known science to that point and like all such snake oil sales, it still does.
On the subject of improvements, do you mean specifically performance wise in racehorses...or just pretty much anything at all?
As far as Standardbreds are concerned, I think it's generally accepted that the speed explosion started with the siring deeds of Meadow Skipper but I don't believe it to be the case that the horse himself was the one and only factor at work. His emergence as a sire of raw speed coincided with adoption of AI, vast improvements in training methods, catch drivers, better feeding & vet care, improved racetrack and race bike design etc. That might be getting off the track a bit though.

Hi Jamie,
It seems that we have digressed a little with Tom Ivers. I did note that he was just a name that I quickly thought of that had information on the rate of improvement of a racehorse over time using a particular training methodology. Alot of training methods still incorporate Intervals which I don't think was invented by Tom Ivers. I don't remember timelines, however I do remember carbohydrate loading being popular among athletes. See this article by the Australian Institute of Sport which discusses a 2-3% improvement with Carbohydrate loading.
http://www.ausport.gov.au/ais/nutrit...ydrate_loading
Horses are of course different; however it seems that Tom Ivers wasn’t the only person with the idea. See this article in 1985.
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1...program-energy
So then, as you have a good understanding of same, what is the biggest improvement in training that you know of in elite athletes/racehorses under controlled conditions and without drugs?

I’m not sure I understand your point in regards to the “speed explosion” and “raw speed”. My opinion is that raw speed helps more in sit and sprint type races such that you see on the smaller tracks. However racing over 1600 metres at places like Menangle is more of an Aerobic event and therefore more of an Endurance race. Take Min Min Lights for example. This horse didn’t have much raw speed, however was “transformed” into a horse that could maintain a high speed for an extended period when Ian Wilson started to train him.