It would be better to base heart
rate recovery tests in endurance competitions on each individual horse’s resting
heart rate, according to the authors of a recent study.
Veterinary check points (vet
gates) are set up at various points along the route of an endurance race, to
ensure that each horse is fit to continue the competition.
Horses are held at the vet
gate and checked for heart rate recovery, metabolic status, gait and general
condition. The heart rate must have fallen below a specified value before the
horse can continue. The required heart rate is the same for all competitors.
It has been assumed that
horses with low resting heart rates would reach the required limit for
continuing more quickly. Now research by Arno Lindner and colleagues has shown
that is, indeed, the case.
The study was performed at the
Veterinary Science Faculty’s Centre for Physiology and Pathophysiology of Sport
Horses at the National University of La Plata, Buenos Aires, Argentina. A full
report of the work has been published in the journal Animals.
Seven horses were involved in
the study, in which they were exercised at different speeds for up to 60
minutes on a treadmill.
The researchers examined the relationship
between resting heart rate (HRresting) and HR after exercise (HRrecovery),
measuring heart rate before exercise and on several occasions during the 30
minutes after the end of exercise.
They found a positive
relationship between HRresting and HRrecovery, supporting the view that the
time taken to reach the pre-defined HR is shorter when the resting HR of a
horse is lower.
The study also found that a
lower resting HR was not associated with higher endurance capacity. The
research team looked at the relationship between HR and V4. (V4, the velocity
at which the blood lactate concentration is 4 mmol/L, is widely used to assess
athletic performance.)
With only a few exceptions,
there were no significant relationships between the V4 of the horses and their
HRresting or between V4 and HRrecovery.
The authors suggest that,
based on their findings, it would be much better to determine the individual
HRrecovery during the initial veterinary examination of a horse to decide if it
was fit to compete, and apply this value at the vet gates during the
competition.
For more details, see:
Relationship between Resting and Recovery Heart
Rate in Horses
Arno Lindner, Martina Esser, Ramón López and
Federico Boffi
Animals (2020) 10(1), 120;
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