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Arctic Winter Conditions - training racehorses in the snow

By Geir Stabell
First Published: 07 December 2009 - Issue Number: 28

While some horsemen and women hardly let their horses out of the stables as soon as the temperature dips under ten or fifteen degrees below zero, wild horses in Northern China are known to survive extremely cold spells with temperatures creeping as low as 40 below, and horses in the Southern Hemisphere get by during lengthy heat waves of 40 plus.
What exactly is ‘too tough’, or what are unacceptable conditions for horses? Can thoroughbreds cope with training and racing under wintry conditions? In Scandinavia, horseracing is disrupted by the winter, but not brought to an absolute halt. Täby Galopp outside Stockholm races virtually year round, and experiences made in the Nordic climate tell us that thoroughbreds can cope very well in cold weather, far colder than what one is used to in leading racing nations such as England, France, Ireland and the US.
Comparing thoroughbred racehorses with various types of horses living in the wild may not seem to make all that much sense, but even if thoroughbreds lie ‘somewhere in between’ wild horses and human beings, they are very hardy indeed. Research has shown that horses living in the wild are about 20 times less sensitive to extreme temperatures than human beings. In 1879, a group of unknown wild horses were discovered living under incredibly extreme weather conditions in Northern China.
These horses inhabit the endless plains embracing the border between Mongolia and China. The terrain is flat, bare and offers next to no vegetation. At first glance, a thought that springs to mind is that it would be easier to survive on the moon. On these uninviting plains, with no trees, the winters are long and typically reach temperatures of 30 to 40 C. below freezing. With such open landscapes, strong winds are also part of the daily menu, adding a biting wind chill factor making it impossible to believe that any animals could survive. But these wild horses do, and they have been doing so for years – probably several generations – without any help from man.
The area gets little snow during these cold winters, which can be both a blessing and a curse, a blessing because no more than about half a meter of snow means that the horses are able to ‘dig through’ the white carpet and find at least something to call food, and a curse because if they experience spells of no snow at all, they will often become dehydrated. These horses rely on snow, eating it to replace their need for water. What made the discovery of these horses even more interesting was that the area they roam lies some way east of what is...

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