well, i never said, nor do i believe that a human's will and intelligence is not a good thing in general. we're probably the pinnacle of evolution, around this galaxy at least. what i solidly do not believe is that "willpower" is an advantage in the much more narrow realm of simply going fast, especially for horses. i think it even slightly works against it. it makes sense - same reason we're naked and have bad teeth - there's no evolutionary push to fix what thumbs and brains can overcome.

> dogged persistence, not any genius

i saw or read that interview and agree. 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration as they say. or maybe 1% inspiration, 50% perspiration, and 49% luck as i sometimes feel.

> If the trainer doesn't show up one day, does the horse train itself?

1. well, yes, they do. they have a strong desire to stay fit and every day we turn them out and they run. it's awesome because they are so fast and good at running. pure joy as they run just as fast as they can. there are plenty of videos of barrel race horses running the pattern by themselves when let loose in an arena, just because they love to do it.

> I've never seen two riderless horses race each other. Does this ever happen?

2. oh absolutely! they love to race each other just for fun and it's probably as fast as they ever go, without a riders weight. we limit how often we turn two young ones out together because they might overdo it and hurt themselves. it's sometimes a show of dominance, but mostly its buddies playing. horses form very close "buddy" relationships and they legitimately play with each other. and play means "run" for horses. they'll run along the fence line, just as fast as they can go until they are totally winded. tails in the air, loving life. not worried at all about your vet bills.

my perspective is this: quarter horses (which are what i have) are the 5th fastest land animal. they are basically evolutionarily perfect for what they do: sprinting. some sources say 55mph but all sources say north of 44mph.

unlike humans they do not need external motivation because they were just built for running. they do not care about the short term, long term, or any other things like that. they do very much like alfalfa. and carrots, and neck scritches. that's basically it.

as with all specialists, however, they are also relatively fragile and while good at a few pretty specific things, they are poorly adapted at other things. like not dying when a plastic bag floats by on the wind, or by forgetting to drink. their digestive system is primitive and rather poorly "designed". if they get stressed out because a you moved something in their environment, they might die of a stomach ache. horses actually invented aspergers and they all have a serious case of it.

more motivations, more intelligence, more will would not improve the speed of a horse, even if it had a human-like concept of that. just as this article implied, racing horses have likely achieved their penultimate performance potential.

willpower is important to human performance, sure. but horses are not human.

horses aren't overall "better" than us, generalist, thumb wielding, humans. but they are indisputably: much bigger, much faster, eat a lot more, and are truer friends.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fastest_animals