Getting Fit on Racing

Most research shows that dropout rates at fitness clubs are significantly higher than retention rates, and dropout stats don't even include members who do not attend frequently enough to benefit.

Doctors Ornstein and Sobel (Healthy Pleasures) explain why. The problem lies in the confusion of many fitness-crazed Americans between exercise and physical activity. “Exercise is usually a deliberate, sometimes odious, sweat-soaked endeavor that can take time away from life, whereas physical activity can be a daily undertaking, work or play, that involves movement.”

“Fitness should be a healthy pleasure,” the authors tell us. Accordingly, the best way for lovers of horse racing to remain fit is to live within walking or cycling distance of the race track. American race meets are not year-round affairs so for us to keep fit by getting to and from the track on human energy, we'd need several reachable race tracks.

But in sprawling America, race tracks are too far apart, and when they are nearby (7.7 miles between Belmont and Aqueduct), heavy congestion makes cycling unsustainable.

In Europe, however, one finds clusters of racecourses with pretty roads between them. Here in France I've got five tracks within cycling distance and I completely avoid any congestion to four of them.

British trainer Harry Dunlop's bicycle commutes are more ambitious. Dunlop and members of his Velocity Racing syndicate, all bicycle riders, will be arriving at Chantilly racecourse on July 9 after a two-day 90-mile cycling trip from the ferry port of Dieppe on the coast of La Manche. With earthquakes or hurricanes unknown across the serene rolling hills of Normandy, no force majeure will stop them.

Dunlop is returning to the scene of triumph where his Robin of Navan (American Post {GB}) won the Group 3 Le Coupe Longines a little more than a year ago.

“I'm having a horseracing/cycling syndicate, so the owners are cyclists,” Dunlop told the Racing Post last year. “Cycling is something I took up at the start of the year and I really enjoy it.”

They key word is “enjoy”.

I've been cycling with pleasure to French racecourses for more than a decade, often with my horseplayer partner Alan Kennedy. In 2010, Alan and I did a 1,000-kilometer 13-track “tour de France” to raise money for retired Thoroughbreds, through TDN and the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation.

My city of residence, Clichy, just to the north of Paris, is within 40 cycling minutes of four major racecourses: Longchamp, Saint-Cloud, Enghien and Auteuil, with Maisons-Laffitte reachable in an hour and ten minutes.

I look at the race tracks as joie-de-vivre fitness clubs. My racecourse commutes provide physical fitness without the tedium and toil of “exercise.” Once in the track, horse race handicapping and toteboard decision-making provide the type of brain aerobics that fit within the mind-game criteria recommended by Alzheimersprevention.org, which should “engage your attention, involve more than one of your senses and break a routine activity in an unexpected, non-trivial way.” Any serious horseplayer will see the connections.

The same source notes that, “regular physical exercise can reduce your risk for developing Alzheimer's disease by a stunning 50%.” Cycling, a low-impact activity, also cuts heart disease and cancer risk.

The studious horseplayer would be pleased to know that cycling boosts brain power.

With this in mind, I've sought other worthy places of residence or vacation spots where we could have a menu of racecourses within cycling distance. I asked Harry Dunlop to help with Britain. He suggested that west of London would put me within reach of at least four tracks: Epsom, Sandown, Kempton and Lingfield.

Taking Dunlop's advice, I searched for a geographic center between these tracks. I came up with two places: settling on Banstead: 10.5 miles from Sandown (42 minutes via Kingston Road and A240), three miles from Epsom (9 minutes via A2022) 18 miles from Lingfield (1 hour 43 minutes via Ditches Lane) and 14 miles from Kempton (an hour via A2043).