Of course, riders nowadays generally used Two-Point Riding, or monkey riding, with their hips raised off the saddle precisely to achieve this as much as possible and reduce some of the pressure on the horse.
But while others tried to minimize it, he wanted to reduce that portion to as close to zero as possible.
For example, on 1,600 meters of turf, a one-kilogram load could result in roughly a 0.2-second difference for a Thoroughbred, or about one horse length.
On 2,000 meters of turf, it would be 0.22 seconds, around 1.1 horse lengths; on 2,400 meters, 0.24 seconds, or 1.2 horse lengths...
If the same horse ran on turf with a load and without one, the difference over 1,600 meters could be around fifty-two horse lengths, around fifty-seven over 2,000 meters, and as much as sixty or seventy horse lengths over 2,400 and 3,200 meters!
That was on turf. The gap would be a bit smaller on dirt.
Of course, he could not maintain zero pressure throughout the entire race, so all those figures had to be halved. On top of that, other riders would also try their best to reduce the pressure on their horses and seek coupling between vibration inertia and their center of gravity... so it had to be discounted heavily again.
Including the gains from reduced air resistance, his rough estimate was that, like the difference between a rider and an ordinary person, he could only gain a lead of a dozen or so horse lengths...
At that point, it could hardly even be called a competition between horses. It was a gulf between him and the other riders—like the difference between a world champion horse and an ordinary G1 horse!
—Logically speaking, with all those advantages, as long as the horse was not too