I raise a beer!!

[Ecobogan]

Thanks mate and I sure got a kick out hearing it for the first time in all of it's animated glory.

It's easy as a kid to see your parents as being born 40 years old and boring so hearing about their young and wild was always a good thing.
I got into dirt bikes as soon as I could and both my sisters did a fair bit of enduro racing on horses, some were Arab crosses from memory.
There was the never ending horse vs bikes debate between us, as was the case everywhere.
In the late eighties a well known dirt bike magazine called the challenge...quarter horse vs motocross bike in a barrel race...to put the debate publicly to bed.
Can't remember where it was held exactly but loads of folk turned up and saw the A grade pro racers on current model factory tuned RM250' get absolutely flogged royally stupid everytime.
The utter best of the best needed near twice the time as the horses.
All came down to traction, the bikes couldn't get power down or turn nearly as quickly no matter what they did.
Quick shut me up I tell you.
They're certainly enigmatic animals and have played a big part in pretty much every civilization.
This is a bit debated but I've read from a few sources that, back in the day, industry needed to quantify machine output and James Watts in the early 1800's came up with horsepower.
You probably know that torque is measured in weight over distance i.e how many pounds can be lifted using a bar 1 foot long...ft/lbs and horsepower is essentially how quickly that can be done.
So 1 horsepower is anything that can lift a man's weight (about150lbs) the height of a man(about 6 foot) in one second....so the story goes.

So being on the way to Brissy you might've passed through Toowoomba? I grew up there and is where the whole horse/bike caper started.
Do have very fond memories of having horses around and a few mates around here are right into it.
Take care mate it's the old school adrenaline sport!

[Patriot]

Yep.....she’s a faast horse

[Daddybang]

I had plenty of mates riding bikes when we were kids that used to laugh at me preferring to ride horses ....but that stopped around the time girls became interesting then they'd be asking me to teach them!!!. To me bikes are a hell of a lot of fun but I'll always prefer to grab a saddle than a handle bar

Yep patriot Winx is fast but it's also the way she moves and her composure and the way she uses that speed. As I said she is just an amazing mare. I watched that race on Saturday and couldn't believe the nonsense the commentators were spouting about her being pushed the only way she's gonna be beaten is if she falls over

Yep ecobogan I know the toowoomba oakey area not well mind you but have mucked around down there a little (gets a little too cold for me!!! )
To be honest I'm not sure about horse power or the origins of but I thought I'd heard it was something about horses being attached to a revolving spindle???
Anyway hope ya have a great day

Edited to add
Just looked at wiki and yeah watts used draft horses attached to a mill wheel to compare the output of his steam engine to the amount of horses needed to put out a certain amount of work in a certain amount of time (very basic explanation of the origin of the term without all the maths which I suck at!!!!! )

[Rod_outbak]

Two different beasts; both called Horsepower.

I recall the power measurement of 'Horsepower' being to do with a horse lifting a 1Hundredweight block to a certain height in a set time.
[This fits in with Ecobogans' description]

And then there were the machines called 'Horsepower's.
In the Montgomery ward 1894 mail-order catalogue we have here, they list machines known as a 'Horsepower', 'DogPower', and I think there might have also been a 'Goatpower'.
They often came in one and two-animal versions. Most variants had a long wooden shaft mounted off the top of a heavy toothed cog, which then had a series of reduction gear, and then a driveshaft exiting out the side. One variant had the 2 dogs (looked like St Bernard in the pic) walking on an endless track in a cage, which looks like it wouldnt have the torque of the big flat ones.
Mum used to also refer to these as a 'Whym', but we think this might have been a brand of Horsepower.

When I visited Sovereign Hill in Ballarat in 2006, they had a couple of working Horsepowers in the Wheelwright's shed, where he was working on a wagon wheel. Their Horsepower was a shipload bigger than the ones here, though.

We have a complete Horsepower on the dump here; yet another thing I'd love to resurrect to working status.