bicycle for horses - Cycling Mob: Road Cycling, Mountain Biking and More

06-21-2004, 11:03 AM

I posted this last week on some horse sites and got some good advice.
I was wondering if a treadmill could be used to power a wagon and a
horse could be made to operate the treadmill.

I have since found out that horses operated stationary treadmills for
powering machines and ferryboats, but that was almost 200 years ago.

I'm wondering if the technology could be developed that would enable
an ordinary horse and rider to beat Lance Armstrong and/or Smarty
Jones. (I'm thinking 100 relatively flat miles at 35 mph would be a
good goal, better than anything possible by a bicyclist or horse and
rider.) Basic data, a horse weighs around 1000 pounds and can generate
up to 3 horsepower in short bursts. Treadmill would probably have to
be around 10-12 feet long, would need some sort of automatic
transmission to keep the horse operating at it's best speed and keep
it from falling off either end on a hilly road.

On a more practical level, if there are some of you who DON'T think it
would be worthwhile to do this just to see if it could be done, this
could magnify the output of a horse just as a bike magnifies the
output of a human, and in parts of the world where animal power is
still used, it could make peoples' lives better.

I don't own horses, don't know how to weld, don't have any money.
Anybody thinks this is a cool idea, give it a shot and let me know if
it works.

There are lots of challenges, both ergonomic and engineering.