In Italy, training is often conducted on the beach, but this kind of exercise is not well studied. The running economy of human runners on soft dry beach sand, grass or firm surface is well known in Sport Medicine; indeed little is known about horse trained on different surfaces. We have made a primary study on a comparison of several clinical and physiological variables in stan-dardbred trotters undergoing similar exercise programs on different surfaces (sand vs track). We tested 2 groups (A and B) of trotting horses (total n = 20) aged between 3 and 4 years. Horses in Group A were trained at the sea side and Group B at the racetrack (280 m a.m.s.l.). In both groups, training consisted of 40 minutes of trotting at a speed of 4-5 m/s. All subjects were evaluated three times at 4 check points: at rest, immediately after the training session, and 1 and 2 hours post-training. Heart rate (HR), respiratory rate (RR) and rectal temperature (RT) were measured at every check point, and blood was sampled for measurement of some variables: hematocrit, plasma concentrations of total protein, glucose, non-estherified fatty acids (NEFA), sodium (Na +), potassium (K+), chloride (C+), aspartate amino transferase (AST), creatine kinase (CK), lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), blood lactate (LA) and cortisol. Results show that exercise on wet sand is more intense than on track, because the friction is greater. The value of hematocrit, K+, cortisol, HR, RR and RT are higher in A than in B after exercise. No recording of blood lactate accumulation in both exercises shows that they are aerobic. Both exercises don’t fatigue the animals because all parameters return to basal values one hour after exercise. Rest values of group A show lower concentration of Na+, AST, LDH, RR than in B group; but Na+ concentration is at the lower limits of normal values, probably correlated with a major sweat loss.

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